CRM may have become one of the Top 10 tools used by managers, according to a recent Bain and Co. global survey, but that cuts no ice with our higher education institutions. We are still producing streams of graduates and post-graduates who have little or no knowledge or understanding of CRM. Not only do they not know why it is important, but also they don't even know what it is. Indeed, they might join the world of business without even hearing the expression, "customer relationship management."

Of course, there are a few noble and notable exceptions that only go to prove the rule. Table 1 lists some of the schools that offer educational programs in CRM.

Most of these schools offer single or half-units dedicated to CRM, which can take between 15 and 40 hours to complete. Other institutions include some CRM subject-matter in courses on information technology, database marketing, e-business, strategic marketing, business-to-business marketing or relationship marketing. You can try your own Google search; you'll find there are very few opportunities to learn about CRM in institutions of learning.

So, what's going on? Why is a fundamental and widely applied business discipline—CRM—not being taught in our universities? I think there are three reasons: structure, networks and resources.

I think the answer lies mostly in the structure of business disciplines within universities. The tradition has been to organize academic departments on conventional business functional lines. We have marketing, accounting, operations, human resources, business strategy and finance faculty. These may be enhanced by some technocrats in economics, IT, statistics and law. There might be a few staff from business disciplines such as organizational behavior and leadership.

CRM, is, of course, a cross-functional business discipline. It sits nowhere, but it belongs everywhere. It could be claimed by marketing, IT, operations or strategy subject-matter experts, but it is generally owned by no one. Structure should follow strategy, the experts tell us. These rigid structural divisions—silos, stovepipes—in universities can only inhibit the development of cross-functional educational offerings.

Professional bodies Another reason for the lack of CRM offerings in our universities is the absence of professional bodies in the field. Marketing faculty are members of discipline-based professional associations such as the American Marketing Association or the Chartered Institute of Marketing. They attend conferences where they network with, and learn from, other marketers. Finance, operations and IT specialists have their own forums. Where is the equivalent association or network for CRM academics? It doesn't exist.

I'm sure that many people think of academics as earnest searchers after truth, doing original research, creating new knowledge and passing on the fruits of their experience and wisdom to their students. Isn't this what scholars do? In truth, most universities are midsize, bureaucratic enterprises that demand much of their people in terms of teaching, research and service. Faculty members often use the teaching resources that are readily available to them: books, case studies and interactive games, for example. There are several hundred books aimed at Marketing 101 students. It's the same for IT, finance, operations and HR.

The faculty's needs for a convenient, well-structured, proven solution to their teaching requirements are well met—as long as they sit within the conventional academic disciplines. There are few equivalent resources available to those who wish to teach CRM. Most of the books on CRM are produced by consultants and vendors whose readerships are not fee-paying students.

Adrian Payne, director of the Centre for CRM at Cranfield School of Management, noted when I spoke with him, "Until recently, no credible, academically researched models or frameworks encompassing all the diverse elements that comprise CRM have been available." That is, however, only a first step. Teaching resources that make it easy for faculty members to instruct the subject have to follow. That will allow the faculty with an interest in, but little knowledge of, CRM, to teach the subject with some degree of competence.

Merlin Stone, one of the most prolific CRM authors, reckons that all MBA-level students should have a clear understanding of what CRM is and what it can deliver. Beyond this, he suggests that, "All marketing students should understand direct marketing, database marketing, e-marketing and CRM—each one is inextricably tied to the others."

The lack of resources, networks and supportive structures means that the educational needs of those who lead and implement CRM programs are not being satisfied in the traditional way, through higher education. Is there a vacuum? Yes—but only a partial one. Online communities such as CRMGuru.com have filled the gap. Being a self-help community, it provides the resources and networks that leaders and managers need. Add to this the hands-on training offered by vendors to clients' users and the odd training program from professional bodies such as the Institute of Direct Marketing and Chartered Institute of Marketing, and you have pretty much covered the territory.

We wouldn't educate our finance or marketing people this way, let alone our engineers, doctors and lawyers. Must this remain the status of CRM education?

Last week, I attended, and was fortunate to speak at, the 1st Global Contact Forum, hosted by Instituto Mexicano de Teleservicos.  The event drew a broad collection of contact center folks primarily from Mexico and Latin America.   However, twenty one countries across 5 continents were officially represented among the participants. 

So, after Delta Airlines lost my luggage on the leg from Atlanta to Philadelphia and left it out in the monsoon on Friday, I was able to salvage a few notes and scraps of paper from my bag.  From that, along with my cloudy memory, here's what I think were my key (albeit, random) observations and takeaways (disclaimer: reading runny, smudged ink is not my core competency)

• In talking with Rodolfo Salazar he confirmed my opinion that Mexican and Latin American contact center industry is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1-1.5 years behind the US market in developing social CRM strategies and tactics for leveraging social media as an effective service and support channel. 
• In my talk on social CRM, I asked a question: "how many people have engaged a company for service via a social channel?"  About 20% of the audience had.  In response to the question " how many of your contact centers provide service and support through social channels?".  To that, about 5% raised their hands. 
• In contrast, in a study that just came across my email this morning that surveyed US contact centers, 35% indicated they provide support via social channels.  Does that seem high to you?
• Interestingly, the focus of discussions, presentations and hallway chatter was on providing near-shore contact center alternatives for US-based companies.  It got me wondering, if all these contact center BPOs are chasing the US market, who's providing in-country service to their local customers?
• Speaking of near shore opportunities for US-based companies, every Spanish/English bi-lingual contact center ought to be developing a strategy for taking advantage of the labor arbitrage opportunities available through the Latin American market.  Culture, language and proximity all make me wonder why more aren't jumping across the Rio Grande
• Tod Famous from Cisco gave a thought-provoking presentation and demo on their social CRM platform.  Many of the large enterprise vendors are developing and planning some initial release of such platforms this year, addressing challenges of workflow, multi-channel integration and unified communications.  I'm wondering what the response will be from vendors such as Radian6, Visible Technologies and the other "pure play" monitoring platforms  
• IMT put up a bunch of video interviews on YouTube with conference speakers, including this one with yours truly This should give you a good overview of the conference topics and landscape of this exciting market. The full list is in the "related videos' list on this link.

Republished with author's permission from original post .

Working with businesses throughout the U.S. and Canada, I often get asked how effective teams are created.  There is no easy answer.  Creating a team is complex and requires effort, dedication, strategy and willingness. Creating a team is serious business. And it’s important to your bottom line. When employees are unhappy, disengaged or just going through the motions: your business takes a hit and your consumers pay the price.  Not a goal of any business I know.

In her blog, “Laughter is the best medicine – and productivity booster”, Cathy Leibow discusses the research supporting having fun at work. There is a direct correlation between enjoying your work environment and creative, productive employees.  If those are behaviors you want from employees, I encourage you to consider creating opportunities that inspire those behaviors.  Check out some of the suggestions here: http://bit.ly/czXulx

Some additional ideas:

1. Allow employees to have a few pictures of family/friends at their work station
2. Have a potluck lunch once a month (I’ll bring the paper plates…you don’t want me to cook anything!)
3. Share personal success stories through your internal communication system (ex. “Jen finished her first half marathon this weekend…could someone pick her up off the floor?!”)
4. Post employee pictures (most employees do not even know what employees from other departments/areas look like, yet they talk on the phone to give/receive information almost daily)
5. Sponsor a “Meet and Greet” night with one rule: No one is allowed to talk about work (you may have to get creative and have some activities prepared…feel free to contact me if you need some ideas)

Research has proven your employees productivity will increase when they feel more connected to your company.

• What are you going to do to create a stronger team?
• What opportunities do you have, with your current resources, to foster a team environment?

If you have additional ideas or suggestions, please share them!  I’d love to hear what people are doing that’s making a difference.

Republished with author's permission from original post by Jen Kuhn .

Blair Pleasant posted last week at Unified Communications Strategies Community Blog and I couldn’t help but notice the integration of unified communications and social media. She makes the case that many people have misconceptions about social software, assuming that it’s just about telling people what you ate for lunch, when in reality, it’s an extremely useful business tool. It’s more than just chatting with friends or letting your “followers” know what you did over the weekend. Tools such as social bookmarking, content tagging, wikis, blogs, and microblogs let workers participate in communities where they can build expertise and share knowledge.

Social networking and unified communications each have inherent value, but are even more powerful when we can blend social software nonsynchronous communication tools (such as wikis and blogs) with UC’s synchronous communications capabilities (such as click to connect). Integrating unified communications with social software lets workers better network with peers within the organization, identify and connect with experts within the company, collaborate on projects, and help workers feel connected.

The fact that IBM is seriously playing in this space is great news since they’ll most likely focus on the enterprise market and the SME/SMB marketplace will naturally follow. For the full story read IBM Integrates Unified Communications with Social Software.

Republished with author's permission from original post by ynot .

Collaboration is the new buzzword.  It seems everywhere we turn, we read about collaboration–it’s critical to Sales 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and just about everything else that’s 2.0.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m on the collaboration soapbox as well, but I wish the focus wasn’t just on Shiny New Collaboration Toys. 

I’m attracted to any article that has collaboration in the title, but am often disappointed because it is another article on technology–whether a new telepresence approach (Yes Cisco, your advertising is working), a new software/social networking tool, or something else.  These are interesting and provide new ways to extend the way we collaborate, but seem to gloss over the essence of successful collaboration—or even the fact that collaboration isn’t necessarily the right answer for everything.

I remember when collaboration used to be called teamwork, but I guess that’s not as sexy a term.  Plus we all know about teamwork–it’s really hard.  Collaboration is hard too, but we spend more time talking about shiny new toys than about how to collaborate effectively or whether to collaborate at all.

So let me talk about teamwork.  For great teamwork, we have to align goals and objectives.  We have to have a shared vision about where we are going, how we know when we get there, and why we are going there in the first place.  If the team is aligned in it’s goals and objectives, then chaos results–we create a lot of activity, but it’s aimless.  We get frustrated with each other and tend to stop working as a team.

Teamwork limits our freedom.  We tend not to talk about this, but to be effective on a team, we often have restrictions on what we do and how we do it.  We must work together with others, not just do our own thing.  I was struck by a piece on collaboration by David Byrne (yes, of Talking Heads Fame).  He says that sometimes there is great joy in being limited — it helps to let others participate in making decisions, not to have the responsibility solely to ourselves.

He also raises the point that working together is to expose ourselves to ideas “outside and beyond what one would of come up with oneself…. It gets us outside our own self created boxes.”  Isn’t this one of the points of effective teamwork, that working together we can accomplish so much more than we could be working as individuals?  We can possibly get things done faster.  We can possibly come up with much better ideas, methods and approaches.  We can explore the concept that 2+2 is sometimes more than 4 (God forbid I use another buzzword–synergy).

Teamwork is tough, it’s a double edge sword–for every positive benefit, there can be a negative.  But if we can organize ourselves to overcome the negatives, the results can be tremendous.  As leaders, we build ”teams” in our organizations.  But creating effective teams is more than a buzzword.  Morten Hansen has written a great book on this, Collaboration.  It focuses on internal collaborations—teamwork, and when they are effective and when not.  It’s a must read for anyone involved in teamwork.

Teamwork outside of our organizational walls becomes “partnering.”  Partnering is all the rage, it seems to be a higher form of selling  (maybe it removes the stigma of the act of “selling.)  Like teamwork, partnering is very difficult.  It isn’t right for every customer or supplier, it isn’t right for every situation.  Effective partnering requires the same open-mindedness as teamwork.  Effective partnering limits our freedoms, but exposes us to opportunities that we might not otherwise be able to pursue.  No organization can partner with everyone–we can’t afford it, we don’t have the resources to support it, it creates organizational schizophrenia.

Partnering requires new skills, discipline, processses, and methods.  Partnering requires sharing—shared values, vision, risks, resources, and rewards. 

Teamwork, partnering, collaboration is about working together–differently–to achieve things we can’t do as individually.  The tools are just aids in helping us do this, they are not the ends.

Republished with author's permission from original post by David Brock .

There have been CRM failures for more than one reason. The better prepared you are, the less likely you will have to deal with it. Here are some questions and points that should be addressed prior to making the leap:

How to Avoid CRM Horror Stories

1. What if you are unable to migrate your current system data to your CRM system?

2. What if the solution does not solve your business problem? How will it impact your existing operations?

3. Lack of ability to integrate seamlessly with 3rd party applications.

4. Lack of ability to create custom screens, fields and automated business rules that are specific to the way you do business.

5. Employee perception is not addressed and employees are unwilling to use system.

6. Lack of service received to implement the solution successfully. Services include configuring the system the way you do business and receiving sufficient end-user and manager training to be self-sufficient and not completely rely on the vendor for every minor adjustment.

7. Does your current computer system meet the minimum system requirements for yourCRM software?

8. Can you afford for your CRM system to go down? If not, how will operations proceed?

9. How easy is it to move to another vendor? Can you export your entire database? Can you upgrade your application to an enterprise level product without too much inconvenience and cost?

10. System security – this may not be a concern when you are small but as you grow, it will come to play.

Go evaluate and ask !