A few conversations on SaaS based CRM have recently centered on privacy. The SaaS problem regardless of solution is privacy and integration into core corporate systems. Always has been. Always will. There needs to be a dose of reality though. Cloud based e-mail is reality and many companies are moving that way. Those systems have the same or greater privacy concerns, yet that never seems to be the objection. Maybe if user adoption was higher on CRM systems, they privacy question would be moot.

Over the long weekend, I had a conversation with a friend and former colleague on the state of the enterprise. The common theme centered on the advances in technology and that projects still fail at an alarming rate. This made me recall an earlier post on project success.

Many many moons ago, I had two clients. Both were large enterprise software companies. Both partnered and competed in various markets. Both were deploying the same CRM product to increase efficiencies in their customer service centers. It is the ideal situation to illustrate project success and failure.

The first company had ambitious plans to deploy across multiple product lines, across multiple service teams and integrate with multiple CRM systems. The plans were big and bold. “We will be your most successful and reference-able customer,” the executive sponsor boasted in the kickoff meeting.

The second company had calculated and negotiated their purchase price based on a cost per call metric. They had a simple goal. We have 18 months to get to positive ROI.

Which company succeeded? It was not the first company.

Interesting read and follow up to My $0.02 post yesterday on Read Write Web about SaaS provider Zoho and VMWare partnering to provide on-site versions of Zoho’s SaaS suite. Go where the market takes you. Smart move.

Read Write Web: Zoho Partners with VMware for Collaboration Behind the Firewall

It has been clear for awhile that a major shift has been happening in enterprise computing. It has taken time to gain traction and momentum, but it looks like Software as a Service (SaaS) is nearly there.

Companies will look to adopt SaaS solutions for 2 major reasons:

1. Lower costs
2. Implement quickly

Cost structures are killing IT departments. The old enterprise paradigm just does not scale anymore. No huge capital investments. No new major hardware. No new major software. That also means that any SaaS purchase has to be “instant on.” No more hiring a Big 5 firm to take 6-12 months to roll out basic functionality.

Early adoption of SaaS has been in the CRM space, notably with Salesforce.com. There is a reason that Sales and Marketing were targeted first. These two organizations have the most dynamic processes in the company. They need to be able to react quickly. IT departments are not typically scaled to move so fast with fluid processes. A SaaS company comes in wiht a pitch of I can take this problem away from you and IT will likely bite. Just think about the personalities that are in Sales versus IT.

At the end of the day though, SaaS providers need expertise. Do not expect a company like Salesforce.com to build out an enormous services organization. They are more likely to partner with providers of process consulting, training and integration for particular verticals and foreign markets. Note that this is not technical consulting. The focus will be on the process and how to get there.

Finally, expect that Sales, Marketing and in general CRM will lead future innovation in SaaS. Simply, CRM got there first.

That’s my $0.02.

Very interesting article and very cool graphic powered by Tableau Software. Tableau is based in Seattle and makes impressive visualization software. BI folks out there should check them out.

WSJ Blogs: How Long Does It Take To Build A Technology Empire?

Solid blog post at Sales Enablement provider BizSphere. The Need to Understand the Context B2B Sales People Are Operating In makes several good points.

First, the way customers buy today has changed.
Second, Marketing now owns the early phases of the traditional sales cycle.
Third, sales will spend more time adding value than selling the value proposition.

Tying solutions to real business problems has always been at the heart of the complex sale. In today’s B2B sales environment, sales needs to have the skills for that complex sell.

CRM solutions fail most of the time. I always wonder what is meant by fail. I have had my hand in many CRM deployments and only a 2-3 did not meet the clients expectations from initial roll-out. Those that I would consider a “fail” never aligned the technology to the business process from day one. Pretty soon they were on a road to nowhere. Having worked in Sales and having a CRM background, I know why user adoption is not higher. Sales people do not like to be tracked, measured or accounted for against anything other than quota. Think about it. What other organization is measured against a quota, that if not met, will likely result in job loss? Sales is already measured.

The sales enablement concept is very interesting because it gives sales a real reason to use a CRM system. If it does provide value, user adoption goes up, ROI goes up, and hopefully, sales go up. Then everyone will be happy. The average tenure of a Sales VP is currently 19 months. Can your organization survive with 19 months or less of sales data?

There has been a lot of talk about social CRM (sCRM) and Twitter. The implications for consumer based offerings is clear. In the enterprise, marketing has use cases.

The WSJ has an interesting look at how traders are using Twitter.
Money quote: “Analysts said the service seems well-suited for a sector that devours new bits of information about the condition of crops or livestock, as well as political or regulatory developments and market moves.”

Ask yourself, does this sound like your business? You need to be where your clients and prospects are. If they are on Twitter, then get on Twitter.

WSJ: For Traders, Twitter Is One More Trading Tool

Forbes has had some great coverage of the Black Hat cybersecurity conference. Here is an interesting read on little known issue with virtualization.

Check out Why Cloud Computing Needs More Chaos

Have a great weekend.

Recently I was asked about Sales Enablement providers. I knew of a couple but had mainly thought that the whole area was lipstick for sales/marketing content management systems (CMS). What I have since learned while doing some research for a project is that the capabilities of sales enablement have evolved to include market and competitive intelligence as well as insights from the field and subject matter experts.

Worthwhile blog on Sales Enablement @ http://salesenablement.wordpress.com/

Three main Sales Enablement players of interest:

• Salesforce Content
• SAVO Group
• Kadient

Why this is important to CRM? It will drive user adoption.
Max’s CRM Rule #1: Give Sales a reason to use CRM.