This week, LoopFuse’s VP of Field Operations, Matt Quinlan, sat down with Helpstream’s Bill Odell to discuss utilizing Social CRM to create customer success. Quinlan oversees sales, marketing, and “customer success” at the on-demand marketing automation vendor, and gave some insight into how LoopFuse has been using a Helpstream community to optimize his work. Helpstream is a self-proclaimed provider of Social CRM, and offers integrations for Oracle and Salesforce.com users. Their product is built for web-driven customer service and support, ultimately engaging customers through the creation of a community.

An example of a Helpstream Online Community

One of the interesting points Quinlan made is that Helpstream has been integral to his ensuring customer success as LoopFuse grew. The bigger the company became, the more difficult it was to ensure customers were satisfied throughout the implementation process (in LoopFuse’s fledgling days, assistance was performed on a one-on-one basis). Quinlan states that deploying a Helpstream community allowed LoopFuse to provide better customer service via an interactive, searchable, digital environment.

The suggestion is that having a customer community will soon be as important as having a company website. Now, this isn’t surprising considering the information came from the Helpstream website, but the information’s source doesn’t preclude its validity. Helpstream users are provided with the ability to engage their customers through the community—as opposed to customers passively consuming content—which helps them maintain stronger relationships.

Integrating social media into CRM, creating Social CRM, has been a much-debated topic over the past few years. It’s tough to find a solution that utilizes the technology effectively without creating distractions in office, and perhaps greater adoption and monitoring of the customer community is a step in the right direction. Only time will tell how many other large companies employ similar communities, and with what amount of success, but for now it seems a good way for large companies to reach out to customers with social media—something that’s eluded them for a while now.

SAP is holding their Influencer Summit in Boston this week, and it goes without saying that as a major ERP vendor, attendees are paying very close attention to what they have to say about on-demand solutions. Not surprisingly, SAP has taken to offering non-ERP products this year, in a conscious movement away from their reputation as an on-premise ERP vendor.

This newfound focus on helping companies acquire a network of on-demand tools is a good start at diluting their on-premise standing, and several SAP executives noted in their keynote speeches that their move to the cloud is going to be a structural overhaul. One of SAP’s board members, Jim Hagemann Snabe, spoke of the eventual demise of the three-letter acronym—SAP doesn’t want to deal in ERP, CRM, and the like anymore, and wants to move away from the isolation implied by these divers platforms. This is part of the reason SAP’s latest offering, Business Suite 7, has a non-acronymic name, and the intention is to lower the total cost of ownership and provide enhancements without necessitating a costly upgrade. Snabe also acknowledged that the short-term goal would be a platform through which users can interact with back-end, ERP data, and also be able to work collaboratively via social networking platforms.

Another reason SAP cannot continue as it once did is that large enterprises are finding they can no longer afford the costly upgrades required by on-premise solutions. John Schwarz, another SAP board member, stated that SAP will continue offering on-premise products, but that SAP’s newest enterprise software innovations will be web-based additions to help customers adopt a SaaS-hybrid model. As noted on this site before, the SaaS hybrid model is gaining lots of ground with companies wanting to get more use out of on-premise investments.

Below is a video of ERP pundit Brian Sommer (filmed by Asuret CEO Michael Krigsman), and in it he suggests that on-premise ERP will soon be extinct. The hubbub surrounding the SaaS hybrid model certainly supports this theory, as entirely web-based ERP solutions would be the next logical step. Sommer argues that on-premise ERP systems being slow to change was fine when improvements weren’t occurring at light speed. Now ERP platforms have to keep up with the speed of innovation, and hybrid models support this; yet SaaS hybrid models aren’t for everyone. Sommer predicts that many more large enterprises will move their ERP to the cloud, but entirely cloud-based systems aren’t right for everyone, and the hybrid model provides a nice limbo for companies wanting the security comforts of on-premise solutions. Signs point to on-premise going extinct, but this wipe out may take longer than people expect.

Earlier this month, CRM Buyer re-released an interesting story as part of a “Best of ECT News” series, and it touched upon an important aspect of business management that many SMBs are reluctant to implement: time reporting.

Small- and medium-sized businesses tend to have their CRM spread across multiple applications, so it’s not surprising that some invaluable applications can be neglected. But time tracking is not to be ignored, because it provides important information about where companies are making money (i.e. which customers are the most profitable), to control costs and revenue growth, and helps to really understand costs and focus on key areas. Having an automated system to streamline tasks is beneficial for cutting administrative costs.

Time tracking applications are recommended for companies with 30 or more employees, but they can also be helpful for even smaller business and freelance workers. Simply put, it helps users to not only keep track of their time, but also to make the best-informed decisions when it comes to projects and clients.

Still, CRM Buyer points out that many SMBs are hesitant to adopt these programs, and for a variety of reasons. Some companies are just averse to change; some might find their employees take offense at being asked to record their time at work; and many people just don’t like timesheets. But timesheets can help enforce union contracts and consistency, and the advice given to managers here is to fully explain the business needs for these time-reporting tools.

Naturally, a lot has changed with the economic decline, and time-tracking apps are reportedly on the rise. That time reporters are priceless in running a business isn’t surprising, but what is amazing is the number of companies—no matter what the size—that are shying from using them. Still, most everyone has been affected by the economy, so the demand for these types of productivity tools is only increasing, and will likely cement their status as a business management staple.

And of course, because no CRM application is considered complete if you can’t access it from your iPhone, most time-reporting companies are offering mobile applications.

The eCommerce market has been growing this past year, and according to a study by Forrester Research, 18% of North American and 23% of European enterprises are planning major upgrades to their eCommerce platforms in the near future. Today, CDC announced today that it would be purchasing a Canadian ecommerce developer, and Epicor Software announced this month that they would be joining that market with their Epicor Commerce solution. Epicor offers a suite of applications designed to work across multiple product lines, known as Extend solutions, and Epicor Commerce will be a part of that family.

Epicor Commerce touts standards-based Microsoft .NET technology and support for AJAX, and encourages collaborative B2B and B2C activities. The platform provides customers with the ability to create elaborate eCommerce Web designs, and can deploy web content, images, and marketing promotions and programs. The pages created are search engine friendly, and are optimized for traffic from all major search engines. In addition, Epicor Commerce provides automatic synchronization of information on products, pricing, customers, and inventory levels directly from the user’s ERP system; it also supports order placing, and payment methods from COD to credit card.

Epicor is a leader in retail ERP, so this product is more than apt; even better, Epicor Commerce is available in both on-premise and SaaS formats. During these tough economic times, many companies are looking for ways to cut costs and overhaul their web presence, which makes the SaaS deployment option all the more relevant. The Canadian company CDC is planning to acquire, Truition, is also a SaaS vendor, and likely they will roll out eCommerce solutions incorporating Truition technology within the next year.

As noted before on this blog, the “hybrid model” of both SaaS and on-premise components has been proliferating this year, and it’s nice to see more companies embracing on-demand technologies. And it is particularly nice to see Epicor and CDC—as two heavyweights in ERP—making headway in the SaaS market. Many ERP companies have, for a while now, been under fire remaining largely on-premise, and while these two companies are here offering definitive SaaS ERP solutions, it’s good that they’re showing comfort with the new technology.

Yesterday at Dreamforce, it was all about Salesforce Chatter. Today, CEO Marc Benioff took some time to tell us about Force.com’s progress, and it’s pretty impressive. Benioff lamented the fact that companies like Oracle charge annual maintenance fees for the kinds of services offered by Force.com, and it seems people agree: there are currently more than 135,000 custom applications built with Force.com, and more than 200,000 programmers in its developer network. And starting at $25 per user per month, and offering speedy development timelines, it’s plain to see why so many are clamoring for Force.com.

Development on Force.com is cheaper for companies because their programmers don’t have to test their applications against multiple combinations of databases, servers, etc. Furthermore, users are Salesforce.com customers, and therefore need not invest in hardware. Some note that it is potentially difficult to export applications built there to other platforms, but even large software vendors are taking note of Force.com’s popularity, particularly IT management companies (the larger of which have been a bit hesitant to begin the shift to the cloud).

IT management software company CA announced at Dreamforce today that they will be releasing a Force.com-built system, CA Agile Planner, which is for managing responsive software developments. More specifically, the product will allow programmers to develop various increments of applications to provide for continual feedback. CA’s CEO, John Swainson, even called Force.com’s growth “nothing short of amazing.”

Another IT management company proudly joining in is BMC: today they announced their Service Desk Express will be available via the Force.com platform in the spring of 2010. Service Desk Express will be sold, marketed, and available via Salesforce.com, and BMC execs are saying this will allow more IT departments to take advantage of the technology. BMC’s CEO, Bob Beauchamp, lauded cloud computing’s ability to “abstract all complexity of the infrastructure that rely on IT services delivery and follow best practices.” And while Beauchamp didn’t divulge any pricing details, he did add that serving IT management via the cloud would help their customers cut costs; it will also likely please their current customers, and companies everywhere are reevaluating any costly legacy systems they have.

Salesforce.com’s annual cloud computing event is underway, and we will be live-blogging the news as the day progresses (or you can “watch” it unfold here). Salesforce has enjoyed a good couple of months–they reported strong Q3 earnings, and launched an update of Service Cloud, their fastest growing product. It’ll be interesting to see what happens today, and what direction the company will take.

CEO Marc Benioff has long praised the real-time cloud and social media streams, and today Salesforce announced its “Facebook for enterprise”: Salesforce Chatter. Chatter will provide companies with real-time collaboration capabilities in a secure, pritvate social network for their busniess. Connections are leveraged through the profiles, feeds and groups that can be created for content, people, and applications, and Chatter also touts status updates and Twitter–the most relevant tweets are filtered into the Chatter platform.

Example of a profile on Chatter--it does look a lot like Facebook!

The above photo shows the profile-page setup within Salesforce Chatter. The stock photo is of a user’s profile, but keep in mind that products and applications can have their own profiles, and join the conversation through status changes as well. Users can also post content, documents, spreadsheets, and presentations to Chatter’s newsfeed, and there is a multi-tenant sharing model. In addition, native applications built on Force.com can stream updates to Salesforce Chatter. And naturally, Chatter will support mobile devices, and will be available on BlackBerry, Windows Mobile phones, and the iPhone. It will be available in 2010, and included in all paid editions of Salesforce CRM and Force.com; it will be offered independently for $50 per user per month.

During Benioff’s keynote, he acknowledged 4 clouds: Sales Cloud 2, Service Cloud 2, and Custom Cloud 2, and the fourth was unnamed, and is presumed to be Chatter.

Intuit is reinventing itself for the Web, and its latest product is an online version of the ever-popular contact manager. Due in large part to the economic downturn, many companies have released similar offerings this year—Salesforce.com has the Contact Manager Edition, and SugarCRM has Sugar Express—and now Intuit is aiming to get SMBs online with their Customer Manager.

Like the Salesforce and Sugar products, Customer Manager is light CRM for small businesses—a tool to help them store information in a streamlined space instead of across multiple applications. Customer Manager is browser-based and customizable, and information entered into the database syncs with Intuit’s QuickBooks, which is where this contact manager supersedes the Sugar and Salesforce offerings. With the QuickBooks integration, users can see information about financial transactions (see image below), update calendar information, and also import and export information from Outlook and Exchange.

Customer Manager for Mobile is the extension for smartphones, designed for mobile viewing. It provides all the capabilities of the desktop version, but so far is supports only BlackBerry phones (thought Intuit notes they are actively working with other smartphone manufacturers to support other devices). Also, Customer Manager has collaborative functionalities, so information entered and edited from the mobile edition will be updated for employees using the desktop version, and vice versa. Currently, Customer Manager is offering a free month-long trial, and then costs $9.95 a month for up for five users.

Intuit’s new product may be simple, but it is impressive. Of course, it seems a logical step given the large number of SMBs using QuickBooks, and executives at Intuit have stated that this is one of many online extensions we’ll be seeing. The contact management space has certainly been expanding this year, with some definite CRM heavyweights vying for the market, and it will be interesting to see what other products are released in 2010.

Update: Salesforce.com announced at Dreamforce that it will be releasing a contact manager for SMBs as well.

For a while now, IBM has been shifting their focus from hardware to software, and recently, CFO Mark Loughridge told us that they were investing lost in business analytics. Today, the company announced a very large fruit of that endeavor: the IBM Smart Analytics Cloud. This product is the for IBM clients, and is accompanying the release of Blue Insight, which is an internal product that will be the world’s largest private cloud-computing analytics environment for business analytics.

Predating this release are the recent acquisitions of data analytics company SPSS for $1.2 billion, business analytics firm RedPill, and Canadian business intelligence developer Cognos. In addition, IBM recently performed a Global CIO study and found 83% of respondents were looking to business intelligence and analytics to boost competitiveness.

Blue Insight, the internal offering, will give IBM’s sales and development department (some 200,000 employees) the ability to gather data and information—from customer relationships to demand trends to shipping times—for more efficient decision making to gain further insight at point of sale. One of the most impressive aspects of Blue Insight is its scope: information will come from about 100 different info warehouses that make up more than a petabyte of information—100 times the content of the Library of Congress.

IBM Smart Analytics Cloud will provide customers with the same scalable architecture of Blue Insight, and like its internal sister, will tout many of the Cognos 8 BI tools. Customers will be able to create reports, dashboards, and scorecards for monitoring business performance, and also import data for strategic analysis. And the addition of this vast information source also gives IBM the opportunity to offer an impressive bundle: hardware, software, middleware, and consulting and maintenance services. And the folks at Forbes posit that if IBM adds data mining and real-time analytics, they will strike gold.

IBM’s foray into the software market has been extremely fruitful, and this new product will certainly spark copies from other software companies. It will be interesting to see who else joins the business analytics-cloud race.

Smartphones are proliferating at light speed, and applications for them—especially for the iPhone—are growing apace. The iPhone has long been the rival of the business-friendly BlackBerry, but since the advent of the iPhone, other smartphones are rolling out different features in an attempt to match it.

Most recently, the iPhone and the Android phones have taken center stage, and despite lackluster sales, many consider the latest Droid model as the mobile phone that will outdo the iPhone. The Droid has been positioned as a business phone in many ways—honing in on the BlackBerry crowd—but the phone’s projected coup remains to be seen. Regardless, both the Android phones and the iPhone could succeed the BlackBerry as the enterprise phone of choice—many companies are weary of paying for BlackBerry’s secure messaging server, and both the aforementioned phones will likely adopt similar secure messaging services soon.

So considering that the battle of the smartphones becomes more and more heated, and we see people of all professions carrying them, you’d think a deluge of mobile CRM applications (and news about them) would follow. But like the Droid takeover, the rise of the iPhone CRM application has yet to be seen, and it is very likely it may never be realized.

Devices like the BlackBerry and iPhone offer accessibility to more information, which can be very helpful to sales and field teams in need of CRM data. To remain competitive, it is becoming more important for these service people to have CRM information readily available, and thankfully most CRM vendors have applications for the major mobile devices at this point. When searching for a mobile solution—be it iPhone CRM or other—it’s important that the mobile employees’ needs match the IT and security priorities of the company. But what is most likely going to affect your mobile CRM selection—and the reason mobile CRM will probably never surpass the presence of the desktop application—is that it usually depends entirely on your choice of desktop solution. In most cases, it’s easiest to just rely on the mobile version of the native platform.

Those using on-demand platforms can readily access CRM data from their iPhone, since vendors like Salesforce.com and SugarCRM build their products in the cloud. Companies dealing mostly in legacy systems, like Oracle, usually develop separate applications, and some non-CRM companies are creating applications to extend CRM functionality to the smartphone.

There are a plethora of solutions, but the options for personalization, and how closely they resemble the native app are another story. Dealing with tons of data on a mobile device is not ideal, so an iPhone CRM application is very much “CRM lite.” In addition, security issues may have IT departments worrying about certain data being stored on mobile devices—many mobile CRM apps have offline components, and if the phone is stolen or lost this could be problematic. Fortunately, many vendors are incorporating data encryptions for mobile solutions to prevent the theft of valuable or confidential CRM data.

When it comes to choosing a mobile CRM solution, CRM Buyer has a few recommendations: find a mobile CRM component that correlates to the native application, and more importantly, be sure the mobile solution meets the sales staff’s needs. Should they find the app lacking, they will most likely enact their own solution, which leads to counterproductive fragmentation of information.

It has long been noted that the people benefitting the most from an Android or iPhone CRM application are sales people; aside from maybe help desk centers, they are also the ones thought to benefit the most from social CRM as well. Recently, the CEO of appssavvy, a consulting company that launches mobile applications, told the press his company would soon be expanding from social gaming apps to social CRM applications. Whether these social CRM apps will differ greatly from traditional iPhone CRM apps has yet to be seen, but it sounds like a space where mobile CRM could really grow, especially since social media platforms are already simple, and translate well onto mobile devices. In addition, social networking applications are popular on smartphones, so social CRM as an extension could be highly successful.

In the spirit of CRM systems acting as unified platforms for sales, marketing, customer service and now social media, Helpstream announced last week that they are adding marketing automation integrability to their social CRM offering. Helpstream’s CEO, Bob Warfield, says that active customer service communities pave the way for a focus on marketing, and using social media streams helps sales teams assess the customer voice and identify leads.

Helpstream’s latest release provides productized integrations with marketing automation solutions from Marketo, Infusionsoft, and others; companies can integrate Helpstream CRM with any marketing automation provider. The social marketing includes: “overhead” cloud feeds enabling users to integrate any social network, Twiter monitoring, and a “mention this” function that pre-sets Twitter responses.

Tech pundit and president of The 56 Group, Paul Greenberg, thinks this is a smart offering, noting that in an age where SaaS vendors are emphasizing customer service in the cloud, Helpstream is augmenting their line by providing a workflow engine in addition to their community platform. In many ways, this puts Helpstream in direct competition with bigger CRM providers like Salesforce.com, Oracle, and of course Lithium, who’ve already added social CRM capabilities.