I still cannot figure out how I’ve got on this page, but the title and the first paragraph have caught my eyes:
X launches latest on-demand CRM release; Pushes social networking
X on Tuesday released its latest on demand CRM effort–X CRM On Demand Release 15–with the primary new feature being social networking capabilities.
I paused for a moment and then my brain got overheated: maybe CRM doesn’t mean what I know, maybe social networking capabilities is not exactly what I imagine, or maybe it is just a CRM that allows my customers to connect to each other and share their complaints about the provided services.
Well, I was wrong! CRM does mean what I knew (Customer Relationship Management), social networking is about interacting people (agreed there is no clear definition for it), and the announcement is not about customers sharing their complaints “playlists” or preferences. But then, what is this announcement about?
The lead component of X CRM’s new social capabilities is a new feature called ‘Sticky Notes’. This allows a user to mark any object — for example an account in a given salesperson’s portfolio — with a comment and then subscribe to the message stream related to that object. Team members can then follow and participate in the conversation around that object, which is all co-ordinated within new functionality called the ‘Message Center’. They don’t have to go into the application or call up the account itself. The Sticky Notes conversation stream can also be exposed as a portlet or gadget and embedded in an external home page such as iGoogle or MyYahoo!.
I had to pause again and ask myself if the meanings of collaboration tools and workflows have changed overnight. But I don’t think this really happened and this is just an example of how marketing departments of the large companies are mastering buzzwords and sending out subliminal messages (NB: to be read BS).
Posted by: Alex Popescu (aka the_mindstorm)
Please don’t ask me about the company name. A quick search will reveal its name 😉
mindstorms 