Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

The first hurdle for many organizations will be learning to treat social media as a telephone and not a megaphone.  Providing access to our companies so our audience will have a place to interact and see us as real will be the second hurdle.  Finally ones ability to stop tracking numbers of people as though they were points on the scoreboard will perhaps be the last one to clear.

Along with you, my goal for the coming year will be to bring back the business deal with handshake via social interaction over the internet and creating tangible relationships not just traceable reactions.

Holiday blessing and prosperous New Year!

Perhaps your org is, but I can assure you that some of the others you listed aren’t yet. ;-P

I maintain that there is a genuine need for more voices like your own within the Cloud Cabal upper levels – who do recognize they type of talent required to pull it all together – and will subsequently change both their recruiting practices and role requirements. 

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

I have been in the forefront of eCRM revolution since its inception more than 10 years’ back. And if I can relate to how things were when CRM was “eCRM” (before large vendors entered the field in a big way), I can say that once consolidation happened in the industry, demand for talent sky rocketed, and is still strong even now for experienced CRM, ERP IT professionals. We are at “consolidation” stage when it comes to Social CRM – just see all the M&A in the last one month alone and a string of IPOs in Social Media. 
As I have highlighted in the post, demand for talent will pick up going forward. Experienced CRM/ERP professionals can benefit from this coming boom by picking up required technical skills in the area and by becoming experts in technology/tools used in Social CRM – SFDC/Radian6 for example and similarly for Oracle, SAP and Microsoft too. 

There are many Social CRM pundits (preachers), but if one is expert in using the tools and delivering Social CRM solution using some of the leading tools, that person is going to be highly valued. Just my 2 cents worth of wisdom!Thanks again for your comment,Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

I don’t necessarily see that there is as much of a critical shortage of skilled resources who have strategic and tactical skill with Enterprise, ERP, CRM apps/suites/processes, plus an understanding of social customer psychology.  Rather, I think there is indeed a pool of resources out there that the ‘big’ social business vendors aren’t tapping into yet, or at least they’re not moving them into high enough roles in the organization where they can have real impact on the overall direction of delivery strategies and the creation of real customer success stories. We are the missing link – the real practitioners between the Preachers and the Pioneers, but we’re not being well utilized. 

I think a big part of the challenge isn’t a lack of resources, but vendors not understanding who the resources are, and why they should be recruiting them.
I number quite a few candidates to fit the bill amongst my own friends and colleagues, but it’s a tough task to get the attention of the big vendors unless you’re perceived as a social media voice or blogger versus a battle-worn, ‘in-the-trenches’ talent treasure.  I’d lay bets on all of them, (myself included), in a challenge against most of the self-proclaimed social business gurus on something as simple as development of a plan of execution.  I have no doubt I’d make a killing on that wager. But, first we must get past the gate-keepers to those who are willing to take up that challenge.

I’ll add a little personal research via this snippet copied from from one of my posts on this topic:

“Looking at the positions posted on three ‘top’ social platform vendor sites doesn’t bode well for the clients. While we’re all searching for success stories, I forecast many dismal failures ahead if the right people aren’t being used in the right ways. Of 55 jobs posted by those vendors offering social collaboration solutions for businesses, only 4 of the jobs listed have any sort of business analysis consulting or enterprise software implementation experience as a requirement. That’s nothing short of scary.”

As you astutely clarified, it’s not just an issue of hiring the right resources, either. Ideally, when resources such as ourselves are recruited into any of these organizations, they should be utilized as a cadre of Drill Sergeants who can cross-train and mentor those coming up in the ranks as the next generation of service professionals. It’s not enough to rally the troops with a new battle cry, we need to be in a position to carefully build best practices, share basic tenets of consultancy, architect best practices, and vet the competency levels of the rest of the team.  We need to write the narratives for social enterprise from within.

I’m game. As are several skilled colleagues.  Now what? 

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

You are also correct in saying that “in order to get/have the right context it essentially needs the right data and then, of course, the right attitude.”

But being local is paramount because how would you scale in social CRM other wise? You cannot be relevant, approachable and appear to be human if you try to engage thousands (even tens of thousands or more) customers and prospects from a central or head office. You have to de-centralize and engage your customers at a local level, else Social CRM is impossible. This is what I have highlighted in my post.

Thanks again for your wonderful comments, greatly appreciated!

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

thanks for your answer! Let’s get the discussion continued:

I would argue that especially Dell amongst the mentioned companies has a social CRM strategy in place. Add Giff Gaff into the mix. 

Looking at these companies one can observe that “being local” is not the core criterion but probably being knowledgeable, approachable, and appearing to be human. I think that, in order to get/have the right context it essentially needs the right data and then, of course, the right attitude.

Social CRM is a means to become/stay relevant. Being local is imho one way, not the only one and (again imho) not the key one. Imagine local staff having a “don’t care” attitude or local staff not having the knowledge.

Who would you prefer to interact with? The local staff who might know and doesn’t care about you or the person in a far away country (probably via a community) with keen interest in getting your problem solved and the knowledge or, at minimum, an “I’ll find out for you” attitude?

I actually would go a little further after thinking of it for a while: Being relevant also includes making the right products that meet customer expectations (or surpass them) – without the need to solve problems but the possibility to get the product even improved by being able to participate in a co-creation process. This doesn’t need any locality at all – see Giff Gaff again.

What do you think?

Best regards
Thomas

You are right, being relevant is important. But when it comes to Social CRM, the best way to be relevant is to be local – as only “local” sales and support staff can provide the best service that customers expect in social age. Who wants to talk to a rep, on phone, who doesn’t have the right context?

Thanks again for your comment:

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

Cheers
Thomas

You are right, consumers have become numb to mass or homogenized media and Social Media can be effectively used for more authentic customer relationships – for engaging customers.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts!

Harish Kotadia

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

What an intriguing conclusion, you’re right! crisis or competitive
action will push the change! I think we must not wait & watch cause
people like you and me are commended to leader this change, our kids
will do the rest!

Sincere thanks for taking time to reply my post!

Admiration and respect for you

Luis San Vicente

What an intriguing conclusion, you’re right! crisis or competitive
action will push the change! I think we must not wait & watch cause
people like you and me are commended to leader this change, our kids
will do the rest!

Sincere thanks for taking time to reply my post!

Admiration and respect for you

Luis San Vicente

@lsanvicent:disqus

Yes, as you have said, some executives do realize the challenge to transform “old fashioned” marketing way. But it is difficult in most large and medium companies to change fundamental business processes, even though it may be important to do so. Question is what will make these executives to push hard for changes, will it be a crisis (like Social Media crisis) or will they change because of competitive action? We will have to wait and watch. But one thing is certain, change is coming and this time, it’s going to be big time change!

Thanks again for your comments,

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.

Thanks again,

Harish Kotadia, Ph.D.