Social Media and CRM – thoughts on how they should connect

I have done a few articles in my blog on how I'd like to see Social Media integrated to CRM (especially ACT!). The two most relevant are ACT! by Sage and Social Media – Social CRM and Thoughts on ACT! 2010 beta (#ACT2010) - The good, the bad and the ugly

But, since those, I have seen the social media sites expand their capabilities and have seen many more people using them for the business connections as well as their social ones.

From a business point of view, this is introducing many issues with maintaining and managing those relationships and the methods you use to communicate with them. So I thought I would expand my view of some of the ways they should integrate. Obviously, as my focus is ACT!, some of the items might be specific to that CRM environment.

Contact importing/sending and syncing

Social Media has meant that people are making connecting with people in a wide variety of social networking sites like LinkedIN, Facebook, Plaxo, Twitter, Google Buzz and others.

But good CRM strategy means that you should be able to centralise all the points of contact. Basically, I think this should just be one way (from Social Media to CRM) – although, some social media platforms also allow you to load your contacts into them to search and see if they exist, then link them. This would be a good option for those platforms that provide this facility.

• Import all (or a lookup) of social contacts/friends from the social media platform
  • Check to see if Contact already exists by email (all email fields) or Contact Name
  • For each Social Media site, there should be a dedicated field to fill in the key that links the CRM contact to their profile
  • As many people use different email addresses for social media sites, when adding the email, it should check if the email address exists. If not, add it to an additional email field
  • Ability to define if the imported contacts are Public (all CRM users), Limited Access (some CRM users) or Private
• Should also import picture field (if available)
• Ability to send a lookup of CRM contacts to the social media network and request to connect or invite the contact if not found
• Ability to sync changes made by contacts on social site to CRM - including a picture field. This can be turned on for all or some social sites. An easy way to keep your data up-to-date

Events/Activities

Many social media platforms (like LinkedIN and Facebook) provide the ability to add “events”. These should be imported as activities in the CRM – with the option to link to a specific contact or to the user’s own record in the database.

Social Media Display

This is to display the contact's social media profile in a tab when you are working with them.

• For each social media platform this requires two URLs and a dedicated key field
• When looking at the contact and displaying their SCRM tab
  • If key field is empty, use first URL for search. Try email first (all email fields). Then, if that fails, try Company+Contact or just Contact
  • Allow user to select a contact (if only one contact auto select - most likely for email match) and link to the Contact in the CRM by adding the necessary data to the key field
  • When contact selected, and the direct key added to the special field and use this with 2nd URL for future views of the contact directly
  • Add a check to see if user is connected to the contact. If not, add a button to add them - this will usually display more data and can also change the link field

Blog/Micro blog

• From the Social Media Display (above)
  • These might be URL with dedicate field from above (Twitter, Facebook, etc) or a web field separate from the web site field in ACT! (for Blog)
  • Should also have the ability to "favourite" an individual post - record it in History
  • For additional power add for Facebook/LinkedIN (Comment, Reply Privately), Twitter (Reply, Retweet, Direct) - so it's like an off-line client
  • Comments, Replies, Retweets, Directs should have option to automatically generate a history
• Email
  • Maybe add ability to read/send emails via Facebook, LinkedIN, etc
  • If Send, also write these to History
• Collection of data for accounts
  • Ability to combine updates on Groups/Companies like is done now for Notes, Histories, Activities, Sales Ops – this allows a Company wide view of their social media
  • Also ability to create Dynamic Groups based on Twitter or Facebook lists and LinkedIN groups

Security

• I haven't really thought through the implications of this... but if all of the above is done, some additional security might be necessary - eg you might be a LinkedIN Contact, Facebook Friend, etc with a contact that others in your company are not and not wish them to see
• What other items might need to be controlled?

As you can see, my view is that CRM (specifically ACT!) should be the centre of all knowledge and communication and this level of integration and functionality makes that a reality for social media

I'd be more than happy to hear any thoughts/comments any of you might have on this

Technorati Tags: ACT,ACT! by Sage,CRM,SCRM,Social Media

Thoughts on ACT! 2010 beta (#ACT2010) - The good, the bad and the ugly

There have been a number of posts from people on ACT! 2010 (due soon) and as we at GL Computing have been running our production data on the new version for a while, I thought I would posts my thoughts on it so far. Here is a list of what’s new in the up-coming build.

Here is the ACT! by Sage Version Comparison Chart - Compare your version to ACT! by Sage 2010

Note: The following are my personal views on the beta and features may change in the release.

• Welcome Screen – A start-up screen displaying useful help links. This will be nice for new and upgrading users to learn the new functions quickly
• New Look and Navigation
  • While the left-hand Nav bar has some nice functions (Quick Lookup and a context-sensitive list of Related Tasks), it’s less customisable than previous versions and doesn’t allow adding of direct links to the List views or the different calendars.
  • The Top icon ribbon is too large and takes up valuable screen real-estate for little value.

• Customisable Opportunities – these have been given a major overhaul including:
  • The ability to add custom fields to both the opportunity and to the products and services table
  • Personalise the layout of the opportunity like the Contacts, Groups, Companies layouts
  • Track activities, history, notes, documents and other items tied to the opportunity
  • New reports and more security options

• Web 2.0 Technologies – this is a nicer version of the free Contact Web Context Browser
  • See your contacts’ information on a variety of Social Media and other sites, such as: LinkedIN, Facebook, Plaxo, MySpace, their web site, Google, Google Maps, Google News, Yahoo and others. It also allows you to create your own links.
  • Noticeably missing from the default list is Twitter, although it’s very easy to add.
  • For the Social Media sites, the links are just a search based on standard fields. To really work, this function needs to be able to enter a direct link for the contact (once found) to a “system field” and then use this link. If nothing in the field, then revert to the search. In a similar way to how Xobni does for Outlook
  • Additionally, there is no way to store specific “status updates” to these sites to a history or to view a combined feed for a company or group.
  • There is no way to update ACT! contact information from these sites (or at least highlight when they are different), which would be a nice option, especially from sites like LinkedIN.
  • Finally, there should be an ability to post updates from ACT! to the Social Media sites and store the posts in ACT! – this would allow a company to report on and review posts made by staff across multiple sites
  • I had previously posted some of these ideas in this blog post:
    http://blog.glcomputing.com.au/2009/03/act-by-sage-and-social-media-social-crm.html

• E-Marketing – Swiftpage has been incorporated out-of-the box to provide:
  • Better mass/merged emails
  • Survey and web forms
  • Drip marketing
• Reports and Dashboard Components
  • There have been many new reports and nice report selector with option to select favourites – it would be nice if the Favourite Reports were added to the Reports menu, even to a sub-menu.
  • The Dashboard has some new components, including a Data chart (like the previously available Data Chart control) and a Facebook Friends List.
• More Integration
  • The ability to email activity invitations in iCal format (a function missing since ACT! 6.0 had vCal) to users of Outlook, Gmail, Apple iCal, Windows Live, Facebook, GroupWise or Lotus Notes
  • Create an ACT! activity when you accept an iCal meeting request in Outlook
  • Share contacts with the vCard format. Also a nice addition missing since ACT! 6.0
• Administration
  • Create up to 50 remote database simultaneously for easy roll-out of larger sync implementations
  • Support global environments by being able to set the currency when creating the database and allowing different international versions to share the database
  • New Admin Dashboard to see user information, logon and sync status and more.
• Platform support – including SQL 2005 64 bit and SQL 2008 with Premium and Corporate.
  • For a full list of supported platforms, see the ACT! 2010 System Requirements
  • Update: Windows 7 is now fully supported with ACT! 2010

Sage have obviously been very busy over the past year and there are also, as one would expect, many more enhancements and improvements that will improve your ability to use ACT! to assist your business.

Overall, this is been a good beta. The product has been very stable and there is much to entice current users to upgrade, especially the opportunities area. However, I think some of the new functions could have been implemented to provide a better use of the product (the navigation) or more power (Web 2.0 Tab) 

Technorati Tags: ACT!,ACT,ACT 2010,ACT!2010,CRM,SCRM,Sage,Facebook,LinkedIN,Social Media,Twitter,Beta,Swiftpage

New Subgroups for ACT! Fanatics on LinkedIN

New sub-groups have been created under the LinkedIn ACT! Fanatics Group:

• Sales and Marketing for ACT! users
  A group to discuss general sales and marketing strategies and processes, especially as they apply to users of ACT! by Sage

• ACT! and Social Media
  A group to discuss ACT! and Social Media (Social CRM) - LinkedIN, Twitter, Facebook, Plaxo and any others

• ACT! Add-ons
  Group for ACT! users to ask questions of add-on vendors and for add-on vendors to ask users what they would like or to ask each other questions related to the SDK

• ACT! Resellers
  A group for ACT! Certified Consultants and other resellers to discuss best practices for selling, implementing and supporting ACT! by Sage

• ACT! International Advisory Council
  Council of ACT! Fanatics to discuss and evaluate technical issues within ACT! by Sage that effect international users

See the full list in the ACT! Fanatics Sub-groups

Please let me know if you have any ideas for other groups that would be useful to add

Technorati Tags: ACT,ACT!,ACT! by Sage,LinkedIN

ACT! by Sage and Social Media – Social CRM

More and more businesses are starting to take advantage of various forms of “Social Media” and are looking at the advantages of integrating these with their CRM solution to provide a more complete view of their relationships.

Sage themselves have said they are looking at doing more with Social CRM and have asked users for input in what they would like in these links:

• The ACT! user and Social Media
• Are you Tagging with delicious, Diigo or other Social Bookmarking Tools?
• ACT! and the Web - Social Contact Management: Part 1 of 3

I thought I would post a few ideas on what’s possible to do now with ACT! and what I hope Sage will work on in future versions of the ACT! product.

What types of “Social Media” am I referring to:

Yes, there are a number of different types of social media in use. The ones I’m going to discuss are the ones that I’ve found most useful in business at this time:

• Blogs – like this one.
  • A flow of information from the business or staff members to the market usually with the facility for users to comment.
  • Great for providing detailed news and updates that your target market can subscribe to
  • Easier to maintain and update than their web site “News” pages
• Social networking sites like LinkedIN, Facebook or MySpace.
  • Includes a form of micro-blogging through their status function
• Twitter – social media micro-blogging
  • Short (140 character) updates
  • Very fast updates
  • Allows users to update via SMS or smart phone applications
  • Similar to status functions in social networking sites like LinkedIN and Facebook

What does integrating CRM with Social Media mean?

• Viewing recent information posted by contacts
• Updating your CRM with updated data posted by the contacts to the social networking sites
• Storing information within the ACT! database so it can be searched on or viewed later like history
• Enabling the use of this information to improve business intelligence

What Social CRM is possible now with ACT!?

• Ability to attach web pages from blogs and other URLs to Contact records
• For ACT! 2008 and 2009, Sage has provided a free Contact Web Context Browser Control that can display LinkedIN profiles, Google maps and other information in a tab for contact. You get more information on this plug-in and download it from this link
  

What I’d like to see Sage add to ACT!

• Permanently link the LinkedIN profile to the ACT! contact rather than the current method of displaying a search
• Add the same functionality for Facebook and other major social networking sites
• Lookup for those Contacts where the social media profile and the ACT! contact have different information
• A function to update the ACT! Contact record from the LinkedIN or Facebook profile
• Groups that connect to LinkedIN Groups
• Blog tab to display last 5 blog items
• Micro blog Tab displaying last 20 social network status updates and Twitter tweets
• Ability to Save items from the Blog and Micro blog tabs so they remain in ACT!
• Reply to a status or Direct message a contact and save in the History for the ACT! Contact
• Combine and view Blog and Micro blog tabs in Company and Group records
• Keyword search to include Blog and Micro blog entries
• Dashboard to show most recent blogs, status updates, tweets based on various search terms

Please post a comment with what you’d like to see done in this area and how it would benefit your business.

Technorati Tags: ACT!,ACT! by Sage,ACT,CRM,SCRM,Social Media,LinkedIN,Facebook,Twitter

Display LinkedIN, Google Maps and others in Tabs or Outlook in Dashboard

For ACT! 2008 users (10.02 or 10.03) or ACT! 2009 users (11.0 or 11.1) with LinkedIN accounts (if you don't have one, get one as it's free), I posted two useful freebie plug-ins to the ACT! Fanatics Group:

1. WebContext Browser - Displays LinkedIn profiles in a tab, it can also display Google maps, Plaxo Lookup, Jigsaw lookup, US WhitePages Reverse Telephone lookup, WhitePages Reverse Address lookup, and Yelp. Can be customised to add other sites.
2. Outlook inside ACT! Dashboard - Shows customisable Outlook Inbox and Calendar and Contact folders inside of an ACT! Dashboard. You can use them as you would from Outlook
   

Very worth-while functions for any user to add to the product. For developers, source-code is available if you want to modify it.