Social CRM, now a Gartner Quadrant and as is the case, they that market well (money in hand) gain the position of choice-

Social CRM, now a Gartner Quadrant and as is the case, they that market well (money in hand) gain the position of choice- am I being cynical as usual?

But it is not about bashing Gartner, although I have long seen through the ages of IT (33 Years) that if you gain the “cannot be fired for symbol” and add the backing of Gartner, many IT Directors find it hard to do something different. (Lazy or just treading water?)

Hence the industry either evolves in a sheep like fashion or something surprises all and blows revolution winds through the doors. So to this point, Social CRM is supposedly being defined as we speak, but almost none of the current vendors appear, such as Salesforce, Oracle, Netsuite in the top right quadrant of the Gartner report, in fact it is almost the territory of a new comer called Jive…..who you may say, are they? Well it appears the most recently well oiled marketing machine on the horizon, heavily VC funded and looking for an exit no doubt!

Social Networking has taken on a new twist, Facebook potentially bidding to be the next Football Association Sponsor in the UK shows that their ambitions, fuelled by their only business model, advertising, has required them to become all consuming, even looking at the way the site users profiling data, makes one think how long can this last?

Facebook surpassed Google, wow, and now watch them position themselves in the corporate world…CRM is all about customer data and the data is that which makes it worth any company, big or small  gaining access to it, I would like to think for offering better services, better quality of product and in line with the objectives of the customer. In my recent lectures and speeches, I have found out that Generation Y and Z (University Lectures mainly) are in need of guidance; they do not or not care at this point, the fact that anyone who offers a service and does not charge for it must make their money elsewhere. Simple fact of economics, who runs the data centers, hmmm, they do of course and a costly past time it is!

So that shows why profile data is so important, it’s a currency for making money, especially where advertising is concerned, but what about the data of the people, what about the abuse of this data, how can we protect the most important procession we have and only allow it to be used when we unlock it?

This week I chaired with Mark Newman (Informa Research officer) the SimCard industry main event, SIMPOSIUM 2010 and over the years, this industry has played a quiet, but effective role of supplying MNO (Mobile network Operators) and Credit Card issuers with their foundation for identity and connection to their industry. But in doing this they have had to rely on the MNO/CC providers for existence and although they plow millions of Euros in research for the way we use the cards, most, if not all is set at the pace of the purchasers.

But now, because of the potential revolution in the Cloud and the orderly way the industry works, a defining moment has arrived and one that cannot be ignored. If this industry and the social networking / social community offerings do not allow for you or your customer to protect their interaction with these environments and therefore protect your most sacred ‘Persona’ in a ‘Digital Lock Box ’ and only interact when you want it to, then I fear as in the decision to make an almost unknown company top of the pops for Social CRM, we will face some major challenges ahead on fraud, abuse and money loss. $30 billion US ad market makes the need to have open profile data available, 3.4 billion Simcards provides an effective start to helping Generation Y and Z secure their most precious data.

Near Field communications will provide the transparent interaction and if we want to use the new social platforms being offered, let’s make sure they do the job and let’s  see if the work can be done with this industry and out from under the control of slow to move businesses.

On a final note, please avoid taking the sheep approach, question how such a newcomer can make it there in the first issue, also how much research can Gartner have done in the last year, Social CRM was not even born a year ago, when I wrote ‘CRM is Dead’!