At the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Milan where Esteban Kolsky and I presented the "The New Era of Customer Engagement with Social CRM", I spoke with Emanuele Quintarelli of Open Knowledge who organized the event - and he did a very good job I might add!. During our conversation Emanuele made the remark that Social CRM has now become an accepted part of the agenda in comparison with last year. Participants attending the previous edition found it strange to even mention customers when discussing E2.0 and preferred to focus on the software solutions - but this year this seems to have changed completely. It was thus of particular interest to me to note was that the notion of the Social Customer and that we need to organise to engage is starting to gain traction from the protagonists of Enterprise 2.0 (see Bertrand Duperrin's take on it here). For example, Emanuele Scotti's opening speech dealt with changing needs and behaviors of the Social Customer, followed by Sameer Patel's excellent Keynote who continued on by talking about how companies should organize for customers that want to interact with the company (and not only be passive buyers). And as a sidenote - on the vendor side, Jive Software for example is adding "Social CRM features" and repositioning itself as as a "Social Business" platform provider.

I won’t go and repeat the ideas that have already been put forward by other participants (you can find the links below), but I’ll cut through the chase and give you my takeaway. 

Un article de notre partenaire Richard PEYNOT

Lors d'une opération de fusion-acquisition, l'entreprise acheteuse devrait se soucier de la valeur du système d'information de sa cible et du coût d'intégration des deux systèmes d'information.

 Qu'elles traversent une période de crise ou pas les entreprises vivent dans un environnement de fusions et acquisitions. De 1996 à 2006 le nombre de transactions a plus que doublé, à une croissance moyenne de 9% par an.

The discussion around Social CRM is entering a phase whereby we are trying to move away from turning around in circles about semantics, towards a more practical and pragmatic approach that businesses can identify with so as to consider implementing it.