And this year is no different. I’ve been glued to each game. And, despite the Vikes 2-5 start, I continue to hope there’s a chance they could run the table or go 7-2 and close out the year 9-7, secure a play-off berth and make a run to the Super Bowl in Big D.

And then came the drama that has been the last week in Minnesota.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve watched the Vikes make blunder after blunder-on the field and off. But, since this isn’t a Vikings blog, let’s stick to the PR lessons we can learn from what happened off the field this week. The Vikes made a few mistakes this week-no question. What can we take away from the situation and learn from? Quite a bit, it turns out:

* Communicate quickly and effectively with key audiences-from the inside out. Coach Childress actually had the right idea here-he just didn’t hit all the internal audiences (allegedly). In this case, the counselor in me would have encouraged Coach Childress to sit down with management first. Then, the team. Then, the media. Maybe even single out a few players that he knew Moss meant a lot to (Percy Harvin, for one). Bottom line: Make sure you’re communicating key information in a timely fashion with the right people-in the right order.

* Build consensus before making key decisions. Local MinnPost columnist, David Brauer, had a great tweet the other night: “Say what you will about Chili cutting Moss, but the move was gangsta.” Sure, cutting a player without informing much of anyone (again, allegedly) is pretty bad-ass, I’ll agree. But, if you’re planning to cut a player with the talent and fan adulation of Randy Moss, you better make sure you’re standing shoulder to shoulder with management and the director of player personnel before pulling the trigger. A little consensus building would have went a long ways here.

* Erase all opportunities for speculation. This is probably one of my biggest beefs with Coach Childress’ approach to date. OK, so you cut Moss unilaterally and don’t inform too many people. Not ideal, but I can live with it. But, you cut him and you don’t explain why? Not to the team (allegedly). Not to the public. Not to anyone, as far as I can tell. Why is that a problem? Because it opens up the opportunity for *massive* speculation, which is what’s happening now. If Coach Childress comes out hard Tuesday talking about exactly what happened and why, and starts focusing squarely on the game this Sunday, this is all swept under the rug fairly quickly. As it stands, this probably won’t go away until after the game Sunday (and if they lose, it may extend in the news cycle for another week).

* Admit your mistakes (when possible). Coach Childress did say that trading Moss for a third-round draft pick was a “poor decision.” He did own up. And, look at the result: People seem to be dropping that piece of the story. Why? Because it leaves nowhere for reporters and the public to go. He admitted he was wrong-end of story (on that piece, at least). Just not much to report or talk about. Plus, I always argue, admitting fault isn’t a sign of weakness-it’s a sign that you’re human. And, keep in mind, people (fans, coaches, organizations, etc.) will forgive you for your mistakes. Sports figures and coaches have proven that to be true over and over again.

Note: Photo courtesy of David Erickson via FlickR Creative Commons.

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Similar to blogging, podcasting is a medium that B2B marketers remain on the fence about. Are they worth the time investment? Should you start a podcast to generate leads? I would say probably not, at least if that’s your only motivation.

Podcasts work because they have an appeal of authenticity. There is power in the human voice. And that’s why they are a great way to positively inform and educate your audience. If that’s a goal you have, then read on.

Think of podcasts as content pieces to use as part a lead nurturing program. If you’re going to start podcasting don’t just do one and see what happens. A good podcast requires a commitment to do more than one to build your audience.

Here are some podcast ideas you can try:

• Ideas or tips of the day, week or month
• Talk radio complete with topic and call-in listeners
• Short interviews with thought leaders and industry experts
• Recording speeches, webinars or teleconferences for later distribution
• Promote an upcoming event by giving a preview of the speaker or content

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Most encouraging about SEMPO Institute‘s efforts at education has been participation from major search engines in building the courses. SEMPO’s Terry Plank told WebProNews that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft among others have worked with the Institute on the launch of their newest class.

It’s called Advanced SEO, and offers the next step from the prerequisite Fundamentals course. The fifteen-lesson online course covers a slew of topics, from keyword research and website architecture, to analytics and brand management.

Since participants will have taken the $499 Fundamentals class first, the $1,750 Advanced SEO builds upon the organic search lessons learned there. This allows SEMPO to confidently offer the course to technophiles and non-techies alike.

Catherine Donovan has been working on developing SEMPO Institute as her full-time task since September 2006. We asked her about the main points SEMPO believes will justify the investment one would make with a course.

Donovan highlighted two key points about the curriculum. The material created for it has been peer reviewed. Any issues that need improvement get it before the work becomes part of the course.

Members of SEMPO write the material. The people who are actively working in the industry can address the needs of students better than someone who has just read about search marketing in general.

Their approach seems to be working. Fundamentals students have noted at an 80 percent clip they would recommend that course to others. Plank said the student body have covered a breadth of people, from search marketing novices to professionals who know the field now.

Those students come from a variety of places to SEMPO Institute. The popular Search Engine Strategies conference series has led many to check out Fundamentals; referrals and of course search engine traffic brought people there too.

In May, SEMPO Institute will launch Advanced Search Advertising, covering the paid side of search marketing. SEMPO will continue to update material, and should branch into other courses as areas like social media mature over time.

Every once and a while I come across a simply excellent white paper.

I found one that really is over the top.

I was working on a project for one of my clients, regarding word-of-mouth marketing.

The paper is titled Consumer-Generated Media (CGM) 101: Word-of-Mouth in the Age of the Web-Fortified Consumer and written by IntelliSeek (now Nielsen BuzzMetrics).

This is one of the best pieces I have seen for a number of reasons:

• It is highly educational and informative
• It establishes the sponsoring company as a thought leader
• It very subtly inserts sales messages
• It’s formatting and layout is simply incredible

I would like you pay close attention to the following items when examining this paper:

• The first page: Note the very large text in the opening sentence and large type on the rest of the page. Also notice how the problems are clearly identified.
• Writing style: The words are very easy to digest in this paper.
• Creative use of columns: I am not a big fan of multiple columns, but these guys did it right. There is space on the left for call outs and hand written notes for those who print the piece. Note that page one has no columns (an important point to draw in the reader).
• Exceptional use of sidebars: Nearly every page uses sidebars (extra information to bolster the story). Note the full page sidebar on page 6 AND the “Consumer-Generated Chicken Buzz?” on page 9.
• A quiz: What a quiz you say?? Yes, there is a quiz on page 9, titled “A Marketer’s Quiz: Questions to Ask Yourself.” This is an excellent example of adding valuable content for the reader.
• Use of photography: Nicely done to add to the story in a few places (including the cover).
• Case studies: Page 14 has a few simple case studies.

Folks, I suggest you carefully study this white paper. Much can be learned. It is one of the best examples I have ever seen.

What are your thoughts about this piece? Do you apply any of these tactics?

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First the 9 points

1. It’s only an initial fear
2. You have something valuable to say
3. When in doubt, post.
4. Use the comments for refining your point
5. Everything is beta
6. Have a schtick
7. Correct English be-damned
8. Show your greatest hits
9. People are listening

Both Joshua and Darren offer some good comments on each of the above points and I’d encourage you to read both of their posts. I’d like to focus my thoughts on one of the themes I see running through these 9 points. As the title of this post asks, is a blog post ever finished?

If you look at points 3, 4, 5, and 7 all are an indication that a blog post isn’t necessarily meant to be a finished piece of work. I like one of the comments Darren made in reference to posting even when in doubt and I’ll use it as the jumping off point for my own thoughts.

I do subscribe to the theory that blogs are not just for finished or refined thoughts. One of the wonderful things about blogs is that when you track them over time you get to see the journey that a blogger has gone on. Good blogs will track the evolution of thought of a blogger.

A Blogging Evolution

Darren’s comment echoes my own feeling about blogging. I do want to get something from an individual post and in truth it’s probably going to be one of your better posts that gets me to click the subscribe button, but I also like to see the evolution of the blogs I read consistently. We’re all human and we all change our mind. In the year+ I’ve been blogging my thoughts on seo and web design and blogging have changed. The industries themselves have changed so why shouldn’t my thought.

A comparison between an article and a blog post might be in order. Even though it would be easy to consider a post an article, and admittedly I often interchange the two words, I see a difference. An article to me should be more a finished piece, more well researched. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t research the topic of your post, but I think it’s ok to get away with a little less on a blog.

I tend to think of an article as something I would submit to another site (even if it’s something I’m submitting to my own site) and something that may be your one and only encounter with me. Because of that it should expect a less forgiving audience. Where an article is focused solely on the ideas within, a blog post carries with it a person and voice behind the writing and the thoughts of that person are carried through the blog and not just in any single post.

A blog should be more informal. While I hope you’ll learn something in reading here I also want you to get to know me. While you may read only one post and move on I’d like to think if I’ve captured your attention with a post you’ll come back for a little more and get to know me and my thoughts over time.

I’d also like to get to know you and I think leaving ideas somewhat open allows for their continued discussion. A blog is not about a single voice, but rather a community of voices, perhaps directed by a single voice. Many times someone here has made a comment that’s gotten me to rethink something I said and rethink an idea I had held as truth. That allows me, my ideas, and this blog to grow and evolve.

Recently I’ve asked you a few questions about blogging. First I asked if you prefer full or partial feeds and then last week the question was if you thought there was an optimal length for a blog post. You can probably guess I have another question now.

Do you think blog posts are finished pieces of writing? Do they need to be your final thought on a subject or should the ideas in a post be allowed to grow? If a blog post is meant to be informal how important is it to use proper grammar when writing a post? Ultimately do you think a blog post is ever finished or should the ideas in it be revisited as a blogger’s thoughts on the subject evolve?

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Too bad the blogosphere is also a glass house.

It’s a little tough to follow Scoble’s initial Saturday rant entitled “Big gadget sites don’t link to blogs,” what with the out-of-sequence numbered updates and so many strike-throughs that the post looks like it was built around railroad tracks.

The saga begins with a three-part video webcast at the Scoble Show, which included a walking tour of Intel and the scoop on Intel’s development of a 45-nanometer processor. Popular gadget blog Engadget posted their own news the following day with no link love for the Scobleizer. Engadget said they didn’t find the videos newsworthy.

Worse, neither did the New York Times, whose article about the subject was linked to en masse by bloggers, all of them committing Unpardonable Blogosphere Sin #2, selling out your buddies for the mainstream media.

And so, the Court of Scoble was called to order, a list of non-linking blogs and publications read before the public for judgment. List of defendants: Engadget, Gizmodo, Slashdot, AnandTech, Hot Hardware, Daily Tech, Silicon Valley Sleuth, Tech News Journal, PCLaunches, BDUO, GPUWiki, SEO Blogger, Fanboy Tech Web, Bit Tech, ZDNet, Digg, JD Lasica, Overclock.net, Vinnie Mirchandani, Flexbeta, ITNews.

Well, he’s at least thorough in his calling out, even if he had to go back and apologize to Engadget and Gizmodo, admitting he had gone “overboard.” Interesting. That doesn’t usually happen until March. Anyway, you gotta admire the stones.

On Sunday, Scoble chronicles his own flogging, while creating a detailed list of those that ignored his video in favor of the New York Times, which forced perhaps a more honest blogosphere than he was looking for.

Among the more blunt responses:

Ouch.

Ryan Block, managing editor at Engadget, brings the situation back to earth a bit:

Though perhaps inadvertent (but maybe not), Scoble has brought out some valuable lessons in this wild west, and hopefully, that takes the sting out a bit for him.

Lessons:

1. Link to bloggers and they’ll love you for it.

2. Find the earliest source, link to it.

3. It’s okay to ignore the chain: Blogger 1 writes a sentence, links to Blogger 2 who also wrote a sentence and linked to Blogger 3, who maybe has two sentences about the topic and links to Blogger 4, who began the discussion. Skip Bloggers 1-3, link to Blogger 4.

4. Links are an editorial decision, i.e., a silent but poignant way to validate one source, and by default, invalidate another by not linking.

5. Sometimes content is overlooked. Sometimes it is ignored (I’m talking to you New York Times!). But it’s difficult to tell which has happened and why.

6. A good old fashion blog-fight can get you a lot of attention.

7. But depending on your position and situation, it’s not always a good idea to start one.

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Here are a few of the lessons learned in that time:

• Blogging has been the single most effective marketing initiative for our search marketing agency second only to providing top service to clients who then refer us to other companies. In fact our top sources of new business are:

  1. Referrals

  2. Blog

  3. Articles

  4. Web site

  5. Conferences

• Blogs can serve as a very effective platform for connecting online social networks and offline interactions.
• One of the most effective ways at getting into the media is to become the media in your industry via a blog.
• Finding your “blog voice” is important. People will visit and interact with your blog based on whether your regular communication patterns resonate with them or not. If you’re all over the board, you’ll hold some people for a while, but not long.
• A rushed blog post that is not well thought out can quickly cause the wrong kind of attention or misinterpretation.
• As your blog grows in popularity (RSS subscribers and visitors via links and search engines) the more you have to lose or gain with the quality of your posts.
• The whole transparency thing is great in theory, but is only as effective as your ability and willingness to articulate.
• Don’t do it all on your own. Invite guest bloggers and include other bloggers from your company.
• Don’t blog when you’re mad, really tired and especially not if you’ve been out on the town.
• Blogs can be excellent conduits to connections and friendships with people that you may never meet in person.
• Blogging is forever. Once you hit publish, it’s out there. There’s no taking it back.
• The feedback loop to blogging can get addicting and like other addictions, can have serious side effects. Consuming a large part of your productive and free time without a corresponding return on effort is one of those side effects. These effects can be abated by having a clear blogging strategy and following blogging guidelines.
• Blogs can be exceptional tools to boost visibility on search engines as well as social media channels.
• Poorly configured, badly optimized and infrequently updated blogs are nothing more than spam magnets.
• It’s just as important, and maybe more, to link out from your blog as it is to get incoming links.
• Widgets and plugins can be very effective if not necessary enhancements to default blog configurations that will assist in building community, making administration easier and for blog optimization.
• Online Marketing Blog has been a very effective tool for building credibility and opening doors to connections with search engines and people in the search marketing industry that would otherwise might not have happened.

If you’ve been blogging for a while, what lessons have you learned?

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Lee Odden is President and Founder of
TopRank Online Marketing, specializing in organic SEO, blog
marketing and online public relations. He’s been cited as a search
marketing expert by publications including U.S. News & World Report and
The Economist and has implemented successful search marketing programs
with top BtoB companies of all sizes. Odden shares his marketing
expertise at Online Marketing Blog offering
daily news, interviews and best practices.

In 1999, Armstrong became frustrated with the “dysfunctional” nature of corporate systems and decided to see if he could figure out how people naturally organize and communicate in an environment without access to the technology and tools of modern communications.

He moved for a year to St Agnes, an island with 72 inhabitants that is one of the Isles of Scilly, an archipelago of islands off the southwesternmost tip of the United Kingdom.

While there Armstrong started an initiative to build local IT training skills but mostly he watched and listened to how the locals interacted and shared information in their daily comings and goings. One of the “big events” of each week was the arrival of a boat from neighboring St. Mary. When the boat was cancelled, which it sometimes was, there might be six people in the village who needed to know. Armstrong found consistently that they would all have that information within hours, even without a formal distribution system, and there would be no ‘verbal’ spam for uninterested people. This feat was accomplished without any formal or even conscious processes.

Armstrong reasoned that employees of modern corporations have the same native instincts and tacit intelligence but they seem to have become crippled by the formal structures and electronic information systems. Based on his observations, Armstrong patented a new technique for distributing items through a social network that aims to harness social behavior to manage information better.

He also formulated a set of of basic principles which the British Knowledge Management guru Richard Cross describes thusly:

• The requirement to understand useful social mechanisms in the enterprise
• The nature of implicit authorization parameters within groups or communities
• How Groups pool intelligence on relay targets
• How Groups can function as targets for relaying
• How Relaying is activated by semantic triggers
• The notion of trigger thresholds governed by social network and the need to access activity, content and user preference data from across the whole corporate ecosystem

Armstrong and chief technologist Craig McMillan formed Trampoline Systems in 2003 with seed finance from funds and private investors in San Francisco, London and Tokyo. Further investment was raised in April 2006.

The company’s main application is called SONAR (Social Networks And Relevance), an appliance that plugs into the corporate network and connects to existing systems such as email servers, contact databases and document archives.

SONAR analyzes data in the systems to build a map of social networks, information flows, expertise and individuals’ interests throughout the enterprise. Basically, it looks for trigger words and phrases that recur frequently, then, like gossip spreads on an island, passes on the information to the people for whom it will be relevant.

As Richard Cross describes it: “This alert mechanism mimics a core, element in natural communications: the ‘delight’ of discovery, the joy of serendipity. Users can also set levels of authorization on their data, to ensure intimate messages don’t inadvertently become ‘broadcast news’.”

In mid-November, Trampoline uploaded the 200,000 publicly available Enron e-mails and created an amazing SONAR testbed called the Enron Explorer that allows you sift through the wreckage to find the smoking guns. If you’ve ever wondered what Ken Lay knew and when he knew it, this is your chance.

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Jerry Bowles has more than 30 years of varied experience as a writer, editor, marketing consultant, corporate communications director and blogger. For the past 20 years, he has produced and written special supplements on new technologies for a number of magazines, including Forbes, Fortune and Newsweek.

http://www.enterpriseweb2.com

On the one hand, the message is about the community: the community is what matters, it is the community that we are reaching out to, to include them on various things (messages, events, news … things that they might want to know).

On the other hand, it is about measurement. And, well, when you get into measurement, it becomes a Technorati A-list, inside baseball (blogging) circle that really only helps propogate the A-list mentality.

Now, yes, I know these people. Yes, I talk to these people. But, no, I do not exclusively outreach to these people when doing work for clients. Why? Because it is stupid. It is being unclear on the concept of the blogosphere. You know, reaching communities, no matter how big or small.

This is about applying old-school, old-media practices to a new medium that people “claim” is all-inclusive (everyone has an equal voice) but these lists prove they don’t mean it … and, well, this should be of concern for PR people. With the recent announcement of more Technorati 100 in various locales and languages … it says “it ain’t about the community or reaching the right audience, it’s only about reaching the biggest dog.”

Is that not what got PR and media in trouble in the first place, ignoring the masses but only concentrating on the large press? You get a bigger bang for your buck with the smaller local press, because you can reach a localized audience. You can get a bigger bang for your buck if you do outreach to a specific audience – Mommy bloggers, Photo bloggers, Candy bloggers … depending on what you want to do outreach for or whom.

So, reading this today made me think of that. First, let us forget the lack of transparency – but I guess it’s about being a team player - but the event itself seemed odd. Let’s do something for a photo company, but let’s invite top bloggers … that may or may not be the right target. But, hey, it does not matter about the target (they are gonna be up here anyway for Blog Business Summit!) but it’s about paying homage to the A-list.

Where do I get that impression – well, I read the post, the link from the link blog. Now, I know these people. I think of many of them as friends. And, yes, I do do outreach to these people … when appropriate. Heck, I am a slacker and need to respond to Thomas Hawk, and get together with him for some stuff that we have talked about in the past.

But, how does this help PR and help companies understand social media (or new media or emerging media)? It does not – it shoves the square peg of emerging media into one of the usual round holes. It says that we just don’t get that the blogosphere is about the enthusiasts and the right communities, but we will only work with big names and we will ignore the audience to be able to continue link love to promote ourselves (second to clients). Well, okay, that’s harsh.

But, for a photo company, does it make more sense to invite the A-list bloggers, or some of the photo bloggers and enthusiasts that I know and love? Well, you make the call – I do not know who was there, but the post thus far makes it seem like it was the usual suspects (as I understand it, the NDA ends on Monday, and maybe we’ll see something better … right now, though … .)

And, my disclaimer? Worked with Getty and Corbis at Ofoto. Nice PR teams, both of them.

Okay, back to the Blog Business Summit – there have been some great talks, and despite the dichotomy, people are learning more about measurement and more about communities, and while there’s always going to be some inside blogball feel, there are people here that are asking questions. Taking a page from another panel I sat on, I lead a panel (disclosre: with two clients) where I opened up the floor almost immediately for the audience – to engage the community. If people walk away with anything, it should be that the blogosphere is about the community, and getting the community involved. And, I think people are getting that here. More can be found and – all good reads.

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Jeremy Pepper is the CEO and founder of POP! Public Relations, a public relations firm based in Arizona, USA.

He authors the popular Musings from POP! Public Relations blog which offers Jeremy’s opinions and views – on public relations, publicity and other things.

It is a widely-held notion that enterprise software, at least as it had traditionally been known, is dead. Ray Lane has proclaimed that there will never again be a billion dollar software company. Larry Ellison has made two investment bankers his key executives, effectively shifting the focus at Oracle from innovation to acquisition and consolidation.

Marc Benioff mentions his “No Software” message to anyone who will listen. This general disdain for software has even taken root at that seemingly invulnerable stronghold of software, Microsoft. Here, Ray Ozzie has issued a memo, warning that Microsoft’s model is dated and faces the threat of extinction at the hands of Software as Services forces. Only SAP seemed blissfully unaware of the news of enterprise software’s demise – until announcing an on-demand CRM product in early February.

There are very real changes in the economic climate and business needs that we have to come to grips with because they shape the real new paradigm’s calculus for success.

The same conventional wisdom that doomed much of the enterprise software market has now embraced the paradigm shift from Software to Services. We need to understand the component parts of this new Software as Services paradigm and how it came to be. It is only by seeing which parts are the inevitable spin to manipulate perceptions and which parts take advantage of changes in the landscape of economics, technology, and business needs that we will see what models can work for which markets. We must also understand these components if we want to avoid the “Web Bubble 2.0″. Otherwise, Software as Services ground swell is building up enough hype-momentum to produce.

Let’s consider the real economic climate, and today’s companies’ real business needs as a way to root out a few of the pitfalls and red herrings ahead. If we learn our lessons, there may be a very bright future for both software and services ahead.

Economic Climate

The market for software, while not bad by historical standards, is no longer being driven by the twin afterburners of the Internet bubble and the Y2K crisis. CEO’s (except those running traditional software companies!) are not waking up in a cold sweat from nightmares about Stanford grad students taking over their businesses overnight by “disintermediating” them via the Internet. Companies are no longer seeking to add new information technology toys to their arsenals regardless of the cost or risk. In short, we have moved out of a distorted bubble and back into normal times, not bad times.

Many great enterprises have been built in normal times, so we should not despair. However, we must recall the old formulas involving return on investment, customer satisfaction, and barriers to entry. They had been long forgotten, at least for a time, as the intervention of the “twin afterburners” made them temporarily obsolete. Today, they are once more essential to success.

Good old ROI

Return on investment (ROI) forces us to deliver results such that the healthy green curve of return exceeds the red curve of expense/risk as soon as possible and by as wide a margin as possible. Under the twin afterburner economy, the expense/risk curve could be ignored with impunity because the return curve was assumed to be infinite due to the mysterious workings of the new economy. In fact, the stock market returns during this time did defy conventional economics in just that way. In our new, normal world, we must take these curves into account and ensure their proper trajectories. For markets offering limited return curves, a strong focus on lowering expenses and risks is essential.

The latter is one of the forces behind the success of Software as Services companies and the demise of Siebel Systems in CRM. Because CRM systems are only about managing process and collecting the opinions of salespeople, they never truly delivered on their promise of safeguarding and enhancing the productivity of salespeople. They are useful tools, but their promised return curve never materialized. At the same time, Siebel sold a system that was very expensive and risky to install. Once the normal economy had returned, the expense/risk curve was seen to be way above the return curve and companies lost interest. Salesforce.com, for example, has radically repositioned that expense/risk curve so that even (or some would say, especially) small organizations could be successful with CRM.

Customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction follows the ROI forces closely. That statistic on average CIO tenure being so short is an indicator of poor customer satisfaction. All of the CIO’s can’t be that incompetent all of the time. Some blame must fall to the software and those who were installing it. The cost of installing enterprise software ballooned out of all proportion to the license costs, and the latter were supposed to be a true reflection of what the software would bring in benefit.

Analysts estimate that it costs anywhere from $5 to $7 per $1 of license sold to install most enterprise software. Any scenario that unbalanced is going to be fraught with risk, expense, and much opportunity for unhappiness which all lead to low customer satisfaction. Customer Satisfaction is the subjective institutional memory and fallout of bad ROI.

Here again, the Software as Service folks have an answer. By moving the software out of the data center, the customer can no longer see how the “sausages” are made. By insisting on a one-size-fits-all approach, much of the potential for dissatisfaction is self-selected away during the initial sales cycle, and the risks inherent in custom coding are eliminated. But it is the self-selection piece that is missing when the Siebel’s of the world claim that installed software as one-size-fits-all is easy. And so the religion performs the useful service of protecting the customer from their own worst tendencies.

Unfortunately, the idea that you can have any color you want so long as it is black is not a long-term stable solution to the issue of deployment and customization. People like customization and personalization. In fact, it is one of the alternate paradigm shifts that drove the sales of MP3 players – why can’t I have exactly the music I want instead of what some record producer thinks I should have? Businesses must do some things differently in order to differentiate.

As luck would have it (more on luck later), Salesforce.com identified a market where customization could be dispensed with. There has been little value shown in doing extensive customization of CRM systems because it isn’t the details of the sales process that matter. It is simply the mindset that there should be some kind of rigorous process. Overly literal imitators of Salesforce.com’s model need to be careful that their market will not require customization either.

Successful software, or services, must be difficult to copy

Barriers to Entry is the last economic component to consider, but it is one that the Software as Services community has not yet assimilated. In the wake of the dinosaur-killing mass extinction event, the furry mammals haven’t had much opportunity yet to compete for dominance in the food chain. The time to compete is coming though. With every venture capitalist in the land and many shareholders and analysts clamoring that Software as Service is the road that must be traveled, there is a gold rush beginning to take root. Soon, there will be many who want to poach each claim that shows any promise at all. Salesforce.com is a particularly juicy target. It may be that they have sufficient momentum that brand will become their essential barrier to entry. They are attempting to use the AppExchange concept to create a network effect barrier to entry, but that will take many years if they’re able to get there at all.

Ironically, the very forces the early Software as Service players have harnessed to their advantage have eliminated the barriers to entry that can be so important to long term success. With no customization, indeed as little investment as possible to adopt these products, and with their data entirely accessible via the Internet, it’s hard to see why the commoditizers will not ultimately themselves be commoditized by hungrier vermin that come along later. The jury is still out on what effective barriers to entry will work, and therefore what the barriers to entry will be for this model.

Business Needs

Somewhat related to economic climate is the idea of business needs. Are there any big problems left to be solved, or is the time and energy better spent providing ever cheaper solutions to the problems we’ve already uncovered?

One of the great tragedies of the enterprise software empires is that they became gradually disconnected from the idea of solving real business needs as more demand was driven by Y2K and Internet disintermediation fears. Many important business needs remain unsolved to this day because they weren’t sexy enough or didn’t benefit from the “Disruptive-Force-Du-Jour” of the times. Supply chain and product lifecycle management seemed like big new spaces that were enabled by the new Internet ethic. In fact, they were interesting spaces, but did not apply to a large enough market despite being useful to companies almost in direct proportion to how much they resembled Silicon Valley thinking.

CRM promised to solve the revenue growth problem, which is a big problem, but they only delivered the ability to collect the opinions of sales people and to monitor their adherence to the sales process. These were poor proxies to the revenue growth problem.

One way to look at this issue of problem solving is to go through the financial statements of companies and ask what has been done to improve the outcome of each line item. Huge markets have been created around the line items that have to do with manufacturing, for example. Enterprise resource planning is the epitome – and it is no accident that SAP as the premier player, is strongest among manufacturers.

The distinction between the idea of enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management is also strangely resonant. Planning implies some ability to proactively influence the outcome, and that is exactly what ERP systems are all about, at least for manufacturers. Management by contrast implies an ability to react to what is happening, and this is exactly why CRM has not solved the problem it set out to.

To achieve the levels of success that have been enjoyed by the ERP players, and to kick-start an entirely new phase in enterprise software and services, sales performance management focused vendors need to deliver the planning promise to the revenue problem in a proactive way. Instead of looking at opinions about what might happen, we must focus on using the powerful compensation carrot to drive future behavior based on what was learned from past results. This is exactly what was done in ERP, and it represents a bold new opportunity to address an important business need that has rejected the best attempts of the CRM movement.

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Robert Warfield is Senior Vice President Engineering and Chief Technology Officer at Callidus Software (www.callidussoftware.com), the industry’s leading enterprise incentive management (EIM) provider to global companies across multiple industries. Callidus EIM systems allow enterprises to develop and manage incentive compensation linked to the achievement of strategic business objectives.