18 Use Cases That Show Business How To Finally Put Customers First

Social and CRM: How Companies Will Manage Their Social Relationships
Over the last six months, I’ve been working closely with Ray Wang who is well known in the CRM space as an expert.  Coupled with my focus on social technologies we did a deep dive on how our worlds are colliding into the trend to Social CRM.  In our opening webinar when we announced our joining of the firm, we made it clear we’re looking at the holistic business, across multiple business departments –not silos or roles.

Companies are unable to scale to keep up with the social phenomenon
We know that customers are using these social technologies to share their voices, and companies are having a very difficult time to keep up.

• For companies, real time is not fast enough. Companies need to be able to anticipate what customers are doing to say and do, in order to keep up. Although Motrin responded to angry mom’s within 24 hours –it was too slow.
• Companies are unable to scale to meet the needs of social. No matter how many community managers Dell and ComcastCares hires to support, they’ll never be able to match the number of customers happening.  They need tools, and they need them now.
• Customers don’t care what department you’re in they just want their problem fixed. Dooce’s support problem with Maytag quickly became a PR nightmare –had the support group known she was an influencer (and what it means), they could have serviced her better.

Above: Framework of the 18 Use Cases of Social CRM

How To Use This Report: A Pragmatic Roadmap
Regardless if you’re in IT or in a business unit, we wrote this to meet the needs of both groups.  This architecture lays out all the possibilities (18 use cases) defines the problem and goal for each, and suggests some vendors who to watch.  It’s also pragmatic, as it lays out a process on how to get started, baseline needs (listening) and what to do next.

Action Items

1. Sign up for the webinar series. This is a deep topic, and the report is only the tip of the iceberg.  As we’ve done in the past, we’re going to offer a series of free webinars on this topic to explore each of the use cases in gritty details.  Sign up for the webinar now, as we can only have 1000 attendees per webinar, as our last webinar had over 1100 registrants.
2. Read then spread this report. Like open source, the Altimeter Group believes in open research, we want our ideas to grow, and others to take advantage of it.  So if you found the report helpful, please forward the report to internal constituents, partners, vendors, clients, and blog it.  Use it in your presentations, business plans, and roadmaps.  I’ve embedded it below, and there are download features for your own use.
3. Have an internal discussion. Evaluate your current situation at your company, then draw up which business needs need to be tackled first, use the use cases as a roadmap by mapping out which phase comes first, and which phase comes second.
4. Learn more and join the community of pioneers. This is new territory, we don’t have all the answers, so we’ve created at group in which pioneers can learn from each other.  It’s free, and the conversation has started already, jump into the group, and learn together.

The Altimeter Approach
Standing behind our belief in open research, the Altimeter Group wants to be part of the community, we:

Involve the expert community in the research process
Altimeter is unique as our partners can tightly co mingle our topic areas and see how they converge, we highlighted our vision when we joined. We seek to be stewards of community and during our six months of research we talked to way over 40 thought leaders, vendors, and companies that are approaching this space. We blogged ideas, engaged in conversations with the #scrm hash tag, and had working sessions with thought leaders like Paul Greenberg and Esteban Kolsky.   We approached research in an open way, and allowed for vendors to review the report and submit back their ideas, some of which we incorporated. This effort was a group effort and included a lot of heavy lifting from Christine Tran, operations who helped to schedule countless meetings, and guidance from Charlene Li, our founder.

Provide a holistic view through deep collaboration
We see that worlds are converging, and we model our research the same way, through really analyzing the mixtures of our different topic areas. For example, what was interesting is that my ‘marketing-speak’ and Ray’s ‘IT Speak’ often resulted in the tower of babel. Although we were talking about the same topic, he had to translate IT and marketing speak both ways.  After many puzzled looks, we embracing this, and realized that this isn’t unique to us but a sign of companies converging as a result of mass adoption of easy to share social tools.  Thus, we realized this framework that could meet the needs of the various camps would be helpful, companies need to move quickly, as customers have adopted social in rapid fashion.

Use open research to grow ideas
We want ideas to spread, and have made the entire report available at no cost on slideshare, and put up images on flickr, we hope you use them, under creative commons licensing of Attribution -Noncommercial – Share Alike Status, we believe in open –not closed research.  We’re trying a different business model, we want to involve the community of experts and publish our findings out there for everyone to benefit from, please support us by sharing it as much as possible, while we trial a new way of doing research.

Update: I forgot to mention, this report was entirely funded by the Altimeter Group there were no sponsors. Also, we are open about disclosing who are clients are (providing they approve), as a result, we hope you’ll trust as more.

Related links: I’ll roundup interesting links that discuss this report

• Ray Wang, my co-author on this report has his take
• I cross posted on the Altimeter Blog, see comments
• Dave McClure, VC blogged his take
• Ray also cross posted on Enterprise Irregulars
• Marketing Profs Daily Fix, and it ended up on the homepage
• Brian Solis, speaker, thought leader reviews the report and extends the conversation about customers
• All Things Digital cross posts Brian’s piece
• David Berkowitz posts on Marketer’s Studio, we await his detailed review later
• Gauravonomics builds off of our use cases and creates a matrix, well done.
• Clo takes a sales focus, and extends the thinking and rallies for action
• Jacob Morgan has an excellent review, because he critiques the many vendors needed for 5Ms (see my comments on his blog) and discusses the need to separate automation vs manual processes. He cross posted on Cloud Ave
• Prem, one of the thinkers in this space says the report helped to crystalize thinking, read his review.
• More thinking about gurus and vendor control in this post and comments.
• Tac Anderson, a practitioner and thinker on social business compares to his existing frameworks when it comes to sales
• Stefano takes the use cases and aligns them with the Groundswell objectives, interesting.
• Get Satisfaction blogs about the report
• Our friends over at Web Analytics Demystified, also a research and consulting boutique, notice our pragmatic approach. I’m working on a report with them, stay tuned.
• Marshall Sponder hopes we take the report further –and notices what we did, a gap in implementation partners
• VC Cafe says this is a must read report
• Connie Bensen of Techrigy, Alterian points out it all starts with listening
• Greg Moyer wants to see more research on this topic, including the final impacts
• Also in Italian, look for the small icons at top to translate into English
• Customer think publishes Ray’s points
• Mike Boysen does a detailed review of the paper, adding additional points, really extends the conversation
• Gerald Hensel did not find it boring
• Adam “The Metz” suggests sales 2.0 folks read the paper
• Mitch expands on use case rapid social sales response (S2)
• Ogilvy’s John Bell, calls for a definition, discusses influencer relationship management, and questions the difference
• John Batelle, CEO of Federated Media shouts out about the report
• Peter Greenberg discusses the changes the report has caused, and makes some suggestions, thanks Peter. He also reviews the use cases, and points out other reports.
• Dennis Howlett gives a critical review, requesting more use cases that have direct impacts to the bottom line. Fair enough feedback.
• Filiberto reviews the report, and gives some strong cursory reviews.
• Our friends over at Foreplay in Brazil have translated the 5Ms into Portuguese.
• Well respected analyst Rachel Happe covers the report and seeks definitions around SCRM in relation to collaboration. Short answer? A company must first love itself before it can really love their customers.
• Perkett PR listed this as a key weekly read

Update: March 10th, From behind the scenes, we’re hearing of SCRM vendors and brands that are interested in deploying are using the framework as a roadmap, market requirements doc, and as a plan of what to do. Excellent.

Yesterday, we had the second in a three part webinar series about social strategy. The first, which you should listen to, focuses on understanding customers though socialgraphics. The following slides and recorded webinar (a bit faint, so be sure turn it up) are intended to be the foundation for companies of all sizes to develop a strategy based on business objectives –not the latest technology.

We believe in Open Research and encourage our knowledge to become the foundation for growth of ideas, and encourage you to learn, share on your blog, and put into educational materials. Those that offer social services or technologies, should consider embedding this on their site, and using to quickly educate prospects and clients –furthering the industry forward.

If you write a review I’ll be happy to provide a link so we can hear the perspectives of those that watched, if you found the presentation helpful, please pass it on, and encourage it to spread

Sharon gleaned five key points

Airfoil PR highlights 7 key learnings

Alyce gives her wrap up thoughts

Charlene cross posted from the Altimeter blog

The file is also on Dropio

The tag from the event was #socialstrategy, see the Twitter discussion

The next webinar, “Social Strategy: Getting Your Company Ready” will be taking place on Wednesday, April 14 from 11 am -12 pm. You can register at this link: http://bit.ly/gettingready

What happens when the social web and mobile devices become synonymous? Customers will be able to access their friends opinions in real time, make decisions on the fly, and will never have an excuse to make a poor buying decision.

[As mobile and the social web become one --customers are empowered to make confident buying decisions, wherever they go]

Earlier this year, I was deliberate in my mentioning of investing in two key areas, Social CRM, and Mobile Social Networks. While Ray and I are nearly ready to publish our report on SCRM, I’m pleased to announce we’ve a new partner here at the Altimeteter Group focused on devices, mobile, and the intersection of social technologies.

Michael Gartenberg, who stems from Jupiter and Gartner Research joins us as a partner with a focus on how customers are accessing each other in context of locations, activities, and their day to day life. In particular, I’ve been impressed with Michael for sometime, we’ve been interacting online for years, and I’ve respected his insight, and deep knowledge of the space.

If you’re not familiar with the mobile space, Michael is an influencer, his insight is sought after and he’s a regular contributor at Engadget, Computerworld and SlashGear, and has published hundreds of reports, blogs, and is one of the top analysts on Twitter. We’re pleased to announce Michael as part of the Altimeter founders.

On a related note, we’re growing quickly, and have expanded to a new office, nearly three time the size of our previous office. While it feels empty now, but we’re anticipating growth as more clients continue come on board.  I’ve posted some photos from Twitpic and also on Flickr.

Related Posts

• Michaels Altimeter Profile
• Michael Gartenberg’s blog
• Michael’s Twitter account
• Charlene Li, founder of Altimeter Group, welcomes Michael
• Analyst expert Jonny Bentwood of Edelman notes how we’re unique
• Carter Lusher of Sagecircle notes that we’re investing for growth
• Barbara French of Tekrati “an irresistible mix for Gartenberg”

Left: There are four main categories of social strategy, yet with over 20 subset objectives, which we’ll discuss at a high level.

Organizations that focus on social technologies suffer from the symptom of ‘Fondling The Hammer‘ .  True social strategy stems from business objectives –not the latest technologies.

So often, companies develop social tactics based on the latest tool that’s sprung forth.  Yet, so far and few in between to organizations develop an actionable plan based on business goals.

This second in our no-cost webinar series is coming up on the topic of social strategy.  In the spirit of open research, we’re leading a discussion in public, and encourage you to join, learn, and share with others. Co-hosting with Charlene Li, we’ll be hosting a no-cost webinar to discussin how companies can develop a social marketing effort that meet business goals.

Although not a requirement, our sessions build off each other, read, watch, and listen to our previously recorded session, we discussed how companies should really understand their customers before entering the social space.

Register: Developing a Social Strategy by Objectives, Hosted by Altimeter Group
Date: Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PST
(Status: 858 out of 1000 maximum have registered, as of Feb 11th)

Please sign up, we’re only limited to 1000 attendees and last time we have over 800 signups. If you are unable to make the live webcast, we’ll post the full set of slides and recording on this blog and the Altimeter blog, so please subscribe.  The hashtag for this event is #AltimeterWebinar, and if you’ve questions you want to pose in advance on Twitter, I’m listening and will factor in the top questions, or leave a comment below.

Time to put the hammer down, and start focusing on building that house.

Two Key Additions In Growth Areas: Lora Cecere, Alan Webber
We’re pleased to announce that we’re expanding two new partners Lora Cecere (full bio), Supply Chain Management and Alan Webber (full bio), Government Innovation. Founding partner, coauthor of Groundswell, Charlene Li discusses the hires and the changes in the market. At the Altimeter Group, we’re not forced into limited topic areas, but instead look at the intersection of major themes.  Each partner has a unique perspective, and we are constantly talking, sharing, and pushing our ideas by collaborating, you’re starting to see this manifest as Ray (CRM) and (Social) converge on Social CRM. We know that customers demand a holistic experience, so organizations will follow suit, here’s how our world of social technologies merges with these two new topic areas:

Supply Chain Management: Intersections with Consumers
In my area of focus, customer strategy, it’s important to expand the thinking to ‘where the customers will be’. With the rapid adoption of simple social technologies, they’ve caused great disruption to marketing, PR, media, and customer support. With customers and prospects explicitly giving off signals of what they want, don’t want, or intend to do, it gives companies the opportunity to anticipate their needs. We see this opportunity to tie these customer signals in social media and getting the right products to customers –when they need it most. So what’s next? Beyond social media marketing, or supporting customers with social technologies, an upcoming trend we see is tying social technologies with supply chain management. There are three areas where social and supply chain management start to converge:

• Demand signals by empowered consumers using social and mobile technologies. As consumers indicate their demand for new products or intentions, these signals will be transmitted to companies, their distributors, and sellers to anticipate the needs of consumers.  Companies can reduce their inventory, shipping, an risk of spoilage of limited shelf-life products.
• Co-innovation of new products between consumers –and engineering. We’re already seeing some companies like Uservoice, SalesForce ideas power Nokia, Dell, and Starbucks to ask their customers what they want built, but we expect this trend to continue.  Aside from reducing time and cost of the R&D process, companies can produce just the right amount of inventory, and benefit from an army of engaged advocates that participated in co-creation.

We’re pleased to bring on Lora Cecere from AMR, where her domain knowledge of supply chain management will cross over with many of of our areas of focus. Learn more about her on her bio on the Altimeter site, or on Twitter.

Government and Education Connect With Communities
Open government, citizen media, and social media used to organize and rebuild after a crises have all touched our lives in one way or another. Undoubtedly, government agencies are realizing the power of these tools to understanding their citizens, learning from them, and influencing them. As a result, expect disruptive technologies like mobile and social to quickly move into the government limelight, such as the TSA adopting a blog to connect with travelers.

• Build better relationships with communities. We’re already seeing government organizations benefit from understanding these tools, and using during campaigning practices. As citizens have already adopted these technologies, government organizations can benefit by listening, understanding and responding to citizens using social tools.
• Use social technologies to innovate programs. It’s not just about using these tools for campaigning purposes, but also improving existing programs.  Take for example, San Francisco uses Twitter to located troublesome potholes, reducing the costs for city workers to find the areas to fix –instead relying on citizens to reduce costs.  Expect new forms of innovation to emerge that will improve cultures and where people live.

It’s a pleasure to welcome former colleague Alan Webber from Forrester Research, who’s got a strong background on web user experience, and a focus on government innovation. Together, we’ll be crafting frameworks for government agencies, educational institutions and those that serve them on how to harness social technologies to improve their missions. Learn more about Alan from his blog, Ronin Research, his bio on the Altimeter site, or on Twitter.

Growth At the Altimeter Group
Back in late August when Ray, Debs, and myself joined Charlene, we were excited to try a new model. Now, four months later, we’ve over 40 clients on retainer relationship, that’s little over 2 companies signing on board with us per week and are about a dozen employees.  We’ve previously announced new hires, recently we hired Valerie, our operations manager, who will keep the gears going as we help our clients tackle ‘wicked’ problems.

Although we’re best known for our focus on disruptive technologies like social, web and marketing, the Altimeter Group has a wider offering that expands to enterprise applications and innovating new products.

Related Posts

• Carter Lusher of SageCircle breaks down the changes.
• Founder and Partner, Charlene Li welcomes the new crew
• Alan Webber makes his announcement
• Ray Wang, Partner focused on enterprise strategy, welcomes the growing team
• Tekrati covers the changes: Altimeter Group Adds Two Partners

Companies should have a ‘Customer Strategy’ not a ‘Twitter or Facebook Strategy’. To start, first understand your customers social behaviors, below are the slides and recorded webinar featured yesterday by Charlene Li and myself.

We know that customers are adopting new technologies to communicate with each other –and companies must change their own behaviors to reach them. Yet, to often, we hear of companies ‘fondling the hammer‘ where they have knee-jerk reactions to which ever technology emerges. The problem with this strategy is that new technologies are emerging in rapid iterations due to low-cost of innovation. As a result, focus on their behaviors, which we cover in detail in the Engagement Pyramid.

While using surveys is an effective way of getting a strong baseline set of knowledge, you must be constantly monitoring and updating the changes your ever-changing customers are having, and encourage you to partner with brand monitoring companies like Visible Technologies, Techrigy by Alterian, Radian 6, TNS Cymfony, Nielsen Buzzmetrics, Crimson Hexagon, and even simple easy to use tools like Twitter search and Google Alerts.

We focus on disruptive technologies, and know we don’t have all the answers, so we want to work with the community. Like the Opensource movement and creative commons, we’re embracing ‘Open Research‘ which means we want to share what we learn so others can build on top of it. We like Creative Commons, and hope you use this content for educational purposes and to share with others with attribution. Stay tuned, as we plan to share more about the socialgraphics methodology and other frameworks.

Above: Access the slides on slideshare (you can download them in PPT format)

Above: Listen and watch the recoded webinar, there were over 600 attendees in real time, making it interesting to watch the discussion in the chat and in Twitter.

Here’s the link that I mentioned comparing Toyota’s shotgun approach and Ford’s laser-like approach. Next, join the conversation in Twitter and beyond, see the many tweets tagged #socialgraphics. Last but not least, thanks to Christine Tran, for her research expertise and rolling out our new powerpoint design.

The Social Strategy Trilogy

Part 1: Socialgraphics help you to understand your customers (You’re here now)
Part 2: Developing a Social Strategy
Part 3: Getting your company ready (sign up)

Now in Russian, thanks.

Left: In the past, marketers have relied on tried and true demographics to understand customers. Now, as consumers adopt social technologies, marketers must measure socialgraphics, which indicates how they interact with each other.

Beware of plans or proposals that start with “Twitter Strategy” or “Facebook Strategy” Instead, they should have a “Customer Strategy” that focuses in on how customers behave –not on the ever-changing toolset. As a result, companies should first understand how their customers use social technologies before they choose the tools. Socialgraphics is how to measure how customers use social technologies, where they are online, and how it influence them in the context of the customer lifecylce.

This upcoming free webinar, suited for corporations who want to develop plans in social with confidence, will answer how to apply socialgraphics. Like demographics or psychographics, companies must now understand socialgraphics, which answers five key questions:

Socialgraphics answers five key questions:

1. Where are your customers online? First, find out where your customers are online, knowing which websites they are particiating at, this will reduce guessing.How to make this data actionable: Don’t aimlessly approach social networks without knowing if they are there, if they are in Hyves, Mixii, or Facebook, go there. Fish where the fish are.
2. What are your customers’ social behaviors online? How do they use social technologies? Do they share? Comment? Create their own content?How to make this data actionable: Which social features should you deploy. Example: if they frequently like to comment on websites, allow them to leave their comments.
3. What social information or people do your customers rely on? How to make this data actionable: If they rely on their friends, facilitate a marketing program that encourages customers to share with friends, this data helps with determining resource allocation on advocacy programs.
4. What is your customers’ social influence? Who trusts them?How to make this data actionable: If your customers are trusted by others, highlight your customers in front of their community. For example, teens may share information with each other, spreading their influence to others.  Example: Walmart’s 11 Moms blogger program is a platform for customer voices.
5. How do customers use social in context of your products? How do customers use social technologies to learn, make decisions, and support your products and services? How to make this data actionable: Be confident in your resource allocation by understanding when customers rely on social tools or their peers in pre-sales, awareness, decision making, implementation, or support of a product.

When properly deployed, Socialgraphics, helps companies, their agency partners, and business units be more effective in their planning and deployment –reducing risk from deploying without having knowledge.

In the spirit of open research, we will make this webinar, the slides, and the overall methodology available for the public to use, under creative commons license. We hope you’ll join us.  Stay tuned as we have other webinars coming soon.

Long term friend and former colleague Robert Scoble (who’s now with Rackspace) came by to interview the Altimeter Group. Although Deborah Schultz and Charlene Li were off traveling the globe, Ray Wang (who covers enterprise strategy) and myself were able to sit down with Robert and discuss the trends we see happening in the industry. Big wave to Rocky who’s the show producer, and also a former colleague.

This post was collaboratively written on a wiki by Charlene Li, (cross posted) who maintains a focus on Leadership Strategy and Jeremiah Owyang, who maintains a focus on Customer Strategy. Together, we’re covering the convergence of emerging technologies at the Altimeter Group.

Twitter brokers a deal that offers search engines Microsoft Bing and Google Search access to their real time data streams.  Also, Facebook, offers up public status updates to be searched and served up to Microsoft’s Bing.  This trend towards micro media requires companies to pay attention to the real time and social web for marketing, support, and competitive strategies.  There are several impacts to the ecosystem, here’s what you should know:

• Deal Fills In Technology and Relationship Gaps for Twitter. Twitter lacks the computing power of a premiere search engine, as their current Twitter search results are littered with spam, duplicate tweets, and are only sorted by time.   Leveraging the sophisticated engineers at Microsoft and Google affords Twitter an opportunity to focus on their platform –not search.  From a business aspect, this deal makes sense is that Microsoft and Google both have relationships with advertisers and brands, with trained sales forces to cut deals. Although the terms of the deal aren’t public, it’s suspect there was an exchange of material goods, it’s likely that Twitter will benefit from revenue share in the near future.
• Social Search to Serve Results Based On Time, Authority. Expect real time data to merge with existing search engines, as a result we should see Google Search and Bing to serve up search results based on: 1) Real time information based on what Twitter users are saying, including memes from trending topics, 2) Preference given to links and URLs that are tweeted by users with more followers or authority, 3) Geo location of tweets to influence search results.  As users seek “Thai Restaurants in San Mateo” location based tweets could provide additional context.  4) Eventually results will be served up by your friends.  Google has given a nod to serve up information based on your social graph (your friends) using Google Profile.
• To Compete, Facebook Must Make More Content Public. For closed social networks like Facebook, this means they need to continue to offer up more data that can be searched in public by search engines.  With default settings in Facebook set to ‘friends only’ this will continue to be a challenge as Facebook’s community prefers the filters and privacy settings that this closed social network provides.
• Twitter’s Future: Seamless Integration with the Web. Success for Twitter isn’t about becoming a destination site, but instead about becoming a data protocol that’s embedded everywhere.    Like “Air“, microblogging features are already present in multiple applications, desktop and mobile clients, and the bite-sized information is becoming available in context wherever it’s needed.
• Customers Influence Search Results An even more amazing impact of these announcements is that for the first time, consumers will be able to directly impact web search results. Although companies spend thousands of marketing dollars controlling their search results by using Google’s advertising services, customers and competitors can quickly and cheaply impact search results using simple tools like Twitter.  Consumers, empowered using mobile devices as a publishing platform can link to content and influence search results. Now, a simple tweet with a picture of a plane landing on the Hudson from a mobile phone will show up at the top of search results.

Key Takeaways: Customers Impact Brand Search Results Using Twitter
Even if your company is not active on Twitter, your customers can influence the search results related to your company –you must pay attention to this trend.  Just as your company likely already has a search strategy through search optimization or paid search terms, you’ll need to extend micromedia to your strategy.  In order to be prepared for this change, companies must:

1. Develop a Listening Strategy That Starts With Roles and Process.  Every business and market is now moving faster and faster as information spreads around the globe in minutes –if not seconds.  Companies must be ready to quickly identify flare ups, be ready to respond, and correct incorrect information.  Develop a listening strategy that has internal roles set in place, a process to respond and the right tools like Radian 6, Visible Technologies, BuzzMetrics, or Cymfony.
2. Change The Marketing Mindset –Legacy Methods Ineffective. Search marketers must understand that blasting marketing information through Facebook or Twitter won’t be effective, as search engines will filter out irrelevant messages that nobody listens to. Instead, marketers should allow content on all web properties and email marketing to be easily added to Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites by offering icons that encourage people to share. Providers like ShareThis and AddThis make this simple to do.
3. Develop Influence Marketing Programs. Since these search engines have all noted that they will rank real time information on a person’s authority and not just traditional page ranking, marketers must double down on building these relationships.  More than ever, brands will need to foster discussions within Twitter as retweet, replies, and linking behavior will influence what is served up on results pages.  It takes time to build real relationships that develop into public conversations so get started now.

Related Links:
For a list of social networking stats (including Twitter) we’ve a 2009 collection we keep up to date.

If you’re in the market to buy web based collaboration tools, community platforms, CRM, or any software as a service application, know your rights before you buy.

A few months ago Charlene Li, founder of the Altimeter Group launched her Engagement Database report, which showed which brands were most active with their customers in social sites. Today, we’re proud that partner Ray Wang launches the Software as a Service Bill of Rights for customers, you can view, download, or share the document from his blog.

Our research wasn’t created in a hole, we want to help the community that we serve and involved 57 ecosystem partners for their feedback, input and guidance. We’ve also made the research available using Creative Commons–meaning we encourage it to be shared with others.

How to use the Software As A Service Bill of Rights

• If you’re a buyer of any of these markets, use this document as a checklist to ensure your rights are being met.
• Have a dialog with your vendors, asking them where they fall within these bill of rights and where they differentiate.
• Encourage your existing vendors to follow these rights as you negotiate your next renewal.

Thanks for everyone who attended our webinar today (799 registrants, 458 attendees) to discuss Altimeter’s vision on the future of business, and to tell a little about ourselves.

Yet, for us to be successful, we know that we need to be part of the larger community, so we only presented till the half of the hour and opened it right up to discussion by taking questions from the webinar, and tweets that were tagged #futurebiz. Ironically, it became a trending topic, then the twitter spammers quickly moved in to offer cialis deals.

We learned a lot. Looking inside the company, this was a great internal exercise as it forced us to really work together, define our vision, what and who we are in a public way. We also learned from the real time and live feedback: Some folks wanted more detailed content, others preferred some speakers over others, and we made the mistake of forgetting to record the conversation so only the slides are available.

The learnings never end, but now I’d like to get your opinion on where you think the future of business is headed. Take a look at the embedded slides above, and come up with your own: How must business change in the future for companies to be successful.

Love to hear from you: What’s the Future of Business?

New technologies are emerging at a faster pace –yet companies lack an on-boarding process.

Just a few years ago, fax, cell phones, email and the internet stormed into companies. Today, social technologies have caused many corporations to respond with a knee-jerk reaction, or shudder away in fear. Tomorrow, location aware devices, an increase in cloud computing, and augmented realities are quickly appearing on the horizon. What’s the trend? These emerging technologies are coming at an increased speed.

With more changes coming, it’s painful for companies to quickly adopt without a strategy. As a result, modern companies need an on-boarding process for any emerging technology. We plan to be that guide for the world’s top brands to understand, experiment, and improve their business. How, do you ask?

Ready For Takeoff: I’m Joining The Altimeter Group!
I’ve joined the Altimeter Group as a partner, where I’ll be a strategy consultant. Focusing on customer strategy, I’ll guide my clients through a process to understand and adopt new technologies.

I’ll draw on at least four resources: 1) My experience at Hitachi Data Systems leading social strategy, 2) Insight gleaned as an industry analyst, 3) learnings as an active practioner of the tools, and 4) Large network of the smartest minds in the space.

Our Holistic Approach: Leadership, Customer, Enterprise, and Innovation.
I’m joining a powerhouse team and will be one of four partners. First, our founding partner, Charlene Li, will focus on the changes coming to successful leadership. I’ll focus on customer strategy of emerging technologies, for now, that’s primarily social and it’s impact to marketing and support. From an enterprise point of view, Ray Wang, has focus on business applications like ERP and CRM. Also, Deborah Schultz will focus on innovation.  She’s well known in the tech scene, and was recently a consultant guiding the P&G Social Media Labs.

How We Plan To Work With The Ecosystem:
We want to be part of the greater community, and we’re going to work with companies and the providers of technology and services:

Guiding our clients to adopt emerging technologies. We want to develop a long-term relationship with a select set of clients. They’ll know that today’s focus is social, but it’ll quickly move to “what’s next”. Despite market changes, our practice will remain consistent: evaluate the situation, educate, develop a strategy, identify the right providers, and make measurable business impacts through our pragmatic approach.

Got something to offer? Get involved with us. We know we’re part of the larger eco systems, and we will work with technology and service providers that are ready to engage with our clients. We’ll be working with agencies, consultants, individual thought leaders, high-tech startups, established technology companies and beyond in order to find the right mix for our clients.

Get geared for flight at the Hangar. We’re announcing our physical space at our office in San Mateo (appropiatly called the “Hangar” in the spirit of the Altimeter, a device used to measure altitude) where we have training rooms, conference areas, and meeting rooms. (Author and friend Brian Solis has taken some pictures) In the spirit of P&G’s social media labs, we’ll use this space for training, experiments, demos, unconferences, tweetups, and the occasional social bash.

Join The Altimeter Open House Webinar On The Future of Business
If you want to learn more about the Altimeter Group, we’re hosting an Open House Webinar to discuss the Future of Business on Thursday, Sept 10th, at 10am Pacific Time. (GMT – 8:00)  Sign up, it’ll be interactive where everyone can participate.

I’m hanging up the analyst hat, moving back to practice. I’m truly thankful for the grand adventure at Forrester. I learned the value of knowledge, and will continue to refer companies to Forrester for research and analysis. The skills, trends, and contacts I gleaned as an analyst have made me a better practitioner, now I venture into the field as a strategy consultant.

This blog will continue! I got a lot of questions whether or not I’ll continue to blog, and guess what? I plan to increase commitment to blogging. One change you’ll note is I’ll be increasing my scope beyond just social –and I’m taking you with me. As I’ve done for years, I’ll share what I learn in this blog, and we’ll discuss it in the comments and learn from each other as a community.  Remember, blogging is a form of paying yourself first.

Despite being scared, I’m ok with it. I’m leaving a stable, high-profile job in the middle of a recession, and live in Silicon Valley, an expensive place to live. Yet, after speaking to many entrepreneurs and successful professionals,  they reassured me and told me to embrace my fear.  Why?  They say it will only fuel my desire to succeed.  I truly believe now is the time for innovation, and see glimpses of light despite this recession. In the spirit of Silicon Valley and beyond, I’m going to take a risk for a greater reward.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Lastly, I wanted to sincerely thank you all for the support, from family, friends, colleagues, readers from all over the globe and even competitors, it’s truly appreciated. I also wanted to thank Charlene for believing in me over the years, and the brain power from my new partners Debs and Ray, and the behind-the-scenes help from Denise.

I look forward to this next phase in my journey, as a Partner at the Altimeter Group, see you at our Open House webinar! or email me at jeremiah_owyang at yahoo.com

Related Resources:
I’ll update this section with interesting points of view.

• Lionel Menchaca of Direct to Dell
• Claire Miller of New York Times
• Shel Israel, Global Neighbourhoods
• Jeremy Pepper, of POP! PR Jots
• Carter Lusher of SageCircle
• Podcast: Interview with Joseph Jaffe
• Brian Solis of PR2.0
• John Cass of PR Communications
• Podcast: Shel Holtz audio interview with FIR
• Todd Defren, PR Squared
• Research Live
• Jonny Bentwood, Institute of Industry Analyst Relations
• Mary Duan, Silicon Valley Business Journal
• Vinnie Mirchandani of Deal Architect
• Phil Fersht, “Charlene’s Angels” Horses for Sources
• Chris Yeh, Cloud Avenue
• Ken Burbarry, Web Business
• Steve Ellis, New Marketing
• Jay Andersen, Hill and Knowlton AR Focus
• Rachel Happe, “SES” Community RoundTable
• David Berkowitz of the 360i blog
• Susan Etlinger of the Horn Group
• Paul Botin, VentureBeat
• Paid Content/Reuters
• PR Week (subscription required)
• Altimeter Group’s Press Release

Correction: Thanks to the observant James Fishback, I made a fix to correct ‘Hangar’.