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very specifically what you intend to accomplish and to clarify the business objective(s) 243
involved. With that done, you can make your technology selection.
■ ╇ B uild a S ocial C R M P rogram
Social CRM applies internally—inside your organization—as well. The same
triage process used to identify and connect a Social CRM program around business
objectives can also be applied to internal process change and innovation. If you are
seeking ideas for improved future products or radically new designs, or are looking
for insights on how your organization might restructure itself (including “virtually”),
then consider platforms like the Lithium ideation platform or collaboration tools
from Cynapse and Jive Software. They can be applied internally, as Dell did with
its “Employee Storm” platform, the internal counterpart to its customer-facing Idea
Storm. Be sure to connect the outputs of external efforts to your internal work process:
The concluding section of this chapter, “Enterprise 2.0 and Internal Collaboration,”
covers this aspect of Social CRM.

Looking back at Table€9.1 and Table€9.2, use your business objectives to refine
the available technologies. After using your business objectives to narrow the choice of
solution providers, ask the solution providers themselves to come back with a report or
proposal on how they would approach your situation, and how their tools and methods
apply. They’ll be happy to do this and to share their case studies with you. Nothing
like spreading the workload! Plus, it’s a really smart way to generate a wide range of
options quickly and to gain a broad perspective on what is available. This book will
slowly go out of date: Your good habits of due diligence and self-education won’t.

Organizational Culture

Along with business objectives, consider your organizational culture. How siloed is
it, and why? What are you peers likely to think of a change to the way in which they
work? It’s quite important to get a handle on this before you start narrowing solution
choices.

If your organization is broken into specific teams with minimal interaction, look
for tools with automated workflow capabilities that invite collaboration across distrib-
uted teams. You’ll need to send specifically filtered information to specific individuals
and to have the responses shared with other internal stakeholders. If your organization
is “flat,” then posting a report on SharePoint, Basecamp, or Notes and inviting com-
ments might be fine. Whatever the case, be sure that you understand and plan for the
ways in which the teams that are necessary to the success of any implementation pro-
gram will be looped into the process.

Your Delivery Experience

One of the more insightful aspects of Social CRM is its relationship to the processes
through which your customer experiences are created. As distinct from the more sales-
process-focused traditional CRM, Social CRM is all about aligning your business with