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 intersecting at Social CRM. In our opening webinar when we announced our joining of the firm, we made it clear that we were 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 going 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 Comcast Cares hires to support, they’ll never be able to match the number of active customers. 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 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 a 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. Thus, we:

Involve the expert community in the research process
Altimeter is unique as our partners can tightly comingle 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. 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, co author has his take
• Dave McClure blogged his take
• Ray cross posted on Enterprise Irregulars
• Marketing Profs Daily Fix
• Brian Solis
• All Things Digital

To that end, the slides and video recording (of both the slides and audio) are available below. You can also download them from Slideshare.net (for slides) and drop.io (for the recording). You can follow the conversation that was taking place, using the hashtag #socialstrategy.

Note that this webinar was Part 2 of a three part series. The content from the first webinar, “Understand Your Customers’ Social Behaviors” is available online.

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

Developing A Social Strategy Webinar

A hearty welcome to Michael Gartenberg, the newest partner to join Altimeter. With the addition of Michael, we now have seven partners along with a staff of five other people. We also recently moved offices in San Mateo to accommodate our new growth (more on that below).

Michael has been a long-time, respected voice in the space of personal and mobile technologies, and he brings to Altimeter a unique viewpoint of how these technologies are changing the consumer experience. Understanding how people use devices to connect  with content and each other is an important linchpin in creating strategies around emerging technologies for our clients.

To that end, we’re looking forward to collaborating with Michael on many fronts. Jeremiah Owyang is focused on location-based and mobile marketing issues while Ray Wang is looking forward to exploring how enterprise apps can better develop and leverage mobile extensions. Michael’s focus on new innovations such as demand sensing via devices is right up Lora Cecere’s alley while Deb Schultz can’t wait to get Michael and his collection of gizmos into our upcoming Altimeter Labs experience.

And as a self-professed geek, I personally am looking forward to tapping into Michael’s passion for consumer electronics and exploring with him how these devices will change how we interact. I believe we’re on the cusp of the next wave of innovation, which will be centered on contextually aware behaviors and data – if only we can properly address sticky issues like privacy.

At Altimeter we love to be faced with “wicked problems” that appear intractable. With Michael on board, we’re one step further on our quest to address on behalf of our clients how new technologies are impacting their businesses.

Michael is also an avid Twitter user and writes frequently on his blog, GartenBlog.net. Michael also writes regular columns at Computerworld, Engadget, and SlashGear.

Lastly, in terms of growth, we recently moved our San Mateo, CA offices into much larger space that will be able to accommodate our growth over the next 2-3 years. It’s still the “Hangar”, our term of endearment for our office, and right now, it feels really big. But we’re looking forward to filling it out very soon!

Michael’s bio is below, and is also available online.

Michael Gartenberg is a partner with Altimeter Group where he leads coverage in the connection points of people, digital media and “What’s Next” technologies across multiple screens, devices and locations.

With more than twenty years of experience, Michael focuses on how vendor and customer relationships are impacted by the new ways they communicate, create, consume and share content  with people on emerging platforms and digital devices. With a strong focus on consumer behavior and usage models, Michael helps clients understand the impact of how technologies change consumer behavior and how they can best make decisions to reach consumers who seek access to contextually relevant information, wherever they are and on whatever device they choose to use.

A frequent contributor to many news and media outlets providing both broadcast commentary and print analysis Michael also writes a monthly column on business technology for Computerworld, as well as weekly columns for two influential technology blogs; Engadget and SlashGear. Connect with him on twitter @gartenberg and read his blog at GartenBlog.net.

As part of his coverage, Michael also looks at the convergence of how personal mobile and social technologies provide new meaning with location-based context and and contextual information being served at the right time, at the right place. In addition, Michael also works with companies to create new mobile frameworks that allow businesses and marketers to choose the correct platforms to target and how to best maximize the results of those investments. He is also exploring how enterprise applications are being reshaped by mobile demands, as well as how mobile context and sensing is impacting supply chain management.

A long time blogger, Michael has been ranked by TechnoBabble among the most influential analyst bloggers. In addition, he is the only analyst ranked in the top 10 of both most influential as well as engaging analysts on Twitter according Edelman’s TweetLevel. Michael serves on the board of advisors for the Consumer Electronics Association where he helps create the agenda for the Consumer Electronics Show.

Michael recently hails from Interpret, LLC as Vice President of Strategy and Analysis, where he created Interpret’s syndicated research offerings. Prior to that he was Vice President and Research Director at Jupiter Research, where led the Personal Technology and Custom Research Teams. Michael was also a Research Area Director of Gartner Inc., leading the Personal and Distributed Technologies research area.

Contact information:

Email: michael (at) altimetergroup (dot) com

Like many parents, I try to take steps to keep my kids safe online, making sure that they understand not to share personal information online, or even to use their real names. They know how to write appropriate emails, and I constantly monitoring what they do, the emails they send, and most importantly, engaging in a constant dialog with what they are doing online.

But when I logged into my Google Buzz account this evening, I found that my 9 year old daughter had posted the following:

Pretty innocuous, but it was PUBLIC! I saw it because Buzz conveniently made me a follow of hers. I pride myself on staying ahead of my kids, but this time, my kid got ahead of me. She used Buzz without fully understanding that what she thought was a private conversation with her friends was in fact very much public.

Fortunately, this was her only Buzz posting. But what was most disturbing was looking at her friends’ conversations and realizing that some of them were chatting with complete strangers, and in some cases, sharing personal information like emails. Absolutely terrifying as these are 4th graders who have no clue.

I quickly turned off Google Buzz,  (but I didn’t totally disable it, more on that below), dashed off an email to the parents of the friends she had been chatting with inside of Buzz (again, all in public, with their real names), and then finally took a long hard look at the situation.

First, I discovered that buried in Google’s terms of service somewhere is that children under the age of 13 are not allowed to have Gmail accounts. But unlike Facebook, which requires that people enter their birthdates when setting up accounts, Google makes no such attempt to educate people signing up for Gmail that such a provision is in place. As a result, while Google is absolved of responsibility because of the TOS, it could and should do a better job of complying with the  Child Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). [UPDATE: Google does in fact ask for birthdate when signing up, and sends users who are under 13 to the FTC page about COPPA. Obviously, I violated Google's TOS by putting in MY birthdate and then giving account access to my child.]

Second, I think Google will have a second wave of privacy problems to address in Buzz. The easiest thing to do as a parent is to simply disable Buzz, meaning that the Google profile and all followers are deleted — permanently. But the reality is, my child has actually figured out how to use Buzz and seems to enjoy it – unlike most adult users of Gmail! But managing groups, privacy settings, etc. would be required for her to continue using it and I’m not confident as a parent that she’ll be able to figure all of that out. We’ll give it a try, but unless her friends also keep the conversation private, it will all be for naught.

So while I applaud Google for taking quick steps to manage the privacy backlash on Google Buzz, I think Buzz will bring to the fore the quiet reality that many people have enabled Gmail for their kids (and which Google loves because it ensures a new generation of Google devotees).

Without an overhaul and the addition of true parental controls in Gmail, this will remain a problem for Google, and a potential PR nightmare. Imagine parents (and kids) checking out their Buzz accounts to find that “iorgyinbathrooms” is following them, which is exactly what happened with my child’s account!

Does your child have a Gmail account? If so, have you talked to them about what Google Buzz is and how they should be properly using it? Please take action, which may be as dramatic as completely disabling Buzz on your child’s account. Do this as soon as possible, as I’m concerned that unsavory characters are already exploiting this parental control loophole.

Update Part 1: I received a response from a Google spokesperson, with permission to post it here:

“We designed Buzz to make it easy to have conversations with your friends about the things that interest you. Keeping kids safe online is very important to us. You must have a Google account to use Buzz, and we require all new Google account users to provide birthdates to keep children under 13 from signing up for accounts. Since we launched Buzz, we’ve listened to the feedback from our users and have made many product improvements to address their concerns. It’s still early, and we have a long list of improvements on the way. We look forward to hearing more suggestions and will continue to improve the Buzz experience with user control top of mind. Even as we roll out changes, we think it’s important to remember that there’s no substitute for parental supervision to keep kids safe on the Internet.”

Update Part 2: I had a chance to speak with Scott Rubin, who runs the child safety and public policy program at Google. As a parent of young children himself, Scott understands the need for parents to be able to control what their children see and do online. He pointed out that Google earlier this month enabled Safety Mode on YouTube and that the company continues to develop ways to give people in general better control. Scott acknowledged that things went wrong with Buzz and that some improvements were made quickly, and also that there’s more to come. We also discussed an interesting situation regarding children between 13 and 17 — those are are actually allowed to have Gmail accounts  of their own. There are very few controls within the Google universe that give parents control, and Scott expressed an interest in continuing the dialog about what Google can do to ensure child safety.

So if you have suggestions on parental control features you’d like to see Google add, please include them in the comments below.

Update Part 3: As you can see in the comments below, I’ve been branded both an irresponsible parent for giving my child access to email and also a responsible one for taking precautions. I’m often asked what I do as a parent so I thought I’d share some details of the madness to my method. First, there is no such thing as perfect, full-proof parental controls for the Internet short of sitting down with them and watching every keystroke. But that’s exactly what my husband and I did, starting early and stressing basic Internet safety such as not downloading files, sharing personal information, learning to exercise judgment online. Over time, we gave our kids more and more freedom to do things on their own, and put in place clear consequences if they broke the rules. Believe me, there have been many mistakes made and a lot of learning along the way! But each time, no major harm was done and they become more aware of all the pitfalls that being online entail.

Email was initially sent from our machines and our accounts with full supervision, then without supervision, and finally they were given their own accounts.  But I still get copies of everything that they get, and they are allowed to email only people in their address book that are preapproved. This incident has made me rethink what email service we use for the kids, especially since we’re in violation of the Gmail TOS, and I’ll be looking into other options.

YouTube is accessible only from a public PC in the kitchen, and their PCs are in the family room with screens that I can easily see from the kitchen. We also have K9 monitoring software installed that blocks/allows sites and tracks everything they see and use. But my favorite software is TimesUpKidz, which limits their online time to one highly-anticipated hour a day, and then only during certain times. I love it because it removes my need to constantly tell them to get off the computer!

But more important than any piece of software, the thing that I believe keeps them most safe online is the constant communication and conversation we have together about their online activities. When I talked with my daughter about Buzz this morning, I told her that I saw the post that she wrote, and she readily said that she was looking forward to getting comments on it from her friends. When I told her that the posts were public, she said that she had no idea, and immediately agreed to stop using Buzz. She knows that she isn’t ready for a public presence and the reasons why. Our conversation about Buzz was part of our every day, normal conversation about being safe online, discussed in a relaxed way over breakfast. She and her brother frequently ask about things they hear about from their friends or things that they see online, and my hope is that as they enter the tumultuous teenage years, that we will continue having these conversations (although I think I’m be way to optimistic about that!)

Each family has to decide for themselves what works for their kids, and I understand that some people will disagree with  my approach. But it seems to be working for us, and for now, the Google Buzz issue has been resolved. I’m no fool — I know dangerous situations are always lurking around the corner, but I hope that the security controls we’ve put in place plus the ongoing conversations we have will be enough to keep the worst situations from happening.

Trends such as open government and supply chain/demand orchestration disrupt traditional business and organizational models, creating both problems as well as opportunities. We passionately believe that new technologies like social CRM or real-time demand generation need to be examined in a networked, holistic way, one that defies traditional “coverage areas”. Innovation and new ideas happen at the edge, so when we cross-pollinate our ideas across subject areas, we add value for our clients.

As an example, Lora and I recently discussed how social technologies would impact manufacturers and retailers, especially their ability to sense how demand is changing. This isn’t something that I normally think about, but as I prepare for an upcoming client engagement with a CPG company, I plan to add Lora’s perspective  to the discussions I will have with that client.

It may be tempting to categorize us as a remodeled analyst firm, as we are mostly former technology industry analysts. But whereas analysts analyze, we are driven by a different passion–we want to change things, especially for our clients. We look forward to addressing the tough, “wicked” client situations that require digging deep and working collaboratively to arrive at elusive solutions.

As we grow, we also humbly recognize that no matter how much we expand, we can’t do it all ourselves. New technologies are changing too quickly for any one person or firm to have perfect knowledge of an emerging space, so we are committed reaching out and supporting the greater community. For example, we recently hosted a Social Media Club meeting in our San Mateo office, as we believe strongly in operating from within the ecosystem.

You’ll find below bios for Alan and Lora. Please join me in welcoming Alan and Lora!

Alan Webber, Government Innovation

With a strong focus on making organizations more efficient and more effective, Alan helps government agencies manage the impact of emerging and disruptive technologies and improve interactions between government and citizens and businesses. Returning to his roots, Alan will also be helping organizations understand the impact and role of clean technologies and sustainability in business.

Alan has more than 16 years of business and government management and technology experience working with commercial and government clients around the globe. Prior to striking out on his own and joining Altimeter Group, Alan was a Principal Analyst at Forrester Research where he covered government and the B2B user experience.  Prior, he led various strategic planning, performance management, eGovernment, and Web initiative efforts for the US government at the Department of the Interior and the National Science Foundation.

When it comes to cross collaboration, Alan will mesh well with the other Altimeter team members. Together with Jeremiah Owyang, Alan will be helping government agencies and leaders use social media to better engage with citizens and businesses. Alan and Ray Wang advising clients on the implementation of ERP and CRM systems in the public sector.

Connect with Alan on twitter at @AlanWebber, or read his blog.

Lora Cecere, Supply Chain Management

With deep experience in using enterprise applications to drive supply chain excellence, Lora provides early adopters with a first mover advantage. For software vendors, Lora provides strategic guidance in go to market strategies; reviews and designs software licensing, pricing, support, and maintenance policies; delivers competitive assessments; evaluates software partner ecosystems; and actively researches the evolution of business processes like supply chain compliance, deduction management, order-to-cash effectiveness, supply chain metrics, and emerging supply chain processes.

Her analyst experiences include Vice President roles at Gartner Group and most recently at AMR Research.  Before serving as an industry analyst, Lora was a line-of-business user/buyer and a builder of enterprise solutions.  She’s launching a new blog, Supply Chain Shaman , and is on
Twitter at @lcecere.

Update: Added other blog posts discussing this announcement.

Alan Webber’s post on his blog - Alan update – Joining Altimeter Group!

SageCircle - With expansion and professionalism, Altimeter Group raises its relevance with both enterprises and vendor analyst relations

Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang - Growth at Altimeter Group: Supply Chain Management, Government Innovation

Also, there was a vibrant conversation taking place on sites like Twitter, using the hashtag #socialgraphics (for search of just the tweets on the day of the Webiner, use this link).

Jeremiah Owyang and I will be running a free Webinar introducing how we are thinking about how companies can understand their customers through what we are calling "socialgraphics". To register for the Webinar:

Register for Free Webinar:
Understand Your Customers’ Social Behaviors, Hosted by Altimeter Group
Wednesday, January 20, 2010 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM PST

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 life cylce.

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, they are:

1. Where are your customers online? First, find out where your customers are online, knowing which Web sites they are participating 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, Mixi, 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 Web sites, 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 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.

At its Dreamforce conference, Salesforce.com announced the launch of Chatter Collaboration Cloud. On the surface, it may look like merely Twitter integrated deeply into Salesforce.com’s offerings, but it’s really a social platform that can integrate multiple inputs that will accelerate the opening up of enterprise applications.

I was pre-briefed about the announcement, so will walk you through major highlights and also discuss a few implications.

Overview

Chatter Collaboration Cloud reflects a recent expansion in Salesforce.com’s offering, continuing where Sales Cloud 2, Service Cloud 2, and Custom Cloud 2 left off. Chatter will be Salesforce.com’s “social platform”, integrating in profiles, status updates, groups, feeds, and of course, information from Twitter and Facebook.

When it launches in Q2 2010, it will be a free offering with premium options like compliance features. It will be available in all Salesforce.com products as well as a standalone offering (although I didn’t see a demo of the standalone option. The fact that there will be a basic social platform for free is a blow not only to microblogging players like Yammer, but also should concern collaboration players like 37 Signal’s Basecamp, Jive, and yes, even Sharepoint.

But the real power comes from the integration of the social platform into Salesforce.com offerings. The top navigation tabs in the CRM module will change to include “Profile” and “Groups” while the “Twitter Conversations” tab will go away. People will be able to import their profiles from sites like Facebook and also form group around topics, such as winning a particular business.

But the interesting development is the integration of social updates directly into the context of the sales opportunities. Companies may be using Yammer, Sharepoint or some other type of collaboration platform to discuss deals. The pain point: they lacked the context of the deal itself. Chatter integrates those conversations, associating them with specific deal, accounts, or groups with the use of hashtags.

Essentially, Chatter enables presence within Salesforce. This means you’ll be able to see my update “Working on a presentation for #Ford” not only on my profile page, but also in the context of the Ford deal. So my salesperson will see that information on the Ford account as an update, even if s/he’s not actively following me. This is about putting the conversations and social objects in the context of where they will be most useful.

In a clever twist, Salesforce.com also makes opportunities an entity. If I’m following the Ford deal, I’ll get updates when there is activity on the account, for example, when a competitor has been identified on the deal. That means your enterprise application will send updates that you can follow directly in your news stream, interspersed with updates from colleagues.

This means your enterprise app will be “adopting” social technologies, moving away from sending notifications via email (and cluttering up your inbox) and instead, sending updates just like everyone else on your team into the news stream.  Essentially, your enterprise app will be “tweeting”, with it’s own “profile” and Chatter updates aggregated into one place.

Lastly, Chatter is an open enough platform that it can incorporate social content from multiple sources. For example, a person’s profile details from Facebook could be appended with data from Rapleaf, or activities from a client project in Sharepoint could “update” account information inside of Salesforce.com. This is already happening: Jive recently partnered with Radian6 to provide built-in social monitoring (commentary from my partners Ray and Jeremiah is available). Other nimble players like Socialtext and Lithium are also moving in this direciton.

What This Means

• Enterprise apps get social–and smart. This is more than merely integrating Twitter-like functionality into CRM and creating “social CRM”. This is a rethink and elevation of how information flows around an organization, and where it lives. The elevation of deals to be on the same level as people is significant — in every other social platform, people reign supreme and the world pivots around them. Look for social CRM providers like Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, and many others to open up their platforms as well.
• Updates and notifications get integrated & aggregated where they’re needed. It’s one thing to use Twitter for customer support. It’s quite another to integrate it into the workflow of the organization. When Service Cloud 2 is enabled with Chatter, people will be able to see the history of interactions with the customer, including when it’s happening off their site. RightNow’s integration with Lithium and acquisition of HiveLive is an indication of trends to come.
• Enterprise apps and collaboration platforms will need to be more open. Enterprise products like Sharepoint and Oracle CRM, and will need to accelerate their integration of  social tools into their platforms to provide services they can’t easily offer. Likewise, Salesforce.com will have to extend its new social data into other platforms as well. If I’m an enterprise customer of both Salesforce.com and Sharepoint, I would want there to be deep integration between the two systems. The risk of not acting: smaller players like Lithium, Jive, and Socialtext will gain a greater foothold because of their ability to integrate and open up their platforms.
• Salesforce.com moves to incorporate the 10 elements of social enterprise apps.  Chatter engages new stakeholders by opening up the system to new types of users, collaborators, networks, and communities.  More importantly, it supports pervasive & natural collaboration. Chatter enables knowledge worker skills into existing work flows.

I’ll be posting screenshots as soon as official ones are available.

David Stanley will be joining us as Vice President of Business Development and Sales, where he will be responsible for expanding Altimeter Group’s market share through direct sales engagements globally, as well as overall business development. Previously, David was Vice President of Sales at ARInsights, makers of the industry leading SaaS-based “Program Management Software” for industry analyst relations.

He’ll be joining Linda Ziffrin of Valley View Ventures (V3), who has been managing many of our key client relationships, since I started Altimeter in 2008. In addition to Altimeter, V3 works with many leading independent IT analysts so we’re able to tap into V3’s relationships at top technology firms.

Christine Tran has joined us as a part-time Researcher, helping us deliver all of the client work being generated by our amazing sales team. She’ll be working closely with Jeremiah Owyang in our Customer Strategy practice, and also coordinating future workshops and events.

Finally, Denise Aday is the person who keeps us all working smoothly. Along with her team at Aday VA Solutions, Denise started as my virtual assistant and has moved into an essential role as our virtual office manager. In her own gentle yet firm way, she makes sure that nothing gets lost in the busy shuffle.

Below is the contact information for each person and their full bios are also available on our site. We hope you’ll join us in welcoming them!

David Stanley
Email: david (at) altimetergroup (dot) com
Phone: 719.357.7826
Twitter: @kiwigate
LinkedIn profile

Linda Ziffrin
Email: linda (at) valleyviewventures (dot) com
Phone: 978.369.5622
Twitter: @LindaAtV3
LinkedIn profile

Christine Tran
Email: christine (at) altimetergroup (dot) com
Twitter: @christineptran
LinkedIn profile

Denise Aday
Email: denise (at) altimetergroup (dot) com
Twitter: @adayva
LinkedIn profile