Mike Marker got busted.

I was talking to him on his cellphone at lunch yesterday and we were having an animated conversation about the project when he cut me off mid-sentence.  Turns out he was pulled over by the Kentucky police.  Here is the transcript of what I heard:

“Just a second, Scott”.

Some background noise.

Kentucky Policeman: “Hello sir, can I see your id?”.

[shuffle, shuffle]

Kentucky Policeman: “Well Mike, do you realize that you drove through a stop sign back there?”

Cool hand Mike: “Umm, No I didn’t.”

Kentucky Policeman: “I’ll be right back, I’m going to write you a citation.”

Mike (back on phone): “hello… stop laughing Scott… it’s not funny … seriously….”

Click.

Let’s admit it. CRM can be a bit dry. Part of what’s cool about how MG is approaching CRM is that they are incorporating tools that more closely emulate a personal relationship. That’s what the “R” stands for. Now that things are in full production, its interesting to see a lot of these ideas come alive in the product. Since we are all fans of Twitter, Scott and the team thought it would be a great idea to include something similar in the product. If you check out the screen-cap, you’ll see what I mean. On the right side is a place where you essentially can post tweets or really short messages. If you look above the text box you’ll see that messages are being filtered for “Mike Sullivan” which show messages to Mike.

The ability to send short messages around in a team environment is a great idea because it emulates real life. That is how most office conversations take place so why not build a real world purpose into your CRM.

More on this later, but there are some really amazing features in the pipe that will really change the way relationships are valued. This is just one of them.

PS: The screenshot has no look and feel yet. I will Andrew wow you with that once its ready.

I recently watched a great keynote speech given by Malcom Gladwell at the New Yorker annual conference where he talked about “mismatches” in hiring people.

The core concept is that organizations determine specific skills that are important for a role, isolate those skills, and then evaluate candidates based on their ability for each skill.  It all sounds so logical and obvious.

The problem, according to Gladwell, is that it doesn’t work.

He uses several examples spanning professional sports, lawyers, and teachers, and in every instance demonstrates that the candidates’ ability in isolated skills - vertical jump in basketball, mental acuity in football, college entrance scores for lawyers, level of scholastic achievement in teaching - are all poor predictors for determining if people will perform well in their job!

There is a fundamental problem with converting “people” into stats and using these stats to make decisions.  It is logical but not always worthwhile.

Now think about how most companies use CRM analytics to determine “customer profiles” and predict future sales.  Current CRM dashboards have detailed pie charts and graphs that isolate key information.  But is it a reliable source for decision-making?  Is it RIGHT?

I don’t think so (gasp!).

I think that CRM dashboards are misleading and setup sales people for failure, or worse, encourage them to “cheat the system”, making most CRM analytics nearly worthless.

There’s a need for CRM dashboards to provide real value to salespeople by helping them process a lot of data that helps them to manage the human side of business.

I think we have the solution.

Thanks to Jay Godse for sending me this video clip.
Graph from Graph Jam.

We need a name. Four names really. Okay, maybe five.

So far we’re stumped.

Every decision, every action has been the product of collaboration and passionate discussion, yet this elephant in the room seems to receive sporadic attention, or inattention. It’s the blank screen problem on a billboard scale.

Its seems that this one area of the project has been relegated to our quiet contemplative moments – almost as an afterthought.

This needs to change.

We need a rambunctious, semi-professional stream of consciousness type discussion that can put 50 to 100 names on the table in short order.

No filter. No judgments. Just ideas.

No no.

There was no canoeing, no bow-hunting, and no livestock impersonation. Rather, this was a thorough functional review and creative design discussion of our soon-to-be-launched suite of Customer Relationship apps.

Meetings (retreats) like these are important because they help remind you of the things that you take for granted. Things like:

• Our applications are already filled with knock-out functions and features.
• The people you are working with are smart, creative, passionate, and fun to be around (even before the 5th beer).
• We don’t do it enough.

It also reminds me that we have a lot of work to do to ensure that our organizational structure and processes are well thought-out and everyone is well-prepared to support the launch. In the immediate future, we’ll need to finalize our resource plan and start assembling the missing pieces. Wish I could do it from a cabin in the woods…

Just got back from the Mercury Grove retreat. As I mentioned in my previous post, we were getting together to go over the final path to launch. Most of this had to do with getting Andrew and Creighton together in the same room to work on the UI design and functionality. Both of these guys are smart. Let me say it again, BOTH of these guys are really smart. I have worked with talented designers and developers in my short career and none of them can match how good these guys are. They’re professional, experienced and fast workers. We went through about fifteen screens with them over the two day retreat and each one seemed better than the last. This is especially interesting for me because I’d like to start showcasing some of the elegant features that they have incorporated into the the app.

On the social media side, I presented the plan for entitled “From now to launch and beyond” which was pretty well received. Up to this point, I had been a little disappointed with how some of the MG crew and partners couldn’t bring themselves to blogging. The retreat made me realize that you just cant force people do things they just don’t want to do. The result is a bit of shift in how things will roll out from now on. Although, I want everyone to participate, they don’t have to. We have to use peoples passion where it is most effective. For me, it would be in the SM plan and the blog and launch. For others it can be whatever they are working on. Although it would be great to see that passion put into words, its not the end of the world as long as the product is great.

I just got back from an intensive two-day brainstorm / working retreat with the team up near Mount Tremblant in Quebec.

It’s difficult trying to make the best use of such a short period with everyone in the same physical location - it’s only happened one other time - at the beginning of this project - and it’s unlikely to happen again.

The highlights of the meetings:

• A lot of progress was made on how we integrate the customer management, customer portal, and team collaboration modules.  We discussed where they overlap, and how we can ensure smooth transitions for all of the different roles of the people who will use the software.

• Huge progress in design.  I think we have an excellent, innovative navigation and data structure model that will make it easy to find information quickly without feeling overwhelmed by the screens.

• Some killer features.  Like a combo twitter-like IM / mobile notification and communication platform that is extended across the apps.  Or a scrollable, graphical timeline view of all information about an account in the company section.  I am really excited about some of the concepts that are playing out.

However, for me the biggest challenge and opportunity that came out of the last two days is how we are going to “name” the software.  We came to a conclusion that we are not doing traditional CRM or support management - and that our software really “humanizes” the relationship that companies have with their customers.  So we’re looking for a name that will reflect this.

Any ideas?

This is going to be a good week. The MG guys are all going to be in town for one last monster session before the final push in the development of the four products. This is where the designers and developers will start working together to deliver the most innovative CRM possible. I know that Scott A. and Mike will be interested in what the BV02 guys come up with on the UI side. I think that whatever it is, it is going to be amazing.

My job will be to walk everyone through the social media strategy surrounding the product launch and roll-out. The blog so far has been interesting but as the product becomes more real, we’ll be able to really pull the curtains back so you can see for yourself why we are so excited about this application. After all, seeing this application in its finished state is really what people want.

On the roll-out side, one of the things that I want to do is have MG present the new apps at as many community events as possible. Mostly at barcamps, democamps and meetups in almost any city. If you’re hosting one of these, I’ll likely be in touch soon.

Photo courtesy of Waspmeat

For reporting, we started out using XML/SWF charts. I was familiar with the library and it seemed to be easy to integrate with rails (and it was). But the type of charts Scott wanted to see weren’t possible with XML/SWF charts.

After a few days of hacking, we scrapped that charting library for amCharts (http://www.amcharts.com/)

This library works great, but you need to get comfortable with configuration. Lots of configuration options, but really easy to get working with rails. Basically you just use repond_to and write the xml needed using builder and the javascript in html.

Here is a chart that is on the dashboard of CRM. The rollover effects are nice, and the message inside is easily customizable.