The folks working at the Altimeter group are top-notch and when they speak people listen. I was all the more disappointed when I saw their latest work analyzing which Social CRM vendors are walking the talk.
What was good about the review?
- It is critical for companies delivering social business solutions to be eating their own dogfood. If you want to know what works and what does not work you must be using your solutions every day. Kudos to the Altimeter Group for promoting this behavior.
- The criteria that was used is clearly defined. Great job on transparency.
What was bad about the review
- A small subset of vendors delivering social solutions were even looked at, reported upon. I was surprised not to see companies like Helpstream, Parature, Fuze Digital, Neighborhood America.
- The fact that Lithium is a client of Altimeter Group is a good reason to be disappointed with the fact that they came out as “the leader”. In my opinion the Altimeter Group’s criteria was biased, favoring Lithium Group and ensuring they would come out on top.
While I do not feel anyone consciously did anything wrong, I do feel the Altimeter Group came up short this time. Let’s keep an eye on how future reviews go.
UPDATE: 12/8/2009: As I noted above, Jeremiah, and the entire Altimeter Group, are top-notched. Jeremiah notes in a comment below that he has begun building a publicly available list. Please reach out to Jeremiah if your company is not on this list. While the review itself still falls short his efforts to broaden the discussion are dely appreciated. Thank you.
John
December 10, 2009 at 4:57 pm
[...] raised awareness of this nascent space. However, not everyone was thrilled with the effort, as CTO John Moore gave us an A for effort but a C- for results, and Kim Kobza, the CEO of Neigborhood America (they were an early adopter) left a comment on [...]
December 8, 2009 at 10:16 pm
I agree with John’s review here. At Social CRM Tools we eat our own dog food by utilizing our product to find leads, to lookup leads interested in the product, and to help understand what we need to improve. We have a long way to go, but you will soon see us competing in this space with the other players. Social CRM Tools provides LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Realtime Monitoring within Salesforce.Com. http://www.socialcrmtools.com
December 9, 2009 at 12:53 am
Thanks John, appreciate the note.
December 8, 2009 at 8:25 pm
New technologies invariably drag out old behaviors. Thanks for pointing this out, John, as it is difficult to figure out where all these platforms and apps are and what they are achieving. If you don’t look under all the hoods, you don’t find those natural biases that continue to drag us backwards.
December 8, 2009 at 6:59 pm
[...] raised awareness of this nascent space. However not everyone was thrilled with the effort, as CTO John Moore gave us an A for effort but a C- for results, and Kim Kobza, the CEO of Neigborhood America (they were an early adopter) left a comment on [...]
December 8, 2009 at 4:30 pm
John:
Thank you so much for your mention of Fuze!
Our many happy customers and people like you will certainly help to get the word out about Fuze Digital Solutions.
Although possibly not understood our even known by many analysts, our patent-pending community Knowledge Base http://bit.ly/3aC5aj and our upcoming Fuze Social release clearly puts us squarely in the social support space.
Consumers and staff want a place to quickly find content that is accurate, succinct and thorough and that the company will stand behind. But KB content can not realistically provide sustainable value without perpetual refinement using broad insights gained from the real-world usage and experiences of a community of people internal and external to a company. Either the KB is “social” or it will not work long-term.
Keep up the good work in “shaking the trees!”
Bests, Chuck Van Court
CEO and Founder
Fuze Digital Solutions http://www.fuze.com
December 8, 2009 at 3:59 pm
[...] I’m surprised that Jeremiah didn’t expand the survey to at least include the full range of companies in his signature “Industry Index” for Social CRM offerings. And I have to concur with John Moore (@JohnFMoore), self-appointed SocialCRM (#scrm) evangelist, analysis that the Altimeter Group might have gotten a little tunnel-vision on this Social CRM Survey. [...]
December 8, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Appreciate the recognition, John. You keep your ear to the ground and are fair and just in your reviews/comments. If I didn’t know any better, I’d tag you as a one-man analyst firm with a consumer advocate flair.
Keep up the great work.
December 8, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Thank you Courtney. I just enjoy seeing trying to see the entire picture, not just one viewpoint. Appreciate the comments. -John
December 8, 2009 at 2:44 pm
John
Thanks for the evaluation of our evaluation. You’re right, we only surveyed a handful of the vendors, as it’s a rapidly growing space.
In an effort to get our C- to an A, I’ve kicked off an ‘Industry Index’ which is intended to map out the whole space, see here
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/12/08/list-of-companies-providing-social-crm/
I’m always open to helpful feedback so we can collectively improve the industry. Thank you.
December 8, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Kim
Thanks for popping by. You’re right, I didn’t get all the vendors in the evaluation, it’s a large group. Neighborhood America deserves to be recognized. I’ve created a new post listing out all the vendors. I also noted you were an early adopter
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/12/08/list-of-companies-providing-social-crm/
December 8, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Jeremiah, You’re a class-act doing the extra work to expand your survey and dig deeper. You did a nice job putting a stake in the ground for all of us, even before that.
John, you do a great job evangelizing the opportunity and value in the concept.
Thank you both!
December 8, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Thank you Bill, I appreciate the kind words.
December 8, 2009 at 2:08 pm
[...] the appropriate awareness of this nascent space. Not everyone was thrilled with our effort, as CTO John Moore gave us an A for effort but a C- for results, so let’s start the conversation. John is right. Our evaluation yesterday was only on a [...]
December 8, 2009 at 11:29 am
The most definitive and respected authority on Social CRM is Paul Greenberg, CRM at the Speed of Light. Paul has tracked (Neighborhood America) us since at least 2007 and interviews us several times a year to remain current with our steady innovation. For instance, yesterday when Paul published his year end recap on social CRM Neighborhood America received several recognitions in his blog See http://tinyurl.com/yl9k4wb .
In CRM, Paul is the authority. He has the experience. And he is complete and even handed. So be it.
Thanks for calling it out. Same issue earlier in the year. http://tinyurl.com/ylzbtyh
As the 2008 and 2009 Codie award winner for best social networking solution from SIIA, it would seem that we would at a minimum rate an interview.
December 8, 2009 at 6:05 am
Have you briefed me? To date, I’ve not had a chance to get to know you, let’s fix that.
We expect this space to quadruple in size by this time next year, you didn’t even include the brand monitoring companies –or even twitter clients which have workflow features in them.
The good news is, this is our first of many measurements, and you’re about to get on my radar.
find me at jeremiah@altimetergroup.com
December 8, 2009 at 4:36 am
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by JohnFMoore: My latests, Altimeter Group: A for Effort, C- for Results on Social CRM Survey: http://bit.ly/4RaO7B #crm #social #scrm…
December 8, 2009 at 4:24 am
I thought this tweet from Lithium was sort of funnny. I basically read this as: “Yay, we suck the least!” I’m only being semi-facetious here
December 8, 2009 at 1:38 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by John Moore and John Moore, Jungchan Hsieh. Jungchan Hsieh said: JohnFMoore Altimeter Group: A for Effort, C- for Results on Social CRM Survey: http://bit.ly/4RaO7B #crm #social #scrm (via @JohnFMoore) [...]