Let’s talk about the healthy BIG C in CRM and it’s definitely not customer relationship management!
Traditional CRM as we know it is really about customer attraction and retention. ‘Relationship’ has always seemed a massive misnomer for me. The R in CRM would have been better served with a new nomenclature – something like ‘revenue’, or ‘retention’?
Like me, from time to time, you possibly feel that the pace of innovation is pretty insane and sometimes even overwhelming. In just a few years we’ve probably changed over 50% of the way in which we consume stuff. The Collaborative Era thinking, that ‘access’ triumphs over ‘ownership’, coupled with the management of excess, has driven disruption in many areas including, transport and accommodation, among others. With access to a world of talent, the acquisition of skills and services in business today is so radically different and would have been unimaginable just 10 years ago. Creative destruction caused by technology is rampant. Are you still asking WHY you need a community?
Lego had helped kids build cool stuff since the 1930s but they may not have built their firewalls quite as well as their product. In 2005 their software tool, the Lego Factory, got hacked by some tech-savvy LEGO enthusiasts.
Communities are without a doubt becoming more and more critical to business, civil society and non-government organisations, and to government. For the past few years, we’ve curated content and written prolifically about collaboration. A few months ago I decided on a reboot as collaboration is a strong outcome of shared-purpose communities and it seemed prudent to, in some ways rewind to the basics and in other ways fast forward to how communities are built, nurtured, measured and sustained.
As I write this on the eve of Madiba’s centenary, and as many South African organisations rally their teams for their 67 minutes of contribution, I have to stand up and say, it’s just not enough!
