Using social analytics to maximize CRM investments

By Richard Edwards, Principal Analyst, Ovum | Jul 26, 2010

According to Trampoline Systems, a company specializing in business social analytics, some corporate customer relationship management (CRM) platforms contain useful information on less than 25% of contacts in a customer database. Although this figure is somewhat worrying for those tasked with delivering business value from CRM solutions, it probably comes as no surprise to a significant proportion of account managers and sales executives.

Social discovery uncovers the business relationships that matter the most

Accessing the “missing” 75% of actionable information is vital from a competitive and business survival perspective, and so organizations must consider the option of information discovery tools alongside traditional enterprise search solutions. An increasing percentage of “real customer intelligence” is to be found on the Internet and social forums in particular, and so enterprise search and social analytics solutions must have both reach and range, i.e. the ability to crawl, catalog, index, and analyze unstructured information from a plethora of sources.

The economic downturn has resulted in many organizations restructuring their businesses, and as a result client contact databases are no longer up-to-date. Winning new business through cold calling was never easy, and today’s economic climate has made it a whole lot harder. According to Nigel Edelshain, CEO of Sales 2.0, “social calling” (or a “warm introduction”, as traditionalists might call it) is 8–10 times more effective than cold calling, and so the business value of social connections is there for all to see.

Being able to determine a “connection route” to a company is both useful and valuable

There are products on the market that offer useful ways to explore and exploit the connections that we all have, but it is more useful to determine the “connection strength” of a relationship or business link. Social analytics products are starting to help sales and business development executives to identify useful business relationships and connections that already exist within the organization in order to generate leads and opportunities.