I will be Speaking at SugarCon 2012

Decided to go back to where it all started for me. Databases and CRM.

Eons ago I wrote some of these in Dbase 3+ and through the decades went through the ACT, Goldmine and Lotus Notes home grown written CRM apps. Speaking of which John Ferrara of Goldmine has a new CRM offering, check out www.nimble.com if you like Tweetdeck and are in Marketing or Sales it has some great promise.

Since looking into CRM's again I realized something has not changed. It's still a "look at me and use me" world but it's full of "let someone else do it people". So in the spirit of Social, Collaboration and CRM, and a bit of competitiveness, I submitted an abstract:

  

Business Anti-Social: Why the Boss Doesn’t Use SugarCRM

CRM is a huge investment by your organization. Yet why do many Executives not take an active role in it's usage? Don't they want to be social? The answer is not so simple and sometimes even the opposite of what you may expect to hear.
We will discuss some reasons for this problem and how to work around them.
We will encourage others to take the first step to a better dialogue with your clients. SugarCRM is that first step in so many ways but so few make good use of it.
Strategies used by other vendors will be touched upon because there are personality types you need to understand.
How to encourage management to embrace the Social Business aspects is key to helping your business go up against your competition...shouldn't your executives be in on this?

I know a bit self serving of a title, but the reality is some of the same issues we face on the Lotus side appear on the CRM side as well. The SugarCon blog posted this about my session:

This one’s not just about Sugar, but really about all CRM applications; one major reason for failure in all CRM implementations is the lack of executive buy-in. Keith Brooks of SAS Group plans to talk about the reasons behind this phenomena and he’ll suggest ways to negotiate different executive agendas. What does he want people to learn from this session? “How to be a social business no matter what your executives think, say or do,” he says.

So there you have it, a little social, a little CRM, a little psychology and we will learn some things along the way too.

On behalf of my partners at the SAS Group  I look forward to representing us in San Francisco at SugarCon 2012. April 23-26 at The Palace Hotel.

Maybe this time I will get to hear and meet Guy Kawasaki, sadly I missed him at Lotusphere last month.