The Eclectic Zone

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Yesterday in Forrester #crmjam on Twitter, Social (networking, not cause!) aspects got a lot of attention. Theo correctly points out the possibilities of convergence between BPM and CRM. One of the converging points, as per him, is around social BPM and social CRM – again correctly.

During the same jam session, I tweeted about the fact that “social” seems to be an underlying theme around lot of disciplines/practices/technologies. And, in this rare event when we had folk from BPM, BI, and Collaboration towns of the world trying to collaborate with the CRM cause, we still were using terms that ended up pointing back to our living areas or “silos”. So, I wondered why we continue to look at the themes as Social BPM, Social CRM or Social XYZ (where XYZ could be any technology or discipline). My note there ended with a statement – “Social is a Phenomenon, and not a discipline”. (And I ended up committing to Connie and Clay that a post on the same is coming up, so I had no option but to post this 😉 )

So, this point actually aligns well with what Theo pointed out that social could be one underlying theme that could make some of these traditional silos to work together.

However, when we start looking at social aspects as the phenomenon, and not tie with a separate discipline, it has ramifications for better, such as:

• Social BPM or Social CRM will not look like a destination, but a context-setting for the passing set of events of current times

• It will prevent us from creating further sub-silos within our current silos (Social BPM under BPM, Social CRM under CRM), and hence help converge than alienate

• Social as underlying theme or phenomenon will help us focus on the actual objective behind the concept – that is, collaborate in the best interest of the customer

• Hopefully, prevent duplication of effort across disciplines (Do you really need a separate collaboration technology for usage in BPM vis-à-vis CRM or anything else?)

• And, save us from wasted energies in new terms, clarification of those, and more saving in terms of getting rid of those when this context-setting phase has passed.

What should remain – when we are done with this phenomenon –  is the set of disciplines that are better placed to collaborate and synergize toward customer centricity.