Social CRM and hosted virtual machines seem to be ‘crossing the chasm’ moving towards becoming mainstream

Do you remember the book, ‘Crossing the Chasm’ by Geoffrey Moore? If you don’t remember it, or have never read it, this was the defining book on the uptake of technology and its life cycle from earliest adopters through to maturity and retirement. It explained the nature of technology adoption through various stages and at the time was the perfect handbook for those struggling with the adoption of the PC, together with what seemed like an avalanche of new products for its use. This was the book that produced what many think of today as the ‘Gartner Hype Cycle’, and my reason for asking the question at meetings, or of audiences, is if you haven’t read it, I really recommend you to do so, and if you have then take another look.

Geoffrey Moore defined a moment when a technology, and possibly a market leader who has early mover advantage, crosses the chasm that separates them from being a challenger to the status quo of the market to being the accepted method with the resulting mass uptake. Virtualization and VMware is a pretty good example over the last couple of years. Right now I suspect we have two technologies at just this stage, and as is usually the case the mass entrants into the market define their offerings by comparison with the market leader as this is the most recognizable way to present their competitive product.

The first is social CRM, and the most used reference point is Salesforce.com, with its combination of a focus on CRM itself, social networking and collaboration with Chatter, now extended with the acquisition of Radian6, and of course the Force.com platform to build and extend further differentiation. Frankly, to me thinking about it as the combination of the parts, it misses the point entirely as it makes evaluations around the way we do things today. Seen as an entity, social CRM is the transformation force for front office, i.e. everything to do with winning business externally, in much the same way as ERP became the transformation force for back office automation and efficiency.

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