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Subject: [ciq] FW: CRM.Insight #5.14 -- xCRL; Diverse,Competitive and Integrated CRM
CIQ TC
An article about the Customer Relationships Language that was published
yesterday
in CRMGuru.com, the world's largest online CRM Community. This article is
now generating extensive interest in the CRM community with several mails
continuing to hit my mail box since yesterday with enquiries and interests
to contribute to this standard.
I will update the press releases section on our web page with this article.
Regards
Ram
-----Original Message-----
From: Carol Smalley [mailto:csmalley@telenet.net]
Sent: Thursday, 2 May 2002 10:39 PM
To: rkumar@msi.com.au
Subject: FW: CRM.Insight #5.14 -- xCRL; Diverse, Competitive and
Integrated CRM
Ram, your perspective piece on xCRL is below. Thank you again for
sharing your insight with our readers!
Carol Smalley
Editor, CRMGuru
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----Original Message-----
From: CRMGuru.com [mailto:lists@crmguru.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 02, 2002 7:00 AM
To: csmalley@telenet.net
Subject: CRM.Insight #5.14 -- xCRL; Diverse, Competitive and Integrated
CRM
______________________________________________________________________
CRM.Insight VOL 5.14
May 2, 2002 CRMGuru.com
Circ: 100,000+
"Customers at the Heart of Your Business"
______________________________________________________________________
CONTENTS:
* EDITOR'S NOTE: More Alphabet Soup
* PERSPECTIVE: xCRL -- Reducing Integration Expense with Standardization
* FEATURE: CRM in 2002: Diverse, Competitive and (Hopefully) Integrated
* GURUBASE SPOTLIGHT: New Content Worth a Look
* EDITOR'S PICKS: The Best Stuff on the Net
* CRM EVENTS: Featured Conferences and Seminars
****************** Sponsored by Oracle ********************* Whom can
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The only source for truth is Think Customers-FREE from Oracle
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______________________________________________________________________
EDITOR'S NOTE
More Alphabet Soup
By Bob Thompson
A hearty "welcome" to the many new members joining CRMGuru the past
couple of weeks. As a reminder, this month we're focused on the critical
but somewhat geeky topic of CRM integration and architecture. If you
think hardware and software is tough, wait 'till you tackle CRM's
"peopleware" challenges. That's our agenda the rest of May.
Meanwhile, back at the acronym factory, there's a new four-letter model
rolling off the line. This one you'll want to take for a CRM spin in the
future. Read on to learn about xCRL and how Ram Kumar is attempting to
standardize customer information sharing. Skip this article if doing
things faster and cheaper is not important to your organization.
Chances are your business has to become more competitive to survive, if
not thrive, in this economy. So too must the CRM industry, according to
our feature article courtesy of our friends at ebizQ. Result: more
competition amid a shifting landscape of CRM vendors. That's mostly good
news for CRM buyers, and mostly gray hair for vendors.
Are you an Amazon.com customer? If so, we'd like your input in a brief
online survey. The results will be incorporated into our next "Real CRM"
case study in June. Please help us better understand your relationship
with Amazon.com by taking this 10-minute survey now:
http://crmguru.com/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?amazon.
[Send comments to mailto:editor@crmguru.com]
______________________________________________________________________
PERSPECTIVE
xCRL: Reducing Integration Expense with Standardization
By Ram Kumar
The rapid adoption of e-business has created a new world of
interoperability between organizations, systems, processes, platforms,
tools and, most importantly, data. When we consider customer management
initiatives such as CRM/eCRM, Single/360 degree view, and Customer
Information Warehouse, there are factors other than software license
fees and customization, training, and maintenance that raise the cost of
deployment.
Integration of systems, for example, can be a far more significant and
costly challenge. In most large enterprises, customer information is
captured and stored in multiple "proprietary" systems. Bringing it all
together for analysis in a customer information management system
usually involves time-consuming integration using the proprietary APIs
(application program interfaces) provided by CRM and other enterprise
software vendors. Backend systems integration is where most of the real
cost -- and risk -- of implementing CRM and ERP systems lies. Many of
these implementations have significantly under delivered because cost
has prohibited them from interfacing with other key systems.
If a standard way of defining customer information and relationships
existed that was vendor neutral, open (i.e. independent of tools,
systems, languages and platforms), and enabled portability and
interoperability of data, then it would be possible to reduce the
expensive and complex integration problems associated with new business
initiatives. The proposed standard -- by the Customer Information
Quality Committee of OASIS -- is called extensible Customer
Relationships Language, or xCRL, and is intended to meet this
requirement.
xCRL, is a set of XML vocabulary specifications for defining customer
characteristics such as name, address, age, customer number, e-mail
address, and so on. In addition, xCRL describes, in a standard way, how
individual customers and organizations interact with one another. As
currently defined, xCRL enables users to describe relationships such as
person-to-person, person-to-organization or organization-to-organization
in a standard way. For example, if a CRM system and an Enterprise
Resource Planning system both understood xCRL definitions, they could
automatically interoperate without needing expensive, custom
integration. This would accelerate the time taken to deploy such systems
and allow them to interact more readily with a wider range of other
systems.
Work is in progress to extend xCRL to include customer relationships
with other entities such as accounts, products and services.
[Ram Kumar is the founding chairman of the Customer Information Quality
technical committee of OASIS. He is the Chief Technologist and Architect
of MSI Business Solutions Pty. Ltd., Australia. He can be reached at
rkumar@msi.com.au.]
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************************************************************
______________________________________________________________________
FEATURE
CRM in 2002: Diverse, Competitive and (Hopefully) Integrated
By Alan Robert Earls
With integration the CRM migraine of present, ERP vendors are promising
to make that headache go away by providing plug-in CRM modules that are
already integrated with the vendors' other software. Courtesy of our
colleagues at eBizQ.com.
http://www.crmguru.com/features/2002b/0502are.html
______________________________________________________________________
GURUBASE SPOTLIGHT
Building Relationships across the Product Lifecycle
By Don Peppers, Peppers and Rogers Group
This worldwide, boat retailer illustrates the difference between selling
products and selling services that create a lifestyle. Courtesy of our
friends at 1to1.
http://www.crmguru.com/gurubase.php3?itm=472
Metadata management: How to put customer data in its place
By David Cameron, Wheelhouse Corp.
Getting CRM on track means backing sound deployment principles with XML
and metadata management. An XML-based metadata framework specific to CRM
creates an aggregation layer that pulls together a meta view of the
company's customers. http://www.crmguru.com/gurubase.php3?itm=473
On the Frontline
By Joe Chung, ATG
The frontline isn't a place. It's a concept, a way of thinking about
your customers, partners, and employees -- and the Web applications that
serve them. The frontline is where the action is.
http://www.crmguru.com/gurubase.php3?itm=474
******************** CRM Solution Center ******************* Looking for
CRM software solutions or service providers?
Your search is over! Visit CRMGuru's new Solution Center.
http://crmguru.com/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?solution
************************************************************
______________________________________________________________________
EDITOR'S PICKS
"If loyalty equals apathy, does relationship pricing equal ripping off
the customer?" This article from CRM-Forum is guaranteed to make you
think . . . and think again.
http://www.crm-forum.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=78303
"Know What You Want." Patient planning helps MetLife skirt CRM
minefields. Be sure to read the reader responses, too.
http://comment.cio.com/crm/041702.html
"Bridging the Gap between Sales and Marketing - A new look at the old
paradigm." In an attempt to bridge the gap between two typically dueling
parts of an organization, the author offers key steps for sales and
marketing to serve the customer with a united front.
http://www.saleslobby.com/Mag/0302/CMRM.asp?Mktg=CMMA
"Special Report: Security." Gartner offers a ten-part special series on
security issues, focusing on what you need to know and do as well as
future concerns regarding an intriguing array of customer issues. Many
links to explore.
http://security2.gartner.com/event.php.id.19.jsp
"Building the Perfect CRM Machine." One size does not fit all when it
comes to CRM infrastructure.
http://www.crmdaily.com/perl/story/17416.html
___________________________________________________________________
FEATURED CRM EVENTS
Analytics: The Rx for Your Pharmaceutical Marketing - FREE Web
Seminar, May 2 - 11:30am - 12:30pm ET. Free Unica web seminar focused
on marketing in Pharmaceutical and Healthcare, featuring Forrester.
http://www.unicacorp.com/webinars/pharma_CRM/ or call 877-864-2261.
Discovering the real value in customer self-service - SearchCRM web
event & round table discussion, May 8 @ 1 PM EDT. Features Allen Bonde,
Allen Bonde Group; Chris Selland, Reservoir Partners; Steve Olsen, 3Com.
http://webevents.broadcast.com/wsp/index.asp?nEventId=1715
Rebuilding the Cross-Channel Experience in Banking - Web Seminar
May 9, 12:30 p.m. -1:30 p.m. EDT. Hear Cathy Graeber from Forrester
present on defining a customer-focused multi-channel strategy.
http://www.unicacorp.com/webinars/banking_CRM/
Join CRMSouthEast May 15th in Atlanta to hear Laura Pollard present
"CRM Best Practices." Ms. Pollard is founder & president of CRMA Canada
(CRMSE's sister association) and President of Accelerate Growth.
http://www.crmse.org or Susan Stottlemyer at mailto:susan@crmse.org.
Technology enables CRM. Strategy drives it. True customer
focus takes more than a CRM system. Get Insight from execs
at Sprint PCS, USAA, and McDonald's. Insight executive forum May 15-16,
Chicago http://crmguru.com/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?dcevnt
E-METRICS SUMMIT, Santa Barbara, June 25-26. Senior executives and
eCommerce managers explore ways to measure Web effectiveness. Vital
presentations will set the stage, participants will set the agenda.
http://www.targetingemetrics.com/fsa
Connecting the Dots: Satisfaction, Loyalty, Profit -- CRMGuru webcast
recording featuring Frederick Reichheld, a renowned loyalty expert,
who will share his insights based on years of research.
http://crmguru.com/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?webcast031302
To view all events: http://www.crmguru.com/events/
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