Top 10 CRM Buzzwords

Global CRM

SearchCRM looked at its search logs to come up with a list of the top 10 CRM-related buzzwords. You can find it here.

How many of these are new to you? Let me know! I've been involved in eight of these ten directly this year and the other two through vendors which specialize in large-scale development and deployment.

Global CRM

Upcoming Events of Note

A series of sessions on the Middle East and US foreign policy are coming your way from the World Affairs Council. Check them out here. Topics range from whether the recent US elections were a foreign policy mandate for change, to long term planning for middle east relations.

Also, this week UDC is hosting a session on the partner/competitor status between the United States and China. Check it out at IFI WatchNet's site. That's a great site for the globally-minded.

EuroSlumber?

China's growing like crazy. India's doing great, thank you. Even the US is keeping its head above water with a 3% GDP growth rate (for now -- but keep an eye on real estate in the US).

But Europe? Pretty anemic. France, in particular, has been underperforming with a GDP half of that of the United States. Its recent quarterly economic numbers were far under expectations. What's going on?

In the past, I've dreamed of living in France where work weeks are short and vacations are long. But I'm beginning to believe that the labor market does need to be more fluid, to add more jobs at the bottom, where underemployment is high, and to give businesses more flexibility in shedding costs. This is not to say I think France -- and by extension, the EU -- should shed its pro-worker mindset. Instead, I propose that it SHIFT its mindset. Invest in workers to allow them more employability. Get training: get a tax break. Switch jobs: get a tax break.

This amounts to shifting revenues from the state to the companies whose capital is being freed up, but in the classic economist's point of view, the capital is better when held privately than when held by the state. And to an extent, that is true. Certainly it is better, in my view, to invest in worker so they can grow and have more freedom of choice, than to structure a society where people hate to leave their jobs -- in fact, would be punished by a sluggish job market if they DID leave their jobs -- and where the majority of young people aspire to work for the state. Public service is good, don't get me wrong, but I read this trend more as job risk aversion.

Europe's safety net is far better than America's in most regards. I hope the conversation about job security in France changes so it can take advantage of that safety net even as people embrace change, look for new careers and take advantage of the business nimbleness that comes from a fluid jobs market.

What do you think?

Global CRM

Global CRM



I just finished up co-teaching a two day seminar on customer experience management (CEM) in Hong Kong. I found the experience fascinating on several levels.

To start with, it was my first time to Hong Kong. I loved the people. The city, though dense and cluttered and hazy, still somehow conveys a strong sense of order and safety. I was in Kowloon near one of the biggest shopping centers in the world -- I took the opportunity to study global and local branding strategies in the stores and environmental signage, while buying a few things ...

In attendance at the seminar were retail strategists, several representatives from a "gentleman gambler club", one of Sri Lanka's biggest telecom providers -- an impressive crowd, many of whom were extremely sophisticated. A couple of companies sent multiple representatives pulled from several silos, which was actually exciting to see. It shows that companies acknowledge that CEM must be multi-disciplinary and matrixed, something that has been strangely hard to convince companies of with regards to CRM (which is often just thought of as an IT initiative).



The other two instructors, including the founder of Greater China CRM, Sampson Lee, delivered their material with their own unique styles. I especially enjoyed Sampson's ability to bring the students into discussion, as well as his command of the content regarding irrational decision-making and latent knowlege in customer choices.

A couple of topics seemed especially interesting to the audience: choosing an experience opportunity based on a unique brand concept, and the peak-end rule. You can go here to see the Wikipedia slug for peak-end. Sampson has done a nice job of applying peak-end to customer experiences in more-or-less sequential customer interactions in a retail environment.

Rafael Rodriguez' material, pulled from his vast library of management science slides from his Focused Management company, along with new materials, provided a speedy overview of Six Sigma, performance indicator hierarchies, and process optimization. I think his most interesting material was his TESCO case study, pulled in part from Patricia Seybold's recent articles on CEM.

Overall it was a great experience -- especially nice to see Sampson's wife, Alice -- but I am totally exhausted. Now, for reasons too intricate to explain right now, I'm heading to Moscow.

More news later ...

TRIUM Graduation!

TRIUM Graduation

It is done. The class of 2006 has completed its course of work and its graduands have processed.

And how we processed!

The day in London enjoyed splendid weather of almost Los Angeles beauty. Lincolns Inn was as grand and Harry Potter-esque as ever, with coats of arms all around and portraits of UK's most powerful. At one point, a colleague said, "Is that Maggie?", referring not to our lovely, bright classmate Magdella, but to a portrait of Margaret Thatcher, who no doubt was at least an honorary member of the Inn.

There was a string quartet, brief but spot-on speeches from the academic deans of LSE, HEC and NYU, champagne at the outdoor reception, a delicious lunch, many of my esteemed and beloved colleagues, and especially my lovely bride Angela and my father, who goes by many names. I call him Buster.

It was a grand day. Bravo, TRIUM, and felicitations to all of my colleagues.

ASEAN Treaty Signed

Unified Market?

CNN just announced that ASEAN signed a trade pact with the United States. "Southeast Asian trade ministers signed an expanded trade and investment agreement with the United States on Friday that calls for a mechanism that allows U.S. imports easier access to the region. The Trade and Investment Facilitation Arrangement, or TIFA, was signed by U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab and trade and commerce ministers from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations."

For a region with a half-billion customers, this seems like good news. And there are indeed a number of countries with rich economies in the region, including Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei.

This agreement should help simplify customs arrangements, a critical need in a multi-country region (the same problem persists in Central and South America). As such, it should help any number of countries do business in the region, since such uniformity -- or at least rationalization -- of customs arrangements will be supported inevitably by technolog. This technology, in all probability, will have an effect that will be scaled and improved over the next decade. (Just in time for other transformative changes in the region, including a bigger free trade zone called AEC, targeted for 2015.)

US exports to the region are rising fast. FDI was up 48 percent in 2006, the same levels seen before the 1997 Asian financial crisis (see "Foreign Investment in ASEA Rises 48 Percent to 38 Billion in USD," AFX-Asia, 8.21.2006), in which a web of corporate and bank debt caused a collapse -- even contagion -- that sent ripples throughout the global economy.

A big question is the effect that China will have on the region. China already is a powerhouse there, taking advantage of proximity to keep its relative cost of goods low. Nevertheless, ASEAN has not included South Korea, Japan and China formally, instead relying on annual meetings of the so-called "ASEAN Plus Three" to frame the issues of regional cooperation. What's the role that China will play?

Some thoughts include ASEAN remaining as it is, with other regional countries forming their own multi-lateral trade agreements. Candidate groupings have included China and India, or even China and Japan (despite recent problems between the two countries regarding purported Japanese nationalism, which is probably overstated).



Examine the chess game, then: The US approaching ASEAN from the Pacific, China, India and Japan joining in some way to trade locally with ASEAN ... the key consequence I can see is that US companies will be forced to increase their FDI into China and ASEAN countries to reach cost parity.

And even then, the challenge for US companies is actually understanding the markets. This is the big rub for US companies. The range of customers is diverse, culturally, geographically, linguistically, economically ... just in the case of Malaysia and Singapore, one can find vast differences in religion, education, culture, income and world view.

Which companies will have the customer data and instincts needed to market, innovate and operate well in the region? Sure, the customs paperwork may become simpler soon, but the customer paperwork is about to explode.

Photograph Copyright (c)2006 by Paul K. Ward.

WTO Talks Off

Doha Collapses - Good or Bad?

Ah, the anti-globalization people are rejoicing in the streets and the pro-globalization people are either doom-and-gloom about how this will make Africa suffer and hit consumers in the wallet, or hopeful that the talks might be revived like Lazarus (or perhaps like Dracula when the sun sets, from the point of view of anti-globalization activists).

Just as Orwell once said (and I am paraphrasing from "Politics and the English Language") to beware the politician who leans over the podium grasping his lapels and repeating, "Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!", beware trade liberalization people who say that something will hurt Africa and consumers.

I tend to favor globalization, even the hideous version that gets called "globalization' when in fact there are many ways to globalize. However, there are always two key issues I keep in mind when I'm trying to evaluate a proposed WTO initiative or multilateral trade agreement:

1. How will capital be concentrated?
2. How will free trade damage the culture and values of a region or country?

In the first case, we get a clue to who might be pushing behind the scenes to get a decision. Usually, of course, the concentration of capital favors big multi-nationals. That might open up competition, but it doesn't necessarily mean lower prices, nor better quality or choice for consumers. In short, the concentration of capital can just as often work AGAINST the intentions of trade liberalization.

In the second case, the answer can help us understand the non-monetary, apolitical objections of a country. And, after all, WTO cannot (and patently does not) function just as a shill for corporate interests. Some pundits, including Sally at my alma mater LSE, seem to want to restructure the WTO to make it a bit more of such a shill. So, who objects to free trade, for example, in agricultural goods? Those countries and regions where the quality and character of their goods will likely be damaged by free trade. And given that cultural identity is often a complex thing that is rooted to the land, or to history, what's at stake is not just free trade, it's identity. Think of it this way: When you can get products from major multinationals anywhere you go in the world, what does it matter anymore where you actually ARE?

Is the failure of the Doha round a catastrophe? No. If the pushback on agricultural subsidies is a sticking point, the answer is not to restructure the WTO to make sure that the sticking point can be "worked around" (as Sally suggests). The answer is to dig a bit deeper and ask why this is a problem in the first place. Sure, the answer is partially pure protectionism for the sake of softening the blow that globalization makes to certain sectors. But the answer may be deeper than that.

And certainly, if we want to help Africa and lower prices, the WTO has plenty of other options. But, honestly, I don't see the WTO having a legacy of doing anything much more than lowering trade barriers for MNCs (oh, yes, and anyone else, too). Just because WTO now has a larger and more inclusive governance structure, don't be fooled. It's lipstick on a pig. The WTO's lack of success is neither disaster nor success. It's mostly just part of the balancing act between the forces of concentrated capital and the forces of conservative cultures.

Global CRM

Upcoming World Affairs Council Talks

As a member of the World Affairs Council, I'm constantly impressed at the timeliness and quality of their speakers -- even when they're shilling books. Hey, one day I'll be doing that. So I don't hold it against them.

This Wednesday, July 19, WAC offers a great chance to hear about the politics of Iran (nuclear, democratic and global). The book he's written, "Confronting Iran: The Failure of American Foreign Policy and the Next Great Conflict in the Middle East", gives historical and speculative future context to what's happening in geopolitics (petropolitics, too) and how national and international policies might make a difference.

For info, go to WAC's site.

Digital Dashboards

Digital Dashboards

Ouch! Here's a terribly glib article on executive dashboards for marketing and CRM. A couple of major problems: the article claims that executives should specify the information they need so that they are not overwhelmed with the "wrong" data; and that data should be continually reported so that marketing people can see how well they're performing.

These don't seem like problems to you?

Consider:

1. Executives at most companies don't know about customer value management, perceived value, measuring brand equity in the new digital network economy, and so on. These metrics are all precursors to sustainable revenues. Instead, most executives are interested mainly in revenues as the metric because they have stockholders and analysts to answer to. So, they'll look for revenue data and maybe profit or ROI. But most won't look for return on the customer relationship.

You can easily make your revenue goals in marketing by doing silly things like deep discounting. You can even make a lot of profit by selling a lot of cheap things at a high price in a one-off kind of way. But you cannot sustain either in a free market economy where customers talk. You are destroying brand equity and hacking up the net present value of future customer earnings. So, I ask you: Who should determine the information that executives get? The answer is NOT "executives" if they're obsessed with the quarterly report.

2. OK, let's talk about continuous reporting. Don't get obsessed with the short-term. Don't compensate performance on the short-term only -- or even primarily. Don't constantly rejigger things because you're nervous about results. For example, if you put out a promotion and it doesn't do well, how far do you look for the root cause? Do you only look to change the things you can immediately control without understanding first what might have caused poor campaign performance? You've got to think about the entire value chain for the customer to find out why you're underperforming. Maybe the campaign needs time (so don't fire the agency). Maybe the campaign landed on deaf ears (because the value prop was terrible, since you're out of touch with customers). Maybe your prospects had a better deal from your competition (what? you're not tracking competitive choices?).

Continuous reporting can be your enemy because it can make you a nervous wreck. Look for trends, look for creating consistent customer value, look for how your success or failure impacts your entire company.

Here's a story about how revenues and great quarterlies are terrible. In the late 1990s, Calvin Klein went ballistic when Warnaco, a licensee of his, struck a deal to sell his designer jeans -- at Costco.

Warnaco: Hey! Great revenues this week! Celebrate!

Not, said Klein. You're destroying my brand! I want the license back!

With these thoughts in mind, read that article to see if I'm right. Is it glib?

You tell me.

Customer Ecosystems

The Net is the Computer?

When Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems presciently said that the network is the computer, he knew that the Internet was going to shift the way people thought about the box on their desks. Sadly for Sun, he was right. Schwartz, the new CEO of the high-tech computer hardware company (McNealy just stepped down), is laying off people in unprecedented numbers. (You can link to the story here.)

The reason that the network is the computer is simple. We get the most value from things we don't know. The stuff on our computers is stuff we know (or at least know about). When we have that "moment of truth" when we really need to know something to make a decision, we rely on external information. (Ping me if you want to see the research on this.)

So any company that makes the search for external information seamless, fast and useful is bound to have more potential marketability than companies that sell boxes on desks. The boxes become a commodity. It's the nature of the knowledge we get through connectivity to a digital network that creates value.

So, Sun is down. And Google, famously, is up. And, ironically, some of Google's new efforts with Ajax include software derived from Sun Microsystems. The J in Ajax stands for JavaScript, a simple version of Sun's Java language. Sun has made its mark. Perhaps that mark will ultimately be just a fingerprint on the side of Google's rocketship.

But now that you have a sense for why we're looking upward not at the sun but at the search engine, you can ask yourself: How am I helping my stakeholders and customers make better decisions with information they don't currently have? The answer to that question could well keep your company from becoming a black hole.

Hosted CRM

salesforce, NetSuite, RightNow

Holy moley. I've known for a couple of years that the hosted CRM segment was going to explode. This is part of a general trend towards outsourcing processes, but it's also an acknowledgement that the battle for the top is over: Big iron CRM deployments built from scratch just do not constitute a market that companies are willing to compete for. They want the big mid-market, and the mid-market doesn't want the nightmarish complexity and expense of custom-from-the-ground-up CRM solutions.

Ah, but there's the rub. The key to success nowadays is to create a DIFFERENTIATED multi-channel experience for and relationship with your customers. How are you going to do that without a custom-from-the-ground-up strategy? You can't. So, are the hosted CRM solutions for you? Only if they provide you the business process customizability that gives you strategic advantage.

Unless, of course, your goal is to do CRM "tactically". Fine. Pull in an analytics module, a call center module, and so on. Don't risk a lot of money. Don't force a big culture change on your company. For some companies, this can work for a while. For an even smaller number, these tactics can even swing some marketshare to you that won't leave you when your competitors finally wake up. Good for you.

But the downside of hosted CRM is that it is cheap and lower risk, which means anyone can do it, and that means any move you make can be quickly copied by your competitors.

Software always has this characteristic: Over time, it does the same stuff, better and cheaper. The scale attribute of hosted CRM has pushed costs down even faster.

The conclusion? You must choose a CRM strategy that gives you sustainable competitive advantage over a long enough time horizon that you get a better return than your competitors can.

That's a bigger chunk of work than just choosing your next hosted CRM vendor. And guess what? It'll be expensive, and probably require a culture shift at your organization.

Darn. No such thing as a free lunch.

And the same is true of CRM vendors. Luckily, a good number CRM companies are smart marketers and have aggressively differentiated themselves win sustainable marketshare. (Check out SearchCRM's good article on recent moves by RightNow and salesforce.com here). This actually lets you match your strategic needs with a specialized hosted CRM offering. The downside is that the same option is open to your competitors.

Saleforce.com, I believe, has made a good step in fixing this problem by making its basic offering extensible through what amounts to being an "on demand development environment," as SearchCRM aptly puts it. Others are competing on hosted business rules services (RightNow, a great company that gets it) and better dashboards for decision makers (NetSuite). Where will the CRM initiative win at your company: in IT, in the C-suite, or in an more integrated approach that spans all channels and many departments? The answer may help you pick a vendor.

Creation nets: Harvard Nails It

What McKinsey Missed. And risk.

As soon as I shoot a cannon across the bow of McKinsey because they left customers out of the creation net, I pick up the April issue of Harvard Business Review to find an article called Manage Customer-Centric Innovation -- Systematically by Larry Selden and Ian MacMillan.

They recommend a handful of steps to get customers involved. The "extend" part of their prespcription is a big challenge. You must extend both your capabilities and your segments. How do you do this without disrupting your business model and finances? There may be no way to do this, particularly if you are at a cross-roads with your company or with your sector. In fact, disruption is probably inevitable.

But you will want to manage that disruption. First, look at how others, beyond direct competitors, have succeeded in extending their capabilities and segments. Essentially, you're gathering business intelligence about your (direct and indirect) competitors' creation networks. How have other companies accessed and serviced your markets and do they define their markets differently?

Next, look at your partners and suppliers. What markets and capabilities work for them? Why?

One key insight is that an innovation strategy is risky, so you have to move the costs of those risks somewhere -- in your pricing or your financial structure, for example. You can also move some of those risks out to partners and suppliers, if they are eager to work with you.

Should you innovate? The answer lies in another question: Who is setting the pace for change in your sector? You? A competitor? Or customers?

Creation nets

I saw a great new article in McKinsey Quarterly (to which you must subscribe, hint, hint). It's called "Creation nets: Getting the most from open innovation" (Brown, John Seely, and John Hagel III, 2006 Number 2).

The idea is that you have to innovate to succeed (and this seems to be increasingly true as competition accelerates), and the best ideas may come from outside your company. CEOs generally agree that internal R&D is among the least successful ways to innovate, according to another McKinsey article I heard about in a recent Peppers & Rogers webinar. (I think the article is called Extreme Innovation. When I've got ten seconds to my name, I'll track down the reference for you.)

Brown and Hagel say:

"Although creation nets thrive in many different parts of today's global economy, they may not be fully visible to casual observers. Many Western executives, for example, go to original-design manufacturers (ODMs) such as Lite-On Technology and Compal Electronics, which are based in Taiwan but have expanding operations in mainland China, to source designs for a wide range of consumer electronics and high-tech products. From the perspective of these executives, they are dealing with a single outsourcing provider. Yet behind the scenes, the ODMs are mobilizing large creation nets to push the performance envelope of the products they design."

But oh, my gosh. Look at the big hole in the program: They've left out the customer in the creation net.

And to make this blunder even worse, it is the customer that actually defines innovation as a business term. New products and services that are not taken up in the market are not innovations.

So, if you leave out the customer during the R&D process, you're playing craps with your capital investments.

This is not to say that inventions of the past haven't, by chance, hit upon a latent (i.e., unknown) need of the market. But chance it was. Shall I mention craps again?

And to top it off, the authors were so close to getting it right, I'm amazed they left the customer out. The reason that creation networks actually create value is that they are constructed on the basic building blocks of a new kind of economy: one that is transitioning from an information economy (post-industrial, founded on information and knowledge sharing via computer technology) and a digital network economy (post-information, founded on the ability for all players to act on and improve knowledge and process outputs). Connectivity, information, motivation and co-evolution of knowledge are all parts of this network.

This is why customer experience management is critical to creating value for your company. The customer experience is an interaction (both you and the customer are players) -- it is not a "message broadcast" or "information delivery" marketing play. You must enable interactions so they can improve. That is, if customer experiences are what you want to manage and improve, then they must reveal actionable information to you (and probably to the customer). If you don’t manage customer experiences this way, you’re stuck in the information age at best – and perhaps in the industrial age at worst, where marketing and public relations were all extruded from the top.

A conscious customer strategy that brings customers and prospects into your innovation processes can really pay off for you. And, you basically have no choice in the matter if you want to be part of the new economy. You have to employ creation nets, and customers have to be part of them. You can't capture marketshare in a net filled with holes.

Global CRM

Global CRM

I'd like to share an announcement relevant to my friends and colleagues in the Washington DC area.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 24 - FOREIGN POLICY WORKSHOP

THE FUTURE OF US-ASIA RELATIONS - A U.S. Dept. of State Bureau of Intelligence & Research and Office of Civil Rights Workshop

Moderator: CORAZON SANDOVAL FOLEY
Bureau of Intelligence and Research Program Manager

Featuring BARRY WELLS - Office of Civil Rights, US Department of State
HENRIETTA FORE - Under Secretary of State for Management
VISHAKHA N. DESAI - President of the Asia Society
DR. VICTOR CHA - Director of Asian Affairs, White House National Security Council
HON. WILLIAM ITOH - Former Ambassador to Thailand
DR. FRANKLIN ODO - Director of the Smithsonian's Asian Pacific American Program

Location
WEDNESDAY, MAY 24, 2006
11:00 am - 1:00 pm
Dean Acheson Auditorium, U.S. Department of State
23rd St. NW Entrance
Washington, DC

Admission
FREE, but Advance Registration Required!
Please register by Friday, May 19. To register, email event@worldaffairsdc.org or call 202.293.1051 with the following details:

1. Full Name; 2. Birthdate; 3. Driver's License or Passport Number; 4. Citizenship; 5. Affiliation

The above information is required for security clearance purposes with the U.S. Department of State. Please have photo identification at entrance!

Global CRM

Global CRM

Customer experience management is hitting the government (and the beltway) big time.

In the last two days, I've talked to two important organizations which both spontaneously had begun looking into CEM. One derives most of its revenues (near $1billion USD) from the US Government. This company has to compete for these funds, and they realize the standard procurement process -- presumably designed to level the playing field to remove non-proposal influences -- is not the only game they have to master.

The other organization is a US Government agency. They have two big constituencies: fellow agencies, whom they assist; and global stakeholders working to harmonize regulations, laws and behaviors with international standards. It may appear that the payoff in CEM (and CRM) for this agency is not primarily measured in dollars, but in value created. And that's true. But dollars count here, too. The agencies served by the organization I'm talking about can advance their causes through other organizations (NGOs and for-profit consulting and development firms). So CEM in this case is one way to assure that this particular agency gets more wallet share from the agencies it serves. That lets them build their budget, attract better talent, keep them longer, and become more effective.

In both cases, though, CEM is being introduced to provide relative competitive advantage.

Still, CRM is the bigger player in all this. CEM matters, but just looking at the new Google Trends reports (go to http://www.google.com/trends) shows that CRM is a Google keyword far more often than CEM. (You can discover some other interesting data by checking out this cool new search engine feature. Go Google.)

That's it for now ... gotta get a proposal and a strategy out, and then I am at last going to get my haircut. Then I'm rewarding my lovely bride with a dinner out. Every day is Be Nice to the Bride Day, right?

Global CRM

Global CRM
I'm finalizing a couple of sessions on customer experience management today, which will help audiences in Singapore figure out the "CEM model fit" for their organization.

I've been thinking a lot about the organizational challenges to building a decent CEM program. Renée George from Kimpton Hotels carved out her own position to do it: Director of CRM and strategic marketing. She drives the big picture and the smallest details to make sure they're lined up. (See 1to1media.com for a great article on George's work with Kimpton.)

But a lot of organizations don't have the guts or vision to put someone in charge of strategy and tactics that spans units, functions and processes. Too bad.

I think one helpful approach is to develop a CRM and CEM communications strategy within an organization that allows stakeholders to learn how improving customer experiences can improve products, processes and resource allocations. This learning process is critical to adoption of any future system.

But adoption isn't the main goal of such a culture changing initiative: The key is to make explicit those tacit communications that interfere with or support creating great customer experiences. In short, the communications plan should be two-way: Educate your enterprise, and encourage conversation so you -- and others -- can identify how products, processes and resource allocations directly affect and can improve customer experiences.

This turns the responsibility for change onto each person participating in this two-way exchange, and puts the "what's at stake" argument in their lap.

Global CRM

Global CRM

I've been involved recently with developing curricular material both for CRM and CEM (Customer Experience Management) training. It's a fascinating exercise.

First, people like me (aka CONSULTANTS) have a bad rap: we offer superficial advice and we leave the scene before the real work gets done. We'll that's not always true, but generally the executives I deal with take a jaundiced view of consultants (not of me, of course!).

But to create curricular material requires that one focus on what is proven and what is really practiced. This means I've been devoting a lot of time determining the state of the art of marketing, operational and strategic thinking -- and behaviors -- coming out of global companies.

This is not a stretch for me, particularly, since I try my best to keep up with this stuff anyway.

But it does force me to ORGANIZE this information so it can be quickly understood and, ideally, adopted.

And this is where it's interesting.

Because, in training as in life, adopting what you learn is plain hard. I just finished a series of articles for CRM Today that featured my interview with EuroRSCG's strategy planner Jerome Guilbert. One of the points hidden in the interview is that his customer strategies only partly penetrate his client's operations and thinking. Here he is, one of the smartest guys in the customer strategy business, and big companies don't really "get" what he's telling them.

Even if they understand it, they're not ready to act on it.

And that's what happens with curricular material. How can you present the latest research and "best practices" and hope to get the audience to both understand it and act on it?

I've been using a lot of case studies lately. That's been terrific. I found them especially helpful in my seminars recently in Malaysia. But case studies are compelling stories -- with points that emerge in discussion -- and they can only go so far in helping someone actually convert the knowledge into action in his/her specific case.

It's tough.

But here's what I've concluded, after doing dozens of modules of this type: I'm training thinkers, not necessarily doers. The key first step in CRM -- and CEM -- is recognizing the value of customers. It's too glib to say they're "important". How do you measure their value? How do you create more? How do you describe customers' needs? How do you monitor them? All these "hows" must be preceded by this simple realization. Everything nowadays starts with customer insight.

If I can get that across, I've accomplished something.

Of course, the devil's in the details.

Which is where consultants come in, I guess. :)

Global CRM

Global CRM

Every once in a while, you gotta let loose a little. Even if it hurts.

My pal and CRM guru extraordinaire, Paul Greenberg (see the link to his blog to your right), said, 'Paulie, great blog! But you GOTTA LET LOOSE!"

Now, I don't think anyone who saw the two Pauls together (see the picture from the 2005 Greater China CRM, where the two Pauls sandwich Ro and Rafael) would think of Felix and Oscar of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple. We're more like Niles and Frasier. Peas in a pod. But when it comes to writing, Greenberg is the free-form, stream-of-consciousness, in-the-body, Moveable Feast Meets Langston Hugues Meets Garcia-Marquez Meets Jack Kerouac winner, hands down.

It's all part of the Greenberg Gestalt, though -- it's not that he's primarily a WRITER. He's a LIVER. With caramelized ONIONS. No -- I mean, the guy just embraces life. And in fact he embraces a good many attractive young women, who flock to him like paper bits to a plastic comb in a cold Connecticut December. You should see him in action at a convention. It's true, from Shanghai to Washington DC.

The thing I love about Paul Greenberg is that he gets as silly crazy as I do about simple observations that are Important and Obvious.

Things like this:

1. Customers are critical to a business' success.
2. Customers are people, too.
3. Get off your darn call center script and TALK TO ME.
4. Don't put lipstick on a crappy CRM system and call it Cinderella.
5. OF COURSE IT'S ABOUT THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE. Don't act surprised!

I'll be writing about CEM here, soon. It's the next TLA. (Anybody who can guess what TLA stands for wins a free copy of my latest peer-reviewed journal, worth $1.)

So, I loosened up a little, Paul G. I'm exhausted. Now it's time to think about the next writerly, non-loose blog posting.

Old habits die hard, baby.

World Intellectual Property Day

Today is World Intellectual Property Day. And, in honor of that, I'd like to send out a hello to my fellow strategy guru Sallie, active in the World Intellectual Property Organization and in battles on behalf of actors and producers whose films are exploited worldwide. She was travelling overseas once (I think to Moscow), and kicking back in a hotel room bed watching a recent film on the TV when, lo and behold, the telltale warning message flashed across the bottom of the screen: "Property of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences" -- the people who put on the Oscars(tm). Clearly someone had swiped one of the preview videos sent out to AMPAS members (all entertainment industry insiders) during the Oscar voting season.

When she told me the story, we laughed. We were aghast. And I totally forgot to ask Sallie if she liked the movie.

Global CRM

Global CRM

Here is a great link offered by Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge e-newsletter, profiling the Chinese consumer. Which is to say, they profile the affluent, urban Chinese consumer: They're easier to find, and they buy.

One warning about this content, though: As smart as the guys at Harvard may be, the authors didn't flinch (when they should have) when they used the phrase, "If only 2 percent of this total estimated market were to buy cars in the next two years ... ". That's a tell-tale phrase that someone's trying to sell you something. Every crazy business plan has a phrase like that in it. It's not that you shouldn't look at things like marketshare, but to do business in China, you have to assume that it does not represent a mass market for many, or even most, products. You should be asking, 2 percent of what?

Assume that you'll be competing with existing products in multiple niches defined by characteristics you do not yet understand. When you consider the Chinese market this way, that fraction of marketshare that would make you enormously wealthy in your business projections turns out to be far tinier.

You may get lucky. But one of the reasons China gets so much FDI (according to a recent academic study by Michael Nicholson of the FTC's Bureau of Economics) may be that direct investment is a hedge against political, regulatory and cultural risks (in Nicholson's analysis, the focus was on IP theft). A key source to find out more is Horstmann, Ignatius and James Markusen's "Licensing versus Direct Investment: A Model of Internalization by the Multinational Enterprise," which appeared in 1987 in the Canadian Journal of Economics.

In short, so much money may be flowing into China from the outside because it is NOT a place you can just "get lucky" -- unless you don't mind that the variability in luck has downsides as well as upsides.

A little bit of homework goes a long way.

Global CRM

Walls Between Customer Data: Compliant or Idiotic?

International Rectifier is a top MOSFET company -- and now it has a global support solution from one of the best, most innovative CRM companies, RightNow Technologies. (Check out IR here .)

RightNow's solution has attempted to fix part of the problem that plagues global companies: How do you create a single view of customer interactions across different systems, regulatory regimes, cultures and languages, and report information into the company to drive continuous improvement of your customer relationships? IR has made strides with RightNow to make such information available transparently across its business units globally. For companies who consciously model their operations globally, such technology is essential. (See the CitiBank story below to tell you how to do this wrong.)

International Rectifier is now able to use a "follow-the-sun" schedule for the customer support centers. This reduces personnel costs. It uses the incident and knowledge management components of RightNow's solution to leverage the experience of each customer support center. In short, it's a classic "project our value" global technology solution. By that I mean that IR is scaling a single solution across all its units. The question (which we hope to address in the next installment after I interview folks at RightNow), is how much localization had to be performed on the data sharing rules. (This is, of course, an incredibly hot topic. Companies are constrained by regulations that differ across regimes. Check out this story from Information Week.)

Good for IR. But companies who are in fact global just don't behave as if they are.

When I was in Kuala Lumpur leading a workshop on best practices (working with my charming colleagues at Pacific Conferences), a participant put his finger on a big problem. Some airlines don't keep track of their loyalty program participants using the same coding system from country to country. He was a dual citizen, US and Malaysia, and yet all his frequent flyer miles on his US account were not available to him in Malaysia. (I don't get it, either.) What was even more egregious, they wouldn't transfer his frequent flyer miles from his older US account to his new Malaysian one. As far as the airline was concerned, he was two different people.

Can you hear the sound of customer value being destroyed?

This is just the global example. Domestic companies have the same problem when their databases don't talk to each other.

I've got whopping student loans from CitiBank, thanks to my fantastic global executive MBA program TRIUM. Somehow I've gotten on mailing lists from a dozen banks, all of them slobbering on me to get me to consolidate my student loans with them. In theory, I should do this before July, when interest rates are going up.

One of those banks hounding me is ... CitiBank.

Just got a call from them today, wanting me to move my loan from their student loan department to their consumer loan department, at a lower interest rate.

This situation is even worse. Not only do I think that CitiBank is nuts for not knowing that I have my student loan with them, but they're just about to lose interest income because their loan departments are competing with each other in all the wrong ways.

The problem may partially be business rules that put up walls between customer databases at CitiBank. It may be a regulatory issue. But my perception is just that one hand doesn't know what the other is doing. From my perspective, they're slapping themselves around in a fevered attempt to ... what? Annoy clients and lose interest income?

But the global issues are delicate, and worth looking into. RightNow's approach is worth talking about. We'll do that in our next posting.

China, the IMF and Governance

Again, China

An interesting article in today's Washington Post by Paul Blustein. Check it out here. In a nutshell, the International Monetary Fund's long mission of providing emergency loans to sovereign nations in financial trouble appears to be shifting. Countries appreciated the funds in the past when they were in trouble, but often didn't appreciate the onerous -- and often inappropriate -- requirements attached to the money. As a result, according to Mr. Blustein, many developing economies have been managing to keep a lot of cash on hand to avoid the heavy hand of the IMF.

Another critique of the IMF has been of its governance and representation. Mr. Blustein reminds us that countries like South Korea and China have been developing rapidly, contributing to the world economy far in excess of their representation within the IMF.

China certainly has a lot of cash on hand, and it is a net exporter, contributing tremendously to world economic growth, and simply becoming more integrated and important. As of this weekend, it will now have a larger share of voting power -- although, like the United States, that voting power will under-represent its actual economic contributions.

What's interesting to me are at least two characteristics that have led China to a position of greater power in the IMF. One is their cash on hand. The IMF wants to remain relevant, so it actually wants China in the mix, but all this cash means that China doesn't need to be a part of the IMF -- except to have more influence. So this is more a political chip being offered by the IMF than an economic one. And, may I say, the US has been following policies that have driven down the price of dollars. If any of us worry that China owns too much of our money and can therefore threaten us in a mass sale of those dollars, we only have our own leaders to blame.

A second consideration is what has been driving China's growth. By its own admission, much of the China-US trade imbalance is overstated because products we import from China are actually the product of US foreign direct investment in China. Their implication is that China isn't nearly the productive giant that the trade imbalance might imply. Nevertheless, it is measures such as their productivity that give them more seats at the table. Again, anyone is worred that China has too much influence, it is because US investors have flocked there.

My own view is this. So what? The IMF is actually doing its job by creating an international financial environment that encourages savings and better domestic economic management. It actually needs to make itself irrelevant. The question then becomes, if the IMF is become less of a bank of last resort, what role would it play? I'm a do-gooder at heart. I'd like to see it do some good. For example, offer cheaper money for transnational projects that mitigate famine, that improve the environment, that increase a quality water supply, and that discourage the root causes of war. Oh, I can see some of you rolling your eyes. But this follows a classic enlightened economic policy that much of the West has been pursuing for a long time: Economic integration and stable natural resource availability generate peace.

And, as for China's role in the world, I say, bring it on. The key arguments that concern many about China (resource use, military build-up, corruption, human rights) are valid but, I believe, short-lived in the face of economic and political integration, rule of law and a free press. They move slowly, but they'll get there, if we continue to provide good examples. The Chinese people I know are smart, eager, globally aware, good, hard-working folks. Fifty years ago, China was on the other side of the world. Now, China is our neighbor. Let's keep our eyes on the big picture: We share a planet and an economy. We are already embracing. We must make it a meaningful embrace by encouraging what works and being crystal clear when they -- and we here in the US -- are doing something that cannot be sustained.

The Issue of China

China Challenges Us

I've been talking a lot to colleagues over the last week about the visit of China's President Hu Jintao to the United States. This is happening critical moment in the relationship between the United States and China, for a lot of reasons. (An important aside: All the photos on this page are mine, and protected under copyright. Please email me for reuse permission. Thanks!)

First, the trade imbalance with China. It apparently indicates that we're buying Chinese goods at a 5 to 1 rate over what we export to them. That's a lot of cash going in their direction. Things are not quite what they seem, though. China has recently, correctly argued that half the goods sold to the US are actually the result of FDI -- much of it from the United States. So some companies in the US are actually successfully using China's economy to sell US consumers goods at presumably better value. But the trade deficit is real.



Second, China is marching towards full WTO membership. This means that its laws must be harmonized with WTO standards. Separate from a discussion about whether the WTO standards are good -- and even properly developed -- China has been taking stepwise movements towards harmonization that have been slower than what many Westerners would have liked.

Third, China uses up resources at an alarming rate, and they're using them up faster than ever. (Its economy grew at an annualized rate of 10 percent, according to the latest figures.)

OK, you know all this. But here's my take on each point.

1. Trade imbalance: This is an inevitable part of the Chinese-American economic dynamics and it will not disappear. Short-term fixes are just that. You can't make the dollar cheap enough to get currency parity.

China may wind up fully floating its currency (right now its exchange rate is tied to a basket of foreign currencies), but it will still have a billion people willing and able to work at wages we cannot compete with in the United States.

In fact, in some sectors, the trade balance will get worse. China has not been content to be merely a cheap manufacturing center. They've been pushing hard to do integrated products and I can tell you from my own experience that their ability to absorb management skills and develop markets and brands is stunning. They're positioning themselves to compete with fully developed Western economies on a full range of value-added product lines. Look for Lenovo to be offering more than computers in the next five years.



The consequence is that the issue is not the trade imbalance: it's what the trade imbalance portends. As global as US businesses are, it is not enough. And as worldly as US citizens might like to think we are, our culture is simply not prepared to deal with the social, economic and political consequences of China's emergence.

A friend who is a brilliant financial analyst and trader, Jason, laughed when I said to him on a recent trip to London that China is going to be a huge economic power in fifteen years, perhaps threatening US economic power. He countered that the size of the US economy was so huge, and it was so stable, that he doubted seriously that China would be so strong, relatively. Looking at the numbers, I think he's probably right that the US economy will still outstrip China's in that time-frame. But upon reflection, I think both he and I missed the point. The real tale will be told in the balance of economic power: China doesn't have to be equal in size to the US economically. It merely has to be powerful enough to change the buyer/seller relationship, currencies, money markets, and resource distribution. It's doing that already. And in an unstable world, such ongoing competition will amplify the effects we feel on commodity prices, fuel, labor pools ... it's a big deal!

Now, don't get me wrong. I love so much about China. I get to Asia whenever I can. The people there are impressively kind, ambitious, globally aware. Shanghai is breathtaking. And I love a lot about my own country. Separate from the love here, though, is the reality: Our trade imbalance is a symptom of much larger, economic issues that themselves inevitably will shift our world view.



2. WTO accession.

My wife and I were in China one morning, walking through a park in Shanghai full of people exercising. Groups of people in big knots, couples, even people all by themselves, were doing t'ai chi.

It suddenly hit me that this is a precise metaphor for how China is integrating into the world. China apparently has learned not to rush into changes that can cause social, political or economic pain. They put down a foot in a new place, shift their weight until they're confident of the next move.

And we're not just talking about legal and regulatory reform. Recently, Energizer Holdings (the Energizer Bunny folks), recently won a case against two dozen companies, including seven based in China and Hong Kong, who had been producing mercury-free batteries and exporting them to the United States. Energizer holds the patent on mercury-free batteries, and wanted to negotiate with the infringing companies to make sure Energizer was compensated for its intellectual property. The ITC, which oversees these international trade appeals, was addressing a defense by the Chinese companies that the patent was invalid.

How does this square with the press coverage from China? Keep in mind that much of the Chinese press is heavily influenced by the government. Here's what you can read online from ChinaDaily.com:

"'We saw this technology as common knowledge, rather than an invention belonging to a single company. Just like everyone knows people need four wheels to build a car, but none of the auto manufacturers actually have to pay for that knowledge,' says an official with China Battery Industry Association who declined to be named." The China Battery Industry Association is part of the China National Council of Light Industry, in effect a quasi-governmental organization.

China Daily continues: "The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected an appeal on battery patents by Energizer Holdings Inc against the US International Trade Commission (ITC). The ITC ruled in favour of nine battery makers from the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong over one of Energizer's patents in the United States in June 2004."

Contrast this with a press release that just came out from Energizer:

"The Court’s January 25, 2006 ruling, and a subsequent mandate issued on March 20, 2006, reversed an earlier ITC opinion and directed the Commission to proceed in accordance with the Administrative Law Judge's prior ruling that the Energizer patent is valid," according to the release. (I got a copy of the release from Levick Strategic Communications, who is working with Energizer Holdings to promote their ITC win. LSC works with a company for which I do strategy consulting. You can find Energizer's release here.)

In essence, the Energizer patent is still in play and can create a justification for ITC to halt battery imports from infringing companies. (Some previously infringing Japanese companies have paid Energizer fees to let them continue to manufacture and export their batteries.)

Energizer, I am told, takes the position that the Chinese press and the China Battery Industry Association probably misunderstood the real impact of the ITC ruling.

That's certainly possible. But by promoting a false victory, China's official organs and unofficial press outlets have created a perception problem for a major US company that was just trying to play by international IP rules. And perception affects shareholders. So the issue goes beyond protecting Energizer's marketshare. It goes to Energizer's value to the stock market.

Energizer ultimately has little to worry about. It's a solid company with a long-term vision for a cooperative role in China.

But this example has two fine points: First, to protect your IP requires money enough to not only do battle in the international bodies and US courts; it requires money enough to battle the Chinese press, which is far less independent than it should be, in my view. (It's getting better, we should acknowledge.) Energizer Holdings can afford this. But what about hundreds of thousands of other businesses engaged with China? Can they stand up to the looseness with which some Chinese companies respect IP law? Can they stand up to the press and the government-sponsored trade associations that (deliberately or not) protect infringing Chinese companies? It's a tough situation.



The second fine point is an irony. The Chinese companies that fought Energizer on the validity of its patent are themselves involved in submitting patent applications for their own technology. Why? China Daily again: "Nanfu Battery is the biggest battery manufacturer in China. Its profits had also been eroded by piracy."

I wonder if this fact represents an opportunity for Energizer, and for other global companies doing business in China. What if these companies allied with Chinese counterparts who were also suffering from piracy? After all, the ultimate problem is not China as a country. The ultimate problem is piracy.

Let's put a ribbon on the WTO/harmonization of laws point. We should cautiously optimistic about many of the announcements timed with the impending visit of the Chinese president. One report from China is that the government is setting up service centers in 50 cities focused on handling domestic complaints on the infringement of IP rights. The goal is to create in 2006 a "vertical IPR protection system from the central government to local governments at all levels." (Chinaview.cn, April 12, 2006). Looking deeper into this, we can see that the intention is to protect domestic companies from IP violations primarily, and secondarily to improve dialog and interaction with international players. (Click here to see more.)

This is not as self-centered as it sounds: Remember that a significant portion of China's exports come from companies receiving foreign direct investment (FDI), including from US-based companies. Thus, for example, this system should support any joint ventures between US companies and Chinese entities. And, in my view, it places the battle where it should be. This is a not a US vs China discussion. This is a rule of law vs piracy discussion.

The Secretary Gutierrez said it right this past March: "[A key element is] transparency and predictability in the rule of law. Businesspeople like to have predictability. It's OK that things are risky as long as we know what the environment is going to be. Business people take big risks, and business people invest a lot of capital. But what they want is to know what the rules are going to be five years from now or ten years from now, so that they understand how to play the game."

The reason for caution, however, is that this plan will take three years to roll out. (Click here to see more.) The message to the West might appear to be: We're taking IP seriously. The message to their own companies might appear to be: You've got three years to clean up your act, so in the meantime, have at it. In short, China's government may be creating a climate that encourages its domestic companies to reform slowly.


3. Finally, as for China's increasing use of natural resources: I say, we must be vigilant against hypocrisy. The United States is by far the hungriest of countries. We need a global commitment to better management of our resources, and severe sticks combined with enticing carrots to get corporate and consumer behavior to line up around our environmental and strategic needs. Unfortunately for US conservatives who hate big government, we are far past the point when pure market options will deliver for us. Of course, we must be clever about creating market-driven options (some of which were rejected by the current administration right after they came to power). They will help. But for the sake of our country and the world, we all must dig in, now, to slow down our rapacious appetite for raw materials, to manage them better, and to make our planet fit for future generations.

I gave a talk to a bunch of bright Cornell students last summer on the nature of social networks, the Web and how that is changing our culture. When I was growing up, I said, I knew one Chinese woman, whose family had moved to my little town in Virginia. I certainly didn't correspond with any Chinese people. I asked the students, "How many of you know someone from China?" More than three-quarters of the students raised their hands. Then I asked, "How many of you regularly communicate with someone currently IN China?"

About half the students raised their hands.

It's a new, connected world. It won't look like the world those of us over 40 grew up in. It's not just a global economy, it's a global consciousness, a global network. And I, for one, think that this network will more easily tolerate trade imbalances than they will accept poisoned air, famine, and depletion of irreplaceable natural resources.


I think the moment I spent with my wife in the park in Shanghai in which the T'ai Chi model of Chinese progress occurred to me has given me a new insight into Western ways. The Washington Consensus embodied in organizations such as the WTO is all about running headlong towards free trade and open markets. In that park, filled with ponds and curved pathways, trees, bushes, flowers and a merry-go-round, surrounded by gleaming modern office buildings and red construction cranes, I didn't see any runners. China may appear in some ways to be embracing free trade and open markets, but they're not racing to be just like the West. They have a more measured plan.

This should perhaps inspire us all to have a better, measured plan, created by all our key trading partners: Let's build a world we'd want to leave to our children. Rule of law matters, but not just for aiding free trade. It's a matter of fairness. And we're being unfair to future generations if we blindly pursue growth.

Let us not criticize China for its resource hunger. Let us all take the blame and find the solution together.

Making the case for going global

Making the Global Business Case

Getting organized for going global is challenging for most businesses, but it's becoming more and more necessary. After all, as soon as you have a website, you have a global audience. Every piece of information you reveal potentially becomes competitive intelligence, and changes the conversation in the marketplace about what's desirable. In short, other companies and markets are watching.

I just published a peer reviewed article on making business cases for going global in the Journal for Association Leadership, a publication of the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE). I incorporate both risk and perceived value into a new formulation of RAROC (risk-adjusted return on capital). If you'd like a copy, drop me a line.

New article on CRM Today

Paul's online journal articles

I was just in Paris a few weeks ago meeting up with colleagues from Demos (France's top training firm), HEC (the top business school in France), Total (the top petroleum company in France), as well as friends from TRIUM (http://www.triumemba.org).

A highlight was interviewing Jerome Guilbert, head of strategy for EuroRSCG.

Here's part one of the article:

http://www.crm2day.com/editorial/50232.php

and here's part two:

http://www.crm2day.com/editorial/50238.php

Enjoy!

Global CRM

Global CRM

Now that I've posted my bio, it's time to really start the commentary. I've also published this as a comment on my bio, a ridiculous place to have published it. This is a good sign that online publishing is something that should be left to professionals!

OK ... let's dig in.

I've been putting a lot of comments on my old blog, which I've now taken down. I may pull out some of that material for here, but in the meantime, the big question I want to tackle is how the "new economy" (read: new information flow controlled by consumers) is changing the way business is run.

My friend Scott told me today that Time magazine's print edition starts off with a list of its online resources at TIME.com. (I don't read TIME, since I get most of my news off the Web, or from other magazines such as The Economist, Forbes, and various IT/supply chain/market research publications.)

This is a major acknowledgment that the Internet is affecting how people get information -- and that TIME is embracing the change. The monetizing model isn't promising at this moment for online news though: People generally won't pay for online content (although the trend is improving there), and ad revenues from online news sites are just a fraction of publication income.

Will that model change, so that publications can stay in business? I hope so. We need an independent, investigative press. To support this, they need to make money -- with no strings attached.

The challenge is obvious: How do publications prove their value? How do they use this value to continue an independent, investigative capacity?

The irony is that a free press is not a freebie.

Global CRM

Global CRM
I mentioned here how TIME magazine is pushing its web content -- a sure sign that the Internet is forcing changes on the news industry that will fundamentally affect its business model.

Another example that might pique your interest: With brands being built bottom-up based on a person's interactions with the company, the top-down branding process has changed forever. This is having an impact on the big advertising agencies and how they do business. But the problem for ad agencies isn't just that they have to change; they also have to change their clients' expectations of what an ad agency can do.

For more info, Google my name, CRM2Day and Guilbert.

BIo

Paul Ward’s role as strategy advisor to corporate and non-profit executives brings his business management and Web services consulting to clients internationally and across the United States.

He is currently developing business and serving clients in Russia, China, France, the UK and Malaysia, as well as in the United States and Mexico. As author of key strategic methodologies that link operations, finance and marketing, he takes seriously the pursuit of best practices backed up by experience and research. Paul lectures and writes regular columns on branding, marketing and strategy, with recent articles appearing on global marketing and financial strategies for globalizing companies. He is a recognized authority on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Perceived Customer Value (PCV) and is doing research on the intersection between Customer Experience Management (CEM) and branding.

Recent clients include governance-service provider Axentis, the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) Corporate Directors Institute, the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineers, the Department of Commerce’s Commercial Law Development Program (CLDP), the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), the Association for Competitive Technology and CyVeillance. He is a global guru for the Greater China CRM forum and is on the editorial board of CRM Today magazine. He is currently working with Greater China CRM to train global leaders in customer experience management (CEM), working in Hong Kong, San Francisco and London, with upcoming sessions in Europe and Asia.

Paul is a member of the American Society of Association Executives and is a managing member of ASAE’s International Section Council. He is also a member of the World Affairs Council. He is a 2006 graduate of the global executive MBA program TRIUM, a joint degree program conferred by the London School of Economics, the HEC School of Management — Paris and NYU Stern School of Business. TRIUM was recently ranked by the Financial Times of London as the fourth best global executive MBA program.

Paul is the Vice President of Sponsorship for the Customer Relationship Management Association of America and is co-director of the Washington DC chapter of the HEC-Paris alumni association. He loves biking, traveling, cooking, writing and reading, all of which he joyfully shares with his wife Angela.

[If you are interested in learning more about TRIUM, the global executive MBA program I've completed, you can check out their site at the link near the top of the GlobalCRM blog home page. Click here to read my open letter to executives checking out TRIUM at MBA fairs.]