It’s been 81 years since the FA Cup (the leading Football (ie Soccer - for you US guys + gals) trophy) has been won by a team from outside England - the last time, 1927, it was Cardiff City Football Club (aka The Bluebirds) from Wales…..speed forward 81 years (to Saturday 17th May 2008) and…..????…….Yes you guessed…it’s The Bluebirds again taking on Portsmouth….Com’ on You Bluebirds (also best of luck Pompey aka Portsmouth)…Cymru am Byth

Blogs are buzzing after the Google launch of Apps Engine Platform was overshadowed by an accusation of ‘copy cat’ by 37Signals.

All the excitment is focused on ’HuddleChat’, an application released as an example of what is possible with Google App Engine, and is ’accused’ of being a dead ringer for the 37Signals chat offering, Campfire.

Let PR Tennis begin… 

Worried that it would be seen as a Big Bully, Google decided to pull the application, leaving only this message.

37Signals CEO Jason Fried used HuddleChat as a PR opportunity, telling Read Write Web:

“We’re flattered Google thinks Campfire is a great product, we’re just disappointed that they stooped so low to basically copy it feature for feature, layout for layout…We thought that would be beneath Google, but maybe its time to reevaluate what they stand for.”

As far as i can see, all 37Signals have achieved here is a clean ’shot in the foot’. 37signals is a company that adheres to the spirit of sharing and thanking folks who inspire them… but not if you’re a Goliath like Google, obviously! (Hmm, you’re face doesn’t fit so you’re not getting in.)

They may look like a victory over the ‘big boys’, but I cant help but feel they’ve tarnished their own brand values and associated it to a bad precedent of web censorship. At the end of the day web based chat clients have been available for years and they all look about the same.

Google should have kept HuddleChat and left users to make their own judgment, thanking 37Signals for their inspired thinking and positive outlook. In turn 37Signlas should stop listening to their own hype, get back to work, and add unique features to make sure Campfire is always a step ahead.

When all is said and done this episode should serve as a reminder for the web 2.0 startup community at large, that Google is in this to make money just like 37Signals and everyone else.

An interesting survey from Forrester Consultancy.

Summary? Purely my view -

CRM is a growing priority for businesses of all shapes and sizes.

A business can spend loadsa dosh on a CRM system - but what a waste if the CRM is not “right” for the business

CRM must fit with business needs - this survey prioritizes the needs of 260 companies as an example (no surprises for the Woo Team)

http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,44179,00.html

January 10, 2008
CRM Best Practices Adoption
by William Band
with Sharyn C. Leaver, Mary Ann Rogan

Organizations continue to spend heavily on customer relationship management (CRM) — $11 billion annually by 2010 — to grow the top line, improve the customer experience, and boost the productivity of customer-facing workers. To better understand how enterprises can get the most value from this investment, we surveyed 260 business and technology decision-makers and influencers to discover their strengths and weaknesses in adopting 11 sets of CRM capabilities consisting of 150 best practices. We found that adopting CRM best practices is a big challenge for many organizations. A significant percentage of the executives surveyed evaluate their capabilities to be poor/below average for all categories: 1) marketing — 37%; 2) customer analytics — 36%; 3) customer service — 35%; 4) indirect sales — 33%; 5) customer data management — 31%; 6) eCommerce — 30%; 7) customer strategy — 25%; technology infrastructure — 23%; 9) field service — 22%; 10) people management — 20%; and 11) direct sales — 17%. Disappointment with CRM is usually the result of poorly conceived strategies that lack a laser focus on improving a specific set of business capabilities to increase revenues or reduce costs.

Saturday 19th April 2008, I will be attending the “Point to Point” horse racing at Bonvilston, South Wales, UK. I’ve just noticed a horse running called “Granpa’s Gone Grey” …just gotta put a bet on….look at the http://www.woosabi.com/  home page and you’ll see why!

Yours…Tony……….the “silent salesman” aka “the Greying Grampy”

sources:

The Times, London 14th April 2008, http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article

Importance of SMEs to the UK:

4.3m SMEs, 97% employ less than 20 people, 12m people work in SME sector - 500, 000 SME New Start Ups Every Year!

Vulnerability of SMEs to cash flow problems caused by customer late Invoice payments:

Over 10% of SMEs collapse due to late or non-payment of invoices

Mutual Opportunities

A great opportunity for Woosabi to enter this SME Market but equally a great opportunity for SMEs to use Woosabi to help maintain and grow their businesses while controlling cash flow through Woosabi’s built-in Invoice Management system

Nice little “quote” from Nancy of The New York Times

Simple Software Solutions From Those Who’ve Been There
By HEATHER CLANCY
Published: September 26, 2007

“Small businesses need something other than watered-down versions of applications designed for much larger companies by executives and developers who have never been entrepreneurs themselves”.

Square Peg, Round Hole?! http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/26/business/smallbusiness

$9billion Blimey Charlie!

This CRM Online’ll never catch on!!

From a New York Times article Feb 13th 2008

See if you can spot the deliberate mistake in the second paragraph…….

“Analysts and industry observers appeared split on whether a rumor that Salesforce.com has approached Oracle about an $8.9 billion deal to sell itself to Larry Ellison’s firm may become a reality.

Some said a deal could be attractive for Salesforce given that the company, which sells so-called on-demand software as a service over the Internet, faces mounting competition from Microsoft and SAP, as well as from Oracle itself”

Dew spottit?………….

Well done……yep, “Salesforce mounting competition”….. omitted Woosabi.com!!!!!

Each time I get on to Woosabi now I get more and more excited. At first it was great to see all the hard work take shape but now I login to my account and Woosabi is doing all the hard work for me.

My ‘top tool’ at the moment is the ‘Dashboad quick notes’ I’m able to make notes during a call that are safe and secure and in a click have them converted in to jobs, contacts etc. And best of all with zero distraction to the work I was performing before the call.

With the dashboard and affiliate partnering strategies in mind I read this discussion in interactive media magazine, NMA
on the wider applications of dashboard widgets.

Have a read: Widgets.