I’ve recently received a flood of strange emails.  They were regarding the Fast Company’s Influence Project (check it out).  At first, it seemed like a great noble endeavor.  An experiment in discovery.

Here is the premise:  You get invited to the project and the person that invites you gets points.  They can then create their own link and get points, etc, etc.   In a perfect world, the person with the most influence would yield the most points.  The fun part of the project is a very well done user interface that visually shows you all the people involved.  You can navigate through connections and influence points.

I want to thank John Sumser for creating the post that influenced me to review the Project.

After I clicked on John’s influence link I had a blast reviewing the site and then went back to my work.  Enjoyable experience.

Then the mob took over.

Emails, Twitter direct messages, even a phone call.  People were asking me to use *my* influence to help promote them so they could be near the top of the list.  Influence?  It is no secret that Broadlook, the company that I founded, develops list generation technology.  People wanted “my list”.  One individual even offered to purchase a list on behalf of their chief executive.

If you are reading this and you are one of the people on LinkedIn or Twitter or some other social disaster and you want be at the top of the list, (1) you can’t have my list and (2) think about what Edgar Allan Poe said:

The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.
-Edgar Allan Poe

In reality, the Fast Company Influence Project will not come near to predicting real influence online.  What it will do is spotlight some people who desperately want to be leading the mob. Guy Kawasaki, while well respected, also seems to want to be at the top of the mob. He talks about it in this article.  I think it would be more fun to pick a person of total obscurity and put them at the top.  Similar to the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) initiative that pointed the search for “Miserable Failure” to George W Bush.

I would welcome human suggestions as to the most influential person online. How about the web master at Google?  What if Google posted a single link on their home page “Vote for Sergey”?

Overall, I am disappointed, it would be nice to have seen a scientific study.  I’m somewhere on that list, but shouldn’t be.  Thanks John ;(

Caveat: My friend, John Sumser did influence me, but did not ask.  Big distinction from the “help me be influential” contingent.

###

More mob quotes

The nineteenth century lynching mob cuts off ears, toes, and fingers, strips off flesh, and distributes portions of the body as souvenirs among the crowd.
Ida B. Wells

The vision that the founding fathers had of rule of law and equality before the law and no one above the law, that is a very viable vision, but instead of that, we have quasi mob rule.
James Bovard

There can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions to an individual, but permitted to a mob.
Ayn Rand

There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence.
Rebecca West

There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.
Oscar Wilde

There is nothing more foolish, nothing more given to outrage than a useless mob.
Herodotus

We grew up as kids watching those movies and we were exposed to themes of civil rights, unfairness, bigotry and fathers struggling against the kind of mob of the town, so you remember how you felt as a kid being taken seriously, that you are part of the human drama.
Rachel Griffiths

When the theater gates open, a mob pours inside, and it is the poet’s task to turn it into an audience.
Franz Grillparzer

Do you use search engines to look for resumes on the Internet?   Do you use exclusions such as “-jobs”  or  “-submit”?

If you do. Stop it. Read on and I’ll tell you why.

First a story about Easter hams.

To understand what I am going to say about searching for resumes, you will need to be in the right frame of mind. Here we go…

A little girl was closely watching her mother prepare the Easter Ham. She was five years old, a great age for asking questions about the world.  She watched her mother prepared the glaze, preheated the oven and brought out the large roasting pan.   In an automatic fashion, her mother took a large knife and sliced off 2 full inches of meat from each end of the ham.

The little girl,  Sarah, smiled as a question came to mind.

“Mommy, why do you cut the ends off the ham?”  she asked.

As if startled the mother replied, unconvincingly  “I don’t know Sarah, my mom always did it.  Maybe it is so the glaze gets inside. ”

Not being satisfied with the answer, Sarah tracked down Grandma.

“Grandma” She asked.  “I just saw mommy cut off the two ends of the Easter Ham.  She said that she learned it from you.  Why did you make the Easter Ham that way?”

Grandma answered.  “That is a good question, Sarah, but I learned it from my mom, your great grandma.  I always thought that it was so the Ham cooked faster.”

Again, unsatisfied, Sarah tracked down, Great Grandma, the family Matriarch.

“Great grandma”, She asked as she crawled up on her lap.  “Mommy cut the ends off the Easter Ham. She thought is was so the glaze flavor got into the ham.  She did this because Grandma did it.  Grandma thought it was so the Ham would cook faster.  Grandma learned it from you. ”

With anticipation, Sarah asked her Great Grandma. “Grandma, why did you cut the ends off the Easter Ham?”

Grandma, wise as she was old, chuckled and answered.  “Sarah, when I married your great grandfather, the roasting pan we got for our wedding was too small for a Christmas Ham.”

“We cut the ends off the Ham so it would fit in the pan”.

Such is the progression of knowledge.  There is no fault when we inherit a practical idea that worked in the past, yet is anachronistic.  In the case of the Easter Ham, a practical, real world solution should have lived and died within a single generation, a single iteration.  However, it continued until one with a child’s mind, a questioning mind, wanted to know why.  When she was not satisfied with the answer, went on a journey of discovery.

Looking at resume search with a “Beginners Mind”

In the past 2 year I’ve taken a bit of a journey in questioning how people use search engines to search the Internet.

Observation:  Top Internet searchers, myself included, had an innate set of beliefs that they held.  These observations eventually evolved into The 8 Laws of Internet Search,  which are a set of axioms for searching the Internet.

At this point I want to make a disclaimer:  I am really, really good at finding things on the Internet. This is not due to any formal training, nor did I have the advantage of a teacher or mentor.  I am self-taught.  I have literally been immersed in searching the Internet for the last 15 years.

Second disclaimer:  I do not include myself as one of the search-string guru’s out there.  To be a search string guru, you need to be current, know the latest websites that are out there, as well as the latest capabilities of each of the search engines; you need to be immersed in the searching.  My immersion is in the underlying rules.

I recently had a conversation with a search string guru .  We agreed that the best analogy was that I design the aircraft and the search string gurus are the pilots.  Works for me.

So what about resumes and searching the Internet?

If I attempted to research the state of resume search, without a basis or set of axioms to work from, I would not have known where to start.  Fortunately, I decided to use the 8 Laws of Internet Search as a starting point. With a special emphasis on the first 3.

So the question I decided to ask myself is: How do the commonly taught practices of resume search stack up to the Laws of Internet Search?  This was a definable goal.   Caveat: My focus is “Open web” resume searches and not searches within a controlled environment like Monster.com or CareerBuilder.com.

The Law of Environment. Trainers do an excellent good job talking about the various search engines, their capabilities and limitations.

Industry score on the Law of Environment: A+

In taking The Law of Permutation into consideration, I found 2 areas that were very different.

1.  Boolean search methods

Sub-score:  B.   Trainers are clear on the concepts that you must search using multiple permutations such as “VP of Sales”, “Vice President of Sales”,  “VP Sales”, etc.  However, the reality is that you may need 15-20 title combinations to reach all possible results.

2.  Semantic search methods

Sub-score: C.  A good deal of mis-information is being spread about semantic search.  Some of this stems from irresponsible vendors that are trying to make a buck.  It would not be a big deal,  if trainers actually tested, scientifically, what they started teaching.  The funny thing is that the value proposition is significant with semantic search.  Say what it can (and can not do) and those vendors will have happy customers with proper expectations.  I shouldn’t be too harsh here, in the early days, I believed the software from Broadlook was meant for everyone.  It is not.  Setting clear expectations of technology capabilities is the mark of a mature vendor.

Semantic search is great when you have a type of resume that is well identified and the rules have been built.  However, throw it a niche area that has not been cataloged and it will fall flat.  Advice:  If you are looking for a commodity position like a .NET programmer, semantic search can work marvels.  If you are working in a niche area, pick a semantic search engine that can be trained by inputting sample resume data.  In the later case, you may have to do the leg work with good old Boolean search first.  Also, ask your semantic search vendor if they use exclusions when they mine search engines.  If they do, twist their arm until they stop.  It’s an old Easter Ham.

Industry score on the Law of Permutation: C+

The Law of Completeness.    Widely taught methodologies, that have not been questioned in years (like the Easter Ham) are yielding approximately 65%.  If you get 65% on a math test, that is not a good grade.   The first example is not using the full available results from a search string query.  If a google search yields 380 results,  the Law of Completeness states that you must work with the entire set of results for maximum yield.

Completeness is not being reached. Why?  When trainers first started teaching how to use search engines (before google),  there were limitations in the technology.  Those limitations were:

(1) No high accuracy method to screen out page results that were NOT a resume.  Therefore search strings needed to be modified to exclude results that were not resumes.

(2) No method to extract all results from a search query.  Therefore search strings needed to be modified to reduce results to a manageable quantity

In both cases, the strategy worked, unfortunately there was a side effect:  Many good results were also thrown out.

Industry score on the Law of Completeness: D

Dropping the bomb on search string exclusions.

So where is the proof, where is the science?

First, I want to thank Cory Dickenson at Broadlook Technologies for leading the team of researchers on search string exclusion metrics.  Looking through tens of thousands of resumes, by hand, and then doing it two more times, is not a fun task.  The reality is that someone had to do it.  Hopefully when this study is reviewed both recruiters and technology vendors will have a better foundation in which to build upon.  I basically hate inefficiency.

Resume Exclusion Metrics (Broadlook project: FRET, Frikken Resume Exclusion Test)

The study was simple.  What was the effect of using exclusions on a resume search string?

The first thing we did for the study was to mine a bunch of social networks and sites that had advice on resume search strings.  We wanted examples, over the past 10 years, that experts were using.  From a few hundred examples, we made a list off all the popular resume search string exclusions that were being used (i.e. -job -job -you -your -submit).

Creating the resume data set

To set up the study, we created search strings for about job 50 positions.  The positions were a wide range: IT , biotechnology, health care, sales, business development, financial, etc.  Next for each search,  we made sure that the search string was specific enough so the results from the search engine was <1000. We did not use any exclusions.  Last step:  Hand verification of every single search engine result.  Each result was classified in one of 4 categories (1) Resume (2) Resume sample page  (3) resume book page (4) Junk: Not a resume.

At this point, we could bring automation into the equation.  Using Broadlook’s Eclipse tool, we automated each of the 50 searches with one of the exclusion terms.  We then repeated the each of the 50 searches with each of the exclusion terms.  Since we already hand-identified which search engine result pages were resumes, we were able to calculate, for each search-exclusion combination, how many REAL resumes were skipped by using each exclusion term. When the searching was done, we had average percentages, across many industries and titles.  We know, with high precision, what percentage of resumes you will lose by using an exclusion term.

Why did I do this study?  Too much time on my hands?..no.  I was interested in making the best open web resume search tool possible.  To accomplish that goal, the tool needs to work within the framework of the Laws of Internet Search.  Specifically the first 3:  Environment, Permutation, Completeness.  The end result was Broadlook Diver 3.0.  The resume search part of the tool *automatically* screens out pages that are not resumes.  In addition, since it is an automation tool, it allows the user to work with complete results from a search engine.   While you can only get Diver from Broadlook, the Resume Exclusion Metrics are free to all.  Enjoy.

The Axioms of Internet Resume Search

1.  Seek <1000 results per search.

You should conduct your search with enough specificity that the search engine reports that there are less than 1000 results.  If you are doing a search that yields many thousands, break up the search into a few separate searches

2.  Never use single-phrase exclusions

Otherwise you will miss a good percentage of resumes.  It is reasonable to use multi-word exclusions, as the level of ambiguity is low.

3.  Use multiple search engines.

There are varying reports of the cross over being as low as 20%.   (Happy to get comments from additional sources on this)

4.  Use automation to screen out non-resumes

Don’t do it by hand and don’t ignore the data below and use exclusions.  This is not 1998 anymore.  Let automation technology screen out Search Engine Result Pages (SERPS) that are not resumes. This includes sample resume pages, job pages, etc.

And now for the Exclusion metrics.

From pool of about 50 job descriptions,  100+ searches,  75,000 search engine results, 28200 resumes, hand verified.  The sort order is based on the worst offending term.  These exclusion terms were pulled from top experts answers on forums about resume search.  Remember the Easter Ham, it is not my intention to reduce the tremendous contribution of those people that freely answer questions (every day) about internet resume search.  It is my intention to give more data so that the entire industry has more facts in which to work with.

This resume research project yielded many other interesting facts, such as percentages of doc files vs. pdf, etc.  In the coming weeks, I will be publishing a white paper that breaks down the data in a bunch of categories… after I get back from DisneyWorld!

Social networking is going to die.  This article is about how it will happen.

The focus for this article will be business social networking.  If you are worried about your Facebook friends and photos and the life sucking that goes on in personal social networks, don’t worry, they will be around for awhile.  They will be dying a totally different death.  That will have to be a future blog posting.  Ask me over a beer and I will explain it.

Ask three people to define business social networking and you will get three different answers.  Try it. Going even further, I hypothesized that you ask ten different people about the benefits of business social networking, you will get ten different answers.  I was recently inspired by a quote attributed to Steve Jobs about dogma as “Being satisfied with the results of other peoples thinking.”  This article will be as dogma free as possible.  While I can’t help being influenced by everything that is being written about social networking, I have come up a few unique conclusions.

1.  LinkedIn is not a social network. Most of my contacts are either in a sales or recruiting role.  In the early days, the premise behind LinkedIn was that you can connect to many people through a chain of trusted referrals. It does not matter what the creators of LinkedIn claim it to be.  LinkedIn was founded on the idea that you can go through a series of trusted connections to network with a target person.  It was a noble idea, however, LinkedIn is now controlled by the mob.  The real question is… how are the majority of people using LinkedIn?   The answer:  Get as many connections as possible, build as big a network as possible.  Next, when you find someone in LinkedIn that you want to connect with, read their background and connect directly.

LinkedIN is a social database.

2.  Social CRM is a buzz word.

The community aspect of SocialCRM is aptly named.  Unfortunately, the average person confuses the community, group and collaboration aspects of SocialCRM with popular social networking sites like LinkedIn. They are different.

SocialCRM is not concisely defined.

When everyone is copying what everyone else is thinking, you get a buzz word.  Fun to report, you don’t need to think too much to find other articles to read, alter and republish.  Read about Social CRM and then write about Social Recruiting. It goes both ways.  But what is Social CRM?  SOCIAL is the base part of the equation.

Unfortunately SocialCRM is being used as a catch-all phrase and it is confusing the consumer. For clarity,  SocialCRM should be broken into 2 distinct terms.  Here is a way to clarify thinking and talking about it.

CollaborationCRM – Denoting the functions within a CRM that allow group collaboration, community connection and project sharing.  Salesforce chatter is a good example.

SocialCRM -  Connectivity to existing social networks like LinkedIn.  This is the definition, when polled,  that most people believe social CRM to be.  (Straw poll yielded 9 out of 10 assuming this definition).

Social Linkage – defined below

The current implementions of Social CRM (as defined above) defeat the purpose of having a CRM.  The best implementation of a CRM is when the CRM is self-contained.  Art Papas, CEO of Bullhorn, an Applicant Tracking System (recruiter CRM) describes it well.  “Our clients live inside Bullhorn”.   The best CRM should have everything the users need, inside the CRM.

Example: you click on a LinkedIN link next to a contact record in your CRM.  What happens?  A browser page opens and you are in a separate web page, disconnected technology, outside your CRM.  This is Social Linkage, not social CRM.  Bad process.

If a CRM is implemented correctly, you should not have to leave the CRM to perform important tasks.

Most of what is touted as Social CRM today is simply Social Linkage.  Social CRM sounds better, sounds integrated, but in every case I have seen…it is not.   What is the challenge here?  Until LinkedIN and Facebook and all the other networks allow tighter integrations,  social linkage will be all that we have.   LinkedIN wants you to stay on LinkedIN,  Facebook wants you on Facebook.  Salesforce wants to be able to say they have connection to LinkedIN.

3. Marketing, not sales, is driving “the idea” of Social CRM

If you look at who is pushing the SocialCRM idea, it is marketing.  The dream:  Having EVERY contact in your CRM mashed up with all social network information.  This would be great for marketing and market segmentation, but unnecessary for sales.   The Reality:  Click, click, and more clicks.  The current state of SocialCRM is, at best, Social Linkage.  The reality does not match the dream.  Marketing is pushes the dream and leaves sales stuck with the reality.

If you have a question about what sales thinks about “Social CRM” as it relates to social network data, look at the ratings The LinkedIn plugin got on salesforce CRM.   Don’t get me wrong,  I am a fan on LinkedIN.  Visionary concept, great source of data, however, it is not seamless with CRM.  If anything the combination is anti-social CRM.

Attn marketers: Your focus should be social media, let sales people worry about and define SocialCRM

4.  Social Agents will replace Social CRM. Social CRM/Social Linkage tries to solve the problem of having “an answer” for every contact in your CRM.  Every contact that you can view in your CRM will, if available, have a link to external social network profile(s).  Services like RapLeaf aggregate multiple social network links associated with a specific person.  Due to the sheer volume of information, mashups are not always correct due to the ambiguous nature of contact information.  The end result:  You click on multiple different links in your CRM and open multiple disparate sources of information.  Even when the links are correct you get Another Bad process.

Enter social agents.

The best products are built from dreaming an ultimate scenario.  Then, working backwards to what is possible.  If there were no constraints…What is the ultimate potential of Social CRM?  Answer:  Every CRM contact has real-time social network information from all social networks.  This information would not be linked, but mashed up inside the CRM.  This is not happening.  Why?  (1) It is not in the interest in the Social Network (really social database) to make the information free and fully available.  (2)  The incentive chain of $ is not there.

So if it is a bad idea to pre-populate social network information for every contact in your CRM, what should be done?  On demand, social agents.

The average sales rep engages 10-20 contacts per day.  A real-time, on-demand social agent is fully capable of making a real time extraction of social network information, mashing that information up inside the CRM and presenting it in a usable format for a sales rep.   This is what sales wants.

Conversely, I have seen a sales reps presented with a CRM that has Linkage to social networks.  While the potential is exciting to the sale rep, they are fired up about the available information available, usage drops off dramatically.

As soon as marketing starts thinking and stops listening to reporters & consultants (who listen to reporters), demand for social agents will proliferate.

5. Social Data comes in 2 distinct flavors

Where someone went to college will never change.  It is a fact, fixed in time.  Where someone currently works is a fluid social data point.   A fixed social data point only needs to be found and stored once in a CRM, whereas fluid data points require social agents to keep them updated.

Fixed and fluid social data points should be treated differently.  Why is this important to understand?  Treating  fluid and fixed data points, with different agents reduces the refresh and load on the technology infrastructure that empowers social agents.  In addition, what can be done with the result of social agents varies based on the information being fixed or fluid.

Last thought. Adding a human-verification element, to cement data accuracy, is realistic on a fixed data point.  Scan once, verify and store forever.

6.  Social Intuition will evolve from social agents

Once we have on-demand social agents, then what?  Take a mind walk:  We now have a CRM, where, on-demand, or slightly before  (predictive system)  social network information is extracted, parsed and mashed up inside the CRM.  No need to live anywhere but the CRM.  A dream of efficiency.

Now that I have all this information about someone.  How do I leverage it?  The fact that someone went to the University of Miami (The Hurricanes) is something that would be in social network profile.  Thus, via a social agent, I would have the University of Miami as a data point in the CRM.  However, would I know the UM mascot is the Hurricanes?  Would I know the score from the football team the night before?  Would I know the weather in Miami that day?   The answer to all these questions is no.

Enter Social Intuition

Social intuition is a combination of social network data points combined with real-time agents to gather additional talking points.   The prerequisite for performing this type of mash-up is (1) Aggregated & scored data from Social Networks (2) Highly accurate fixed data points (i.e.  Mascots for every college)  and (3) Intelligent agents that leverage, fixed data points with social data points to “intuit” additional information.

7.  Company-centric (NOT contact-centric) social mash-ups will prevail

Even with the proliferation of social networks, the average person has just a few, if any data points about them.  Multiply that by the number of people at a company and patterns emerge.  Patterns that would not be apparent in the microcosm of one person.  The best approach in sales is to engage multiple points of contact (people) at a company on the onset of first contact.  This approach is called Sphere of Influence Selling and is well documented in The Sphere of Influence Selling webinar.

Remember:  You talk to people, but the company writes the check.

8.  CRM Socialbases become the ultimate silos

The most valuable list is the list that no one else has.  Think about it.

The most unique set of data is inside your CRM.  Don’t worry about the world,  just about your clients and the companies you want to sell to.  Gather rich data from social networks and other sources and combine it with your CRM.  The future king of all data sets will not be inside social networks.  Companies will mash data from social networks and combine it with conversation history, notes, purchasing habits, etc.

CRM Socialbases will be built on a combination of Fixed and Fluid social data points.

The value of any list can be scored based on data quality & competitive advantage.  For example, LinkedIN has great data, but it is it exclusive?  No.  Anyone with a bunch of connection can get to the names of almost everyone.

9.  Things to watch

Bleeding edge: Watson.  An IBM supercomputer that will, in the coming months, be competing with top Jeopardy players.  In initial testing, it beat the average player, that were winners, on the Jeopardy TV show.  5 years ago this was not possible.   Watson is an answer machine.   What happens when you connect an answer machine with your CRM SocialBase?

Hot: Salesforce chatter: I like this technology.  Nothing that can’t be copied.  Expect to see it in every CRM within a few years. Brings another aspect of social into CRM, in terms of work teams and projects.

Fun: Proximity based social networks – Not a primary technology, but something that should be eventually mashed up. FourSquare is a good example.   (Yes, I am the mayor of Broadlook).

Practical: CRM Profiler – The next iteration of the technology is cloud-based, lives inside the CRM, jumps over social linkage and includes social agents.  Build your own social knowledge-base.

10.  Black swans emerging?

Black swan theory Something that changes everything in a space.  Denotes an occurrence that no one though of.

LinkedIn CRM – It makes sense, but would they alienate CRM’s that currently mash up with them?  It has happened before.  In the recruiting space, AIRS, a recruiter add on tool, created their own applicant tracking system.  Guess who integrates with AIRS today?  Nothing of importance.  Next AIRS was acquired by a RPO (recruitment process outsourcing) company… how many competing RPO’s will continue to use them?  The number is declining.

Facebook CRM – That would be real scary, however, a spin-off without the facebook label might fly.  The yo-yo ethics of their privacy policy is comical.  Can’t ignore them.

Salesforce acquisition of LinkedIn:  More likely to be Oracle, SAP, Microsoft or a company that has deep pockets.  Salesforce already acquired Jigsaw.

Scariest combo:  Google Acquires LinkedIn, creates the Google CRM and makes it free.  It actually makes total sense.  If Google wants to push ads all day long, while people are at work.  This is the way.  Gmail is already the best web-based email system.  They have google docs.  They have a mobile platform.  All the components are there.  If you take a step further and look at the talent they have hired, patterns emerge.   Nuff said.

Recap:

Social Network -> Social Database -> Social CRM  ->  Social Linkage -> Social Agents -> CRM SocialBase.

You heard it here first!

I have been struggling, for years, with getting speech-to-text working in a usable way.  About every two years over the last ten, I go out a store, excited, and buy the most recent voice recognition software. I’m always hoping for a break-through.  I’ve tried various versions of ViaVoice and Dragon Dictate. Dictation programs typically require you to read a few paragraphs to train them to your voice.  Other than that, they are fairly easy to use. For the PC and Mac, voice recognition programs have reached an acceptable level of usability.  Today, I can talk and dictate to my computer much faster than I can type.  In fact, this article is being dictated to my Mac on a plane ride from San Francisco to Minneapolis.  It seemed appropriate.

Social graces.

The guy next to me on the plane looks annoyed.  I am using a wired microphone to dictate this story.  Ok, now he is smiling.  He is enjoying the irony.  However, every time I say “period” to end a sentence the woman on the other side of me looks at me…

(Completing this article by typing)

“With Contempt”  is what I was going to say, so I decided to start using the keyboard.  Conservative, tightly wound person that probably thinks iPods are an evil plot.

The reality:  voice recognition, even if it works, does not fit into the social construct of the plane ride, the coffee shop, the bus, the subway, in fact any mass transit system.  It is a solitary endeavor OR completely annoying.  Want to try a fun experiment?  As voice becomes more commonplace in interfacing with devices…when you see someone talking out loud to command to their phone try this:   In a loud voice say  ” A B C 1 2 3″  and make sure it is loud enough for the mic on their phone to hear.  It works and totally screws up the voice recognition. Fun.

Vlingo on my iPhone

While I mentioned Vlingo on my iPhone, I did not mention that it does not work for me.  I am not a voice recognition expert, but I know that the processing power of mobile phones is not at the level of my new Core i7 MacBook (yeah.. it screams!)   In Vlingo’s defense, if you articulate well and speak slowly, it is good for sending text messages and single line emails in a quiet environment.  But it is not as good as laptop or desktop, and that is frustrating.

Don’t drink the Software-As-A-Service Kool Aid

Prediction:  Cloud-based service for Mobile Voice Recognition is a bad direction.  Even in a connected world, there are many places where you do not have either a cell or network connection.  Does it work today?  Sometimes.  However, when voice recognition really works for mobile, it will have to be native and a core function with 100% availability.  SaaS cannot offer that.  I am really surprised that Steve Jobs added the voice command into the iPhone  (Not a SaaS implementation, so they got that piece right). They usually don’t ship stuff that works  50% of the time.  Apple should have tested it in my Jeep.  If you follow the laws of computing, in about 10 years, mobile devices will be able to process voice as good as a desktop/laptop of today.  This will be a convergence of technologies, just like when the evolution from the iPhone to the iPad.  Voice commands will make more sense on the mobile device, just like some applications make sense on the iPad vs. the iPhone due to larger form factor.

What does this mean for technology affecting culture?

It can go in four directions.  First, think:  Do you remember the first time someone had a cell phone conversation, close to you, in a confined space?  How about the first time someone sat in the stall next to you and had a loud cell phone conversation?  How will you react when you are in close quarters and people are talking to their phones, dictating and email, text or tweet?

Direction 1: It will isolate people.  Socially unacceptable,  therefore people will withdrawal to a more quiet location to talk to their phones.

Direction 2: The older folks like me will lose the social acceptable battle.  The younger generation will be texting, emailing, Tweeting and “voicing” and if we don’t like it, we can  put on noise canceling head phones.

Direction 3: The advent of sub-audible microphones.  Arthur C Clarke, one of the true thought leaders talked about this in several of his books.  Basically, imagine a tooth implant that could pick up “throat noises”.  These sounds would not be heard external to a person’s body.  The sub-audible microphone would pick up the sounds and transmit to a mobile device.  Everyone could happily be talking, Tweeting, emailing, or Voicing on the same subway car without every bothering a soul.   Technology done right is elegant.   Early versions of the microphone could be placed on the neck.  No need to go running off to the Dentist just yet.  Direction 3 is my prediction.

Direction 4: Something no one has thought of yet.

Implications?

If everyone is using sub-audible microphones,  there will be privacy issues.  If someone whispers and you hear it, are you invading their privacy?  Ethically yes, but legally, no.   There will be devices that unscrupulous people will employ to invade privacy.   There will be outrage, backlash and then an attempt at regulation.  While interfacing with mobile devices via sub-audible,  I predict that people will develop their own private vocabulary, like a password or macro to communicate securely with their devices.

Stepping stones to a strange new world

1. Seamless Voice recognition, native to mobile devices  (8-10 year)
2. Sub Audible microphones  (technology is here now)
3. Social acceptance          (who knows)

I started this whole article as a mind-walk towards the concept of “think to text”.  With sub audible mic’s, you can sometimes tell if someone is talking, because they will move their lips out of habit.  The younger generation that grows up on it will not.

So what about “think to text”?  I have no idea.  The headsets that are supposed to measure brainwaves and sell for about $200 and are pure crap. Don’t waist your money, they don’t work.  Based on the state of technology, a system that could recognize words you think is way off.

Waiting in line for the  iThink

On the other hand, I will be guy in line, every 2 years, excited, buying a new iThink…and hoping.

Note:  The man next to me on the plane ride was a software engineer.  We had a great conversation.  Bill:  great to meet you!  It helped to talk through the scenarios.  The woman next to us was a 4 term politician.  Thought we were crazy, thinks ideas are dangerous, wanted to make everything Bill and I were “discovering” as an exercise in thought…illegal. Basic book burner.  What a contrast!

Is your CRM Normal?

Warning:  This Article is not for tech guys!

When it comes to your CRM, being “Normal” is a fabulously good thing.  Most  CRM contain over 30% of duplicate data. Not only is that ugly, but  it causes problems for your sales team and costs your company revenue.

In simple terms, I’m talking about Clean CRM Data.  If you asked your tech guy, he would call it “Data Normalization”.  If you are a tech guy, we covered this…come up, stop reading!

Understanding the problem

Nearly every CRM company and internal corporate IT department has taken a stab at solving the problem of data normalization.  Unfortunately, no one has done it right!  Why?  Think about it: when you buy a CRM it is usually empty.  If you import dirty data from an old CRM, the new CRM will be dirty.
Normalization cannot be dictated at the vendor level

CRM systems are not designed to normalize data.  Why?  A good CRM must deliver flexibility to each client implementation;  normalization cannot be dictated at the vendor level.  Therefore, it is left to each individual customer and each individual user to enter and import data in the way that they see fit.   For the CRM vendor it is a lose-lose scenario. If they dictate a data format, whichever format they choose, be it verbose or abbreviated, someone will not be happy.

Massive duplicates and miskeyed data does not become a problem until after you start to use a CRM.   About a year after the CRM is implemented is typically when the buyer realizes there is a huge problem with the information.  Without some systematic way to start with and keep information clean, duplicates will be introduced and someone has an opportunity to make more $$ on professional services.

Dirty data is a profit center.

While dirty data can lose you revenue, it is  good for service providers; you store more due to duplicates and eventually someone will need to clean that data.

An unending cycle

You recently made the investment and spent the money to have your data cleaned. Now what?  Unless you have an enforceable, real-time strategy to keep your data clean, the cycle will continue.  Six months to a year after “cleaning” your data, it will go from pristine to ugly again and the cycle will continue. Efficiency, revenue and opportunity will be diminished.

How does data get dirty? Who is responsible?

There are 3 ways information enters a CRM.

Hand entered. This is a common method that takes place literally every day.  Did you know there are over 20 ways of writing the company name “The Container Company Corporation”?   Some people are verbose and will type out the entire company name, other will take shortcuts or just mis-key the information.  We are all unique, and unfortunately for your CRM, that can lead to 20 instances or more of the same company in your CRM.

Product Imported. Many Software products have the capability to directly imported data into a CRM.  What rules do those products obey?  Do the rules that they use match your company rules?  Do you even have a set of rules that your company follows? What happens when a duplicate is encountered?  Unfortunately, most of these questions are never asked.  The result: more ugly data.

Mass Imported. While Product imports are done external to the CRM, Mass imports are done within the CRM.  Mass imports are typically done by the IT department or your CRM vendor.  Guess what?  Mass imports can be the worst offenders.  In some cases, the person charged with doing the import is exceptional and it is done correctly, however, this is typically the exception.   In most cases, vendors doing imports and data migration don’t  have the proper tool sets to get the job done.  Even more importantly, they have not coached their clients or asked the proper questions to assure success.

I contend that most imports that are generally considered successful would get a flat “D” on my score card.  If you think your process was good, read on.

Establishing a lasting solution

Solve a problem at its source and you solve it for good.  The best way to get control of your CRM is to create and enforce a Data-Plan.  This is not a minor undertaking, however, for any sales team more than a few people it is critical.  The quiz below is dual-purpose, it will teach you what you need to do and give you a score-card of where are now.
Is your company at Risk?  Take the Broadlook “Are you Normal”  QUIZ:

So, where does your company is rank in terms of the sources and impacts of duplicate data?  Take a moment to take the quiz below.  Good luck.  Be honest!

The Dirty Data Quiz: Is Your CRM at Risk?

Data Plan. 15 points. Does your company have a standard format for CRM data?  If you don’t, this is where you start the entire process.  To comply with best practices, your Data-Plan should be centrally stored, accessible by anyone who enters data into your CRM.  In essence, the Data-Plan acts as a single-point-of-truth for your company and how it treats data.  Your points: ______

Staff Training. 5 points. Has your staff has been trained on your Data-Plan and it is easily accessible?  While this is a great step, it is not as important as making the CRM enforce your data plan automatically.  If your CRM does offer a feature like this, the training is most important for your IT department who can circumvent the constraints put on the average user.  Your points: ______

CRM Cleaned. 5 points. Has your CRM gone through a full Normalization and de-duplication process?  Once you have your Data-Plan developed, you need to ensure that the data you have meets the plan.  Why only 5 points?  A one-time cleaning does not solve the long term problem.  Don’t pat yourself on the back for this,  if this is all you do, you will have one month per year of clean data.  Your points: ______

CRM Enforcement. 20 points. Is your data plan enforced by your CRM?  This is tremendously important. The reality is that not one CRM provider (that I have seen) has a detailed data normalizer that can enforce your data plan like like Broadlook’s CRMShield™.  If your provider does not have this feature, it means you must either build or find an add-on to your CRM.  An even better option is to would be to provide all users to the CRM a tool like Broadlook’s Contact Capture to enter contacts into your CRM.  Contact Capture is FREE (not trying to sell anything here).  Your points: ______

Product/Integration Enforcement. 10 points. Do other products that bring information into your CRM adhere to your Data-Plan?  Beware of products that dump data to a Excel or CSV file.  Sometimes it is unavoidable, however, direct exporting systems that comply with your Data-Plan and do de-duplication in real-time are always a superior choice.  Your points: ______

Vendor Enforcement. 10 Points. Do vendors that provide you with list data deliver it in compliance with your Data-Plan?  Some vendors may push back at first; however, it has been my experience that the entire process will go smoother if the vendor complies to the Data-Plan.  Hold your ground and remember that list providers want your business.  Show them the format that you want your data …and don’t compromise. Your points: ______

Import Enforcement, by culture. 5 points. Does the IT staff buy-in to following the Data-Plan?  The best way to make this happen is include the IT department in the development of the Data-Plan.  Your points: ______

Import Enforcement, by technology.  15 points. Is your IT staff prevented from circumventing a Data-Plan by rights management?  Everyone must obey the Data-Plan. If your IT staff can circumvent best practices established by management, problems will arise.  It the IT staff disagrees with a Data-Plan, best practice dictates that the Data-Plan reviewed, discussed and potentially revised. Again, this maintains the single point of truth and enforceability to make your Data Plan work.  Your points: ______

URL Enforcement. 20 points. Do you have a URL (website) field for each company in your CRM.? The URL of a company is more important than a DUNS number, location or anything else.  It is the single best piece of company-centric information that can be used to update the CRM over time.  The URL can be used to update and add contacts to your CRM with tools like Broadlook’s Profiler.  Your points: ______

How did you do? I want to hear from you! Send how you did to Donato Diorio (ddiorio@broadlook.com).

SCORE	GRADE
<20	F
40	D
60	C
80	B
100	A
Your score:	__________

Understand how your data and your processes rank is paramount.  Dirty CRM data is a huge problem with sales force efficiency.  You may think that cleaning your CRM data on a regular cycle is a good thing.  Don’t pat yourself on the back just yet;  cleaning CRM data on a cycle is treating a symptom.  Just like good physical health,  the best solution to eradicate dirty CRM data is prevention.  Prevent dirty data from getting into your CRM and your CRM be clean and health.  You may even enjoy using it again.

After thought:

Broadlook has just completed developing a new, revolutionary tool to empower the CRM experts, consultants and the users that they support.  It is called CRMShield™.  CRMShield solves a serious issue faced by every business that uses a CRM; data duplication. One piece of the CRMShield technology,  “The Normalizer” will be shipped in June and is included free in every Broadlook product that works with contact information.  I thought I would share some of my excitement about it.