It's a cliche to say things like, "I liked U2 before they were cool," but sometimes it applies. For example, Dion Hinchcliffe at ZD Net's Enterprise 2.0 blog recently wrote about businesses that are "opening up" their customer relations via collaborative tools. It's no surprise to us that this is a good idea: we've been using the xTuple.org website to engage our users and customers in an open dialog since the very beginning. Hinchcliffe dubs this phenomena "Social CRM" and proclaims that it will be one of the key stories in the coming year. We're happy to be a leader in this area, and we can say without a doubt that exciting things happen when your customers care deeply about your product and help to determine its direction.
The best example of this may be a forum thread that's been getting a lot of activity in the past few days here on xTuple.org. To see an example of community collaboration at work, check out the ongoing discussion of Fixed Asset functionality. This is almost an extreme example of how a social business works. Customers aren't just asking (or telling) us to do something--these guys, including both trained xTuple partners and open source users we hadn't previously met, have jumped in, written a spec, argued over features, and are well on their way toward making a significant contribution that will extend the capabilities of xTuple ERP.
The issue tracker is another way we channel community contributions. In a closed model we would handle all bug reporting and feature requests privately, hiding our flaws from the people who need to know about them most. Instead, our philosophy has always been to maintain that information in public, so that all users can see bugs that have been reported, and can add their own issue reports to the list. We've just started our second official "bug derby", called haxTuple, where we'll make a public project out of resolving as many of these issues as we can with the help of our community. We're giving away prizes, of course, but when you have this kind of relationship with your customers, that kind of reward is almost secondary--people take pride in helping to make the product better for its own sake.
Hinchcliffe decribes the benefits of Social CRM as:
- Closer contact with reality when it comes to what customers need or want
- Lower costs to engage with customer and resolve their problems or otherwise give them what they need
- Better results when it comes to having satisfied customers, many of whom actually become very closely connected with the company for everyone’s mutual benefit
It's all true. Thanks to all of you who participate in making xTuple ERP into the great business software that it is. And remember, you can say you've been doing it since before it was cool. ;)
BC Wilson
With the explosive movement of cloud strategies, BC was promoted to director of cloud services in 2014. Previously, he oversaw operations and hiring of managers for critical lines of business for the Product Management Group, driving return on investment (ROI) for all xTuple products and managed ongoing engineering and development of the xTuple Classic GUI product, including all customer-sponsored enhancements, as well as the xTuple Web Portal product. Prior to xTuple, BC was a senior product manager for Trader Electronic Media, where he directed the development of websites for the classified advertising market. He has also worked as a partner in a web design agency, and a content producer for the Road Runner and Starband broadband service providers. BC began his career as a writer and editor for the Ziff Davis computer magazines.
He holds a B.A. in Theology from Georgetown University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Old Dominion University. In 2012, BC was appointed as a commissioner of Bicycle and Pedestrian Trails in Norfolk, Virginia.