This post started from a post by PGreenblog which pointed to a Forester report on how the next generation of CRM is moving away from the traditional Customer Service, Marketing and Sales model into any number of areas including social networks.
Now having scanned this post I twittered that it was “research into CRM 2.0 or as Microsoft put it xRm”. I was correctly picked up by @tekoppele that xRM is more than just social networking. At first I had assumed that the “2.0” tag had been taken to automatically relate to social networking and xRM is indeed well above and beyond just that.
What confused me was that the post that started this off began by listing a number of categories that are examined by the Forrester report and many of these fall under the xRM banner. What the post then goes onto examine is how the report deals with the social networking aspects of CRM and how the report discusses them.
Even allowing for my initial confusion this post gives a very good first pass assessment of the report (Which I doubt that at $1999 I will ever get to read 
) .
In conclusion one thing that has come out of this episode and the resulting conversation is how best to “label” this new world of relationship management?
Microsoft have called it xRM but is that too tied to a specific vendor’s marketing?
CRM 2.0 has, as has been demonstrated, too many social networking connotations?
How about ngRM for New Generation Relationship Management?
Do we even need a label or is it just something marketing like?
Charlie
