Internet of Members \ Salesforce1 World tour

Earlier today, I went along to the Salesforce 1 World tour, to find out what their latest offerings have to offer for the NFP and charity sector.  Sales force as a company are unashamedly sales orientated their language and style is exuberant to say the least and the event had a personality to match. The keynote speeches include lasers, gymnastics displays and even a Salesforce controlled drone. The day saw them announce proudly that Heron Tower is set to become Salesforce tower, in typically larger than life move. 

Despite its NFP foundation, despite its 1/1/1 commitment and despite some pretty big charity’s on their books, the whole Salesforce Ecosystem just doesn't seem to gel, with the sector, at least not in the UK. You have to work hard to see beyond the showmanship and look to the functionality of the platform then you begin to see a flexible solution that does some really neat tricks. The question is can you get through all that bluster.  The exhibitors at the event where all part of the Salesforce Ecosystem, i.e those working within or on the salesforce platform. They fell largely in to 2 categories Apps or implementation partners. It’s fair to say that none of them had a specific NFP focus. There were some rather cool apps on display Riva CRM integration, Cognizant and Cipher cloud to name 3. But as with any smartphone app store there are lots of apps and finding the right one for your requirement is not a simple task for a charity to understand.

Theoretically, it’s possible to implement Salesforce without an implementation partner, and a big part of Salesforce 1 is to increase what admin users can do, and to speed up user led change. But for a NFP it remains beyond the key skill set of the organisation so better to look for an implementation partner. But here too the Salesforce Ecosystem is huge and as with anything else there are partners and there are partners. Some understand the sector, but from the conversations I had at Salesforce 1 it’s clear that most don’t.  Most focus is on delivering Salesforce and making the platform do whatever it is that you want it to do, irrespective of who you are, talk to them about specific functionally such as an organisational renewal process, or member events, and they approach it as just another sales process, which to an extent is true but rather misses the point. 

It would be very easy to rule out Salesforce, and look to a more sector specific CRM, but the fact remains, it has some good functionality and can deliver just what some charities or associations need. If you've decided you need a CRM, it would be folly not to at least look at Salesforce, just as it would be not to look at dynamics, but you also include more sector friendly solutions.

The big tag line of the moment is “Internet of Customers” which is an evolution of the “Internet of things” concept where an internet world connects everything, from your smartphone to you clothing, from your fridge to the light switch. The concept is a good one that points out that behind every THING is a customer, and I’d like to move on the debate one step further by starting to talk about an “Internet of members”, or even an “internet of supporters”. If you remove the sales speak the principal is the same, and that hasn't changed for years. The people you want to engage are out there and they will do what they do in any number of ways our job is to create interactions that work for them so that we can progress organisational goals, and this is just what CRM’s should enable.  So think about what your members\supporters are doing day to day, then what they want from your NFP. The last question is what you can do to make those interactions as simple as intuitive as possible.

CentrePoint - a new page - or back full circle?

I currently work in the 27th tallest building in London, and a landmark in central London. Built in 1966, Centrepoint has been many things to many people. But for my company and I it has most recently been a workplace. All that is about to change as the building is set to undergo a major change. Its set to become plush new housing, so today is our last day in the building before heading off for a new page of our own on Friday.

Growing up in London you can't miss the rather drab looking building that towers over the end of Oxford street, marking the end of London's best known shopping street, it also sits on a road that through the 90's could guarantee a bargain for techies, yet turn your eye half a turn and you find the luvies of theater land. Location wise you couldn't find a better place to provide 32 floors of offices, yet it stood empty for years. As a child I never understood this and I wasn't alone, it proved to be controversial in a number of ways but the developers where effectively speculating on the chance of finding a single tenant. This led to the government offering to buy the building for 5 million pounds, maybe if we had bought it in 1972 we could now have afforded to buy another couple of banks. It eventually became the home of the CBI and a number of other tenants, ourselves included.

Homeless Charity

Another side to the building was the link to the homeless charity and again growing up I couldn't work out how a homeless charity could afford to build a huge building like this and keep it empty. At one stage I even thought that it was the worlds largest Homeless hostel and that the entrance was a rather salubrious snooker hall. In 1974 local activists aimed to squat inside the building to draw attention to the plight of the homeless and reasoning that an empty building such as this should be used for the benefit of the homeless. Around this time the homeless charity Centrepoint was born. It seems the link is purely co-incidental but its rather a good story to think of it as a reaction to the excesses of property speculation that led to the building of a concrete empty building and contrasting to the hundreds of homeless people sleeping on the cold streets within its Shadow.

Its design too is controversial and rather Brutalist, its just Glass and concrete jutting up from the ground rather, well, brutally. Modern sky scrappers like the Shard and the Gherkin are for me far more beautiful. But the building is Grade 2 listed and has won plaudits for it rather uncompromising style. Its certainly deemed nice enough to be suitable for its next phase of life as a home for the rich. One things for sure the views from the building are like no other in the London, and therefore the world. London's newer Skyscrapers are grouped together in the east, but Centrepoint stands alone right in the middle and offers 360 degree views in to the heart of the worlds greatest City.

Future 

So its not really a surprise that the future for the building takes it back in one sense to its controversial roots. Where as the property boom of the 60's and 70's provided profit opportunities even for an empty office building. The property boom now provides a profit opportunity for largely empty housing. Whilst the plans do include obligatory affordable housing, largely the tower itself will be Luxury flats all I'm sure will be sold for in excess of a million pounds. When you look around London at that property band most houses remain empty for 90% of the time operating as a base for the few days a year when the International owner has a meeting in London. So once again there will be a stark contrast between the super rich and the super poor sharing a single doorway. Its ironic that what was controversial back in the 70's is commonplace 50 years later.

One thing is for sure I'll miss the views, but not the rather complicated lifts.