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In one example, a banker hears of an interesting private technology company. It is funded by a small investment fund he does not recognize. Neither the company, the fund, nor any of the executives or investors has been entered in the firm's CRM system. The ERM system shows three colleagues with helpful relationships: a new associate who happens to be friends with a founder, an IT manager who formerly worked with the CTO of the startup, and a Managing Director (who doesn't use the bank's CRM as he should) who knows one of the investors. The ERM knows of the relationships based on e-mail traffic and other passive data analysis, and so it includes thousands of relationships that otherwise never make their way into formal CRM systems.
This networking can be even more effective across business units that don't otherwise use the same contact management systems. But they can leverage the same collective network because it is built on common data platforms such as Exchange or Domino. The privacy configurations can be as open, or restricted, as required to properly match the firm's culture.
Developing a Foundation for Intelligent Relationship Information
ERM is the corporate social networking technology most widely used within large professional services firms. It allows employees to access the collective network of their colleagues' contact relationships and make the best use of their firm's powerful business connections.ERM has evolved as a place to bring together the corporate social network, the public social network (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn), board member information, management profiles and news feeds to create a living relationship network system for professional services firms. ERM is typically integrated with existing systems, such as Outlook or Domino, CRM, and information portals, to give financial services firms broader access to more of their relationships. CRM systems, which are focused on contact data, are injected with the relationship data that usually is missing: the relationships from each employee to each contact in the system, and the strength of each relationship. This allows employees to understand "who knows whom and how well," enabling the collaboration and synergy that leads to cross-selling and uncovering new opportunities. It is critical to systematically uncover the introductions and influential relationships that colleagues can provide.
The success of ERM providers has been impressive. In just the last two years, over 70 of the largest professional services firms, in consulting, banking, advertising and investment management, have adopted the systems for social networking and relationship management.
About the authors:
With over 20 years experience in banking, Jim Eardley is an independent consultant specializing in front office technology for financial institutions. Prior to consulting, Jim had worked at a number of leading Financial Institutions including Bank of America, FleetBoston, and Merrill Lynch. Jim has also worked as a product manager for Siebel Systems, Inc. and later Oracle Corp. He holds a MBA from Boston College.
Geoffrey Hyatt leads the ContactNet product line for Hubbard One, a part of Thomson Reuters. Previously, he was founder and CEO of Contact Networks, a company acquired by Thomson in 2007. Prior to founding Contact Networks, Geoff was the founder and CEO of Strong Numbers, The Blue Book for Everything, now part of Intuit. Geoff has also worked as a manager at The Boston Consulting Group where he led projects for the world's leading technology companies, and he was an Investment Assistant with the International Finance Corporation (World Bank). Geoff holds a Masters of Management degree with distinction from Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and he earned a bachelor's degree in economics and computer science from Dartmouth College.
