Is LinkedIn the Next CRM?
January 22, 2009 by Jimson Lee · 3 Comments
Is it my impression, or did LinkedIn improve their services by creating a contact management system that looks and smells like a CRM?
In the recent year, we’ve seen Facebook become the number 1 social media site that started to creep into the Corporate world. Facebook can now connect to Salesforce.com via AppExchange or Appirio.
But it appears that LinkedIn may be your only source for a low-cost no-cost single-user CRM package. And it fits into the Saas cloud computing model.
If you go to your connections, and choose View & edit details >>, you get a pop-up window that resembles a CRM.
Other than the usual fields that come with connecting to antother person (Name, Title, Company, and Email) the rest can be filled in by yourself:
- Phone
- IM
- Address
- Website
- Birthday
- Other Info
- Notes
It’s the last two fields that caused my alarm bells to ring. In Other info, the pull-down choices are:
- spouse
- anniversary
- manager
- assistant
- custom – where it is a custom defined field
Notes is anything you want it to be.
My next question is when you initially import your database from Outlook, which fields can (or should) be ported over? I certainly don’t want to go into my hundreds of contacts and manually enter all this pertinent info.
A nice sync tool with an Outlook plug-in would be my Christmas wish list. And, of course, synced to my Blackberry!
By the way, you can connect to me on LinkedIn here.
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About Jimson Lee
Jimson is a freelance industry analyst, with over 25 years experience in the IT industry. Prior to joining CRMHelpDeskSoftware, he spent 4 years as a Senior Consultant at Sierra Systems Group, part of Golden Gate Capital, a leading private equity firm with $9 billion in capital under management. Jimson currently resides in Rome, Italy.
I wrote an open letter on my blog last year asking for exactly this type of usability (http://budurl.com/licrm).
Social CRM with the ability to link to our lead software (ie Avidian Prophet) would be a HUGE boon to small business users whose business is mostly socially based.
Now if they would only treat the referral process like it matters. . .
@Raymond – yes, they could use some more improvements, but at least they are on the right track!
LinkedIn’s CRM feature is a fantastic way for job seekers to keep track of their interactions with potential employers too. I teach a class on LinkedIn and the CRM feature always seems to be a welcomed surprise to my audience. People are excited that they can add notes and contact info. FYI: I even built an interactive simulation on how to use it as a CRM, It is open access and can be found at http://www.minutebio.com/LI/PowerTips.htm.
Jeff