Denis Pombriant of Beagle Research Group gave a fascinating keynote yesterday at CRM Evolution in New York. He started by warning everyone (I’m paraphrasing here) that what he said might “scare them away” but then he said, “not to worry, you’ll see at the end, how the evolving CRM will save us all.”
Pombriant focused on CRM and Economics, pointing out that there are 3 major economic S curves ending. The first, is the end of “high-tech” as an economic disrupter–meaning we’ve past the peak of where the new technology introduced to the market has a major affect over our lives. This means that technology is no longer a driver within the economy, it is the economy.
The second end is that of the customer. There are over 77 million Baby Boomers retiring, many of them are past the peak of their “spending wave” which means they have tons of stuff, and now they just want to buy experiences. He says, here in the US the population is “aging-out” (but this is the opposite in emerging economies world-wide).
And the final S curve coming to an end, is the “peak oil”. Here is where things became pretty interesting. Since oil is apart of not just energy, but so many raw materials, and since we are using it up quick super, the cost of oil, and therefore gas will become so high, we will have no choice but to find sustainable ways to travel, transport goods, and do business. The focus here was, figuring out how to find and create sustainability within your own businesses, and how important it is to make your customers a renewable resource.
I think these ideas were very powerful, and exciting. The world is changing, there’s no doubt about that, and these three ends bring a tremendous amount of opportunity, if they are embraced. The common thread I have seen through concepts of social media and business sustainability is simply, rather than building products (or service companies) we think people will want, we need to build products and services, people actually need. It’s the secret to future success, and it’s that simple.
