Social Networking Gets Busy

A variation on the Friendster or Tribe.net systems that, in the consumer world, enable people to introduce or recommend friends to each other on the Web, could be applied to business problems. Technology now or soon to be offered by companies such as Contact Network and Visible Path promises to help businesses better mine contacts buried in personal e-mail, personal information managers and other applications.

The business problem is universal. In their search for new business, sales professionals know that nearly any kind of personal connection to a prospect will likely bear more fruit than a cold call. So they want to find out who in their organization, or even in their partner organizations, might have an existing relationship with the prospective customer.

So, if Acme Paint and Glass wants to pitch its product to John Brown, it is more likely to get face time with him, or at least a returned e-mail, if they approach him as some kind of referral. Social networking software (with user permission) taps into myriad PCs and servers in a given business, looking for links to Brown.

The software would then analyze and rank those relationships to figure out the best way to approach the target. A person with Brown's name in her contact list and who sends mail to him is scored one way. But someone who receives mail back from Brown would be ranked higher.

Contact Network and Visible Path are hoping that this notion will take off, especially as companies struggle to rationalize the fortunes they have already spent on CRM and sales-force automation (SFA) systems.

By pairing technological know-how with a sensitivity to privacy concerns, they hope people will opt into a system that essentially searches their data. To succeed, executives from these companies acknowledge, they must offer complete anonymity up front so a sales assistant will not feel compelled to offer up his or her Uncle John Brown to the boss as a sales target.

Some solution providers see value here. "Anonymity is the home run," said Steven Pope, president of Applied Marketing Science, a Lake Forest, Ill., consultant specializing in commercial realtor accounts. "The system can map every contact and relation path there is, but no one will know I know Bill Gates unless I want them to know I know Bill Gates," he said.

Pope sees Visible Path's offering as a way for him to get often-distributed commercial realtors to work better together. Unlike some professionals, these realtors, who are often working in offices distant from each other, tend to "get" the notion of referrals, and how lucrative they can be.

Chesley Chen, financial services practice director at Computer Sciences Corp., who is working with Contact Network, is optimistic. "Clearly, this is in front of the curve, but it could solve an age-old problem in terms of developing business contacts ,getting warm introductions. A lot of CRM systems that have failed could be bolstered by this," he noted.

Visible Path CEO Antony Brydon concurs, but acknowledges that education is important. "If you can show customers they can have 100 percent confidence in the [privacy methodology] and show them the benefit can be very valuable, people will join in. If we show them how they can make 80 percent fewer cold calls, then this becomes a 'must-have' for them," he noted.

Contact Network and Visible Path are concentrating on direct sales for now, but that will change. Both companies say want to work with partners with CRM and SFA expertise.

Solution providers can help customers "figure out how to maximize the utility of the massive SFA systems they already have," said Cesar Brea, CEO of Contact Network, Boston.

Ron Herardian, president of Global System Services, a Mountain View, Calif., collaboration specialist, is intrigued. He already uses the consumer-focused LinkedIn network to reach recommended employees, hiring managers and partners "through referrals from people you already know and trust."

Of course, with any new field of software endeavor, Microsoft is the wild card. The company has said it is working on its own consumer-oriented social networking project, code-named Wallop, headed by Lili Cheng of Microsoft Research.

Ken Winell, CEO of Econium, a Totowa, N.J., solution provider specializing in collaboration, isn't so sure. "This seems a little too 'wild, wild West' for business adoption," he said.