Sameer Patel, one of the key thought leaders in the collaboration space, joined John Furrier on theCUBE to discuss the ways of putting the *Relationship* back in Customer Relationship Management at SAP’s annual Sapphire Now event.

As one who understood from the get-go the convergence between collaboration and Social CRM, Patel strongly believes that Social needs to be treated like it’s going to have value in the enterprise.

Instead of looking at social like something that happens “in a corner”, as a very isolated process, they are looking at it as a confluence of people, data, business process and content.

With that in mind, they decided to rethink the social in the business enterprise, searching ways to infuse the social collaborative concepts into the applications where the work actually gets done.

Traditional CRM is a technology that didn’t actually reach the customer. Today’s customers, who are extremely well-connected through the social web, have different expectations.

“Well, in the B2C [sector], the answer is expected on the spot. In the B2B era, feedback is expected just as fast, so latency needs to be addresses, at least with a notification ticket stating “your request is being processed.”

And so, the way businesses interact with the customers is changing, and traditional CRM is now infused with analytics business applications.

Putting the *relationship* back in CRM

Sameer Patel is leading the solutions and go-to-market for collaboration and social software from SAP. He pondered upon CRM standing for Customer Relationship Management, but also clarified the term was coined in the analog world, where there were leads and static data bases, and little interaction with the customer.

Today we have a “connected consumer” and a whole different dynamics that is beginning to redefine the customer relationship process, or, as Patel put it, “putting the relationship back in the customer relationship management”.

Until recently it was merely a Customer “Record” Management, not a “relationship”. That is beginning to change, with the help of HANA and its integrated analytics.

Content at the center of the conversation

Content becomes a big part of the relationships with the customer. The core of the framework is built around people, process, data and content.

These are the core social objects. They can be built specifically around support, or around learning. That has been integrated in the LMS applications. Tidbits of information can be used to teach, be it from a conversation of from a powerpoint document. As long as the people are working for the same company, every realm is a teaching/learning oportunity, with the help of SAP Jam.

This enterprise social network solution facilitates collaboration at every level in the business, helping speed sales cycles, increasing customer and employee engagement, and reducing training costs.