A junior, working alongside a host of senior IT consultants, I found that I was treated to daily servings of alphabet soup....ahhh...acronyms! Before long; however, I had become fluent in tech talk. I knew that SAP was an ERP system and that ABAP was a programming language. Just when I thought I had a handle on the tech venacular, I was introduced to a new bit of jargon, CRM.
My boss had asked me to complete a user manual for our new CRM system. He dubbed me as the "go-to" if anyone had questions regarding the application. I knew I would have to do a deep dive to get myself up to snuff on this new software. After a week of working on the user manual, my boss suggested that I conduct a conference call with our German colleagues to migrate their client contact onto our CRM system.
When I called Uwe, he asked me how I liked "sugar." I was extremely confused. Although I speak fluent German, I was wondering why he was asking me why I liked "sugar" and why he was calling it "sugar" in English, and not "Zucker" in German. Moreover, I was perplexed that he would be asking me about sugar at all. As Uwe and I continued our conversation about the CRM product, I realized that software was called "Sugar CRM," my fears were allayed.
When I was first introduced to CRM, I thought it presented a great way to centralize all client information. In addition, it was optimal for my company at the time, with subsidiaries across Europe, to be able to share client information using one database.
Given what I now know about CRM applications, I do not think that social netwpreorking functionality can replace CRM. Perhaps it can be a complement to CRM as is presented in the following article: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/54575.html. CRM should not be discarded in exchange for social networking functionality. CRM emerged for businesses and social networking did not emerge with a purely business focus. As social networking evolves into a business marketing tool, it can be leveraged as a business asset. At the same time; however, I do not believe that it should replace the tradition role of CRM.
To decode the alphabet soup, see the following links:
What is SAP? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_AG
What is ABAP? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABAP
4 years ago
I've always been fascinated with tech vernaculars. The first few weeks at my first job were spent decoding and translating tech language much like I had with French in high school. It was a very interesting experience and I found myself feeling cool and accomplished when I could form full sentences based on acronyms.
ReplyDeleteHi Heather,
ReplyDeleteI totally understand what you mean. I work in the IT field myself and sometimes, I get to points where I am not sure what's being said. It's not only technical Jargon, I have seen it in recently while dealing with executives were I work. The first time I heard G&A and ODC I pretended I understood, but as soon as I was done, I ran back to my office to research the acronyms.