We’ve been working on a “mightier” way to manage customer information and interaction, but we’ve been struggling trying to figure out how we can build a system that does more than just feed back information that you “already know” about your customers.

We’ve come to two conclusions:

1. We need to build a system that is “smart” to help you improve your relationships, not just “track” them
2. The term CRM is too narrow in scope and delivery and carries too much negative baggage

And so, we have been working for the last few weeks on a better term to describe what we’re building and have come up with:  Network Relationship Management (NRM)

NRM is a new business discipline that describes the processes used to measure the influence and contact points of a person’s or company’s professional network.

To put it in context:

• CRM (Customer Relationship Management) focuses on the processes and tools that a company uses to manage customer information.
• NRM recognizes the influence of a company’s professional network and helps leverage strong connections, improve weaker connections, and actively manage the overall health of the network.

A healthy network delivers increased customer loyalty, higher quality leads, and a better reputation — a major success factor, given today’s popularity of “word of mouth” marketing.

As we look at the popularity of online social and professional networking tools, they have been linking people together -  but soon the internet will connect us all!  It’s actually pretty obvious – it’s not who you know that matters, it’s the quality and relevance of the connections that matter.

Here’s an example.

I have exchanged emails (twice) with Seth Godin, author of several good pop-marketing books.  He responded quickly both times, and is listed in my “network” and my apple contacts.  But I don’t “know” Seth Godin, anymore than I “know” Wayne Gretzky (although I have an autographed hockey card).  The same goes for the 10 people I met once at a conference that are now in my LinkedIn network.

Network Relationship Management allows you to recognize the quality of relationships, and their relevance to business.

Which is why we need a powerful Network Relationship Management tool.

We are witnessing an increasingly blurry line between private and professional networks (doesn’t everyone check facebook profiles before hiring now?) and smart companies are beginning to recognize the much more complex business relationships between contract employees, consultants, suppliers, customers, media, and company “friends”.  If companies can strengthen their relationships by analyzing their total network, they can increase sales with existing customers, improve relationships with new leads, and improve overall word of mouth marketing – which all contribute to the bottom line.

In this new “networked world”, CRM starts to look like a dinosaur.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be talking about how our products are going to fundamentally change how companies – and people – will be able to manage their networks.

Stay tuned.