We didn't believe it could be, but this week contributor Jed Cawthorne showed us that life without SharePoint is possible.

Top Three

1. Contributor Jed Cawthorne is here to show us the light at the end of the SharePoint tunnel, sharing some hard earned wisdom from years of evaluating Enterprise CMSs in his SharePoint: It's Not Your Only Alternative: 

SharePoint is or can be a great tool set, providing the ability for organizations to solve many problems. However the “Swiss Army knife" approach often produces compromises so we end up, for example, with good collaboration workspaces, good enough document management, and poor web content management." Read More

2. In this entertaining and educational article, contributor Chris Bucholtz warns of the perils of talking the Social CRM talk, without actually walking the walk. Read and learn. Bad, Very Bad, Awful Ideas - The Canned Social Media Response:

Authenticity is critical to winning in social. Customers have an instinctive feel for it. If you're authentic, they know it and it helps cement their relationship with you. If you dump canned answers on them, they'll know that too -- and draw the conclusion that you don't care enough about them to invest 30 seconds in an authentic answer." Read More

3. In this article, Vala Afshar takes the big picture approach to our Social CRM theme, arguing that social is a state of mind, not a set of tools or processes in his The Pursuit of Social Business Excellence is Not About Technology 

Social is a mindset. The social mindset's ultimate goals are business agility and customer delight. To stay relevant, business leaders must learn strategies, techniques and social collaboration methodologies relevant to the modern day enterprise — they must figure out how to discover stakeholder value, and provide bottom-line business results." Read More

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