Facebook-style business software should not be about real time communication!

In recent months a lot has been said about Facebook-style business software – the biggest advocate of which is Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff.

Basically he makes two points - First one is that Facebook-style business app is the next step after client-server and SaaS “revolutions”.
Second one - that Facebook is all about realtime news feed – information that is pushed to the users without any action from their side. Because real-time is what we all need. Oh really?

I fully agree that Facebook and other user platforms can have big impact on the way we design business apps. But I think we should look at different things than just live feed of information. Most importantly, because live feed helps you be non-productive while feeling good about yourself (great conversations about that on HN recently if you want to read more about it).
Business users will “invest” their time to learn about new document update, or new deal won by their colleague. It’s valuable information but also highly addictive. Daily, weekly or monthly updates are much better here.

Two things about Facebook that are more important than real-time.
There is something else about Facebook that makes it a really great example of how we should design business software. There are two major trends that are about to redefine what business software is and how it’s being used.

1. Web design finally meets business software design
2. „Facebook model“ of an open (for customers, partners and employees) data exchange platform vs. internal data silos available only for company employees.

Let me explain what lays behind these two statements.

1. Web design meets business software design

Data presentation - right now most of business apps out there look like they were designed by some communist accountants. With myriads of forms and tables where every piece of information looks the same. Web design has great examples of how modern UI should look like to be easy to use and how data should be presented so anyone can understand it in a blink of an eye. In fact - most of new web apps follow that trend of designing their apps to be user friendly.

Continuous improvement and analytics - One of the key things that Facebook is showing us is that web application can be improved almost on the daily basis. Important source of information about how users are using the app, besides their direct feedback, is embedded analytics. We can know exactly what people are doing.

2. „Facebook data model“ business app – what it really means?

Private, Shared and Public area - one system for customers and partners.
System that is already on the Internet (SaaS/Cloud) should take full advantage of the fact that anyone can access it from anywhere. Private work area should be built as a typical employees/team members-only application. Confidence and security that only we can see certain information is key here.

But employees should be able to push parts of information to the shared space (equivalent to sending and email with a piece information or a document to the customer). Instead of sending an email we “share” part of the app, inviting the customer to it. Of course - email notification and invitation is sent by the app.

Public space of a business app would be used by employees to publish information that should be consumed by large audience. We are talking here about product info/updates, important customer support notifications etc. Public space would also be used by customers or partners to contact the company - equivalent to web contact forms - only this time it is just another view of the data stored in a business app.

Social business network - In such an application it’s easy to create a social business network. When you have customers and partners as users of the same system the whole communication and collaboration has completely different dynamics. Not to mention that having such an open architecture you can implement interesting things.
One of the examples I have in mind is a new kind of CRM system with Discount Coupon/Word of Mouth management. Here is how it could work.

Business keeps track of all the deals and user contacts they are dealing with. Instead of sending price quotes, draft agreements and other vital business content via email, they share it within the app. Customers have their own shared working spaces, all the important information in one place - everyone is avoiding email chaos.

Customer actions (logged in after we shared price quote, accepted agreement, placed a new comment, downloaded copy of PPT presentation that we placed there after a meeting etc.) is translated by the system into a status report (i.e. system can automatically change pipeline status of the deal). That gives sales managers and company owners realtime pipeline reports based on real actions - not on sales team “hunch”.

Customers can recommend business to other people - thanks to embedded two-sided incentive discount coupon system (Dropbox like concept) we can track how “word of mouth” works with our customers. We can see which one is really valuable - which one is not.

When we know the connections between customers and us we can manage them better - after all what we have finally is a social business network.

Typical CRM system architecture

Example Facebook-style CRM system architecture