Is It Time For an EFM 2.0 ?

 

Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) was a term originally coined to describe a lot of products designed for doing mainly Web Surveys.  Many of the products were little more than automated data collection forms.  Some however were more sophisticated, offering built-in follow up processes, respondent analysis and reporting.  As time has passed, more and more large businesses have adopted EFM tools that support follow-up, analytics, dashboards and other advanced capabilities.  They have recognized that data collection by itself isn't enough any more.  In fact, a business looking at EFM tools today wouldn't recognize a lot of the products from the 2005-2006 as real EFM tools at all. 

Is it time for EFM 2.0?

So what's changed?  I believe there are five major changes in EFM worth discussing:  Process support, Business Analytics / Visualization, Integration, Text Analysis and Social media / Mobile computing. 

• Process Support.  A key difference between research and operational intelligence (feedback) is that insights are operationally relevant immediately, often in real-time.  Business processes operate on an accelerated pace today.  Timely, relevant and actionable feedback lets a business process operate more effectively and more efficiently.  By taking feedback from customers, partners, employees or suppliers and feeding it in real-time to key "actors" like account managers, support staff, or others is now a critical capability for EFM vendors because it supports improved operational efficiency and effectiveness at the business process level.
• Business Analytics.  Because corporate organizational structures have become so much "flatter", data that was once developed and acted upon by local mid-level managers today must bubble up to higher level managers.  Removing the mid-level manager's data organization,  interpretation and action definition role and replacing it with Analytics, Dashboards and automated follow up processes allows flatter organizations to function better.  Many EFM tools originally did not do any feedback reporting, just "dumping" out MS Excel files for users to analyze themselves.  EFM 2.0 products not only possess their own analytical capabilities, but often they can generate dashboards or feed data (filtered or raw) to integrated BI / Dashboard solutions for further analysis / presentation.  Since this also often a real-time or near real-time capability.  Senior managers can become aware of issues and trends nearly at the same time as the operational "actors" who deal with feedback data at an operational level.
• Integration.  EFM 2.0 products use web services to integrate with a lot of different products (CRM in particular).  But, they also integrate with e-mail, business analytics, data warehouses, etc.  The point of integration, especially for CRM, is that two processes can be automated quickly through rules applied at the CRM level.  1. Deciding who gets solicited for what  feedback, and when.  And 2. Routing completed survey and alert data to internal actors for action.  Integrations speed up processes by automating data transfer to operational systems.
• Text Analysis.  With so much text based data being presented to businesses through survey open end questions, Web site feedback forms, Facebook pages, Chat processes, etc.  Being able to analyze this source of feedback is an increasingly key capability.  It is still somewhat of a challenge to act on in real-time for many businesses because methodologies (like Net Promoter) don't really exist for purely text based feedback yet.  However, advanced text analysis tools allow some key-word based actioning and certainly new topics that require actioning tend to bubble up through text analysis fairly quickly.
• Social Media / Mobile Computing.  When EFM was first defined, there was no real social media or mobile computing being done.  Today it is ubiquitous.  EFM solutions have to be able to integrate with Facebook, websites or other social media sites.  And, they must be able to utilize mobile devices for their feedback gathering and follow up functions. 

Traditional EFM vendors are all busy incorporating mobile, social media and text analysis capabilities into their solution sets.  I see this continuing.  EFM vendors are also trying to create integration capabilities that allow their platforms to connect with CRM, ERP and Data warehouse solutions.  I see that continuing too. 

At QuestBack, our surveys  distribute equally well via e-mail, web and facebook today.  They display and operate equally well on either desktop or mobile devices.  We're integrated with the Etuma360 text analysis engine, several CRM systems and a number of  BI / Dashboard solutions (while also improving our internal analytics and reporting capabilities dramatically).  Other EFM vendors are trying to do the same. 

What's clear to me though is that closed loop feedback processes are more important than ever and need to be process integrated more than ever before.  Simple survey / data collection tools really no longer fit the bill for these kinds of needs. 

Maybe it is time for an EFM 2.0.

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About the author - Stewart Nash is a USA based reseller for QuestBack AS and Etuma Ltd.  For over six years he has supported clients large and small with feedback manangement projects and EFM implementations. 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stewartnash
E-mail: stew.nash2010@gmail.com