Must have read basic Books of the last 6 month I recommend to understand modern business world, future trends createing a modern and sustainable business for the next 5 years.

If you are not up to date and don't go with trends you work still in 90ties environment.
It's the same thing, working with a typewriter and with computers. 
We live in 2015, but most of us work like in 2003 (with eMail & MS Office only) and can't handle the increasing information flow of modern times easyly, therefore I can highly recommend this 9 books to change your mind for the future of work.

This is now the time of flat company structures, fast adoption and not building a 5 years plan for your team. It's the time of new tools & collaboration 3.0.


7 english Books:

Jacob Morgan - Future of Work: 
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2014/09/02/jacob-morgan-5-trends-shaping-the-future-of-work/ 
Laszlo Bock - Work Rules: 
http://www.wired.com/2015/04/hire-like-google/ 
Peter Hinssen - The network always wins: 
http://www.peterhinssen.com/books/the_network_always_wins
Andrew Keen - The Internet is not the Answer:
http://www.informilo.com/2015/01/andrew-keen-tech-elites-cannot-ignore-inequality/
Eric Schmidt & Jonathan Rosenberg – How Google works:
http://www.howgoogleworks.net/
Guy Kawasaki – The Art of Social Media:
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-11-26/book-review-the-art-of-social-media-by-guy-kawasaki
Frederic Laloux:
http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/


2 german Books:

Thomas Sattelberger – Ich halte nicht die Klappe:
http://www.zeit.de/karriere/2015-02/outing-manager-thomas-sattelberger-vielfalt
Gunter Dück - Schwarmdumm:
http://zahlten.blogspot.co.at/2015/03/buchtip-gunter-dueck-schwarmdumm-so.html

The network always wins by Peter Hinssen...

3 years have passed since we met twice with Social CRM's.
1 year ago we wrote about our experiences and from 2012 - 2014 outlined here in this blog 

Now again one year later, I would like to take up the issue again, because the trend is confirmed, even in Europe and even LinkedIn & Xing have done their homework brilliant.

What is the difference from the classical CRM of the 90's and 2000's to Social CRM's ?

I would like to list a few points to clarify what Social CRM's can and why no other way leads to it, even if we thereby make us more dependent from the big players in the market, but they bring still some advantages that I do not want to miss anymore.

Social CRM's:
Integrate a variety of social media platforms into one system.
They allow you to parse all these social media data, store and update it automatically or matching.
They help you to measure the behavior of followers, storeTwitter data or seek throughout Twitter for leads and candidates.
Profiles can be easily imported per click, whith sometimes Privacy Legal Issues depending on the country and profile owner. Your date is always up-to-date, by using such a system.

They integrate with Google Apps, Zapier & IFTTT.
The small private database, thereby becoming a global network through API integration of many other platforms.
These solutions exist for Small busnisses from $ 50 a month up to the big corporate solution for several $ 10,000 per year.
Apart from these innovations, also the processes have greatly simplified, since Semantic full text search a la Amazon, Recorded video interviews as paper CV replacement since 2012, tagging, and the integration of many social networks that have everything simplified and shortened.

Time savings through smart workflows:
We can supply many steps for which we used to take at least 4-6 minutes in a CRM, now done with just a few clicks in 1 minute. We import data per click or after a call we just have to ad some note to the app and even the sales or research step is done.
By PC, mobile phone & tablet we have these data available anywhere and at any time.

Phone calls, emails, social media news, tweets, etc pp and platforms such as Xing and LinkedIn can be tracked, as well in real-time. When and where a sales lead email was opened by the customer. 
This helps us to call the potential client in the same time, when he opens this email and talk about the subject. :-)

In international business, whether sales or headhunting these systems are helping us a lot, and the US and the Netherlands are always one step ahead with this tools. (Open Minded Nations!).
Europe and especially the DACH region has more concerns about and too many regulations about all 'new' innovations, which is a cultural problem.

Xing and LinkedIn share business world among eachother:
Xing and LinkedIn are the major players, because these social networks develop more and more to social CRM systems that you can use full value without having to buy an additional CRM system,
in this case, you only pay the premium packages that between 500 and 800 € per month and you are ready to go. Sales, Recruiting, Networking - All in one solution.

Europe-wide trends show that some companies have understood this and have swapped their CRM systems against Xing or LinkedIn Premium Accounts completely and only work in it.
The risk is therefore in my opinion the same, than having a oldschool crm, because if the provider will crash, your date is crashed in both ways, but haveing Social CRM's has a few more benefits.

Thus, the world continues to grow together in all data issues and Big Data is on the way, as well as the 'Internet of Things'. At this point I would like to briefly point out these Big Date joke.

The exciting thing about the Social CRM's is certainly the simplification of the processes that save time and automatic updating, ie Once the system is set up, we just make calls, research and write emails.
So we can fully and completely focus on the real business without extensive administration, which is largely taken from us by the system.
I would say there is a time saving of at least 50% to previous workflows / processes, apart from the actuality of the data.

The NEW Business future is about to be born since 5 years, so we should not sleep to long in front of it, but rather learn this new workflows quickly and integrate it into our daily business life.
Up to now make the example. Startups Generation XY are of interest already automatically, traditional companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Siemens etc pp. are now on the way to become smarter and Xing, LinkedIn, Amazon and Google have done their homework and will be the key players.

Smart Working:
Smart working means to start at 0, delete all previous known workflows a la MS Office, email and CRM from your mind, and then learn new workflows in 2 weeks, which are fancy, simple, efficient and modern. We must tear down the old cottage in the head concerning workflows, instead of just cosmetically take care of our wounds, which open up again anytime and provoke chaos.

2015 should be the year in which you let the whole 90s and 2000s Business fug behind you, whenyou only want it. I promise you, once you get to understand how the ABC works, you enjoy reading and who can use the gear shift on the mountain highway, is pleased to drive a car.
Same is it with this new workflos and tools - it's worth to start now -

"Get ready for 2020 and move your A ..!"

p.s
Sorry for the bad english writing, but my time was limited for a translation. 
So please check out my german version for better understanding. Thanx :-)

These are just some BASIC Apps & Business Tools I enjoy since 5 years:

www.yesware.com
www.nimble.com
www.onepagecrm.com
www.asana.com
www.evernote.com
www.liquidplanner.com
www.toggl.com
www.wunderlist.com
www.pocket.com
www.hubspot.com
www.ifttt.com
www.zapier.com
www.googleapps.com

...and this is just the beginning...