Collective Intellect is a social media analytics company based in Boulder, CO that helps businesses track, understand and use social media. CI’s intellectual property utilizes contextual search to categorize conversations online and identify key influencers in real-time across all social media including blogs, social networks, forums and other digital media.

Social media analytics is a nascent but growing market. It stems from social media monitoring, which has been around for some time in one form or another – many companies use a plethora of tools to listen to what is being said about them in Twitter, Facebook, and blogs. Bringing together these millions of data points and opinions, separating the stuff that doesn’t matter, and analyzing the results quickly is what CI does best. They can then send this analysis to CRM solutions, BI platforms, and workflow engines to allow for thoughtful, informed engagement with the audience.

We have actually been working with CI for a couple of months now, in stealth mode because of some of the research that we needed to do. CI is very interested in building partnerships with large Digital Marketing Agencies, which WavuNet didn’t have in their current portfolio. So, a large part of the initial work was to identify and create relationships with these agencies – an example of the type of ‘custom’ work that we can do for our clients.

Now that the potential partners have been identified an contacted, we are working hard on identifying joint products and solutions, and putting go-to-market strategies in place. Pretty exciting stuff!

Stay tuned to CI’s website and blog for announcements of key partnerships, shortly followed by announcements of joint wins.

It’s great to be able to announce that Logimethods has joined the WavuNet Tribe as our latest partner. They are truly Integration specialists, focusing on everything from strategy to implementation and extension of applications, data, and business processes.

Arnold and I have had the pleasure of knowing Yvon Bérubé and Ragui Sbaygha for years. Logimethods has strong partnerships with Software AG and iTKO (our former companies), and Ragui worked with us when we were all at webMethods.

Logimethods focuses on Program/Project Management, Solution Delivery, and Staff Augmentation for large projects in Telecommunications and Media, Financial Services, Distribution and Retail, Manufacturing Health Care and Utilities. They are a global company but have a concentration in Central US and Canada.

Logimethods has an impressive list of clients, including Johnson & Johnson, McKesson Canada, Telus Health (Emergis), ING Canada, Yellow Pages, National Bank of Canada, Canadian National, Teleglobe, Domtar Paper and others.

Please join us in welcoming Logimethods to The Tribe, and let us know if you would like to add them to your channel!

Why? because he loves the service that he gets at the dealership where he buys them from. He knows the salesman (who deserves a promotion), and can call up the service department any time with a question or to book an appointment.

He doesn’t own one piece of paraphernalia with the van’s logo on it. Not even a keychain.

My Dad is of course a creature of habit, but is also a fine example of service loyalty. That dealership has worked hard to build his trust, and is rewarded with his business. He trusts what they have to say, to the point where he drives what I consider a piece of junk – but that they stand behind.

I see this more and more in the software business these days. Software vendors constantly have to go and ‘re-sell’ their products to companies that have been their customers for years. A lot of this has to do with cost-cutting, a shifting IT landscape, and other hard factors, but the primary driver in many cases is trust.

A customer may see a software vendor once a quarter or even once a year, and hear from them via phone or email once in a while in between visits. Meanwhile, most companies these days outsource a lot of key services, and those third party Professional Services firms spend every day in the trenches right next to the full time staff. They know what the company’s pains are, and what is being done about them. They are battle hardened, and have proven themselves to be problem solvers. So, when it comes to deciding what solution to choose for solving the latest business challenge, who is the company going trust?

Conversely, a Professional Services organization is not going to jeopardize their trusted advisor status by recommending the wrong product. They will do their research, and get to know the vendors that they ultimately recommend. And companies know that, which is why they listen to the services firms.

If you are an Enterprise Software Vendor in today’s market, having a channel that allows you to work with the trusted advisors on the inside of the organization just makes sense. Leverage service loyalty as a strategy. And build a quality brand so that the service partners want to recommend your product.

Make it so my dad would want to spend money with you.