Personal ERP

I was talking to someone last week about my pet idea for a business that offers you a web dashboard to manage all the important assets in your life: your house, car, kids and perhaps your pets or a second home if you’re lucky enough. The person I was talking to made a really interesting point – that Facebook and LinkedIn are simply personal forms of the corporate CRM tools that most large organisations deploy to understand their customers. But, most large organisations will also have some form of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software like SAP that helps them make the most efficient use of the resources they have. However, there really are no personal equivalents of ERP systems and I wondered why.

For individuals, CRM is relatively easy. It relies on a network of people signing up to compatible services but, once that’s achieved, people connect to their friends and form networks whose value grows exponentially as more people are added.

Managing personal and family resources other than money is more complicated because the things we want to manage have to be able to participate in the network. For example, if I’m thinking about my house I’m interested in managing energy consumption, or security or perhaps what the Sky+ is set to record the next series of Glee. For the appliances in my house, especially critical ones like the washing machine or central heating I’m interested in whether they’re working OK and, if something’s wrong with them, I’d like them to be able to tell me what so that I can call a repair man and make sure they come with the right parts. The same goes for my car (does it need a service, where is it right now, how many more miles can I do on these tyres?).

A few years ago the idea that the things you own could provide this data would have all seemed far-fetched. But the advent of small, low cost, networked electronics is changing that. We’re now seeing a rapid rise in connected devices forming the so-called ‘internet of objects’. For example, smart electricity meters, appliances that can report faults and remotely controlled Sky+ boxes are all already here or just around the corner. We’re not too far away from a world in which even family pets can be managed in this way: a new generation of the chips that most cats and dogs already have implanted could act as mini diagnostic labs to alert owners to emerging conditions that require a trip to the vet.

So, whilst personal CRM was an entirely new product space that the likes of Facebook and Linked In were able to own, I predict that personal ERP will be a field that is rapidly occupied by utility companies looking to add more value and reduce churn. We’ll willingly sign up to these services because they save on our energy bills, avoid appliance failures, improve our security and help us control our lives better. In fact, these sorts of services will be so compelling as business opportunities that it won’t just be energy, TV and telephone companies vying to offer them to you. Google have already dipped their toe in these waters with Google PowerMeter. Who knows, in 5 years’ time we may be managing our lives through Google Life and paying through the rich harvest of data about us that Google gathers in return: that our car needs a service, that we could get cheaper energy from a different supplier, that a better deal is available on servicing the boiler. It’s all coming.

Image: The Onzo smart energy kit, which remotely tells you how much power, and other utilities your house is consuming.