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Amazon says 2007 holiday season strongest ever
Shares of online U.S. retailer Amazon.com Inc rose more than 2 percent on Wednesday after the online retailer said the 2007 holiday season was its strongest since it opened in 1994. On December 10, its busiest day during the current season, Amazon said shoppers ordered more than 5.4 million items, or 62.5 items per second. By comparison, the busiest day of the holiday season in 2006 was December 11, when customers ordered more than 4 million items, according to its Web site.

EMC Buys Document Sciences for $85 Million
Storage company EMC has agreed to buy Document Sciences, a developer of software for personalizing mailshots and other communications. The acquisition will allow EMC to extend its offering in the field of transactional content management, which it sees as the fastest-growing part of the enterprise content management market. It plans to incorporate Document Sciences into its content management and archiving division. Using xPression, Document Sciences' flagship application, companies can automate the creation and delivery of personalized communications such as brochures and contracts. The data can be drawn from CRM (customer relationship management), ECM (enterprise content management) and ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems, it said.

Customers Embrace CommonSpot Version 5.0
PaperThin, Inc., a mid-market content management software vendor, announced that four customers have recently gone live on CommonSpot Version 5.0, including: LeSea Broadcasting, Ping Identity, Tulane University, and Tuthill Corporation. CommonSpot 5.0 features include a new and intuitive authoring interface, RSS feeds, Blogs, Wikis, and XML publishing and rendering capabilities. The ease-of-use inherent in CommonSpot 5.0 empowers business users to be self-sufficient and productive, build interactive communities, and achieve faster time-to-market; while its flexibility empowers IT and site administrators to easily adapt the system to meet their complex and ever-changing needs.

Gadget lovers seek out 2008's hottest products
The world's premier consumer electronics show kicks off in Las Vegas this week, but economic headwinds may mute the glitz and glamour of a conference that defines what gadgets are in store for 2008. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is set to attract 140,000 attendees to a show covering 1.8 million square feet and featuring everything from 100-inch TVs to sophisticated car navigation systems to quirky "zero-gravity" massage chairs. The oddly timed event, coming on the heels of the festival of consumption that defines the year-end Christmas holiday season, showcases thousands upon thousands of products and prototypes set for release over the next year.

SugarCRM Announces Sugar 5.0 General Availability
SugarCRM Inc., a provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, announced the general availability of Sugar 5.0. Sugar 5.0 introduces a broad range of new functionality, including capabilities that allow users to build custom modules, a new AJAX email client and a state-of-the-art 'Multi-Instance On-Demand' architecture. SugarCRM's commercial open source model invites the download and inspection of source code by users, developers, customers and partners, producing a higher quality product than possible in proprietary development models. The three beta editions of Sugar 5.0 were downloaded and tested over 30,000 times by community members during the beta process.

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Technical Support Centers Outsourcing Less, More Focused on Customer Service
HDI, a membership association for IT service and support professionals, has released the findings of the 2007 HDI Practices and Salary Survey. The study highlights important trends in the help desk and IT service and support industry.

Some of the key findings in this year’s report include:

• Support centers appear to be outsourcing support less than in the past. In 2006, 57% of respondents reported contracting with outsourcers. This year, only 42% of respondents reported that they outsource some portion of the support function; 58% reported that they do not, nor do they plan to do so.

• 74% produce and report performance metrics, and about half share their metrics with external stakeholders such as customers and support partners – an increase from previous years.

• Customer satisfaction ratings are high, with 76% reporting 4 to 5 ratings on a 1 to 5 scale. This finding aligns with the results in the HDI Customer Satisfaction Benchmarking Study.

• Telephone and email continue to be the most widely used channels for reporting incidents. More than 70% of centers participating in the survey have average speed-to-answer (ASA) times of 30 seconds or less (approximately 1 to 6 rings). The data also suggest that email processes may be improving slightly. About 93% of incidents reported via email are resolved in three exchanges or less, an increase from 88% in 2006.

• In terms of tool and technology usage: 81% of respondents are currently using remote monitoring/support tools; 68% of them have no plans to make changes to these tools; 88% of support centers are currently using incident management software, 30% of them are planning to replace/update it; 25% of support centers are planning to add self-help tools. And, the majority of respondents have purchased, but not fully implemented the capabilities of their service management tools.

• With 32.4% adoption and 27% “planning to implement,” ITIL is the largest single framework impacting the IT support industry. However, 23% of survey respondents are not using Service Level Agreements, Operational Level Agreements or Underpinning Contracts.

• Incident management is on the rise, with more incidents to manage and the majority of support centers’ time (75%) spent on incident management. The increase is attributed to changes in infrastructure and/or products – suggesting that support center managers must constantly prepare for change within their support centers.

• IT support professional salaries have risen only slightly since 2006. Plans for support centers next year include increased hiring for 45%, and layoffs for only 5%. It is a continued concern that there will be a lack of qualified workers to fill these positions.

More...

Contact Center Quality Monitoring/Liability Recording Market to Exceed $2.3 Billion in 2007
DMG Consulting has published its 4th annual Quality Monitoring/Liability Recording Product and Market Report, an authoritative guide to developments in the contact center QM/Liability Recording and Workforce Optimization (WFO) market. DMG forecasts more than $2.3 billion in sales of QM/Liability recording and WFO products by the end of 2007, a 10% increase over 2006. This counts sales from all vendors of quality monitoring, liability recording, coaching and eLearning, performance management, workforce management, surveying and speech analytics.

According to the report, Internet Protocol (IP) was also on the upswing in 2007. Sales of IP recording grew 40% in 2007, and that number should increase to between 50% and 55% in 2008.
Sustained robust growth is being driven by migration to IP recording, valuable new applications and significant refinements to established offerings. A new generation of mid-tier vendors is entering the market, many of whom are focusing on sales to small and mid-size businesses. This segment has historically been under-penetrated, and is likely to be a growth market in 2008 and beyond.

The QM/Liability Recording Product and Market Report, one of a series of reports published by DMG annually, covers more than 45 companies and provides in-depth profiles for 14 leading firms and contenders.

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Retail Firms Ranked High in Area of Communication With Customers in 2007
The Customer Respect Group, an international research and consulting firm that focuses on how corporations treat their online customers, released findings from its Fourth Quarter 2007 Online Customer Respect Study of the Retail Industry.

The study evaluated the websites of a representative sample of major retail companies. Using a common set of criteria, it is the only study to bring an objective and consistent measure to the analysis of corporate performance from an online customer’s perspective.

The retail industry was rated best in the area of communicating with online visitors in 2007, scoring 7.0 in Responsiveness, compared to 6.5 scored by the next highest-rated industries -- financial services and telecommunications. The variety of contact methods available to retail customers was one positive factor.

Twenty-two percent of retail sites now provide online chat, compared to the all-industry average of just 12%. Also noted was the emergence of pro-active “chat,” where visitors are invited to engage in a context-sensitive dialog based on their online behavior. “click to call” prompting a telephone call directly from the retailer to the user also showed a strong upward trend as retailers look to limit site abandonment.

Other communication channels remain well supported. Sixty-five percent of e-mail inquiries to retail companies were responded to within a day, compared to 57% among all other industries studied during the year.. Eighty-three percent of inquiries received a helpful reply -- again well ahead of the average of 60%.
Moving around a site by “fast track” methods is a focus of retail sites, with 96% of retail sites containing FAQ sections, compared to 61% among all other industries, with those FAQs generally easy to locate (65% were linked from the homepage) and well structured (over 82% contained a search facility and / or anchor links). The percentage of sites containing a site search facility was again above average (96% vs. 73%).

However, the retail industry did not cater particularly well to disabled visitors and its Accessibility rating was below the all-industry average for 2007.

Another online retail trend is the increasing capability for users to make selections (70%) and see prices (72%) before registering on the site.

More...

ISVs and Customers Will Reap Tremendous Benefits from Virtual Appliances
According to a recently published Yankee Group Report, IT infrastructure and its relationship with applications has dramatically changed with the rise of Anywhere computing enabled by server virtualization. ISVs now have a new way of delivering their software through virtual appliances -- a virtual machine that consists of an application and an integrated OS. A customer-created virtual machine would normally consist of an OS such as Windows or Linux on top of an installed application. But virtual appliances also escalate the war between Windows and Linux. Open source (primarily Linux) beats proprietary (Windows) in a virtual environment.

Some of the benefits of virtual appliances for ISVs and customers are:

• Lower support costs: Supporting a myriad of customer OSs, all with different versions, patch levels, and configurations is becoming a support nightmare.
• Better quality software: By removing the variables of customer-installed and –configured operating systems, ISVs can have complete control of their software operating environment.
• Easy scalability: Virtual appliances can easily be moved to a faster machine.
• Quick deployment: Virtual appliances plug into existing virtual infrastructure and come pre-installed, pre-configured and ready to start.

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Tools To Improve First Call Resolution
First call resolution is a challenge for many contact centers. According to a June 2007 study of U.S. callers by the CFI Group, customer satisfaction with contact centers is crucial to customer loyalty, positive word of mouth and return on investment. Yet almost a fifth of all callers hang up with their issues unresolved. And of those, 68 percent are at risk of defection. What's a contact center manager to do?
Full Article...

Five Disruptive Technologies to Watch in 2008
A new year always brings changes and new challenges for IT managers, and 2008 will be no exception. While there are dozens of emerging technologies that have the potential to disrupt current standards, five that have significant opportunity to lead to major implications for enterprises in the coming year are: virtualization , the role of Apple and managing cross-platform shops, managed data centers, video over IP networks, and presence-aware applications. What all five have in common is the ability to change the course of your IT plans, rework your network infrastructure, manage your desktops, and alter the way you build and deploy your applications.
Full Article...

The 5 users you meet in hell (and one you'll find in heaven)
Ah, end users. We sure do love them. Why, most of us wouldn't have jobs without them. But that doesn't mean users don't drive IT crazy sometimes, or maybe most of the time. Just as a zookeeper cares for his monkeys one way and his rhinos another (we kid -- sort of), so too should IT tailor its responses to fit the individual styles of its end users, support managers say.
Full Article...

In-Flight Internet Access Raises Questions
Seat 17D is yapping endlessly on an Internet phone call. Seat 16F is flaming Seat 16D with expletive-laden chats. Seat 16E is too busy surfing porn sites to care. Seat 17C just wants to sleep. Welcome to the promise of the Internet at 33,000 feet - and the questions of etiquette, openness and free speech that airlines and service providers will have to grapple with as they bring Internet access to the skies in the coming months. Technology providers and airlines are already making decisions. Some will block services like Internet phone calls altogether while others will put limits and install filters on content.
Full Article...

Desktop Control- Who Really Owns the PC?
The heightened defensive awareness--or, for the cynical among us, security product push--of the past 10 years has endowed IT with progressively more authority to lock down systems. Federal and state regulations add legitimacy to initiatives like network access control and have pushed obvious security functions like least privilege into Vista. Yet vanguard business technology users are hostile to the notion of IT making unilateral decisions about what they can and cannot run on their systems. Now, no one questions who owns the PC. Clearly, businesses are obligated to protect the network and the data residing on it. But in a true question for our times, shouldn't it be possible to balance security and liberty, even on the desktop?
Full Article...

Knowledge Management Lessons Learned: What Works and What Doesn't
by Michael E. D. Koenig, T. Kanti Srikantaiah

The editorial team of Srikantaiah and Koenig follow up their groundbreaking Knowledge Management for the Information Professional (2000) with this important book. While the earlier work offered an introduction to KM, the book surveys recent applications and innovations. Through the experiences and analyses of more than 30 experts, the book demonstrates KM in practice, revealing what has been learned, what works, and what doesn’t. Practitioners describe projects undertaken by organizations at the forefront of KM, and top researchers and analysts discuss KM strategy and implementation, cost analysis, education and training, content management, communities of practice, competitive intelligence, and more.

More Info...

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