The majority of respondents (81%) in CRMindustry.com's "2008 Trends in Customer Relationship Management (CRM)" survey are happy with the overall performance of their CRM technology vendor. The research, conducted in November - December 2007, surveyed high-level CRM executives representing a range of industries. The data gathered provides valuable insight into the issues and challenges important to those responsible for CRM in their organization.

To get a complimentary copy of the executive summary, as well as view the graphs, click here.

Oracle to buy BEA for $8.5 billion
Oracle plans to acquire middleware maker BEA Systems for $8.5 billion in cash, the company announced. Under the deal, expected to close by the middle of the year, Oracle will pay nearly $19.38 per share. That purchase price is above Oracle's initial offer of $17 a share, which BEA had soundly rejected, saying it would need $21 a share for any party to enter acquisition talks with the company.
Source: CNET

Astute Solutions Answers Demand for Enhanced Knowledge Management in the Contact Center
Astute Solutions announced expanding the RealDialog product family with the launch of RealDialog Agent Assist. The solution enables contact center agents to quickly deliver consistent, accurate, and personalized responses. It is capable of addressing issues and questions of varying degrees of complexity in a conversational manner. RealDialog Agent Assist integrates with any CRM desktop, to deliver the precise data needed from key information sources within and outside of the enterprise. Agents enter the customer's question, verbatim, and RealDialog Agent Assist responds with a specific answer, paragraph within a document, or file (sound, video, Web page, or document) to address the question.

Tele2 Uses Software AG Technology to Reduce Costs and Streamline Customer Service
Software AG, a provider of business infrastructure software, announced that Tele2 has chosen the webMethods product suite to reduce costs and improve customer service. Tele2 has implemented the webMethods product suite from Software AG to create a more adaptive and flexible IT infrastructure, which has proven critical to keeping pace with the rapid changes impacting the telecommunications sector. The webMethods product suite is a comprehensive and advanced product portfolio for Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) governance, business process management (BPM), business integration and application modernization.

Google Ramps Up Philanthropy
In one of the most widely watched efforts in corporate philanthropy in years, Google Inc. said it will dole out nearly $30 million in new grants and investments to nonprofits and a private business that are taking on do-good projects such as tapping solar power, preventing plagues and improving public services for the poor. Google's push into philanthropy is being watched closely because of its size and its effort to erase the usual boundaries between the for-profit and nonprofit worlds. Google says it isn't looking to make money on its philanthropic efforts. But, as a division of the for-profit company rather than a nonprofit offshoot, Google.org has freedom to invest in and operate businesses, lobby for political causes and issue certain types of grants that a traditional corporate foundation would not. Its announcement last Thursday includes a $10 million investment in closely held eSolar Inc., which is working on utility-scale solar power. Google.org also expects to invest directly in businesses in places such as Africa to spur job creation.
Source: WSJ

Feel like your support team is on the losing side of a Red Rover game?

The Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA) recently conducted an exhaustive study on retaining technical talent in service and support organizations. This comprehensive report defines the keys to hiring, training, engaging and retaining the best possible service and support staff.

Download the "Best Practices for Retaining Top Technical Talent", research report to discover expert recommendations for the most effective way to accomplish this goal.

Most Organizations Are Not Prepared For a Business Outage Lasting Longer Than Seven Days
Business continuity management (BCM) and disaster recovery (DR) programs are getting better, however, work still needs to be done to increase the quality and maturity of BCM/DR programs. According to a Gartner Inc. survey of 359 information security and risk management professionals from the U.S., U.K. and Canada, nearly 60 percent of organizations only plan for their longest outage to be seven days.

When planning for specific types of disaster scenarios, 77 percent of companies have a plan for a power outage or fire, and 72 percent have a plan for a natural disaster, such as a flood or hurricane. At least half the companies surveyed also have plans for IT outages, computer-virus attacks, terrorism and key service providers’ failure.

Most BCM/DR plans are for a single facility outage, and planning for regional disasters has dropped in priority during the past couple of years. Organizations are, however, taking pandemic planning warnings more seriously than in the past (29 percent in 2007 vs. 8 percent in 2005).

With the growing awareness that continuing business operations after a disaster requires a lot of planning, organizations are also realizing that the approach to best manage an incident is to have a dedicated group of people on a crisis management team. A total of 37 percent of organizations use a physical crisis command center to coordinate emergencies, such as a local hotel room or conference room. However, understanding that many disasters happen when employees are not in one place, 31 percent of companies have established a virtual command center so that traveling or off-site personnel can be included in the management of an incident.

Conducting a business impact analysis (BIA) is the most critical process in the development of a DR strategy and associated plans because it provides the business requirements used to develop the plan. Exercising (formerly called testing) on a regular basis is the second most-critical component of a BCM program. Having a plan is only a fraction of the maturity of the BCM/DR process. Knowing that the plan works during an actual emergency is key to a business's survival. A total of 28 percent of organizations reported that their last DR exercise went well and met all their service targets. However, 61 percent of survey participants reported that they had problems with the exercise, which should not give any organization a good sense of security that their DR program will meet the business recovery needs when a crisis strikes.

More...

Online Shoppers Value Convenience, Price, Product Selection
Ecommerce trade publication AuctionBytes.com has published results of its December 2007 online buying survey. Over 900 respondents participated in the survey, and they give an interesting perspective on what buyers deem important when shopping online.

Online-Buying Survey Highlights:

• The biggest advantage to online shopping was convenience, respondents said, while the biggest disadvantage was not being able to closely inspect items before purchasing them. It's not surprising to learn that 61% of respondents bought from online auction sites and 55% of them bought from Amazon, given that 83% of respondents sell online. But it's interesting to note that 50% of respondents bought from major retail sites - and 29% purchased from "mom and pop" sites. Only 3% did holiday shopping on classifieds sites.
  
• A relatively small percentage of respondents said they shopped online primarily for price (6%). Instead, most said the biggest advantages to shopping online versus going to a mall or traditional retailer was the ability to shop at their convenience (45%) and because it was easier to find what they wanted (27%).
  
• When asked which one factor was most important when deciding where to shop online, top answers were Product Selection (20%), Price (17%) and Security (17%).
  
• Many said the biggest disadvantages to shopping online was that they couldn't closely inspect the item before purchase (44%), shipping costs (17%) and risk of non-delivery of item (11%).
  
• When asked what method they employed most frequently to find items, 44% said they used search engines, and 39% said they went directly to a retail website. Only 7% used comparison shopping sites most frequently. When asked to rate various methods by how often they used them to shop online, 65% used Search Engines "frequently" and 25% "sometimes," while 18% used comparison shopping sites "frequently" and 34% "sometimes."
  
• When asked which services they used to help them find products, 90% said they used Google, followed by Yahoo (22%).
  
• Sixty-five percent of respondents "sometimes" (33%) or "frequently" (32%) use consumer reviews (such as Amazon Buyer Reviews and eBay Reviews & Guides) to help them make their buying decisions.
  
• When asked to rate their level of satisfaction with their overall online buying experience, 61% said they were "Very Satisfied," and 36% said they were "Satisfied."

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Best-in-Class Companies Improve Time to Decision, Customer Satisfaction and Employee Productivity with Operational Business Intelligence
Aberdeen revealed that Best-in-Class (BIC) companies – those performing in the top 20% of all survey respondents – have achieved several business benefits through operational BI initiatives, including management’s view to operational information, time-to-decision, customer satisfaction, and employee productivity. Sixty-three percent (63%) of Best-in-Class companies surveyed have decreased the time between actual business activity and decision-makers’ ability to take action during the past 12 months - compared to 23% of Industry Average companies, and only 6% of Laggards.

According to research presented in a new report, “Operational BI: Getting Real Time about Performance,” Best-in-Class companies have increased their customer retention rates at over four times the levels of Industry Average companies. Best-in-Class organizations showed significant performance improvements in comparison to Industry Average and Laggard companies in several areas over the previous twelve months. Best-in-Class companies achieved:

• 7% mean average decrease in time-to-information – measured as the time between business activity and delivery of information to decision-makers, over the past 12 months
• 5% mean average decrease in time-to-decision – measured as the time between business activity and decision / action taken, over the past 12 months
• 20% mean average improvement in customer satisfaction, issue resolution speed, and issue resolution accuracy in past 12 months
• 12% mean average improvement in customer retention during past 12 months
• 13% mean average improvement in system up-time / data access and availability for end-users over the past 12 months

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Nine Business Issues That Will Matter Most in 2008 and What it Means to the Technology Sector
About 38 percent of U.S. consumers are watching TV shows online, 36 percent use their cell phones as entertainment devices and 45 percent are creating online content like Web sites, music, videos and blogs for others, according to a new-media survey from Deloitte & Touche.

The "State of the Media Democracy" notes that in Deloitte's first edition of the survey just eight months earlier, 24 percent of consumers used their cell phones as entertainment devices, meaning that usage has soared 50 percent.

About 62 percent of "millennials" (consumers 13-to-24-years-old) are using their cell phones as entertainment devices, up from 46 percent in the previous study conducted February 23-March 6, 2007. And among Generation X consumers (25-to-41-year-olds), the number grew to 47 percent from 29 percent in the earlier survey.

About 20 percent of consumers said they are viewing video content on their cell phones daily or almost daily.

The percentage of consumers watching TV online jumped from the 23 percent figure reported in the previous study. Roughly 54 percent of those surveyed said they are making their own entertainment content through editing photos, videos or music, 45 percent said they are producing that content for others to see, and 32 The 2008 Presidential election. Energy costs expected to continue their upward climb in 2008. Customers demanding more environmentally-friendly products than ever before. Each are challenges and opportunities that will frame 2008, and are three of nine areas that will have dramatic impacts across multiple industry sectors in the coming year, according to a Deloitte report being released today by Deloitte & Touche USA LLP.

There were nine business issues that resonated across multiple industry sectors and could have a dramatic impact this year, including:

• Globalization
• Convergence
• Environmental Sustainability
• Rising Energy & Health Care Costs
• Transparency
• Technology Use & Integration
• The 2008 Presidential Election
• Talent Management

According to the Deloitte report, for the technology industry, companies seeking to increase revenues and market share in 2008 will need to learn how to effectively straddle the consumer and business marketplaces. Increasingly, consumer applications of technology are leading developments in the business sector – a situation that used to be reversed. Since most technology companies traditionally have been focused on either consumers or businesses, they will have to broaden their view and identify opportunities and innovations to bridge the two. They also should be alert to the threat of unknown competitors introducing a disruptive technology in this new, convergent space.

A second issue that is expected to play out in both the business and consumer arenas in 2008 is the shifting focus of technology from enabling efficiency and automation to facilitating collaboration and augmentation. The past two decades of industry growth have been driven largely by information technology (IT) applications that automate key business processes, especially those that support large enterprises. The trend is now toward IT that helps people collaborate more effectively and achieve better results through their collective skill sets. This is being evidenced by major waves of innovation around Web 2.0 technologies, social networks, shared workspaces, customer-friendly Web interfaces, and wikis (computer software that allows users to easily create, edit, and link Web pages to create collaborative Web sites).

The biggest challenge and opportunity for technology companies is to reposition their existing technologies and develop new ones to support collaboration and augmentation needs. In the enterprise marketplace, for example, a large number of companies expend significant resources on handling exceptions to standardized, automated processes. In a largely manual, workaround manner, exception handlers struggle to find others to help solve these exceptions, which generates a huge amount of wasted effort. Collaborative technologies could help companies address exceptions more efficiently and effectively and concurrently create greater visibility regarding opportunities for business innovation given emerging unmet needs. In addition, IT could enable companies to connect with numerous, specialized business partners in much more flexible and robust ways to access a broader range of expertise and enhance the potential for learning. Some technologies already exist to address these unmet needs, but there will also be an opportunity to innovate in terms of broader IT architectures to support sustained collaboration across large numbers of independent entities.

More...

Customer Service in the Web 2.0 World
Our world is changing. With over 100,000 new blogs being created each day, every individual's voice can now be heard. And with more ways to connect to one another – through the Web, the blogosphere, social networks, and virtual worlds – more people are starting to tap into the power of the online community. What does this mean for customer service organizations?
Full Article...

The Viability of Video Contact Centers
Until now, video contact centers (VCCs) have been held in check for various reasons -- to some extent because of technological shortcomings on the VCC side, but even more so because of technological barriers on the caller side. Until recently, most customers’ phones were not video-enabled, and many customers' homes and some businesses were not equipped with the bandwidth needed for video contacts to occur. Today, however, with the proliferation of broadband Internet and state-of-the-art mobile phones, most consumers have access to real-time video communications via video-enabled handsets, Web cameras, video kiosks and videophones -- whether it be at home, in the office, or in a retail store or bank lobby.
Full Article...

How to Make IT Allocations Work
Why do people impose allocations, when they invariably lead to such troubles? The reason generally cited is cost recovery. The corporation wants to associate all costs with the various business units to measure their respective contributions to profits. These allocations are not chargebacks or fees for service, where charges result directly from specific purchase decisions. Allocations are high-level formulas that distribute cost pools, and trying to make them accurate is like trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Nonetheless, to whatever degree of accuracy people wish to pay for, allocations do succeed at the accounting objective of assigning IT costs to business units. From a governance point of view, however, holding business unit leaders accountable for their bottom lines and then imposing a tax they can't control is begging for a fight.
Full Article...

Mashups: The Key to New I.T. Strategy?
Mashups allow a company to tune the way information is presented to the way the information would actually be used, and this is now recognized as the keystone to any I.T. strategy to improve productivity. Enterprises believe they have the data they need, but not where it's needed and in the right form for optimum consumption.
Full Article...

10-year, tech-support 'hold' amuses the blogosphere
Did Microsoft Corp.'s technical support call back a customer -- 10 years later? Or is it a simple hoax injected with a sense of blog-based vérité? Nobody knows, though lack of confirmation hasn't stopped the account, posted by "Bic," from zooming around the blogosphere.
Full Article...

Rapid Transformation: A 90-day Plan for Fast and Effective Change
by Behnam N. Tabrizi

Profound organizational transformation takes years and, in most cases is unsuccessful, right? Not according to change expert Behnam Tabrizi. In Rapid Transformation: A 90-Day Plan for Fast and Effective Change , Tabrizi shows you how to accomplish successful transformational change in your firm in just 90 days. Based on ten years of research into more than 500 leading companies including 3M, IBM, GE, Nissan, Apple, Bay Networks, Verisign, HP and Best Buy this book demystifies fast, effective change and lays out a clear roadmap for achieving it.

Tabrizi's 90-day transformational model comprises three main phases, each lasting 30 days. The model enables you to analyze your company's specific challenge, develop a new course of action, and carry out the plan. Moreover, you apply the model in parallel with the normal workings of your organization so you don't have to put your company on hold for the sake of the change effort.

More Info...

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