Living Large: Small Companies Yield Big Results with Web Collaboration Technology

Last year 671,800 small businesses opened, while 544,800 shuttered their doors, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. Not all of these failures were due to bankruptcy. One major culprit was travel expenses. Small business owners expected revenue to decline due to increased gas prices.

See how you can proactively react to increasing travel budgets and literally eliminate most if not all of them through web collaboration solutions.

Avaya Announces New Customer Service Capabilities
Avaya Inc., a global provider of business communications applications, systems and services, introduced two new customer service applications. Avaya is providing Internet protocol (IP) telephony software to power a unique "find the expert" feature from the new Motorola CA50 VoIP-enabled wireless scanner, which quickly helps find the best suited sales associate on the store floor when the customer is making a buying decision. It is the first such solution available in the retail industry. Avaya is also introducing Avaya Video Assistance for Retailers, which features the ability to do standard or high-definition, two-way video communication for in-store customers. Available worldwide, the solution combines Avaya IP telephony and contact center software with award-winning video collaboration capabilities from Polycom. Avaya call routing capabilities ensure that customer calls are sent to the right agent, while the two-way video provides sharp, clear images in full motion video enables clear, natural conversations.

Lyris, Inc. Deploys Angel.com’s On-Demand Call Center to Consolidate and Enhance Customer Service
Lyris, Inc. announced that it has implemented Angel.com’s Virtual Call Center solution, consolidating Lyris’ customer service operations for email marketing, Web analytics, Web content management and PPC campaign management into one company-wide system. With Angel.com, Lyris customers have more alternatives for connecting with the company – either by phone, or online via a self-service portal through which they can view the status of, and update, their own customer service cases. The integrated customer service interface automatically routes callers to the appropriate Lyris expert, according to both product family and area of expertise – making it fast and easy for Lyris customers to connect with the right service representatives and get the support they need.

Apple introduces MacBook Air -- the world’s thinnest notebook
Apple has introduced the world’s thinnest notebook: MacBook Air. It measures an unprecedented 0.16 inches at its thinnest point while its maximum height of 0.76 inches is less than the thinnest point on competing notebooks. In addition to a stunning 13.3-inch LED-backlit widescreen display, MacBook Air offers a full-size and backlit keyboard, a built-in iSight video camera for video conferencing, and a spacious trackpad with multi-touch gesture support, letting users pinch, rotate and swipe. The new notebook is powered by a 1.6 GHz or 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 4MB L2 cache, and it includes as standard features 2GB of memory, an 80GB 1.8-inch hard drive, and the latest 802.11n Wi-Fi technology and Bluetooth 2.1. Starting at just $1,799, MacBook Air begins shipping in two weeks.

Join us for a live Webinar on February 6 to hear renowned support strategist, Lisa Welsher, share 5 proven principles to help improve the performance of your support organization.

Whether you are new to support or are a seasoned professional, this event is certain to expand your knowledge and provoke new ideas.

Click Here to Reserve Your Webinar Seat.

Currently, SMBs are focusing the majority (49%) of their budgets on applications that help them run their businesses. But applications that support innovation (25%) and growth (26%) are increasingly important as well. The most strategic software investments for 2008 will be in customer management applications (18%), an investment that reflects the increased customer demand many SMBs are facing.

But, according to the report, companies are planning to focus their strategic investments in business intelligence (BI) and performance management (PM) applications in 2010.
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User-Determined Computing’ Redefines Information Technology Priorities
When making decisions about investments in information technology (IT), organizations must shift their mindset from Wall Street to Main Street in order to retain and win new customers, according to the findings of a global study of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) released by Accenture.

The survey results indicate that executive and technology leadership – under pressure from investment analysts and other Wall Street observers – are undertaking superficial improvements in their IT systems rather than making fundamental changes to meet the growing demands of users.

Users -- including consumers, business customers and, in the case of government, citizens -- are demanding more because of their ever-increasing familiarity and comfort level with technology, an emerging phenomenon that Accenture has called “user-determined computing.”

The study also indicates that the chasm between Wall Street and Main Street is wide and deep, with little evidence that companies and organizations are working to close it. At the same time, low-cost, emerging-market multinationals are establishing a completely new set of expectations around user experience, participation, mobile access and real-time responsiveness.

The study, based on detailed online self-assessments of the senior-most IT executive at nearly 300 Fortune 1000 companies in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and South America -- with combined annual revenue of $5.3 trillion -- yielded multiple findings that illustrate the depth of the chasm between Wall Street and Main Street:

• IT teams still spend 40 percent of their total time running and fixing existing systems, a number that remains essentially unchanged since Accenture conducted its last global IT study in July 2005. This is a result of many legacy systems remaining on life support for more than a decade and an unwillingness to pull the plug on outdated systems. In fact, on average more than 60 percent of all enterprise systems in the study were fully depreciated.

• On average just 22 percent of customer interactions, 19 percent of supplier interactions and 33 percent of employee interactions are conducted online and processed automatically.

• Only 11 percent of information system interfaces focus on the customer.

• Some 80 percent of organizations are failing to gather very detailed customer information and 84 percent are failing to make the information very accessible to decision makers and line staff.

• Only 35 percent of enterprises around the world are committing mobile applications to a major part of their business and only a fraction look seriously at such collaborative tools such as Wikis for their knowledge workers.

High Performers
Another survey objective was exploring how large organizations manage their IT investments and to identify the common underlying behaviors and characteristics of “high performers.” Some findings related to high performers, which Accenture defines as those that consistently outperform their peers in revenue, profit growth and total shareholder return, include:

• More than 25 percent of application interfaces run by high performers focus on the customer, as opposed to 15 percent of low and average performers. More than half of all CIOs, however, say they need to increase customers as a priority for real-time interfaces.

• IT innovation leaders are already leveraging Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) for legacy integration, and are further ahead today in building new SOA-based applications. The study found that 38 percent of high performers’ application portfolio is comprised of composite applications built using SOA, and 45 percent of new application functionalities of this group are built based on use/reuse of existing services.

• Masters in IT execution, having adopted disciplined approaches to increase standardization and centralization of their IT functions in recent years, are spending on average 19 percent less time on operations (i.e. running, fixing) than other CIOs.

• High performers have shed most of the legacy technology, as they report having the youngest application portfolios. When it comes to application migration, over two-thirds of high performers report looking for alternatives to traditional enterprise applications for their externally facing applications such as sales and marketing and customer services. In addition, over one-third of high performers will look for on-demand/Software as a Service applications for supply chain & distribution, research & development, human resources, finance and accounting.

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IDC Predicts the Number of Worldwide Mobile Workers to Reach 1 Billion by 2011
Pressure on companies to provide work/life balance programs for employees combined with advances in mobile technologies is increasing the number of mobile workers in the U.S. and around the world. By year-end 2011, IDC expects nearly 75% of the U.S. workforce will be mobile.

The current generation of workers is demanding more flexibility and mobility in their schedules. They also have a higher comfort level with technology in general, including remote access technologies and mobile devices. The proliferation of high speed networks, widespread public Wi-Fi hotspots, and fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) technology now allows employees to work effectively from almost anywhere.

In addition to meeting the demands of today's workforce, enterprises are deploying mobile solutions to meet both horizontal and vertical industry needs driven by increasing business response time as well as to help reduce corporate space (and leasing) requirements. Organizations deploying mobile solutions enjoy a strategic competitive advantage over their competitors who have not invested in integrating mobility into their cultural roadmap.

Regional comparisons indicate that the U.S. workforce has the highest percentage of mobile workers at 68% in 2006. However, Japan's penetration rates will increase the most during the forecast period with mobile workers accounting for nearly 80% of the workforce by year-end 2011, up from 53% in 2006.
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Technology Marketers Challenged to Reorganize Around Customers
Despite an increased focus on customer engagement, most B-to-B technology companies continue to fall far short of meeting customer expectations and commitments, according to the results of a major research initiative by the Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) Council. Most technology vendors badly overestimate their effectiveness in addressing customer needs, while a majority of customers feel ignored and trapped in vendor relationships that are marred by broken promises.

These are among the findings of Profitability from Customer Affinity, a new study that advocates major customer-centric changes in the way technology companies measure their marketing effectiveness. The study uncovers profound disconnects between vendors and customers and finds that IT companies risk serious customer alienation and lost business if they don’t realign their organizations around customer needs through improved co-innovation and cooperation.

Some 99 percent of customers surveyed said they would either scale back or terminate relationships with vendors who fail to build customer trust. Meanwhile, less than seven percent of customers believe their vendors are extremely well-aligned with their needs.

In fact, customers say that brand awareness and existing relationships — often thought to be leading factors in purchasing decisions — have little bearing on their decision to do business with a vendor or channel partner. Customer decisions are influenced by competence, quality service and support, and a sense of true commitment from vendors. Yet vendors continue to direct budget toward initiatives that are ineffective at building customer affinity, the study argues.
Among key findings of the new study:

• Fifty-six percent of vendors perceive themselves as being extremely customer-centric, but only 12 percent of customers agree. An overwhelming majority of vendors (85 percent) are convinced that they are getting better at responding to customer needs, but 45 percent of customers disagree.

• More than half of customers surveyed described their relationships with vendors as "dependent and captive," "struggling for common ground," or "combative and adversarial." When asked to describe their relationships with the channel, 45 percent of customers surveyed evaluated their channel relationships similarly.

• More than 30 percent of customer respondents said they would terminate relationships with companies that fail to gain their trust; 62 percent would scale back existing engagements, while 7 percent would no longer consider the vendor for future business.

• Co-innovation with customers is vital to building customer affinity. Nearly six out of 10 customers say co-innovation is extremely or very important, with another 30 percent agreeing that it is at least somewhat important. Customer responses indicated that collaborative, two-way conversations — followed by continuous improvement — build customer affinity.

• Vendors seem to understand that channel partners truly are partners in their success, and that going to market effectively with the channel is critical to maximizing their value to customers. Yet only 8 percent of vendor marketing respondents said they do an extremely good job of teaming with the channel to build stronger customer affinity.

The survey results highlight the challenge marketers face in driving organizational and cultural changes to focus the business around customers. Customers want vendors to rethink the structure of how they embrace, interact with and respond to customers. Cultivating higher customer affinity will lead to better business performance and higher profitability — if companies will pay close attention to the qualities and factors that customers care about.
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Listen Up!
The success of a voice user interface (VUI) hinges on its ability to elicit from the caller the specific responses that will enable the system to help solve a problem. While there's certainly consensus on such a fundamental principle, the conflict emerges at the skeletal level of VUI design, where three components should work in sync with one another. First are the grammars, which encompass all the possible things an end user might say. Second are the prompts, which the system says to provoke a caller response. Third is dialogue flow, which is the way the entire structure is organized. Designing a truly interactive conversation is anything but simple.
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Managing the Global Workforce
The war for talent never ends. Middle managers in China? Good luck finding them, let alone keeping them. Assembly line workers in Central Europe? They're well-educated and hard-working: Trouble is, every company wants them. The cubicle warriors of Bangalore? They get the job done—if they stick around. For corporations, managing this widely scattered, talented, restive, multicultural workforce has never been harder. This Special Report, written to coincide with the 2008 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, brings readers to the front lines of the struggle.
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KM Past and Future: Web 2.0 Kicks it up a Notch
The primary technologies that support knowledge management (KM) are well understood and widely used, but have been limited in the past by lack of flexibility. Incorporation of social networking capabilities derived from Web 2.0, however, is now enhancing those foundational solutions and adding greater interactivity into the KM environment. Those and other new capabilities are, in fact, moving KM much closer to an early vision of KM as providing free-flowing, vital information in a way that is adaptive and user-driven.
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Eight Business Technology Trends to Watch
Technology alone is rarely the key to unlocking economic value: companies create real wealth when they combine technology with new ways of doing business. This article identifies eight technology-enabled trends that will help shape businesses and the economy in coming years. These trends fall within three broad areas of business activity: managing relationships, managing capital and assets, and leveraging information in new ways.
Full Article...

The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea
by Bob Burg, John David Mann

The Go-Giver tells the story of an ambitious young man named Joe who yearns for success. Joe is a true go-getter, though sometimes he feels as if the harder and faster he works, the further away his goals seem to be. And so one day, desperate to land a key sale at the end of a bad quarter, he seeks advice from the enigmatic Pindar, a legendary consultant referred to by his many devotees simply as the Chairman.

Over the next week, Pindar introduces Joe to a series of “go-givers:” a restaurateur, a CEO, a financial adviser, a real estate broker, and the “Connector,” who brought them all together. Pindar’s friends share with Joe the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success and teach him how to open himself up to the power of giving.

Joe learns that changing his focus from getting to giving—putting others’ interests first and continually adding value to their lives—ultimately leads to unexpected returns.

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