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Is the majority of your time spent reacting to situations within your support organization instead of running an efficient and profitable department? Does being more proactive seem like an unreachable goal?

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.

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Microsoft offers $44.6B for Yahoo
Microsoft Corp. has pounced on slumping Internet icon Yahoo Inc. with an unsolicited takeover offer of $44.6 billion in its boldest bid yet to challenge Google Inc.'s dominance of the lucrative online search and advertising markets. The Justice Department says it is interested in reviewing antitrust issues associated with it. The surprise offer of $31 per share, made late Thursday and announced Friday, seizes on Yahoo's weakness while Microsoft tries to muscle up in a high-stakes battle with Google likely to define the technology landscape for years to come. In a statement Friday, Yahoo said it will "carefully and promptly" study Microsoft's bid.

Meg Whitman, eBay's Retiring Chairwoman, May Jump Into Politics
The Los Angeles Times reported that Whitman has been considering a new career in politics and has been testing the waters for a possible run for the governorship of California. After a decade running eBay and making it a resounding success, she has been approached by influential Republicans about making a run for the post, according to the newspaper. Whitman worked at Bain & Co. with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and lately is said to have become fascinated with politics while fund raising for Romney; she recently registered as a Republican and the move could clear the way for a political run. The governor's post will be up for grabs in 2010 when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger leaves the post. Whitman, who plans to leave her chairwoman's post at eBay in March, wouldn't likely have a serious problem funding a political race -- she has a net worth of $1.4 billion, accumulated during her successful stewardship of eBay. The company had less then three dozen employees when she took the helm 10 years ago; eBay now has 15,000 employees.
Source: InformationWeek

Spammers cloak scams by redirecting through Google services
Spammers are using thousands of Google accounts to camouflage their scams from antispam filters, a security researcher said today. He dubbed the practice "Spam 2.0." Rather than inserting links to the actual pages touting their products, some junk mailers are sticking in links from domains registered with Google Page Creator -- the search engine's free Web page maker -- or accounts with Google's Blogger.com service, said Dan Hubbard, vice president of security research at Websense Inc. The tactic has been used by malware makers for some time, but has only recently been adopted by spammers, said Hubbard. Websense first noticed the technique in November, but "it was only earlier this month that it showed up in numbers." Websense has been intercepting tens of thousands of such e-mails daily.
Source: ComputerWorld

Advertising Solutions Provider, Idearc Media Corp. Places Order for NICE SmartCenter Solutions
NICE Systems Ltd. announced that Idearc Media Corp., home to Superpages.com and publisher of the Verizon Yellow Pages, has placed an order to expand its NICE environment by deploying NICE SmartCenter solutions, including Adaptive Interaction Analytics, Customer Feedback and Performance Management. NICE’s Adaptive Interaction Analytics will allow Idearc Media to analyze large amounts of call data to gather business intelligence about its customers, predict behavior and drive strategic decisions and actions. The NICE Customer Feedback solution will improve surveying capabilities and link results to process and service improvements. NICE’s Performance Management solution provides strategic performance metrics in a single, consolidated view.

Red Lion Hotels Enhances Web Site With eStara Click to Chat
eStara, a provider of proactive conversion solutions for enhancing online sales and support initiatives, announced that Red Lion Hotels Corporation will integrate eStara Click to Chat in its Web sites. Red Lion currently utilizes eStara Click to Call and post-call surveys, and is adding live chat functionality to enhance customer service options to drive customer loyalty and online sales.

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.

85 Percent of CIOs Expect "Significant Change" Over Next Three Years
Eighty-five percent of chief information officers (CIOs) see significant change coming over the next three years as they look to meet rising business expectations for IT to make the difference in their enterprise strategy, according to a worldwide survey of 1,500 CIOs by Gartner Executive Programs (EXP).
The Gartner EXP CIO report Making the Difference: The 2008 CIO Agenda represents the most comprehensive examination of business priorities and CIO strategies. It encompasses more than $132 billion dollars of IT spending and the insights from more than 1,450 enterprises across 33 countries and 23 industries.

CIOs are in a strong position to lead in making the difference. CIO tenure has stabilized at an average of four years and four months, giving CIOs ample time to work with executives to transform their enterprises. In addition, more than half of CIOs report having responsibilities outside of traditional IT, reflecting their enhanced business leadership position. The most common additional responsibility is related to business process improvement.

While overall IT effectiveness continues to climb, CIOs face challenges in their people, their processes and IT performance. Only 27 percent of CIOs believe that they have the right number of skilled people to meet business needs. That is impacting both IT performance and IT's support for enterprise strategies.
Web 2.0 and social computing are on the rise according to CIOs. Half of companies increasing their investment in Web 2.0 are doing so for the first time. Social computing is rapidly becoming a way that IT can play a direct role in making the difference to the customer and the market.

Worldwide IT budgets are expected to increase by an average of 3.3 percent in 2008, up slightly from 2007. Enterprises are willing to invest in IT that delivers distinctive solutions. IT budgets at these companies are growing at a rate of 4.9 percent on average, compared with IT budgets at generic IT shops, which will rise an average of 3.1 percent.

Improving business processes was the No. 1 business priority for the fourth consecutive year. Creating new products or services (innovation) moved from being the No. 10 priority in 2007 to the No. 3 priority for 2008. Business intelligence was the No. 1 technology priority for the third year in a row.

More...

Best-in-Class Firms Increased Service Revenue Per Customer by 41%
As service ascends the corporate priority ladder, executives are not only looking to control and manage service-related costs but also to drive revenue recapture and creation opportunities from their existing customer base. In a recent research survey by Aberdeen, to further evaluate revenue generation strategies of more than 300 firms, 88% indicated that the need to develop new revenue opportunities from service was either “extremely” or “very” important. More so, more than two-thirds of all respondents, and 83% of Best-in-Class respondents, stated that they are actively engaged in new service revenue initiatives.

Of the 300+ survey respondents reporting, corporate goals of higher revenue in the face of shrinking product-based margins coupled with rising resource costs were cited as the top drivers for new revenue initiatives. As such, leading service firms were actively looking to segment their customer base to identify high value prospects and aggressively market complementary product and service offerings to these prospects. More than a third of leading firms also indicate taking steps towards the development of a sales force dedicated to service offerings.

For instance, these firms:

• Report having 60% of their customers under service contracts as compared to 31.9% for all other firms.
• Experience a 67% success rate in renewing service contracts when compared to 49% for all other firms.
• Are 54% more likely than all others to provide their service executives with visibility into contract registration, attachment and renewal rates.

More...

Top Executives Cite Competition, Global Economy, Attracting and Retaining Talent as Top Threats to their Companies’ Success
Competition, the health of the global economy and attracting and retaining the best talent top the list of threats to business success for senior executives at some of the world’s largest companies, according to a survey released by Accenture.

According to the findings, executives perceive the top five threats to business success as competition (cited by 73 percent of executives), the health of the global economy and the inability to attract and retain the best talent (67 percent each), company reputation (62 percent) and the inability to develop new products and services (51 percent).

These same issues topped the list of threats cited in a similar survey that Accenture conducted in 2005. The one issue that has increased in importance, however, is that of talent, which was cited by 60 percent of executives in 2005 and rose to 67 percent in the new survey.

Globalization is raising a number of concerns among the executives surveyed. More than half (56 percent) said they are concerned or very concerned about the impact of the global economy on business. Respondents also expressed concerns about their ability to maintain a common corporate culture (cited by 54 percent), as well as service remote customers effectively and understand local ways of doing business (52 percent each). One in five (21 percent) said their organizations are not adequately equipped to succeed as global enterprises.

More...

Supply Management Budgets to Increase 14.5% in 2008
Spending on supply management applications and services will increase 14.5% in 2008 according to a report released by AMR Research. According to “The Supply Management Spending Report 2007-2008,” companies are increasing spending to fill functionality gaps in key areas such as supply visibility, contract management, and supplier connectivity.

The study, which surveyed supply management and IT executives from 12 industries across Europe and the United States, found that increased productivity (ranked first by 29% of respondents) and profitability (27%) are the top two business priorities for supply management executives in 2008.

Additional highlights of this report include:

• U.S. budget allocations will fall mainly in hardware or application infrastructure (24%), software licensees (22%), and maintenance (22%). In Europe, allocations will go toward internal head count (22%), infrastructure (22%), and software licenses (21%).
• Within three years, a shift will occur away from ERP in most supply management areas, leaving opportunity for best-of-breed and custom applications.

More...

Escaping Groundhog Day
by Pete McGarahan, McGarahan & Associates

There is nothing worse than spending time and resources on delivering services not valued by your customers. There is also little value in delivering services that are not properly aligned with business goals and objectives or not focused on achieving any end 'business value' results. Many of us live the same day over and over, symbolically if not literally. The only way to escape our predicament is to change, if not ourselves, then at least our circumstances. This article discusses some of the most common Groundhog Day (a term that is emblematic of repetitive) situations faced by support organizations worldwide.
Full Article...

Essential Customer Care Technologies for 2008
Numerically, there is no doubt that 2008 is a leap year. Will 2008 also represent a leap in terms of how call centers implement technology? In this article, author Joe Fleischer shares his thoughts about categories of customer care technology that he believes will make this leap happen in 2008, given the expanding roles of call centers within their organizations and within the global economy. These categories are hosting and performance management.
Full Article...

Weighing Productivity and Quality to Assess Agent Performance
Contact centers today are all about empowering agents, investing in their skill development, and reducing escalating attrition. Yet most centers still overly rely upon “the old ways,” involving hard, technical metrics that emphasize speed and quantity to track and manage agent performance. Unfortunately, productivity is not all that matters to callers. Speed metrics need to be counterbalanced with quality measurements that are much harder to collect, and even harder to associate, with specific contacts.
Full Article...

8 IT Strategic Planning Mistakes to Avoid
Forrester VP and research director Alex Cullen has seen all kinds of IT plans, the very best and the very worst. And he keeps files of both. "Most of them are pretty flawed," he says. One of the worst included a history of computing from 1960 on. Avoid these mistakes to make sure your next plan doesn't end up in his bad file. .
Full Article...

IT skills: Big Names Help Youngsters Press Right Buttons
IT companies have a long history of helping and supporting young people gain access to information technology and skills. But what has changed radically over the years is the nature of this support. In the past, support was mostly about donating computer hardware ("putting boxes into classrooms or community centers"), but now, the emphasis is on providing young people with a whole range of skills covering IT, life skills, entrepreneurship and employability, to prepare them for the world of work or further education.
Full Article...

The Team Approach: With Teamwork Anything Is Possible
by Steven J. Stowell Ph.D. and Stephanie S. Mead

The book has been written in a straight forward, reader-friendly fashion and is full of examples, real experiences, metaphors, thoughts, and stories to pull you easily through and explain the core concepts of the Diamond Model of Teamwork. The Team Approach is designed more for the practitioner than the academician. In a special chapter of the book, the authors explore the unique issues and challenge that leadership teams encounter and how to work through them. So, if you are looking for specific, actionable ideas to implement in your team, you have come to the right place as the authors and their colleagues share insights from 40 years of combined study, consultation, and teaching on the subject of team development.

More Info...

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