You're Invited to SupportIndustry.com's Featured Webinar!

Topic: Winning the Battle of Expectations vs. Reality in today's service desk
Date: Thursday, March 27
Time: 11 AM PT / 2 PM ET
Speakers: Pete McGarahan, McGarahan and Associates
Stephen Fenter, Director, Best Practices, SupportSoft

This webinar, conducted by SupportIndustry.com and presented by industry experts Pete McGarahan and Stephen Fenter, Director, Best Practices, SupportSoft, provides you with an insider's view of what is happening in the Service Desk today. Attendees will learn how implementing best practices and taking advantage of the latest support technologies can increase productivity and improve the performance of the Service Desk.

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CommVault Rolls Out Internal Global Call Center Solution with Help from Dimension Data
Dimension Data, an IT solutions and services provider, announced that it is working with CommVault, a provider of data and information management software, to enhance and expand CommVault's Cisco IP Contact Center (IPCC) solution. Dimension Data extended CommVault's global reach by integrating its three support centers in Oceanport, N.J.; Oberhausen, Germany; and Hyderabad, India into a virtual call center. Dimension Data is also enabling CommVault to extend its global IP telephony deployment to more than 900 phones throughout the company.

KnoahSoft Introduces Recorder 1.6: A Highly Scalable, Call Recording and Screen Capture Solutions
KnoahSoft, a provider of web-based VoIP and contact center solutions, announced the general availability of KnoahSoft Recorder 1.6, a flexible and scalable recording solution designed to help businesses of all sizes meet their recording needs regardless of how their VOIP architecture is defined. KnoahSoft Recorder supports the full spectrum of deployment options including centralized, branch or remote (e.g. at home) architectures and in any combination. It can handle over 300 simultaneous conversations on a single server and over 500 using our unique, “delayed recording” option. Recorder 1.6 has low storage requirements and offers a variety of CTI driven recording options including: 100% recording, event-driven, on-demand and random recording for both Inbound and Outbound call centers and includes simultaneous voice and screen capture (including email, chat, and BPO transactions).

KANA Embeds IBM Open Technology to Deliver Next-Generation Customer Service Solutions
KANA Software and IBM announced that the two companies are significantly expanding their Global Strategic Alliance agreement. KANA and IBM will jointly market, sell and support Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)-based customer service solutions built on open technologies from both companies. As part of the news, KANA has also signed a new original equipment management agreement (OEM) to capture a larger piece of the growing customer service and support segment of the customer relationship management (CRM) market. KANA will embed IBM middleware including WebSphere and DB2 in its enterprise customer service solutions. The agreement will enable clients to transform their service operations and resolve customer inquiries taking advantage of IBM’s SOA and Information on Demand (IOD) capabilities to share data across multiple applications quickly and seamlessly across all channels including call center, web, e-mail, chat, kiosk, agent and branch.

Services Industry Summit -- eService Strategies and Challenges
April 21-23, 2008

Join us for the Services Industry Summit -- eService Strategies and Challenges, April 21-23, 2008 in historic Charleston, SC. Industry luminaries from leading organizations will share their insights and discuss the latest issues and trends in the areas of eservices, knowledge management and others!

Register today!

In the U.S., 40% of CIOs from 100 enterprises overwhelmingly cited grass roots initiatives as the primary driver in their decision to evaluate and adopt an ITIL framework. The study showed that
U.S. CIOs report business department initiatives as a secondary driver (20%) and regulatory compliance requirements as a third key driver (16%). In addition, U.S. CIOs were twice as likely
as their EMEA counterparts to cite compliance as a strong motivator to evaluate and adopt IT
Service Management, while only 5% of their APAC counterparts cited compliance as a motivator.

The survey shows increasing recognition for ITSM’s potential to align IT more tightly with the business’ strategic objectives, provide additional resources for innovation through more efficient dealing with routine tasks and facilitate communication by providing a common language.

When asked what the primary inhibitors are to the adoption of ITIL/ITSM best practices, U.S.

CIOs overwhelmingly said that the costs associated with implementation – as well as the lack of resources to assess implementation readiness, training costs and certification – were principal obstacles. Based on worldwide responses, these restrictions were most keenly felt by U.S. CIOs compared to their EMEA and APAC counterparts.

Other statistics from the report showcase the differences and similarities of CIOs across the globe:

• 30% of U.S. and APAC CIOs report a close link between innovation and IT efficiencies, while less than 20% of CIOs in EMEA believed that to be true. More than 20% of EMEA CIOs cited innovation as the best way to facilitate the alignment between IT and business departments.

• In the U.S. and APAC, 30% of CIOs believe real business value is derived from ITIL when an organization develops an actionable roadmap for continuous process improvement based on ITIL best practices. In EMEA, 30% of CIOs queried are satisfied with the framework but need more explicit indicators or successes.

• More than 50% of U.S. and EMEA-based CIOs believe that in order to retain strategic ownership and focus, IT must align to business and focus on key strategic needs of the organization.

Regional variations aside, the Dimension Data study confirms that CIOs around the globe demonstrate a growing recognition of the potential ITSM best practices (particularly ITIL) have to get IT functioning like a well-oiled machine and deliver real business benefits. However, some CIOs cite challenges with implementing ITIL due to the fact that much is open to interpretation, and often first-time ITIL implementations fall short. ITIL describes what best practices are, but doesn’t describe how to implement processes. CIOs in the U.S. are most comfortable undertaking ITIL initiatives when the result is an actionable roadmap based on ITIL suggestions.
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Tech Support Salary Survey shows "dramatic upturn" in pay levels
Tech support salaries rose significantly across the board during 2007, according to the latest annual salary survey conducted by the Association of Support Professionals (ASP). The ASP's 13th annual Technical Support Salary Survey, which reflects compensation data supplied by 148 participating support organizations, found double-digit pay gains in five of the seven job categories that the survey tracks, with 8%-9% raises for two other groups.

The report shows pay levels for seven major job categories, including
senior support executives, department managers, analyst/project managers, senior support technicians, field support technicians, support technicians, and customer service reps.

The upturn in salary pay reflects several converging trends in the support and services world, the report notes. These include a tight employment market, customer pressure for higher-quality support, greater employee productivity, lower employee turnover, and less hiring of lower-paid entry- level staff. For more information, visit the ASP Web site at http://www.asponline.com.

Emerging Technologies Will Marginalize IT's Role in Business Intelligence
By 2012, emerging technologies will make it easier to build and consume analytical applications lessening IT’s role in building these applications, according to Gartner, Inc.

Much of the innovation in the BI space will come from emerging technologies that will make it easier for users to build and consume their own reports and analytical applications. In particular, five technologies -- interactive visualization, in-memory analytics, search integrated with BI, software as a service (SaaS) and service-oriented architecture (SOA) -- will help drive mainstream BI adoption.

Interactive visualization will be quickly accepted during the next two years as a common front end to analytical application, driven by the ubiquity of rich Internet applications. This technology trend will make reports and analytic applications easier and more fun to use. With its attractive display, it should be more widely adopted by users who aren't accustomed to the grid style of analysis and reporting offered by relational databases and spreadsheets. By definition, interactive visualization enables users to perform typical BI tasks, such as data filters, drill down and pivots, with little training by interacting with the visual, such as clicking on a pie wedge, or circling the dots on a scatter plot.

Because BI explores huge amounts of data, it has traditionally relied on IT to build aggregate and summary tables to optimize performance on disc-based data storage. This requirement to build a performance layer impeded self-service BI. Falling memory prices and the prevalence of 64-bit computing is making in memory analytics a more attractive alternative. With this approach, business users no longer require IT to build a performance layer.

Many BI systems hold thousands of reports in a complex hierarchical structure. Users find it easier to find reports with search technologies backed by sophisticated relevance rankings instead of a folder navigation structure. Search will make it easier for users to find data for ad hoc queries although it will not help with related tasks such as formatting reports consistently.

Smaller companies that lack the base of investments in BI systems will increasingly turn to service companies to deliver services that integrate, analyze and report on data from numerous systems. Wider adoption of SaaS business models will make analytical applications more widely used, particularly among midsize companies. However, even large companies with full BI and data warehouse teams will embrace the SaaS model for some aspects of BI. The best example today is in Web site analytics, where business users — typically in marketing — can access very sophisticated reports and analytic applications of Web site activity with virtually no need for IT by leveraging a software as a service provider. The increasing trend toward business process outsourcing and cloud computing will only accelerate this trend, enabling the delivery of BI-related information and analysis for particular subject area domains via the SaaS model.
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Presidential Campaigns Show Businesses How to Tap Social Networking and New Media Tactics
The 2008 presidential campaign serves as the harbinger of change in marketing strategies and the use of new media, as well as understanding how social networking can be adapted for building, marketing and in some cases, defending a brand, according to a new paper from Deloitte Consulting LLP. While businesses may sometimes be ahead of politicians in using new media, the velocity of the presidential campaigns forces politicians into much more aggressive experimentation and adoption.

Deloitte offers the following insights for companies to consider based on the campaign to date:

• You've lost control of the message. Your carefully crafted commercials, news releases, and websites are fair game for revisionists. Engage these new media influencers by categorizing their blogs, social networking sites and chat rooms as advocates, neutrals or hostiles. Nurture advocates with useful information while taking action to move neutrals in a positive direction. Consider creating your own revisionist acts. Creativity counts and can win points.

• For better or worse, YouTube is egalitarian. No matter how much you spend on production, there’s no guarantee your YouTube ad will be any more popular than other videos that address your brand. Slick and professional are not the hallmark of most popular YouTube videos. Before using YouTube as an advertising medium directly, consider if someone else is already doing a more effective and catchy job already.

• Facebook provides many plausible functions for markets, none of which is clearly dominant yet. Facebook recently announced that it strategically wants to be viewed as an application platform, not just a social networking site. While all of the campaigns have created a basic Facebook presence – not all that different from creating a simple web page or MySpace site, it’s expected that some campaigns will build custom applications to extend functionality, likely to build networks and mobilize communities. Facebook has also rolled out advertising functionality that allows precision in the types of ads targeted to specific segments.

• Brand terrorism may be right around the corner. For many businesses it is not a matter of whether, but a matter of when. Consider your vulnerabilities now. Re-think and update your crisis management plan quarterly. Identify the required participants and how they will be contacted in an emergency. Include a plan for how to leverage partners and affiliates in your response. Regardless of attack source – new media or old, new media will be part of the response. Think “Swift Boats” on steroids.

• Not responding is no longer an option. Attacks can not be ignored. From Dukakis’ response to “Willy Horton” to John Kerry’s delayed counter-attack from “Swift Boats,” the campaigns have shown what happens when they are either slow to respond or fail to retaliate at all – the attacker wins the day. New media such as social networking and blogs have greatly expanded the sources of threats and the speed at which attacks spread.

• Your media plan may need shredding. Picture yourself watching an online video of your passengers stranded on a tarmac or your CEO portrayed as Big Brother on YouTube. Create a media plan with an appropriate blend of traditional and new media, and then build in flexibility so you can scrap it and shift spending as needed. Remember that brand damaging information moves faster than good news.

• Your organizational structure may be an impediment. Upend a monolithic marketing organization and replace it with smaller units to enhance market-sensing capabilities and nurture instincts. Create the ability to act and react faster. Re-define the notion of "smart hires" based on the new structure, and build teams that balance mature experience with youthful new-media instincts to achieve depth and significantly improve results.

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The Seven Deadly Sins of IT Recruiting
As a CIO, you need a solid IT team to help you realize your strategic goals, make you look good in front of your peers, and allow you to focus on the most strategic elements of your job. Without a good team in place, especially at the leadership level, you will have a tough time moving up in the organization. However, creating a first-class information technology team means knowing how to avoid the top seven recruiting mistakes.
Full Article...

Performing to the Estimate: Managing and Monitoring Software Development
A software estimate is more than just a projection. It is a commitment to deliver a product within a defined budget and schedule. In order to meet that commitment, it is important for managers to recognize and evaluate the processes, tools and personnel skills that affect software productivity and be prepared to take action when it falls below a predefined threshold.
Full Article...

17 Tips For Getting Bloggers To Write About You
One of the best ways to get publicity and generate buzz is to get bloggers to write about what you're doing. Boing Boing co-author Cory Doctorow provides some tips on making it easy for bloggers to point to you.
Full Article...

Blindsided! Career Disasters IT Pros Never Saw Coming
Caution: Watch for backstabbers, career breakers and emerging megatrends. That warning should come with each IT job, but it doesn't. As a result, most IT professionals have stories about the ones they never saw coming. A few of them shared their tales in hopes of saving you from experiencing the sudden jolt of your career hitting a wall, the view from behind as a megatrend streaks away or the sickening thud of an unexpected hit from your blind side.
Full Article...

One Night at the Call Center: A Novel
by Chetan Bhagat (Author)

Business has been lagging lately at Connections, the Delhi call center for a large U.S. computer and appliance company. Twenty-six-year-old agent Shyam, known to his American callers as "Sam," is less concerned about his career than his breakup with coworker Priyanka. (She recently consented to an arranged marriage with a wealthy Indian expat.) Sam's other twentysomething colleagues have troubles of their own: aspiring model Esha takes desperate measures to secure gigs; Radhika suffers humiliation at the hands of an unfaithful spouse; and Varun, aka Vroom, drives at dangerous speeds to cope with personal and professional distress. The bane of the staff's existence is their jargon-spewing boss, Bakshi, who blithely assumes credit for his employees' work. One particularly tense evening (which happens to be Thanksgiving Day in the U.S.), the Connections staff take a break from the office--and receive a life-altering call. Bhagat, an investment banker based in Hong Kong, renders engaging characters and a provocative premise.

More Info...

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