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FREE White Paper: 10 Reasons to Get Your Support Software as a Service

Providing customers with superior customer support can be a constant challenge. Taking advantage of the many benefits that the on-demand support model can provide helps to facilitate and ensure optimal performance within your organization, allowing you to provide your customers with the quality of service they demand. Discover how Software-as-a-Service can change the way your organization does business.

Reason 1: SaaS Cost Advantage
Recent history abounds with stories of big-bang CRM implementations gone awry. Numerous companies have purchased costly application suites, paid exorbitant professional services fees, and undergone months or even years of deployment - only to see their efforts fail to deliver the customer management advantage the business sought.

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Avaya Announces New Initiatives for Mid-Size Contact Center Market
Avaya Inc. announced new initiatives related to its flagship contact center solution for mid-size businesses -- Avaya Contact Center Express. Avaya, a provider of business communications applications, systems and services, acquired Agile Software NZ Limited, the developer of the Avaya Contact Center Express solution. With this agreement, Avaya gains full ownership of Avaya Contact Center Express, which will help enable the company and its partners to accelerate their growth in the mid-market space. Avaya also released Avaya Contact Center Express 4.0, the latest version of its mid-market contact center solution. This new release provides users with a host of advanced multimedia, reporting and self-service capabilities designed to enhance customer service and agent productivity for mid-size companies or divisions of large organizations.

Nexus Drives True Customer Intimacy by Exceeding Customer Satisfaction Expectations
Nexus announced that it has once again achieved Cisco Channel Customer Satisfaction Excellence. Customer Satisfaction Excellence is the highest distinction a partner can achieve within the Cisco Channel Partner Program as a result of outstanding customer satisfaction responses. This award enables customers, partners, and the Cisco sales teams to identify Nexus as one of the top performing partners in terms of customer satisfaction per the Cisco worldwide assessment process. To qualify for the Cisco Channel Partner Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Excellence recognition, certified partners must meet or exceed the CSAT Excellence target for their geographic region.

Oracle(R) WebCenter Suite and Oracle Universal Content Management Help Wind River Improve Customer Support
Wind River, a provider Device Software Optimization solutions, is using Oracle(R) WebCenter Suite, Oracle Universal Content Management, and Oracle E-Business Suite to improve customer service while helping to build valuable long-term relationships with its customers. Wind River enables its customers to personalize their support experience and receive updates regarding patches, application notes,and other relevant content.  The company plans to enhance its personalization with WebCenter Suite's Enterprise 2.0 features and is evaluating the use of RSS feeds, discussion threads and user-driven recommendations.

EMC Announces Acquisition of Configuresoft
EMC Corporation, a provider of information infrastructure solutions, announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Configuresoft, Inc. -- a provider of server configuration, change and compliance management software. Today's announcement extends EMC's powerful solutions for managing the entire IT information infrastructure across storage, networks, servers, and applications -- enabling customers to automate visibility and control across physical and virtual data centers.

How to Migrate Customers to Paid Support
Boston, June 26

If you're still giving away tech support, it's time to make a change.

This one-day workshop, produced by the Association of Support Professionals (ASP), will give you a detailed roadmap for turning post-sale support and services into a true profit center. Topics include how to reduce service delivery costs, design flexible maintenance plans and add-on services, reduce price resistance, identify customer pain points, and generate internal buy-in.

Registration, $475.
https://www.asp-secure.com/workshop.html

Five Questions the CIO Should Ask to Ensure That Enterprise Architecture Is Delivering Business Value
In the current economic climate, an effective enterprise architecture (EA) program is a necessity, not a luxury, so Gartner, Inc. has identified five questions that will help CIOs ensure that their EA initiative is on track to deliver business value. Gartner defines EA as the process of translating business vision and strategy into effective enterprise change. A business-driven EA plan will help identify cost optimization opportunities and ensure a rational approach to investment by balancing the needs of today with tomorrow's growth opportunities.

Gartner has devised five key questions that the CIO can ask to ensure that the EA program is on track.

Is the value proposition of the EA initiative specific to the enterprise and articulated in business terms? Business leaders are interested in achieving the business goals that are defined for the company, and it is the architect's ability to express how the architecture will contribute to these efforts that will make the difference between support for the architecture and tolerance (or indeed, indifference). A corollary to this question is, "Is it written down?" Too often, chief architects rely on the idea that the value proposition is well understood to the enterprise, forgetting that anything that is not made explicit is open to interpretation by different stakeholders.

Has the value proposition been refocused as enterprise priorities have changed? Clearly, the current climate of economic uncertainty has changed business priorities. It is important not to forget that EA is an iterative process. The EA team should re-evaluate its priorities periodically as part of that process. Not every enterprise is drastically cutting expenses because it's the only way to survive. Some are using the current environment to expand into new markets. EA teams should take the opportunity to refine their value propositions to reflect the current business priorities and to publicly reaffirm their commitment to achieving business goals to demonstrate that it is in tune with this business overall.

Do the architects emphasize the value of the process rather than the value of the deliverables? In many organizations, there is an inappropriate focus by the architecture team on the production of "artifacts" rather than the facilitative process of EA. Instead, the focus needs to be on enabling enterprise change -- EA is the process that articulates strategic drivers for change, defines vision of the future state to support those strategic drivers, and provides the road map for achieving the future state and creative constraints that should be followed when executing on the road map. This should be a collaborative process, facilitated by the architects, with the real benefit to the enterprise coming from going through the process and not in any particular work that is produced.

Are performance metrics being used, and are they business-focused? In an attempt to measure the value of EA, organizations often mistakenly resort to metrics that are focused on the EA team and outputs or technical results. Often a company will measure conformance to the architecture, such as the number of waivers granted or the percentage of projects that undergo architectural review. However, Gartner maintains that measures of architectural effectiveness are no substitute for measuring business value. If the EA initiative is not delivering the business results that the enterprise needs, something will have to change. Appropriate measures might instead include improved time to market for new products or reduced costs as a percentage of revenue.

Is effective governance in place to ensure that the architecture vision is being realized? Governance and architecture go hand in hand. EA identifies high-priority business changes, and governance ensures these changes are funded and occur. If architecture guidance is not implemented, then EA deliverables count for little more than books gathering dust on the shelf. To achieve true value, the processes for using the architecture to make investment and implementation decisions must be developed at the same time that the process for creating and maintaining the architecture is defined.

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2009 Ethics & Workplace Survey Examines the Reputational Risk Implications of Social Networks
According to the third annual Deloitte LLP Ethics & Workplace survey, 60 percent of business executives believe they have a right to know how employees portray themselves and their organizations in online social networks. However, employees disagree, as more than half (53 percent) say their social networking pages are not an employer's concern. This fact is especially true among younger workers, with 63 percent of 18 - 34 year old respondents stating employers have no business monitoring their online activity.

That said, employees appear to have a clear understanding of the risks involved in using online social networks, as 74 percent of respondents believe they make it easier to damage a company's reputation.

A mere 17 percent of executives surveyed say they have programs in place to monitor and mitigate the possible reputational risks related to the use of social networks. Additionally, while less than a quarter have formal policies on the medium's use among their people, nearly half (49 percent) of employees indicate defined guidelines will not change their behavior online.

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The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index Increases Sharply
Consumers' overall assessment of current-day conditions improved again. Those claiming business conditions are "good" increased to 8.7 percent from 7.9 percent. However, those claiming conditions are "bad" increased to 45.3 percent from 44.9 percent. Consumers' appraisal of the job market was also more favorable. Those claiming jobs are "hard to get" decreased to 44.7 percent from 46.6 percent in April. Those saying jobs are "plentiful" edged up to 5.7 percent from 4.9 percent.

Consumers' short-term outlook improved significantly in May. Those expecting business conditions will improve over the next six months increased to 23.1 percent from 15.7 percent, while those anticipating conditions will worsen declined to 17.8 percent from 24.4 percent in April.

The employment outlook was also less pessimistic. The percentage of consumers expecting more jobs in the months ahead increased to 20.0 percent from 14.2 percent, while those anticipating fewer jobs decreased to 25.2 percent from 32.5 percent. The proportion of consumers anticipating an increase in their incomes edged up to 10.2 percent from 8.3 percent.

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The Global CIO 50: IT Leaders Changing the Business World
CIOs are being asked to drive business change while at the same time many are trying to replace old and inflexible infrastructures with modern and flexible ones. They're being given responsibility for establishing global standards in applications and related processes, but sometimes without the organizational authority to enforce those new standards. And across the globe, CIOs are fighting the stubborn perception that IT in general and CIOs and their teams in particular are cost centers rather than creators of value and accelerators of innovation. In this best-of-times, worst-of-times scenario, CIOs can find enormous value in seeing how their peers around the world are dealing with these difficult and urgent imperatives.
Full Article...

Dawn of the Service Catalog
IT service catalogs set common expectations for both the IT organization and users. They also help define service-level agreements based on different customers and services, and define operational-level agreements between internal and external providers. The catalog approach can make IT support groups more responsive, because the support crew must meet the agreed-on time frames defined in the catalog. Finally, an effective IT service catalog can drive the definition of configuration items for a configuration management database (CMDB) project.  But there are risks as well.
Full Article...

Reaching Deeper for Savings
You've outsourced, you've consolidated data centers, you've decided that the usual three-year PC refresh cycle can be stretched to four years. All well and good, but what else can you do? Although IT departments continue to apply proven cost-cutting approaches, here are seven relatively new and innovative techniques that CIOs are using to shrink their tech-related spending.
Full Article...

Cross-Selling and Upselling: Translating Sales into Service
Making a successful service-to-sales transition requires cultural and process changes -- from hiring the right agents to providing effective training and offering motivating rewards. As more and more contact centers add cross-selling and upselling to their service and support missions to generate revenue, they are finding that selling is a valuable way to learn more about their customers and to actually increase customer satisfaction.
Full Article...

Personal Branding: 8 Tips That Will Help You Stand Out
From packaging yourself to building alliances with organizations that will extend and enhance your personal brand, here are eight tips for distinguishing yourself from your peers, whether you're on the job or searching for a new one.
Full Article...

How to Tell Anyone Anything: Breakthrough Techniques for Handling Difficult Conversations at Work
by Richard S. Gallagher

No one likes to be criticized. But when feedback is necessary -- whether it's with a boss, someone we manage, or another co-worker -- it takes great communication skills to successfully get the message across with feelings and relationships intact.

Drawing from the latest in psychology on how best to connect with others, How to Tell Anyone Anything steers readers away from the common mistake of focusing on what's wrong, and shows them instead how to provide clear, constructive, positive messages that create real behavior and performance change. Complete with illuminating examples and a unique step-by-step process, the book gives readers powerful insight into how we all react naturally to criticism -- and how to transform interactions that might become verbal tugs-of-war into collaborative, problem-solving sessions.

Click here for more information on this book.

SupportIndustry.com Research Results --The Distributed Workplace: The Challenges of Support
To determine the specific challenges IT service desks face in supporting distributed and mobile workforces, Supportindustry.com conducted a survey in November 2008 targeting support executives. The survey, sponsored by SupportSoft Inc., was designed to explore the increasing pressures faced by support organizations as they attempt to serve employees operating outside traditional, centralized work environments. It examines technologies and processes organizations have put in place to provide remote support, and the kinds of IT problems remote and mobile workers are experiencing.
Get your free copy of the survey results today!

Visit the SupportIndustry.com Blog
The SupportIndustry.com Blog is another way stay on top of the service and support industry. Our blog, updated at least once a week, is dedicated to covering the latest topics related to service and support, call center management, customer experience management, web-based support, help desks, workforce optimization and more.
Check it out today

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