IBM Technology to Protect Customer Data in the Call Center Industry
Researchers at IBM's India Research Laboratory have developed advanced data masking technology that helps call centers protect critical data without disrupting customer service or business operations. As IBM continuously seeks new methods to ensure privacy and security, the company intends to utilize this capability in its own call center operations to further protect information for its services clients around the world. Designed to help dramatically improve call centers, this sophisticated IBM technology detects and masks private and sensitive information collected from audio recordings of conversations between call center agents and customers. Previously, there was no known technology which provided this functionality.

Talisma Enters Partnership with Denodo for Enterprise Data Mashups
Talisma Corporation, a Customer Interaction Management (CIM) software solution provider, and Denodo Technologies, a provider of Enterprise Data Mashup software, announced a partnership to provide a unified solution that integrates information in real-time to support customers in a more intuitive environment. The Denodo Enterprise Data Mashup platform enables Talisma clients to quickly and easily access and combine structured, unstructured, and Web data.  Denodo’s sophisticated platform is able to overcome the complexity of combining data being spread across disparate data silos within and outside the enterprise and deliver it with high volume transaction speed.  With the partnership, all relevant information about the customer will be available at the agents’ finger tips providing a better experience for customers and a more efficient agent experience. 

LiveTime releases new ITIL Service Desk virtual appliance for Sun xVM and VMware
LiveTime Software, a provider of ITIL certified Service Management and Help Desk Software,  has released version 2.0 of its highly integrated virtual appliance consisting of its Java technology based JeOS (Just Enough Operating System) and ITIL Service Management software. With support for both Sun xVM and VMware, LiveTime leverages the power of both virtualization architectures at both the desktop and server levels. LiveTime's virtual appliance includes built-in debugging, configuration and management utilities. Simple guided menus provide easy access to networking, upgrades and general system utilities.

2008 Service & Support Metrics Survey Results

Supportindustry.com has announced the release of a free white paper outlining the results of the 2008 Service & Support Metrics Survey. This annual survey explores the state of enterprise service and support -- current industry trends, future plans, technology adoption, workforce issues, benchmarking strategies, metrics and other areas.

Get your free copy of the survey results today!

IT spending slips, virtualization rises
Goldman Sachs has bad news for most of the IT economy: IT spending will slip from 7 percent growth to 5 percent growth in 2008. While not yet recessionary, the outlook is dipping dangerously close to that.

Expectations of budget growth remain down significantly on a year-over-year basis, with many CIOs limiting their purchases to projects with a high and fast ROI. We continue to believe that 2008 IT spending will decelerate to 5 percent from 7 percent in 2007. Demand for discretionary IT projects dropped to its lowest point in the history of the survey, with caution beginning to spread to the offshore providers.

CIOs have emphasized to us that they are buying on a need versus want basis, are often downsizing deals to fit with current budget constraints. In fact, contrary to general tightening in spending, purchases with an especially compelling ROI are being accelerated in the current environment.

But not everyone is going to get pummeled. In terms of spending priorities for 2008-09, server virtualization and server consolidation were ranked No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, with cost cutting hitting No. 3 and grid computing and on-demand computing rounding out the very bottom of the list.

On the cost-cutting front, drilling into the data yields an important metric: 10 percent of respondents are going beyond trying to slim down licensing costs to cut software maintenance. Given that more and more revenue for Oracle and others is from maintenance, this is cause for alarm.

Several categories of IT spending - ERP software and database software, most particularly - have slipped in priority since Goldman Sachs' report in 2007. Microsoft's Vista spending? It remains in the gutter. Source: CNET
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Worldwide Customer Relationship Management Market Grew 23 Percent in 2007
Worldwide customer relationship management (CRM) software revenue totaled $8.1 billion in 2007, a 23.1 percent increase from 2006 revenue of $6.6 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. SAP was the No. 1 vendor in worldwide CRM software revenue in 2007, accounting for 25.4 percent of the market. Oracle maintained the No.2 spot with 16.3 percent of the market. SalesForce.com and Microsoft registered the highest growth rates of the top vendors with 49.8 percent and 88.6 percent growth, respectively.

SaaS continued to drive the market forward, representing more than 15 percent of total CRM software market revenue in 2007. Growth in SaaS resulted from gains by SaaS pure plays, traditional on-premises vendors offering on-demand solutions and vendors transitioning their installed base from on-premise to on-demand. Though the sales segment still represents the largest contributor to SaaS revenue, demand is increasing for marketing automation and customer service and support solutions. Vendors that offer both on-demand and on-premise solutions are acquiring new customers and shifting their customer bases and revenue models to a greater proportion of SaaS in response to market demand.

The CRM market remains highly concentrated in Western economies, with emerging markets accounting for only about 15 percent of the market. In 2007, over 53 percent of the CRM market was concentrated in North America, and Western Europe garnered 32 percent of the market. However, growth rates in emerging markets surged in 2007 with the Middle East and Africa region and Eastern Europe both exceeding 40 percent growth. Growth in Latin America is beginning to accelerate, and Asia/Pacific is providing growth prospects for an increasing number of vendors as the CRM market expands into Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Vietnam and South Korea. Australia continues to be the largest market in Asia/Pacific, but China and India represent significant longer-term market opportunities.
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2008 Salaries Flat - IT Professionals Fall Behind
IT departments, with the exception of those that serve the housing and credit sectors, have been so far immune to the effects of the economic slowdown. But new data suggests techies are feeling the squeeze.

IT compensation remained flat in the first two quarters of 2008. Staff-level IT professionals at large enterprises saw only a .12 percent increase in their median compensation between June 2007 and June 2008, according to the survey, while in midsize enterprises, salaries grew only slightly more, by .49 percent.

The summary findings in Janco Mid Year 2008 IT Salary Survey are:

• Hiring demand is now the lowest it has been since 2004. Many enterprises have stopped hiring except for key replacements and those positions are being replaced at lower salary levels.

• In the last twelve (12) months the increases in compensation for most IT Professionals were lower than increases in the cost of living.

• Enterprises have slowed down and in many cases eliminated discretionary spending by IT. This has resulted in fewer projects being initiated, consultants use being reduced (if not eliminated), and a slow-down of initiatives that had already been approved.

• The mean increase in compensation for CIO's was less that 1.5%. The mean compensation for CIOs in large enterprises now is $179,823 and $171,755 for CIOs in mid-sized enterprises. (Large enterprises have over $500 million in revenue and mid-sized have are $100 to $499 million in revenue).

• The mean compensation (which includes bonuses) for all Executive IT positions surveyed now is $144,645 in large enterprises and $131,763 in mid-sized enterprises.

• Positions that were in high demand in the 4th quarter of 2007 such as CSOs and others to develop new Web 2.0 applications are now back to normal hiring patterns.

• Administrative positions in some IT functions are now being looked at as those that are expendable

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Canadians say customer service makes or breaks a relationship
Canadians demand good customer service. In fact, according to the second annual TD Canada Trust Customer Loyalty Poll, customer service is so important that 95% of Canadians say their experiences can make or break a relationship with a particular brand or company. This number is up 10% from last year's survey, showing that Canadians are even more serious about the importance of customer service.

Businesses are constantly looking for new ways to show customers that they care: they may offer rewards/loyalty programs or even gifts. Though many appreciate the perks, the bottom line is that Canadians just want to be treated well. In fact, when asked which form of appreciation they are most interested in, 49% ranked "just good customer service" as number one. Rewards/loyalty programs and gifts followed (18% and 17% respectively).

Why Social Computing Aids Knowledge Management
Those dealing with knowledge management (KM) have always faced the challenge of getting information out of people's heads and into a database. Social computing tools seem like a good way to help, since they encourage people to share their knowledge with others, and that expertise can be easily captured. In fact, social computing represents a third wave for KM: the set of tools and processes companies use to create, track and share intellectual assets.
Full Article...

Customers Fire A Few Shots At Cloud Computing
It's a variation on the old straw man argument, whereby a vendor defines its customers' main concerns about a product, technology, or technology model and then proceeds to explain them away one by one. When it comes to cloud computing, the next great information technology movement, the leading vendors express customer concerns along these lines: Is it secure enough? Is it reliable enough? Does it make financial sense? Potential customers are indeed grappling with those issues, but they have so many more questions about cloud computing.
Full Article...

Display Technologies Feed Information to the Call Center
Along with the humble headset and the unassuming ergonomic chair, a call center's message board may be the next most critical but often underappreciated piece of equipment. Large reader boards have been used in call centers for decades to collect data from the ACD and display the information to keep call center employees and managers apprised, at a glance, of whether they were "on" or "off" at any given moment. Today, display technologies, as the umbrella term goes nowadays, are responsible for keeping track of a host of call center statistics from an array of data sources: not only the ACD, but from IP contact center platforms, workforce management systems and scheduling software, CRM systems, call recording solutions and more.
Full Article...

The future of e-paper: The Kindle is only the beginning
Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle has turned a long underperforming category of tech gadget -- e-book readers -- into an overnight hit, and in the process has boosted interest in electronic paper display (EPD) technology. The Kindle and its rival, the Sony Reader 505, both boast e-paper displays that look unnervingly like printed pages and consume next to no power. However, today's EPDs -- and today's e-book readers -- are only the beginning.
Full Article...

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School
by John Medina

Most of us have no idea what's really going on inside our heads. Yet brain scientists have uncovered details every business leader, parent, and teacher should know--such as the brain's need for physical activity to work at its best.

How do we learn? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains? Why is multi-tasking a myth? Why is it so easy to forget--and so important to repeat new information? Is it true that men and women have different brains?

In Brain Rules, molecular biologist Dr. John Medina shares his lifelong interest in how the brain sciences might influence the way we teach our children and the way we work. In each chapter, he describes a brain rule--what scientists know for sure about how our brains work--and then offers transformative ideas for our daily lives.

Download now!

Since a business's Web site is the first place many customers go today when they're in need of service, it's imperative that what they find there -- the search tools, the breadth and depth of content, easy escalation paths, the tools that aid in speedy resolution -- meets their needs. Each visit presents the business with the opportunity to impress and influence existing and potential customers.

Find out more! This informative white paper from SupportIndustry.com examines the latest trends and technologies in using Web-based support tools to improve customer service.
Click Here to Download...

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