Autonomy Enables Apple(R) iPhone(TM) for Business Process Management
Autonomy Corporation, a provider of infrastructure software for the enterprise, announced that its business process management and intelligent electronic forms solutions provide support for corporate users of the Apple(R) iPhone(TM). This marks the latest addition to the company's extensive list of user-facing mediums for securely collecting, presenting and automating information related to business processes based on the meaning of the content, including HTML, PDF, BlackBerry and paper-based forms and documents. Autonomy delivers seamless integration with the Apple iPhone, providing advanced capabilities including fully auditable and secure digital signatures, approval workflow, information collection, business activity monitoring, analytics and collaboration to global enterprises.

KnoahSoft Announces Availability of Harmony Suite 2.0
KnoahSoft, Inc., a provider of call recording, quality and performance management software for contact centers, announced the general availability of their Harmony Suite 2.0, a comprehensive and tightly integrated set of web-based modules for recording, quality evaluation, surveying, coaching, training, performance management and analytics.

Sutherland Global Services Participates in SupportIndustry.com's Service and Support Technology Showcase
SupportIndustry.com has announced that Sutherland Global Services, a US based multinational IT Enabled and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) company serving technology, telecom, retail, online/e-commerce and direct to consumer companies seeking an integrated support solution, is participating in the 2008 Technology Showcase. For over 20 years, Sutherland has helped clients excel in their industry and maximize customer lifetime value. Find out more about Sutherland Global Services, including access to their informative white papers and webinars, by clicking here.

Services Industry Summit
Palazzo Hotel, Las Vegas, NV: October 6-8, 2008

Hosted by Service Strategies, this industry event is your perfect opportunity to share best practices and learn how world-class companies are improving their professional service and customer support and organizations. Don't miss this unique content focused industry event. Industry luminaries will share their insights through informative presentations packed with information and ideas you can put to use right away. The event will also include pre-conference workshops and an executive discussion forum.

For more information, contact Service Strategies by phone at 858.674.4864 or 800.552.3058 - Toll Free in North America, email info@servicestrategies.com or click here for event details, pricing and registration information.

Impact Of Economic Downturn On Tech Spending Varies By Region And Sector
More than 40 percent of large businesses have cut their IT budgets this year due to the global economic slowdown, according to a new survey by Forrester Research, Inc. The Forrester Business Data Services report surveyed nearly 950 senior IT managers across North America and Europe regarding their IT services spending and overall services strategies and priorities.

The economy's affect on IT spending is evident in some specific data points contained in the report:

Forty-three percent of firms have already cut their overall IT budgets in 2008 in reaction to the slow down in the global economy, while 24 percent of firms have put discretionary spending on hold. Twenty-eight percent of respondents said the economy has had no impact on their IT budgets.

Asked how the economy will affect IT services spending, 70 percent of respondents said they will likely negotiate lower rates with suppliers, and 16 percent said they have already cut their IT services spending.

IT departments in the financial services industry were hit hardest — 49 percent of IT shops in the financial services sector have cut their budgets. At the other end of the spectrum is the media, entertainment, and leisure industry, where only 39 percent of respondents said they have had to reduce spending.

IT departments in North America have been affected by the economy more than their European counterparts: 49 percent of North American firms have cut their IT budgets compared with 31 percent of respondents in Europe; although it should be noted that the Forrester survey was fielded in Q2 2008 prior to the deteriorating economic conditions in Europe.

Regarding the state of spending on enterprise IT services, the report illustrates a number of trends:

The demand for services holds steady. Forty-five percent of firms plan to increase their use of applications outsourcing, while 43 percent of firms are increasing their use of infrastructure outsourcing. Forty-three percent of respondents said they are moving more work offshore.

Infrastructure outsourcing expects to grow. Convergent telecommunications and network management is a hot area of growth as 20 percent of firms will outsource this service in 2008.

Few firms have fully tapped into offshore resources. Only 9 percent of firms use offshore resources wherever and whenever possible. A growing number of firms are interested in exploring more offshore work, with 14 percent ramping up use, 19 percent piloting, and 22 percent not using offshore but actively tracking developments. Of those firms not sending work offshore, a majority cite the questionable quality of the work done.

Satisfaction with outsourcing remains low. While overall firms are satisfied with their decision to use a third party, 52 percent say their biggest challenge with existing IT services and outsourcing relationships is that cost savings are lower than expected. Other noteworthy challenges include inconsistent or poor service quality (40 percent) and the inability of the vendor or contract structure to respond rapidly to changing business needs (35 percent).
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Survey Reveals Contact Centers are Severely Underprepared for Disasters
A new report by DMG Consulting LLC, Business as Usual? A Benchmarking Study of Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity for Contact Centers, reveals that the majority of contact centers are not taking appropriate actions to minimize the impact of disasters or disruptions related to changes in their operating environments. Incredibly, 20% of contact centers do not even have a disaster recovery plan. Only 4.7% of companies test their disaster recovery/business continuity plans monthly, leaving 95.3% at risk of a serious meltdown in an emergency situation. Even more worrisome, 60.2% of companies do not routinely test their core servicing infrastructure -- ACDs, IVRs and servicing applications -- exposing them to unexpected but avoidable failures. The lack of adequate planning and testing is disturbing, considering the mission-critical nature of contact centers.

In this important industry Report, DMG benchmarks the survey responses and defines a "leaders" category. Leading companies have well-defined disaster and contingency plans and test them on a frequent basis. They also monitor and test their core and supporting systems routinely to avoid unnecessary service disruptions. Leaders are prepared to mitigate the effects of both unavoidable disasters and system and process failures that can threaten SLAs and the customer experience.
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IT Security Spending On The Rise
Spending on IT security will continue to grow next year, according to new data unveiled by Forrester Research, Inc.. The Forrester Business Data Services survey, which polled more than 1,200 North American enterprise and SMB security decision-makers, found that 21 percent of respondents expect to increase their IT security budgets in 2009, while nearly three-quarters of those surveyed expect no cutbacks in their security spending. Only 6 percent of respondents anticipate having to cut their security budget next year despite the current economic uncertainty.

Other key findings from the survey include:

• Security makes up 10 percent of overall IT operating budgets in 2008, up from 8 percent last year.
• Nearly 50 percent of respondents report to a board/CEO or an executive committee. Security is no longer embedded within IT.
• Data protection is critical. More than half of respondents said that protecting corporate IP and customer data was their top priority for the next 12 months.
• Companies are realizing the significance of having business continuity and disaster recovery plans in place. Forty-two percent of respondents said it was very important, up from 33 percent from last year.

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Firms Slash an Average of $535,000 on Operating Costs from use of Optimized Workforce Scheduling
In an extremely competitive service landscape, Best-in-Class service firms are turning to schedule, dispatch and mobile solutions to: increase the efficiency of their service organizations, deliver better, faster and more accurate service, and to efficiently contain service-related costs. As such these firms are actively taking steps to map processes related to the lifecycle of incoming service work orders and implement optimization tools to boost performance, as indicated in a recent report by Aberdeen Group.

Aberdeen's survey of over 160 companies identified the need for improved workforce utilization as a key driver for service and manufacturing firms to consider work order and scheduling optimization tools. In an attempt to improve utilization, leading firms were two times as likely as all others to utilize optimized scheduling tools and nearly three times as likely to provide their field technicians with mobile tools to access work order or customer/asset related information.

In improving work order management, leading firms were reducing their reliance on paper, developing flexible criteria and rules for their scheduling solutions, and actively leveraging mobile service solutions to provide field workers with adequate access to work order and customer/asset specific information. The study also found increased customer involvement in the service delivery process through access to self-service scenarios or via customer visibility into technician or vehicle location and status. As a result leading firms were experiencing:

• A 9% decrease in mean time to repair over the last year
• A 17% increase in technician productivity over the last year, compared to an 8% increase for all other firms
• An 8% improvement in meeting promised service response times over the last year
• A 71% level of workforce utilization, compared to a 50% performance for all other firms

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2008 IT Social Media Index: Survey Results
The 2008 ITtoolbox/PJA IT Social Media Index, Wave III, was conducted between June 25 and July 8, 2008. A total of 2,935 Information Technology professionals from 109 countries participated. Participants were drawn directly from the ITtoolbox network.

The goal of the Wave III survey was twofold: to confirm the ongoing use of social media tools and user-generated content by global IT decision-makers and influencers, but also to construct a psychographic profile of these IT decision-makers and influencers that plumbs deeper issues such as inspiration, emotional state, and leisure media and pastime preferences.

The survey respondent distribution was 56% North America, 21% Asia, 15% Europe, and 8% rest of world.

This survey revealed the following:

• Consumption of social and user-generated content (blogs, podcasts, online communities, wikis, and profiles/social networking) continues to rise ahead of traditional editorial media. The ITtoolbox/PJA IT Social Media Index now stands at 135, a 30% increase since Wave I research conducted in mid-2007.
• Global consumption of social media and user-generated content has remained consistent, with use of blogs, discussion groups, and wikis leading the growth in consumption/participation.
• Social media consumption continues to outpace editorial and vendor content consumption, increasing to from 3.26 hours/week to 3.7 hours/wk from Wave II (11/07) to Wave III (7/08).

Psycho-demographic results indicate that:

• Most IT professionals are drawn to the field by a childhood aptitude.
• Fathers were indicated as the most common key influence on the life of the IT professional.
• The biggest headache IT professionals experience at work is not putting out fires or grappling with technology that doesn't work as promised, but company politics getting in the way of good decision-making.
• The History Channel was selected as the audience's favorite TV network

More...

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Using a Wiki to Manage Your IT Projects
Wikis are deceptively easy to use and install, so are nowadays found in all sorts of IT departments, especially as quick and simple project management organizers. Although wikis are used mainly as [a] project management tool, says Stewart Mader, principal at the GrowYourWiki consultancy, they can provide other advantages as well, such as in customer/client collaboration, documentation, and developing an online community. However you use them -- as a lightweight project manager or as a document repository and knowledge management database -- Mader warns that you should know how to use them to their best effect.
Full Article...

Managing IT to support rapid growth: An interview with the CIO of NetApp
As the CIO for a rapidly growing storage vendor, Marina Levinson had to scale the IT organization quickly so that it could handle not only its current tasks but also whatever might be on the horizon. Keeping systems up and running is just the beginning; the way the IT function uses resources to satisfy the demands of the business determines the real value of information technology. In this interview, Levinson explains how she has organized her team to work closely with the business in order to ensure that IT's investments match the organization's strategic priorities.
Full Article...

Is Your Scheduling System Ready for the Holidays?
With the holidays quickly approaching, now is the time to ensure that you are prepared to handle all the adjustments that occur with holiday scheduling. While the holidays are the time agents typically request time off, it is also the time when call volumes are at the highest. Preplanning is essential to ensure that you are properly staffed during busy seasons. Automated scheduling systems can save hours of administrative overhead when dealing with vacation requests, but not all systems are created equal. You can use the checklist in this article as a guide for achieving maximum benefit from your scheduling system.
Full Article...

The Tech Industry's 10 Most Annoying Fictional Characters
Since the dawn of time (or at least since the 1980s), tech companies' marketing departments have concocted a slew of catchphrase-wielding characters whose overriding goal is to create affectionate bonds between consumers and their companies' products. This slideshow examines the very worst fictional characters that marketing departments have unleashed on the general public over the years, ranging from smarmy wireless salesmen to dotcom-promoting sock puppets to annoying graphics of paperclips that SIMPLY REFUSE TO GO AWAY no matter what you do.
Full Article...

The Impact of Self-Service on Contact Center Agents
By Donna Fluss, founder and President of DMG Consulting LLC
Introducing self-service applications into a contact center has a significant impact on agents. Successful self-service applications benefit customers while saving money for the enterprise, but they also change the volume and mix of calls handled by agents and create new challenges for both agents and their managers.
Full Article...

The Virtual Support Center: Delivering Support Anytime, Anywhere
View this SupportIndustry.com webinar and learn the benefits of implementing a virtual support center in your organization, including:

• Discover 5 strategies for quickly and effectively implementing a virtual support center
• Hear the story behind a successful support operation who implemented a virtual support center to reduce operational costs and hire optimal talent across geographical boundaries.
• Learn how to leverage remote support technology to build a successful virtual support center.

View the On-demand Webinar.

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!

2008 Service & Support Technology Showcase
The 2008 version of our Service & Support Technology Showcase is now available! This valuable, in-depth buyer’s guide features the latest tools and technologies in the support services industry that enable your support operation to deliver superior customer service.

Click here to find out more...

White Paper: Improving Customer Service Using Web-based Support Tools
In the realm of service and support, the Web has made its mark. 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...

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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Carolyn Healey, Editor - chealey@supportindustry.com

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