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| Project Management Office can Streamline IT Modernization | |||||||||||||
| IT organizations will be unable to meet rapidly changing business demands simply by working harder than they have in the past, according to Gartner Inc. Instead they need to embrace IT modernization as generations of technology, skills and expectations are inevitably replaced by the next ones. Gartner defines IT modernization as the complete overhaul of the culture of IT with the specific goal of developing a portfolio of processes that will enable the IT delivery teams to close the gap on accelerating business demands. According to Gartner, the creation of project management offices (PMOs), combined with an investment in project and portfolio management (PPM) processes and technology, can provide enough organization, process definition and process automation to identify and address an expected increase and proliferation of IT artifacts needing retirement or replacement during the next five to seven years. Investments in a PMO and in PPM as a work management discipline can help IT generate the visibility CIOs need to monitor network, telephony, server hardware, storage and system management portfolios, and make effective modernization decisions that funnel into strategic IT projects. Gartner analysts said that moving the PMO outside of the IT organization promotes its independence, removes any perception of bias and encourages the planning of IT modernization efforts for the sake of the wider business and not solely for the sake of the IT organization. This positioning of an enterprise project management office (EPMO) — which plays more of a role in oversight and monitoring, and has no direct project management responsibilities — enables lower level managers to raise any portfolio issues related to IT modernization programs or projects with senior management. IT modernization represents Gartner’s theme for closing the gap between yesterday’s IT implementations and tomorrow’s IT demands in the face of the greatest shift in IT technology skills that has been seen in the history of computing. Gartner analysts said that strategic use of PMOs should ensure that IT modernization becomes an increasingly critical enabler of business change. | |||||||||||||
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[Full Article]
Jul-27-2008
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| Research Finds Business Needs Customer Experience Management | |||||||||||||
| Most businesses today have not advanced very far in how they manage their customers’ experiences with them, according to newly released benchmark research from Ventana Research. The new research, “Customer Experience Management: Improving the Consistency and Quality of Customer Interactions” confirms that businesses are only beginning to advance towards managing the customer experience across the broad set of customer interactions that occur every day. Ventana Research defines customer experience management as a focus on improving the effectiveness of the people, processes, information and technology involved in the customer interaction at every touch point in the organization. The new research evaluated the maturity of customer experience management and found that only 12 percent of organizations are truly mature in their focus on ensuring the optimal customer experience. The research report notes that customers are one of a company’s key assets, and the way they behave will have a strong impact on the success or failure of the company. If they remain loyal and continue their purchasing, the company’s prospects will be good, but if the costs to support them exceed the revenues they generate, prospects will look bad. Nearly all interactions occur through a customer service agent in a call center or through the Web, and the research shows that customers are less than satisfied with the results of their calls, and only 40 percent of participants reported that issues usually are resolved during the first call. Curiously, though, only slightly more than one-third of the organizations participating in the research said they intend to upgrade the desktop technology on which agents rely in the next 12 months. | |||||||||||||
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[Full Article]
Jul-27-2008
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| Workforce Collaboration and Web 2.0 - A Powerful Combination | |||||||||||||
| New research from the Aberdeen Group found overwhelmingly that Best-in-Class organizations prioritize workforce collaboration and a majority of these organizations infuse the use of Web 2.0 technologies in those efforts to achieve impressive performance gains in areas such as problem resolution, project completion, and workforce productivity, including a 34% average reduction in project completion time and a 26.7% increase in revenue per employee. For organizations that achieved Aberdeen’s Best-in-Class status (the top 20% of aggregate performance scorers) in workforce collaboration, the study shows that it starts with buy-in and support from the organization’s senior executive leadership. With this buy-in, two more critical elements are institutionalized: | |||||||||||||
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[Full Article]
Jul-27-2008
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| Demand for Tech Workers Holds Strong Despite Dip in Overall Worker Confidence | |||||||||||||
| The IT Employee Confidence Index, a measure of overall confidence among U.S. information technology workers, dropped 1.5 points to 45.9 in the second quarter of 2008, reaching its lowest level since measurement began in 2005, according to a recent survey commissioned by Technisource, the technology placement division of Spherion Corporation. The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, indicates that overall confidence levels among IT workers surveyed declined slightly in the second quarter as a result of workers’ increased uncertainty in the job market and in their personal employment situation. Despite workers’ doubts, 42 percent of technology workers say they are likely to look for a new job in the next year. Results from the IT Employment Report: | |||||||||||||
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[Full Article]
Jul-27-2008
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| U.S. State and Local Government IT Market to Grow from $48.4 Billion in 2008 to $64 Billion | |||||||||||||
| According to a recent report from INPUT, the authority on government business, budget deficits will suppress state and local IT spending in 2009, and budgets will remain tight throughout the forecast period. However, demographic pressures will force states and localities to seek new administrative efficiencies in order to redirect money toward priorities areas. Professional services and outsourcing will account for 48.4% of the market's $16.5 billion in growth as state and local governments seek to automate manual processes, augment staffing, and take advantage of private-sector competencies. INPUT expects tight budgets to put further pressure on hardware investments as state and local governments consolidate IT infrastructure in an effort to eliminate duplicative spending. This will call for tighter relationships between hardware manufacturers, value-added resellers (VARs), and the major integrators helping governments identify savings points and scope out solutions. Where major implementations are not required governments will increasingly look toward hosted software (software-as-a-service) options. | |||||||||||||
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[Full Article]
Jul-20-2008
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