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Epicor Releases Next Version of iScala
Epicor Software Corp., a provider of enterprise business software solutions for the midmarket and divisions of the Global 1000, has announced the availability of Epicor iScala 2.3 – the latest release of the company’s tightly integrated end-to-end enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM) solution. Featuring improved security and control, Epicor iScala 2.3 empowers companies to directly address corporate governance, centralization and global deployment issues head-on – ultimately enabling them to achieve operational excellence.
Rainmaker Acquires Lead Generation Provider CAS Systems
Rainmaker Systems Inc., a outsource provider of sales and marketing services, has announced it has acquired the assets of privately held CAS Systems Inc., a business-to-business lead generation provider. CAS Systems provides business-to-business lead-generation services including account profiling, event recruitment services, decision maker identification, sales pipeline tracking, appointment setting, and complete market analysis and list research augmented by a 2.5 million plus contact database. Under the terms of the acquisition, Rainmaker paid a total of $2 million at closing, and will pay an additional $2 million over three years plus interest at a fixed rate of 5.36% per annum.
Portugal Telecom Leverages Telarix’s Billing Solution
Telarix Inc., a provider of Interconnect Business Optimization (IBO) and settlement solutions for content providers, IP service providers and global fixed and mobile operators, has announced that Portugal Telecom will use iXBill’s pre-billing and accounting capabilities to eliminate potential revenue leakage and streamline its billing operations. By integrating iXBill with the carrier’s existing main billing system, Portugal Telecom can efficiently complete payment processing and manage the accounting for any disputed amounts which might arise.
My Computer Works Selects Numara FootPrints
Numara Software Inc., a provider of help desk solutions, has announced that My Computer Works Inc., a PC technical support services company, has selected Numara FootPrints to automate, track and report customer support requests. Already live on the system, My Computer Works is using Numara FootPrints to centrally track and manage more than 1,000 support tickets per month, consistently and uniformly capture data, and identify and analyze trends in order to better predict and address customer support needs. My Computer Works also uses Numara FootPrints to manage its virtual support center for two partner organizations.
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|  Empower,
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| Social Media Trends for Marketing and More
The explosion of social media has been truly global and has reached into many segments of society and business, according to research by Cutter Consortium.
Blogs and other social media are being used by companies in all sorts of ways. Media companies are adopting blogs as fast as possible, but business in general is trying to figure out what is happening in the blogosphere and how they might be able to get involved if it will help to innovate faster, to market products more effectively, or simply to connect more directly with their markets, says the company.
Increasingly, companies are adopting the technologies of social media, particularly blogging, social networks, and wikis, and actively embracing the principles that seem to work best.
Perhaps the biggest impact that the social media has had on business to date has been in the area of corporate marketing and public relations. Businesses of all sorts are finding that the use of social media can be a low-cost and direct means to remain in contact with those interested in the company's products, goals, and announcements.
Cutter predicts the following Social Media trends for 2007:
- Grassroots politics will continue to mean, at least to a great extent, what people are writing about and responding to on the Web. The savvy politicians of the future will learn to use the blogosphere to their advantage, just as former UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill used the radio and former US Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan used television.
- Corporations will learn from the missteps of Wal-Mart, Edelman, and Kryptonite and accept conversational marketing as a cost-effective and productive mechanism to remain closely engaged with the marketplace. This will rapidly become second nature, and the entire PR and marketing industry will be dramatically changed as a result — for the better.
- Within corporate offices, social media applications will spread rapidly, as have e-mail and instant messaging, and those entering the workforce for the first time will simply expect those mechanisms for social interaction to be in place.
- Those companies that harness the potential that social media tools offer, internally and externally, may have an advantage over their competitors: a slight increase in innovation, a few percentage points better penetration in the market, a hair more efficiency in back-office operations. These could add up to something significant.
More...
US Online Advertising Market Fared in 2006
The early read based on online publishers that have reported fourth-quarter results so far is that US online advertising spending will end up coming in somewhere in the neighborhood of $16.5 billion in 2006, according to JupiterResearch. That would represent a very respectable increase of 27 percent over the $13 billion spent during 2005 and will beat the estimate of $15.7 billion that JupiterResearch published mid-year. Altogether, the online channel will represent about seven percent of total US advertising spending in 2006.
The principle drivers behind the strong performance of the market are Google and the ad networks, which have been very effective in monetizing remnant inventory. Paid search remains the largest component of online advertising spending—a position it took from online display advertising in 2005—and we expect it will register about $7.2 billion in spending last year. Search was also the leading driver of growth for the overall market in 2006, growing at a rate of 36 percent to 38 percent. Among the other online advertising market segments, display advertising should come in at around $6 billion, while the online classified listings market will be about $3.4 billion.
More...
Significant Gaps in the Lead Management Process
Across the tech vendor community, approximately 50% of marketing investment is allocated to demand generation and about one-third of that investment is ear-marked to directly support the sales force. New research from IDC shows that, for most vendors, this complex and expensive intersection of marketing and sales remains very much a "work in process." However, IDC observes pockets of excellence that are emerging as executives are starting to come to grips with the escalating costs of selling and marketing in today's tech industry.
According to IDC's CMO Advisory Practice — which undertook a study evaluating which IT vendors have demonstrated best practices in lead management process development and execution — marketing's lead management process at a majority of tech vendors fails to provide even the most basic need of establishing a consistent global definition of a lead. Other failure points include data collection, lead qualification, sales hand-off, lead nurturing, and performance measurement. And only a few of the companies surveyed were able to demonstrate their impact on the sales pipeline.
Essential guidance offered in this study includes the following key points:
- CMOs must dedicate a lead management individual or team to develop and govern a marketing lead management process across the organization, ideally in collaboration with a similarly tasked sales lead manager. Senior management buy-in and support is required at process development, roll-out, and governance.
- Providing quality leads and establishing the ability to track leads will only be possible once marketers and other system users understand the need for a lead management process and its impact on the success of the marketing function. Many leading sales organizations tie use of their CRM system with compensation; it's time for marketing to follow suit.
- Performance measurement in the lead generation process will enable marketing to quantify its true impact on the sales pipeline (e.g., marketing-generated and marketing-enhanced leads and deals) and lead velocity. This will also enable marketing to establish a direct feedback loop to improve its campaign effectiveness along the entire customer development lifecycle – from awareness through advocacy.
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| Understanding Customer Experience
Customer experience encompasses every aspect of a company’s offering—the quality of customer care, of course, but also advertising, packaging, product and service features, ease of use, and reliability. Yet few of the people responsible for those things have given sustained thought to how their separate decisions shape customer experience. To the extent they do think about it, they all have different ideas of what customer experience means, and no one more senior oversees everyone’s efforts.
Full Article...
The Trouble With Customers and Their Data
The financial services industry certainly is aware of threats to customer data privacy. Firms are well informed about previous data breaches at nonprofit and for-profit entities alike. These events are grabbing headlines globally and are foremost on the minds of existing and potential clients, so financial institutions must be attentive to consumers' concerns, mustn't they? Yet, time and again, reports surface of hackers, dishonest insiders, careless data handling and lost laptops leading to the exposure of customer information.
Full Article...
Why Data Hoarding Impedes Corporate Growth
Organizations and employees that keep their data to themselves are increasingly being called on the carpet. Nowadays, more people are realizing the benefits of sharing their data, and happily. A Vice President of Marketing at a large financial institution who had heretofore been notorious for not “opening up” his data mart and the rich historical customer behavior data inside it has recently done an about-face. “It’s just so much easier,” he says. “I’ve found that if I share my customer data, it’s easier to convince my colleagues to share theirs. Now I can see outstanding loans for my customers. I know if they’re homeowners. I can tell if they’re ready to listen to a line-of-credit pitch.”
Full Article...
Can Focusing Too Much on Competition Harm Profitability?
Business has long been likened to warfare, so it is hardly surprising that companies want to beat their competitors. It is a common practice of many companies to focus their attention on grabbing market share from their competitors. But such efforts can actually be detrimental to the firm's profitability.
Full Article...
Automated Voice Messaging
Customer contact programs have progressed through numerous innovations over the past few decade — from bulk rate postal mailings to telemarketing campaigns driven by predictive dialers to broadcast emails. For many business-to-consumer (B2C) companies, these approaches have produced effective results across a range of customer-facing activities, including collections, customer care, and marketing. Growing email volume, spam, and consumer demand for self-service, however, are diminishing their impact and leaving many companies grasping for fresh approaches. Companies frustrated with these traditional strategies can now take advantage of the newest contact innovation - automated voice messaging (AVM).
Full Article...
Contact Center Outsourcing: Time to Bring the Agents Home
It does not take innovative thinking to determine that in order to increase profits, an organization will either have to increase revenues while keeping costs constant, or reduce internal costs, such as overhead. One of the first areas to try and cut costs is in the number of supported employees. One of the biggest drains on all cash flow for the organization: the contact center.
Full Article...
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|  Improving Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty, and Profit
by Michael D. Johnson, Anders Gustafsson
It's a simple equation: no customers equals no profits. So how can a company ensure that its customers enjoy a consistently satisfying experience? In this book, two experts from the University of Michigan Business School lay out a five-stage process that links all of the key measures of customer satisfaction with marketing strategy and product development to guarantee excellent customer service. Johnson and Gustafsson show managers how to break down the organizational barriers that defy great customer service and instead tie together their customer value chain to create a cohesive customer measurement and management system.
For
more information, or to order your copy...
You can find
more industry sepcific books at our web site:
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| Multichannel
Service & Support Survey of Executives: Report of Findings
Supportindustry.com recently conducted a survey of contact center,
helpdesk and customer service managers and executives, focusing
on multichannel customer service and support -- its importance,
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The survey, sponsored by eGain Communications Corp., contains key
findings and analysis in the following areas:
- Strategic importance of customer service
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- Web self-service
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