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| PeopleSoft
Appoints Dave Duffield as CEO
PeopleSoft Inc. recently announced that its Board of Directors has
voted to appoint Dave Duffield, PeopleSoft's founder and Chairman,
as the company's Chief Executive Officer. In addition, the company
announced the appointment of Kevin Parker and Phil Wilmington as
Co-Presidents, and Aneel Bhusri as Vice Chairman of the Board. All
of the changes are effective immediately. These appointments followed
the Board's decision to terminate Craig Conway as President and
CEO of the company, effective immediately. The Board said its decision
resulted from a loss of confidence in Mr. Conway's ability to continue
to lead the company. All of these decisions received the unanimous
vote of the independent directors.
Cisco Ships 2000th IP Contact Center Solution
Cisco Systems has announced its 2000th Cisco IP Contact Center (IPCC)
installation, which will be implemented at Nestle Waters North America.
Nestle Waters North America, a provider of bottled water in the
United States and Canada, chose Cisco IPCC Enterprise Edition to
more efficiently distribute calls and to create a full featured
Customer Interaction Network across two sites to provide superior
customer service and satisfaction. Cisco IPCC Enterprise Edition
helps enable the company to continuously evolve and improve its
customer service to meet and exceed the company's goal of providing
effective and efficient customer care in a professional and user-friendly
manner. Nestle Waters North America had previously deployed Cisco
Customer Voice Portal (CVP) and Cisco Intelligent Contact Manager
(ICM), both of which interoperated with Nestle Waters North America's
traditional circuit-switched call centers and served as migration
technology to the Cisco IPCC.
Olympus Selects Hyperion to Enhance Customer Service
Hyperion, a provider of business performance management software,
has announced that Olympus, a precision technology provider designing
and delivering solutions in healthcare and consumer electronics
worldwide, is using Hyperion Planning to build more accurate forecasts
to increase profitability. The Consumer Products Group at Olympus
America is using Hyperion Planning to help manage purchasing and
inventory decisions. The Hyperion Planning solution enables Olympus
to collaboratively forecast with its customers via a Web-based interface,
enhancing its reputation for world-class customer service by aligning
its inventory with customer product needs and timing. In addition
to improving its forecasts for the sales and marketing departments,
Olympus is integrating other segments of the business in order to
provide data for detailed analysis, such as number of units purchased
by each customer and actual sales by account and salesperson. All
of this data, in turn, helps marketing and other departments create
better plans to support sales.
NCR Acquires Kinetics
NCR Corp. announced that it has acquired Kinetics Inc., a privately
held company and provider of self-service solutions for the travel
industry, for $26 million. Based in Lake Mary, Fla., Kinetics provides
solutions that include airline self-check-in, hotel self-check-in/check-out,
quick-serve restaurant pre-order and self-service event ticketing.
The acquisition covers the systems, software and services developed
and marketed by Kinetics. Kinetics will operate as a subsidiary
of NCR, and its employees will remain with Kinetics. After accounting
for all related costs, it is anticipated that the acquisition will
be neutral to NCR's 2004 earnings.
Leverage Introduces Relationship Intelligence
Leverage Software, a provider of Relationship Capital Management,
has announced Leverage Relationship Intelligence, an enterprise-class
software solution that harnesses the power of an organization’s
relationships, provides relevant tactical sales information and
applies analytic dashboards that empower sales professionals with
a comprehensive strategic view, and greater influence into their
targeted sales contacts. Available today, Leverage Relationship
Intelligence provides sales professionals with the ability to discover,
analyze and leverage relationships in an effort to close more business
and increase revenues. Leverage Software equips both sales individuals
and teams with the ability to add timely and relevant intelligence
about prospects to an enterprise’s relationship network and
gain access and influence through trusted professional introductions
to key decision makers through every stage of the sales process.
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| IDC
Predicts Growth for CM Market in APEJ
According to a new IDC study, companies in Asia/Pacific excluding
Japan (APEJ) are increasingly spending on content management software
as the dust of consolidation settles and vendors increase their
marketing efforts in this part of the world.
The
content management software (CM) market in (APEJ) is expected to
grow from US$109.42 million in 2003 to US$219.28 million in 2008,
which represents a 2003–2008 compound annual growth rate (CAGR)
of 14.9%. Unsurprisingly, Australia and Korea lead the CM markets
in 2003 at US$32.4 million and US$29.02 million respectively, which
may be attributed to their more advanced IT infrastructure as well
as e-government initiatives that were launched since the mid 1990s.
Demand in APEJ is generally fueled by both the financial and government
sectors; the former seeks to comply with Basel II, reduce costs
and to improve customer service levels, while the primary objective
of the latter is to reduce costs as well as increase efficiency
in order to provide better services to citizens.
Many
APEJ countries have already made e-government their priority project,
with Australia, Hong Kong, and Singapore emerging as global leaders
in e-government initiatives. Governments across the rest of Asia/Pacific
have also been actively adopting Internet-based technologies as
part of their ongoing efforts to develop their own e-governments.
These include reaching out to the public with up-to-date information
on government portals and deploying Web content management software
solutions as well as eforms to increase efficiency.
Singapore
was an early adopter of content management among the ASEAN countries
in 2003 and is expected to continue dominating the market throughout
the forecast period of 2004–2008. The ASEAN sub-region comprises
Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia. This is
largely due to various governmental initiatives that are fueling
demand for content management applications. Although IDC expects
the total content management software market in Singapore to grow
from US$9.71 million in 2003 to US$19.19 million in 2008, in terms
of growth potential, Thailand is forecast to be the key growing
market in the sub-region with a five-year CAGR of 18.4%. This may
be attributed to both Thailand's keen government initiatives as
well as the smaller base from which the market is growing.
Though
a relatively small market, India is the fastest-growing market for
CM software with a 24.7% five-year CAGR. One of the main drivers
for the rapid growth is the increased business process outsourcing
(BPO) activities, especially from U.S. firms that are bound by the
regulatory requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley. China follows a close
second at a five-year CAGR of 20.2%. IDC forecasts that the market
will grow to US$40.17 million by 2008. Demand is expected to be
derived increasingly from deregulated industries such as the banking
industry, as FSIs (Financial Services Industries) are faced with
increasing competition, especially with China's entry to the WTO.
On the other hand, Hong Kong will experience the lowest five-year
CAGR in this sub-region at 13.3%. This is in part due to the outflow
of businesses to China.
More...
IT Spending for Customer Data Integration Increased 135% in 2004
The CDI Institute Inc., an information technology research advisory
firm specializing in customer data integration (CDI), announced
that more than 50 North American businesses have placed customer
data integration on their short list for strategic technology acquisition
during 2H2004 with an average planned investment of $1.2 million.
Additionally, the overall CDI software and services market grew
135 percent from 2003 to 2004 from $85 million to almost $220 million.
This growth demonstrates the increasing importance of customer data
integration as a catalyst for realizing ROI for large enterprises'
multi-million dollar CRM installations.
IT
spending on CDI solutions increased from 2003 to 2004, with systems
integrators being the primary beneficiaries of CDI implementation
fees, which increased from $66 million in 2003 to $155 million in
2004. Additionally, mega application vendors (Oracle, SAP, Siebel)
saw their CDI software revenues grow 35 percent from $8 million
in 2003 to more than $11.5 million in 2004. Best-of-breed CDI vendors
(DWL, Initiate Systems, Siperian) also increased their CDI software
license revenues 175 percent — from $7.5 million to $20.5
million during 2003-04.
The
CDI market is comprised of process and technology solutions for
recognizing a customer at any touchpoint, while aggregating accurate,
up-to-date knowledge about that customer and delivering it in an
actionable form just-in-time to touchpoints. Both IT vendors and
executive IT management at Global 2000 enterprises need guidance
in this fast-paced, high stakes market, which is the convergence
of multiple overlapping middleware markets; e.g., customer recognition,
data quality, real-time analytics, data warehouse, business process
management (BPM) and enterprise application integration (EAI), etc.
While
most enterprises have infrastructure initiatives based on the technology
platforms of strategic IT partners such as Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP
and Siebel, more than 75 percent of the IT professionals surveyed
by the CDI Institute are actively considering purchases "outside
the family" to facilitate connectivity between customer-facing
applications and processes.
More...
Apps Vendors to Embed Data Mining Technology
Data mining tools cull through large data sets to provide predictive
and prescriptive analysis. This information is used optimize business
processes throughout the enterprise (e.g., identifying fraud, improving
marketing campaigns). Meta Group expects significant impact on the
data mining market to come not entirely from data mining vendors
themselves, but from business application vendors that are embedding
data mining technology from these vendors. Embedding data mining
directly into the business process enables recommendations and predictions
to be provided in the graphical user interface (GUI) of the application.
As a result, non-specialized users can receive direct value from
data mining initiatives.
The
data mining market has bifurcated into a smaller technology-focused
segment used by quantitative analysts and a data mining segment
focused on a mass audience of less-technical business users, says
Meta. "Embedding data mining algorithms directly into business
applications is a perfect conduit to reach the latter segment.
Due
to this growing channel, Meta Group expects the data mining market
to expand 10% annually over the next few years, with services growing
at a commensurate pace. In addition, specialty, niche-based offerings
will continue to find their place.
More...
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| Unifying
Customer Views
When it comes to CRM software, financial services, unlike manufacturing
or retail sales, is a completely information-based industry. Buying
preferences, family needs and retirement plans are among the many
bits of information that must be meticulously tracked.
Developing
an all-encompassing view of the customer is typical of a new trend
designed to counteract the effects of two decades of massive consolidation
in the financial services industry. A wave of mergers and acquisitions
fragmented and compartmentalized customer information, making it
difficult to know what each business unit was doing or to track
customer interactions. In the relationship-driven business of financial
services, that spells trouble. A narrow view of the client makes
interaction impersonal, and when a salesperson doesn't know a customer's
buying habits, it's far more difficult to pitch new products that
speak to the customer's needs.
Full
Article...
A House Divided Can’t Deliver Customer Service
Every month, many of us receive in the mail a bill for our broadband
Internet access, a separate bill for our cellular phone usage and
possibly also even another bill for our cable television package.
Why is this unusual? Because we often subscribe to all these services
from the same company. Setting aside, for the moment, the fact that
many of us would prefer to be billed electronically, it is certainly
not a CRM best practice to force customers to deal with all these
separate invoices. And service providers are incurring double or
triple the printer, paper and postage expenses.
Are
the customer service people at these communications companies idiots?
Maybe, but more likely they are struggling with a common problem
in these days of mergers and expanding product portfolios: the existence
of relevant customer data in disparate systems and silos.
Full
Article...
"Social Contagion" Affects Online Retailers
For traditional retailers, “location, location, location”
is an all-too-familiar mantra, with stores made or broken by factors
such as traffic flow, demographics and parking. But what about the
brave, new and often perilous world of Internet retailing, where
the physical location of a store is meaningless? How, when customers
and competitors are geographically dispersed, does an online retailer's
customer base evolve?
A
recent study by Wharton marketing professor David R. Bell offers
some intriguing answers. Bell has studied the effect of word-of-mouth
or other "social contagion" factors on consumer willingness
to try an online retailer. Bell's study found a significant "neighborhood
effect," with a 50% increase in the base rate of consumers
trying an online retailer's services once they talked about or otherwise
observed its use locally. “The unique market context of the
Internet retailer raises important and so far unstudied questions,
especially the fundamental issue of the role existing customers
play in recruiting or influencing potential customers," says
Bell. He sees a new and important phenomenon: “It's not the
location of the store relative to the customers that's important,
it's the location of the existing customer relative to potential
customers."
Full
Article...
DDSN: Not Supply Chains As Usual
So your company has decided to become demand driven and create supply
networks. But you might ask, “Isn’t this the same as
supply chain excellence?” The answer is yes and no. Supply
chain excellence is the starting point, but creating a Demand-Driven
Supply Network (DDSN) requires rethinking traditional supply chain
concepts and being very committed to the expectations and requirements
of the customer. It is a fundamental cultural shift that involves
changing the values and beliefs of the organization. This is a culture
that is built upon the ability to listen, respond, and adapt to
customers by using organizational resources as a weapon for market
competitiveness.
Any DDSN journey must start with a clear and shared view of the
customer. How well are you serving the customer?
Full
Article...
Sorry, Your Return Is No Good Here
Walking through the mall a couple of weeks ago, Hayden Cobb, a 32-year-old
systems engineer at Lockheed Martin, couldn't resist a few impulse
buys. But after realizing that all his crisp new shirts didn't fit
right, he headed back to the Express store near Atlanta, receipt
in hand. The clerk asked for his driver's license, swiped it, and
then handed him a small slip of paper that read "Return Declined.”
Cobb
is just one of the many customers who are finding that returning
merchandise isn't as easy as it used to be. Retailers including
Express, the Limited, and the Sports Authority have begun tracking
consumer return and exchange habits to help curb the $16 billion
that stores lose in "return fraud" each year. All the
companies mentioned have enlisted California-based Return Exchange,
a five-year-old for-profit company that stores customer ID and payment
information and tracks shopping behavior, looking for patterns of
fraudulent or excessive returns. The system also aims to prevent
"wardrobing," in which people (women in particular) buy
clothes, wear them to a party, and return them the next day. "We're
not accusing you of being a thief," says King Rogers, a consultant
who advises Express on security matters. "We're suggesting
that you're not a profitable customer." While stores have long
reserved the right to refuse returns, shopper tracking has privacy
watchdogs like Jordana Beebe of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
alarmed (she's particularly worried that data across stores may
eventually be aggregated).
Full
Article...
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 Profits
with Principles: Seven Strategies for Delivering Value with Values
by Ira A. Jackson and Jane Nelson Drawing
on the belief that the most successful enterprises generate benefits
for both shareholders and the public good, two Harvard University
professors look at examples from sixty companies including Starbucks,
Dell, and Citigroup to show business leaders how it's done. What
they find are seven principles that businesses can put to work:
Harness innovation for public good; put people at the center; spread
economic opportunity; engage in new alliances; be performance driven
in everything; practice superior governance; and pursue purpose
beyond profit. Companies that do right by society as well as investors
not only will win today by improving market share, attracting top
talent, and enhancing consumer loyalty, but also by building a competitive
advantage for the future, say Jackson and Nelson.
For
more information, or to order your copy...
You
can find more industry sepcific books at our web site:
http://www.crmindustry.com/
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White Paper: 2004 Trends and Directions in Web-Based Support
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organizations to improve processes and support delivery while, in
many cases, driving down costs. These offerings reduce the burden
on overworked help desks and contact centers in a variety of ways:
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