ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives (129)

Agent Performance Management Is Important to the Customer Experience

Posted by ISG Research on 27 November 2010

My research into Customer Experience Management shows that four of the top five factors that influence a customer’s experience in dealing with a contact center relate to agents: their attitudes, understanding of the customer’s issue, ability to resolve issues the first time and general knowledge (third on the list was average queue times). The research also shows that the largest volumes of... Read More

Topics: Customer Experience, Operational Performance, Analytics

Australia Adopts XBRL for "Standard Business Reporting"

Posted by Robert Kugel on 27 November 2010

In July, Australia adopted what it calls "Standard Business Reporting" (SBR), which is designed to reduce the reporting burden imposed on businesses by the country's federal and state governments by streamlining the information submission ("lodging" for the Oz) process. In essence, the country is on its way to a file-once-use-many approach whereby companies provide data using a single secure... Read More

Topics: XBRL, Business Performance, Financial Performance, finance, SEC

IBM Antes Up for Marketing Applications by Acquiring Unica

Posted by Mark Smith on 27 November 2010

In a second move indicating its seriousness about competing in the market for marketing software, IBM announced its offer to acquire publicly traded Unica Corp. Unica is one of the larger providers in this space, with more than $100 million in annual revenue and 1,500 customers worldwide. Its success in very large marketing organizations, including brand-name customers Best Buy, Marriott and IBM... Read More

Topics: Sales Performance, Marketing Automation, Operational Performance, CRM, Unica

Integrating Strategic Planning With Jonova

Posted by Robert Kugel on 27 November 2010

I’ve focused attention of integrated business planning for the past several years as our benchmark research on business planning and other related topics consistently finds companies are not getting enough of a return on the considerable amount of time and effort they spend on budgeting and planning. Moreover, the current economic climate makes substantive contingency planning more important than... Read More

Topics: Jonova, Operational Performance, Business Performance, Financial Performance, Financial Performance Management, Integrated Business Planning

HP Scandal Reflects on Enterprise Software Issue

Posted by Mark Smith on 27 November 2010

The recent turmoil at Hewlett-Packard that went public with news of the resignation of CEO Mark Hurd is only superficially about the facts of the scandal or the question of who will be the new CEO, sexy as those issues may be. What it really shines a light on is the performance of the company itself. I wrote earlier this year (See: “HP Takes Technology Portfolio to the Clouds with New Growth... Read More

Topics: IT Performance, Operational Performance, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Enterprise Software, HP, Information Management, Information Technology

Knowlagent Increases Agent Effectiveness

Posted by ISG Research on 27 November 2010

My benchmark research into agent performance management (APM) found that the number-one objective of companies trying to improve the handling of customer interactions was to utilize agents more effectively; this also was their top objective in creating agents’ work schedules. In the latter case, the research uncovered a primary reason for difficulties in achieving this objective: Only 36 percent... Read More

Topics: Knowlagent, Operational Performance, Analytics, Call Center

CallCopy Emerges as a Player in Agent Performance Management

Posted by ISG Research on 27 November 2010

Last year I carried out research to discover how companies manage their workforces in handling customer interactions; I investigated their best practices, technologies being used and priorities for the future. The findings led me to define agent performance management (APM) as an extension of what other observers call workforce optimization; APM includes call routing, call recording, quality... Read More

Topics: Call Copy, Operational Performance, Analytics, Call Center

Intacct Gives Professional Help

Posted by Robert Kugel on 27 November 2010

Intacct, which offers cloud-based accounting software for small and smaller midsize companies is starting to put more emphasis on addressing the needs of project-oriented, professional services businesses. One of the challenges that these companies face is getting their accounting systems to support their business at a functional level. To be sure, any ERP system can account for projects, in the... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Financial Performance, Financial Management

Taleo Brings New Intelligence to Talent Management

Posted by Mark Smith on 27 November 2010

Today’s intense competitive pressures demand that organizations utilize their human capital more effectively. Taleo has been steadily growing as a provider of talent management by offering its applications and platform through software as a service (SaaS). Now it has advanced into what they call Talent Intelligence that can help organizations gain new insights on their workforce and individual... Read More

Topics: Human Capital Management, Business Performance, Financial Performance, Workforce Performance, Talent Management, Taleo

Infor Launches Innovative E-mail Management

Posted by ISG Research on 27 November 2010

On August 2, Infor launched its next generation of products for customer relationship management (CRM), which are built on its Interaction Advisor that in May I called “its CEM surprise.” At the time it was clear that Interaction Advisor was a platform on which Infor could build a series of innovative products. I didn’t expect the first of them to be just around the corner. Central to the... Read More

Topics: Sales Performance, Marketing Automation, Operational Performance, CRM, Infor

Contingency Planning, Now More than Ever

Posted by Robert Kugel on 27 November 2010

It turns out that some consumer goods manufacturers and retailers are having a hard time finding space on container ships and even finding containers to ship in. This has driven up the cost of shipping these items and at times resulted in deliveries arriving too late for scheduled promotions or seasonal demand peaks. This, during a time of constrained consumer spending in North America and Europe... Read More

Topics: Planning, Budgeting, IBP, Operational Performance, Financial Performance

Will Cloud Computing Finally Bring Innovation to the Contact Center?

Posted by ISG Research on 27 November 2010

I have been associated with the contact center industry for more than 20 years, first as a systems integrator building centers and more recently covering it as an analyst with Ventana Research. From this experience I have distilled three major observations: that centers are dominated by technology, that they change very slowly and that performance is largely judged by the average handling time... Read More

Topics: Operational Performance, Cloud Computing, Contact Center

Adapting and Planning Your Way Out of the Recession

Posted by Robert Kugel on 27 November 2010

Anyone who has had to regularly produce a written business forecast that goes out more than a couple of months understand all too well Yogi Berra’s famous observation: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Certainly the economic events of the past two years have regularly made forecasts obsolete in a very short period of time. Using the wisdom of crowds can help the... Read More

Topics: Big Data, Planning, IBP, Operational Performance, Business Performance, Financial Performance

SAS Helps Companies Make Sense of Social Media Comments

Posted by ISG Research on 27 November 2010

I often read and hear today that social media is the new channel for marketing and customer service channel and also that companies must improve customer satisfaction to survive (I agree with the second proposition). Several observers have put the two ideas together and concluded that in the future all marketing and customer service will happen through social media – that I don’t agree with. My... Read More

Topics: Social Media, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Intelligence, CRM

Infor24 Makes Applications Simpler To Acquire and Integrate

Posted by Mark Smith on 27 November 2010

The advent of cloud computing and renting of applications has provided another realm of opportunity for applications software vendors. Infor, which already is the third-largest in the world, is taking advantage of it. Infor announced Infor24, an initiative to bring its role-based applications into the cloud. It will use the Infor ION platform that supports other new Infor applications, including... Read More

Topics: Supply Chain Performance, Enterprise Applications, Operational Performance, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Infor

IBM Innovates in Call-Routing for Agent Performance

Posted by ISG Research on 27 November 2010

One often-cited approach to improving the performance of contact centers and customer service agents is skills-based routing. This involves tagging data about the skills of individual agents – for example, languages spoken, training courses passed or the ability to handle well a particular type of call – and using a call-routing system to deliver calls to an extension where an agent with the... Read More

Topics: Human Capital Management, Call Routing, Operational Performance, IBM

Snowfly Motivates Agents To Improve Performance

Posted by ISG Research on 27 November 2010

I have often seen evidence that contact center agents’ performance is strongly influenced by the key performance indicators managers use to judge, and often reward, their performance. In one extreme example I found that agents in a high-value-customer service center were rewarded if they kept the average call-handling time below two minutes. This sounded positive until I uncovered the common... Read More

Topics: Human Capital Management, Uncategorized, Call Center, Snowfly

Hadoop Gets Easier with Cloudera Version 3

Posted by Mark Smith on 27 November 2010

Managing large volumes of enterprise data continues to challenge IT organizations as they deal with administration and storage of no longer just terabytes but now petabytes of data and costs increase accordingly. This massive size of data complicates the underlying issues of where and how to store it easily in low-cost hardware and manage the data efficiently. One attempt at a solution is Hadoop,... Read More

Topics: Cloudera, Information Management, Data, Strata+Hadoop

Research Finds New Adoption and Interest in Mobile Business Intelligence

Posted by Mark Smith on 27 November 2010

The demand for access to business information and applications through mobile technologies such as the Apple iPhone and iPad, devices running Google Android or using RIM Blackberry is surging as consumer preferences and behavior spill over into the business workforce. The massive growth of adoption of these technologies around the world as consumers seek instant access to information has many... Read More

Topics: Mobile, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Mobility, Digital Technology

Kalido Does Data Governance Right

Posted by Mark Smith on 27 November 2010

The proper management of data is ever more important and complex. Business people must have easy access to data from all over the enterprise, but unguarded access and distribution may enable users to bypass the IT organization’s rules for data management, copy and paste whatever they like into spreadsheets and share it in uncontrolled fashion. Firm control of enterprise data requires policies and... Read More

Topics: Master Data Management, MDM, IT Performance, Data Governance, Information Management, Kalido