Resolve customer service inquiries from start to finish

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Info-Tech

Providing exceptional customer service is an activity that most organizations must achieve to grow and retain their client base. For firms that need functionality going “above and beyond” what their CRM platforms offer, Info-Tech recommends adopting a best-of-breed point solution for Customer Service Management (CSM).

Info-Tech evaluated a number of key vendors in the Customer Service Management space. Although the market for CSM products is well established, it is rapidly undergoing a period of change – the rise of SaaS solutions, social media integration, and a wave of recent consolidations are changing the landscape. Features that were evaluated included resolution workflow tools (such as case management and ticketing), knowledge tools, social support and mobile options. Oracle Siebel and Salesforce.com Service Cloud gained our Champion rating for their extremely strong feature sets and multi-channel integration capabilities. However, these two were rated as champions at a cost – the pricing structure of these vendors was prohibitive for smaller organizations. For small to mid-sized companies looking for a best-of-breed solution, we recommend looking at Assistly (recently acquired by Salesforce) – a lower-cost solution that also gained our Champion rating. ZenDesk and TeamSupport are also good options for SMBs.

Implementation of a CSM platform is a critical step that should have a well-managed process behind it. Begin by establishing a cross-functional implementation team that has representation from both IT and the business. Next, establish points-of-integration between other enterprise applications and customer service channels. In most cases, contact records will be pulled from a CRM system, so linking your CSM platform and CRM suite is particularly important. Most CSM vendors offer out-of-the-box connectors to popular CRM suites, like Salesforce.com. After POIs have been established, train relevant end users. Each group of end users will have different needs – for example, agents will require training on features like resolution workflow management, while customer service managers need to know more about reporting and analytics modules. Segment training efforts according to these user groups. Finally, test the deployment by rolling out a pilot project to a small customer service team and gather feedback. This will highlight deficiencies in architecture and process before the platform is deployed to the entire customer service organization.

For more information, please see Info-Tech’s recently released solution set on selecting a CSM suite.

Posted in Applications, Research, What's New in Research | Tagged Assistly, crm, CSM, customer service, Customer Service Management, customer-relationship-management, Dynamics, microsoft, mobile, Oracle, Parature, rightnow, salesforce, Service Cloud, Siebel, social-media, SugarCRM, Team Support, ZenDesk | Leave a comment

 

 

The Role of Social Analytics

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Info-Tech

Social analytics comes with a dizzying number of vendors and the traditional blurriness associated with a new business concept, so spending some time to prepare the organization’s strategy is crucial.

Social media’s role in our society is growing. It’s being adopted by a wide spread of demographics all over the world. This is where your consumers are hanging out. This is where they are expressing themselves – what they like, what they don’t like, what they want. This is where they are talking about you.

Consequently, many organizations are feeling pressure to jump into this space. Unfortunately, this amounts to a poorly managed Facebook page or neglected Twitter account for those organizations that don’t put enough thought into their planning. At best, these efforts are a waste of resources for the organization, at worst, they can actually be damaging since the information being released isn’t being monitored and regulated. Social media initiatives should be thoroughly planned and managed in order to be effective.

One area of the social media initiative that has been undervalued is the role of social analytics. Analytics should be used to shed light on the results of your project, providing modifications for current efforts and guidance for future ones. Anyone contemplating a social media initiative should also be giving thought to social analytics.

Use of social analytics is most likely to influence social media success

Social Media Management Platforms (SMMP) often include features providing analytical capabilities, and their level of sophistication varies widely. Organizations often find the need to adopt multiple applications – anywhere between 3 and 12 – when trying to create a whole solution to support their social media efforts. Fortunately, there are plenty of vendors in this space to help them achieve this; unfortunately, there are so many vendors in this space, it can be difficult to sort through them.

Some of the vendors currently offering social media support:

When considering a social analytics initiative, there are a couple different types of analysis which have become popular: Social Listening and Sentiment Analysis. Social listening uses text analysis to see what words are being associated with your brand and with competitors’ brands. It reveals:

• Where are the conversations happening?
• What is being discussed?
• Is talk growing or shrinking?
• What is being said about your competitors? Can you capitalize on any weaknesses? Defend against strengths?

On the other hand, sentiment analysis focuses on if people talk about your brand in a positive, negative, or neutral context. You can even go further and  drill down in terms of product or channel, discovering preferred features to be emphasized going forward.

• How do people feel about your brand? Your product(s)?
• Who is spreading positivity?
• Who are people listening to?

The insights derived from these analytics can be applied to multiple departments, such as sales, customer service, and marketing. Consequently, social analytics projects should be treated as a cross-departmental project. One department will likely be driving it, but objectives should be established for each department, and then the actual project should be managed from a central hub, with results disseminated outward.

One of the most important things to keep in mind when planning these projects and choosing vendors is that the immaturity of the market means consolidation is on the horizon. That means a lot of vendors are going to be acquired, stalling, or going bankrupt in the near future, so you do not want to make any long-term commitments to a single vendor. Go into social analytics with short-term goals and an aim for quick results.

For more information on social analytics strategy, see Info-Tech’s Formulate a Social Analytics Strategy.

For more information on selecting and deploying an SMMP, see Info-Tech’s Vendor Landscape Plus: Social Media Management Platforms.

Posted in Applications, News & Analysis, What's New in Research | Tagged business analytics, SMMP, social analytics, social media monitoring platforms, social-media | Leave a comment

 

 

Prepare For The Impact Of The Euro Crisis on Your IT Department

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Andy Woyzbun

Watch out; it’s not just a European problem

Everyone knows that the Europeans are facing a major economic crisis triggered by poor government financial management in the Euro zone. But many managers outside Europe don’t see this as impacting them, especially if their own business is doing well. They are wrong.

All organizations depend on suppliers that operate globally. But they have typically paid little attention to how well the larger suppliers are doing; too big to fail comes to mind. But any global service provider that depends substantially on sales in Europe may see their revenue decline, whether their head office is in Paris, New York or Shanghai. IT Service Providers in particular depend on Europe for a significant proportion of their sales. IBM is at 33% for EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), Oracle at 31%, EMC at 29% and Cisco at 20%.

Service providers make a lot of changes to protect their profitability when revenue declines, even if they continue to be viable. And some of these changes reduce availability and quality of service (as a result of labor reductions and manufacturing cutbacks) and can slow down product development cycles. If you depend on these service providers to perform at superior levels, and any of these changes happen, they can impair your ability to meet commitments to your organization.

Predictions? There is no magic crystal ball

It’s interesting to speculate how the Euro crisis will evolve and how much damage it will do not only to Greece, France and Germany, but the United States and China. But speculation rarely leads to action, and action is what IT managers need to take when their suppliers face significant potential revenue shrinkage. There is no unanimity among economists other than agreement that the news is bad, so which prediction would you believe?

It’s not feasible to assess the level of risk facing a specific supplier (Nortel comes to mind). Quarterly financial statements are published well after the fact and financial forecasts in uncertain times are not dependable.

Wait or act now? Do you like to gamble?

We can’t predict where the world economy is going and how it will impact global IT service providers. And we can’t assess whether any of our key suppliers is at risk. So most of us will do nothing, and hope that this economic storm bypasses us and our suppliers.  But we can and should make an assessment of where we are significantly vulnerable to supplier deterioration. And we should take steps to identify a plan B in case deterioration becomes apparent.

Identify major risks and build a plan

We recognize the impact of possible negative events on our ability to provide critical services to our organization. We plan contingencies for hurricanes, major power blackouts and disease epidemics. But we don’t generally plan for what to do if a major service provider fails to deliver the level of service or improvements that we have taken for granted.

The Euro crisis has a very high probability of reducing revenues for IT service providers. Some resulting cost reductions will cause deterioration of service. Dependence on service providers has increased. Approach this as you did planning for disaster recovery. Identify the suppliers on whom you depend for excellence of availability and performance of operational services, hardware and software maintenance, speedy equipment and parts delivery. And start identifying contingency plans.

Posted in Analyst's Angle, News & Analysis | Tagged contingency-planning, Euro-crisis, recession, service deterioration, vendors | Leave a comment

 

 

Top security vendors go head-to-head in annual security roundup – but who came out on top?

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Info-Tech

Cue “Eye of the Tiger” – it’s time for a battle royale between security’s top performers. In its recent Vendor Landscape: Annual Security Roundup, Info-Tech selected just six vendors that scored across multiple product categories and pitted them against each other to find out who would emerge victorious.

If you want to get technical, there really are no losers in this battle of security’s best, as each vendor did well in their respective evaluations; however, this wouldn’t be a fight without a victor.

So who was left standing in the ring?

The champion’s corner was actually occupied by two vendors: heavyweight McAfee and middleweight Sophos. All the vendors were evaluated on an extensive MMA (Many, Many Acronyms) list related to their product offerings: UTM/NGFW, IDP, SSL VPN, Anti-Malware, Encryption, SIEM, and DLP, as well as on price, and vendor strength.

What made Sophos and McAfee champs?

Sophos, small in comparison to McAfee, is steadily growing through acquisitions and impressive products. Its solutions tend to offer comprehensive capabilities allowing for optimal protection via the lowest number of deployed tools. Sophos’ solutions are also relatively inexpensive compared to its competitors.

McAfee is one of the most well-known names in the security market. It’s the only vendor that had products across the board: network security, endpoint security and security management (making it the winner of the Innovation Award as well). It features a significant market differentiator in its ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO), a holistic management platform that allows for seamless management of the entire McAfee stack via a single console. Of course, if you want a top name, you’ll be paying a top price; but it might be worth it for a strong product from an equally strong vendor.

Juniper put up a good fight, coming out as an Innovator. This vendor is known for customizable solutions that are ideal for companies where cost is a major concern. But while they have a decent product offering, they suffer in terms of deployment capabilities.

Symantec suffered a few bumps and bruises as a Market Pillar, but still remains the largest security and anti-malware vendor. Part of its positioning was due to its costly and architecturally complex solutions that only hit part marks in terms of advanced features. Symantec’s solution tends to be a “jack of all trades, master of none.” It’s one of the most stable vendors in the market, with broad partner networks and comprehensive support programs. Symantec is an ideal choice for customers looking to start a long-term relationship with a vendor.

The original firewall company, Check Point, came out as another Market Pillar. It has stability in the market, and innovative capabilities with its software blade architecture, which allows enterprises to deploy just the functionalities it requires and manage them centrally. But where it succeeds in innovation, it suffers in price with some of the costlier solutions.

Rounding out the list is Emerging Player Trend Micro. Despite being the third largest anti-malware vendor and originator of reputation-based scanning, Trend has a narrow product portfolio and somewhat expensive products. However, you can’t deny that Trend is still an endpoint protection innovator.

For more information on the best of the best in security, refer to Info-Tech’s Annual Security Roundup.

Posted in Advisory, Infrastructure, News & Analysis, What's New in Research | Tagged anti-malware, Check Point, data loss protection, encryption, idp, Juniper, mcafee, security, siem, Sophos, Symantec, Trend Micro, UTM | Leave a comment

 

 

Choose Your Consumerization Strategy

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Info-Tech

The consumerization of IT is a topic that has seen a lot of coverage in the IT world in the past few years. In spite of this, there are still many CIOs who aren’t sure how to respond to all of the Personal Unmanaged Devices (PUD) and Personal Unmanaged Applications (PUA) that are invading their networks. These devices and apps are accessing corporate data more often than you may think. Consumer technology has simply outpaced the enterprise, and tech-savvy end users are now questioning why they can’t use their personal devices in the workplace.

As a CIO, you can’t stop consumerization. Your choice will fall somewhere in between adopting a limited strategy and an open strategy. A limited strategy allows you to manage and secure PUAs and PUDs with existing technology and limited up-front costs, so they don’t become a liability to your organization. An open strategy encourages the adoption of consumer technology to increase productivity, innovation and user satisfaction, but requires a larger investment for device and application management.

The strategy you choose will depend on several factors:

Once you’ve assessed the state of your organization and the strategy you should choose, you must align your policy, budget, and reimbursement with your chosen consumerization strategy.

In the limited strategy:

• Policies need not be too detailed, as you will be providing almost no access to corporate applications and data. Users will only have access to email, internet, and calendar and must agree to a full mobile wipe in order to use their devices on the corporate network.
• Up-front costs will be low because you will be using free technology like Microsoft Exchange and ActiveSync to provide limited access to email, internet, and calendar to employee-owned devices.
• No reimbursement program will be necessary, as the devices and apps will be voluntarily purchased by the employee and not mandated by the organization.

In the open strategy:

• Policy will need to be more specific about which applications and devices are allowed on the network, and which employees will have higher levels of access. MDM, VDI, and VPN will allow for a partial wipe policy.
• The initial investment will be significantly higher for MDM, VDI, and VPN applications, as well as the cost of the devices and applications if there is mandatory adoption.
• Reimbursement programs will vary based on the employee’s need for the devices and applications. For example, employees who require devices for external sales might be fully reimbursed for their device cost while an executive staff member who only needs email and limited corporate apps would get a partial reimbursement.

Once you’ve decided on your strategy, run a pilot program for the application or device with employees in various departments and roles. Establish what metrics will be tracked to determine the success or failure of the technology in your organization. Should you choose to adopt the technology, use your pilot metrics to validate your business case, and submit your request for broader adoption.

Consumerization is nothing to fear, provided you take the time to deal with it effectively. If you don’t act, you run the risk of serious data breaches, which can cost your company far more than it would to actively prepare for consumer technology in the enterprise. Take action now, and save yourself the aggravation!

For more information, please see Choose a Consumerization Strategy.

Posted in Applications, Research, What's New in Research | Tagged 2012, android, Blackberry, box.net, bring your own, BYOC, BYOD, consumer technology, consumerization, controls, device, dropbox, evernote, governance, hackers, iPad, iPhone, mdm, mobile, security, smartphone, social, tablet, trends, virtualization | Leave a comment

 

 

 

← Older posts