CRM and ERP News

Here are several excerpts that I found particularly valuable from the recent Businessweek cover story, Customer Service Champs:

Providing great customer service is much more than just a job for the front lines or the call centers. It takes coordination from the top, bringing together people, management, technology, and processes to put customers' needs first. That's true today more than ever. Technology is leveling the barriers between alpha companies and also-rans, making great customer service one of the few ways companies can distinguish themselves. Retail, online, and phone shopping channels are expanding, increasingly prompting customers to demand a seamless--and painless--experience. Refining time-tested concepts and coming up with cutting-edge ideas is critical for managing rank-and-file workers and measuring what customers think.

In BusinessWeek's first-ever ranking of the best providers of customer service, we set out to find the service champions, but also to dig into the techniques, strategies, and tools they use to make the customer king. To launch the process, we created a list based largely on brands in J.D. Power & Associates' database. In addition, we polled 3,000 of our readers, generating a pool of names most associated with treating customers well. We then asked J.D. Power, which, like BusinessWeek, is owned by The McGraw-Hill Companies, to survey customers about the brands that were nominated by readers but not already in its database.

Despite their differences, most of the names on the Businesssweek list share a few important traits:

1. They emphasize employee loyalty as much as customer loyalty, keeping their people happy with generous benefits and perks.
2. They know how to respond when service goes wrong.
4. Helping employees become more empathetic with customers was a common focus.
3. Perhaps the most repeated theme was the need to improve continuously, no matter how many accolades they receive.

For most of us, customer service is an aggravating maze of automated phone trees and scripted voices resonating from halfway around the world. But while offshoring call-center work is still growing steadily, companies are getting smarter about what they send overseas. "I think we're seeing some backlash," says Bruce Temkin, Forrester Research Inc.'s principal analyst for customer experience. "Companies are pulling some [more complex types of calls] back from offshore, and in other cases are recognizing they need to invest more in those facilities to give reps more tools and training."

One encouraging alternative trend, at least for those of us on the other end of the phone line, is "homeshoring," in which service agents armed with a broadband line, a computer, and a quiet corner in their spare bedroom respond to calls at their homes. Service can be better for customers because homeshoring attracts more experienced workers with more education than do regular call centers. Stay-at-home moms are a big part of the labor pool and like the flexibility and nonexistent commuting costs of the home-based model. That makes them more loyal, keeping turnover lower and experience levels higher. Companies that outsource calls to home-based agents report turnover rates in the 10% to 30% range, compared with anywhere from 60% to 100% in the average call center.

The connection between satisfied employees and contented customers is hardly a new concept: Any business-school student can recite by heart the concept of the "service-profit chain," which draws the inextricable link between the front line and satisfied customers. But new research from Katzenbach Partners offers an updated metaphor. The firm stresses the importance of an "empathy engine," which looks at the role of the entire organization, including middle and senior management, in providing great service. The firm stresses the importance of an "empathy engine," which looks at the role of the entire organization, including middle and senior management, in providing great service. If that engine is thought of as a heart, "the whole company has to pump the customer through it," says Traci Entel, a principal at Katzenbach Partners who recently studied 13 leading service companies' best practices. "It starts much further back, with how they organize themselves, and how they place value on thinking about the customer."

There are quite a number of reader comments from people who were disappointed that JetBlue was not included in the BusinessWeek list, but other then that valid complaint, this article is well written and full of good anecdotal information, check it out!

Over the next few months, Cisco Systems Inc. plans to enhance a range of its security products, offering customers an integrated and improved line of products.

The company plans a major new release to the software that runs its Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) product. Also in the works are updates to its Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), the Cisco Security Agent (CSA), the Cisco Security Manager (CSM), and its Mitigation Analysis and Response System (MARS).

The upcoming Version 8.0 of the ASA software will include about 120 enhancements, but perhaps the most significant change is that its AnyConnect VPN client will now work on a much broader range of platforms, including Windows Vista, Mac OS X, Linux and Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Edition.

"We're extending this out of the traditional realm of just laptops," said Bob Berlin, a Cisco senior product marketing manager.

Cisco is also improving the information-sharing capabilities between its IPS 6.0 and CSA 5.2 software to make the products better able to identify and block emerging threats. Another new feature will allow CSA to assign quality-of-service tagging to network traffic so performance can be boosted on applications such as voice over IP.

Using engineering talent it acquired in its 2004 purchase of Riverhead Networks, Cisco has also developed new algorithms that allow the IPS software to better analyze potentially malicious activity on a network. The ISA software will also be better integrated and easier to manage with the upcoming Version 3.1 of CSM.

After years of acquisitions, Cisco is just now starting to hook its security products together, said Robert Whiteley, a senior analyst at Forrester Research Inc.

This is critical if Cisco wants to maintain its new position as a player in the security space, he said. "Whether people acknowledge it or not, Cisco is one of the largest security vendors," Whiteley said....

A new study by the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering shows the Internet wilds are still teeming with hordes of good old-fashioned brute-force attacks and quantifies how frequently machines are attacked and the methods used.

Michel Cukier, Clark School assistant professor of mechanical engineering and an affiliate of the Clark School's Center for Risk and Reliability and Institute for Systems Research, deployed four Linux systems with "weak security" on the Internet and sat back to watch.

Not surprisingly, the attacks came fast and furiously -- averaging one every 39 seconds, or 2,244 attacks per day.

"The majority of attacks came from relatively unsophisticated hackers using dictionary scripts" ... running through "lists of common usernames and passwords," the school reported. Analyzing the attacks showed which usernames and passwords were tried most often and provided insight into what hackers tried once they gained entry.

"'Root' was the top user name guess by dictionary scripts -- attempted 12 times as often than the second-place 'admin,'" the school reported. "Successful 'root' access would open the entire computer to the hacker, while 'admin' would grant access to somewhat lesser administrative privileges. Other top usernames in the hackers' scripts were test, guest, info, adm, mysql, user, administrator and oracle."

The research showed the most common password-guessing ploy involved playing off usernames. "Some 43% of all password-guessing attempts simply reentered the username," the school reported. "The username followed by 123 was the second most-tried choice. Other common passwords attempted were 123456, password, 1234, 12345, passwd, 123, test, and 1."

Once inside, the hackers did what hackers do, in this sequence: try to access the systems' software configuration, change passwords, check the software and hardware configuration again, download a file, install the downloaded program, and then run it.

The scripts returned a list of other systems the hackers might be able...

Hyperion Solutions has launched the latest version of its business performance management solution, which comprises more functionalities for managing and manipulating information to improve operational efficiency. The Hyperion System 9 Release 9.3 software is a suite of financial management applications that is integrated with a business intelligence platform, providing users a range of integrated BPM capabilities. Users can collect, organize, analyze and distribute data throughout the enterprise easily.

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Small businesses have typically shied away from complex software deployments. CRM, for instance, still has a low penetration rate in this end of the market despite the number of offerings from such firms as Microsoft, Salesforce.com, FrontRange, Sage and others. These firms' evangelization efforts have made little headway among small businesses, according to a recent report from AMI-Partners. One out of six small businesses are currently using a CRM application, and the same percentage of businesses plan to adopt a CRM system in the next 12 months, the report stated.

Some of the largest technology companies in California's Silicon Valley, in an effort to cut costs and address a mounting stack of customer-service complaints, are embracing an offshoring trend known as "nearshoring." Unlike the traditional offshoring that flung U.S. customer call centers halfway around the world to India and other faraway countries, nearshoring sends white-collar jobs to Costa Rica, Mexico and other countries in the Western Hemisphere.

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According to a new Pew Internet & American Life Project study, one-third of Internet users have used a wireless connection around the house, at their workplace, or some place else. Analysts expect that group to grow in Corporate America in the coming years as Wi-Fi security gets stronger and coverage range improves.

Users who access Internet-based e-mail and search the Web from their BlackBerries or other mobile PDAs were among those who responded to the study. Specifically, 13 percent of them said they used a PDA to connect to the Internet wirelessly. What's more, 28 percent of cell phone users have used cellular networks to connect at work and 38 percent have used Web-enabled PDAs to access the Internet or check e-mail at work.

While the study suggests that more users are accessing wireless networks at their place of business, the question is which technology -- cellular or Wi-Fi -- will dominate the corporate landscape.

Case for Cellular

Allyn Hall, director of the wireless practice at market research firm In-Stat, said many large corporations won't allow Wi-Fi networks due to perceptions that the networks are not as secure as broadband. "Many I.T. departments have done everything they can to block the deployment of Wi-Fi," he explained. "That said, many of the security issues have been addressed with new standards and log-on procedures."

Hall said he sees Wi-Fi as a temporary technology and is betting that cellular networks will win favor with I.T. administrators because cellular offers a wider coverage range. I.T. admins, he added, also take issue with the rate charges for Wi-Fi when traveling corporate users access the Internet from their laptop in various locations, such as in hotel rooms. Cellular carriers offer fixed-rate plans.

"If there is going to be a competitor to cellular, it's WiMax not Wi-Fi," said Hall. "WiMax offers a...

2007 enterprise software budgets are showing a 10 percent year-over-year increase, according to a recent Forrester Research survey, with software-related spending expected to account for 30 percent of the total. Companies are looking to spend that money on improving integration between applications, upgrading security environments and adopting service-oriented architecture. As the use of on-demand applications increases, so does the likelihood of attacks by cybercriminals.

Five years ago, it was the rare technologist who spent much time dealing with compliance and regulatory issues. Up until relatively recently, only a handful of technologists in certain highly regulated sectors -- such as financial services or government -- spent much time evaluating regulatory issues, ensuring adherence to defined legal or other mandates, or certifying systems for conformance to policy. The rest of us didn't really have that much to worry about in this regard.

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Wondering where to find the nearest publicly available WiFi Internet access? Our global directory of 87,000 locations in 26 countries is a terrific tool for mobile computer users.

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