Survey: Cost Benefits of Cloud-based CRM the Major Advantage for SMEs

The cost savings possible with a subscription model is seen as the major advantage of cloud-based CRM solutions among small and medium-sized enterprises, with nearly 60% of SMEs citing this as a key benefit, new research from Maximizer Software reveals. The survey also showed that scalability of cloud-based CRM is also a major part of its appeal, as is the potential to upgrade the applications as the technology and functionality improves.

SMEs were also polled on their most significant concerns about adopting a cloud model for their CRM systems. The risk of service outages or interruptions topped the list, with more than 70% of the companies surveyed listing this as a key worry.

The independent survey of more than 500 SMEs reveals that the biggest attraction of cloud-based CRM is the ability to avoid incurring high upfront costs, including the need for additional infrastructure and IT staff, necessary to implement an in-house solution – along with the rapid return on investment delivered by the subscription model. The highest proportion of SMEs surveyed – 58% – consider this to be the key benefit of cloud-based CRM at a time when businesses of all sizes are keen to cut costs.

The flexibility of cloud-based CRM also extends to the ability to upgrade the system at little or no cost, which is the third biggest plus for SMEs – listed as a key advantage by 40% of the businesses surveyed. With a cloud-based solution, the software is upgraded automatically on the host server, enabling SMEs to keep pace with the latest features without having to make significant re-investments.

Other advantages, listed in order, include:

-- the reduced maintenance and staff costs that come with hosting data in the cloud, which 32% list as a key benefit

-- the easier access to multiple functions and integration between departments possible with a cloud-based solution (30%)

-- the fact that hosting data in the cloud gives businesses access to the powerful processing and performance hub of a third-party specialist, cited by 23% of SMEs

SMEs are less interested in the capacity of cloud-based CRM to deliver remote and multi-device access or real-time database updates, largely because these functions are also available with in-house solutions.

As well as their concerns over the reliability of a cloud-based solution (named by 71% of the respondents), SMEs are also worried about the speed of service it would deliver, with 52% citing this as a major source of anxiety. Just under half are also particularly concerned that the security of their data will be compromised by hosting their CRM system off-site.

More information on CRM can be found at www.CRMindustry.com

CIO research: 86% of businesses are failing to see the strategic value of mobility

Mobile Helix, the enterprise application and data security expert, announced the findings of an independent CIO survey of 300 IT decision makers in the UK and US; exploring how enterprises are making use of mobile technology. The research shows that although 78 percent of enterprises have a mobility strategy, 86 percent are failing to utilize mobility to transform their business or open new revenue streams.

87 percent of CIOs believe that a majority of their employees would benefit from increased access to enterprise applications, like CRM, ERP and SharePoint on mobile devices. However, complexity concerns play a role in contributing to the reluctance of CIOs to invest more into mobility: 66 percent of CIOs say that they think that it’s too complex, and 72 percent say it’s too costly to integrate mobile innovations into legacy applications. Development, support and security concerns are also factors in limiting mobile initiatives. Yet, if these issues can be overcome, 70 percent of CIOs stated that there is support from their business to use mobility to drive strategic business value.

Enterprises that fail to see mobility as a tool to transform how they do business and open up new revenue streams are missing out on the enormous potential strategic value of mobility.  Only 14 percent of businesses surveyed are currently using mobility solutions to transform business processes, drive increased revenues and develop new income streams. Many CIOs are hesitant to fully explore the potential of mobility innovations as they believe the cost/benefit ratio of implementing them to be prohibitive.

CIOs are most likely to use mobility as an extension of the office today. Less than half of enterprises are adding mobile-specific functionality to add value to specific enterprise applications. In terms of the mobile capabilities that businesses are actually integrating into their existing enterprise applications, secure offline access is the most common, with on-device storage and development tools to push real-time updates to workers. GPS/location-based capabilities are also becoming more popular.

More information on CIO's, CRM and mobile strategy can be found at www.CRMindustry.com

Survey: Mobile and Social Technologies Complicate B2B Sales Processes

Avanade, a global business technology solutions and managed services provider, released results from a large-scale global survey on the changing sales process and buying patterns of business and IT decision-makers. Avanade’s latest research shows the “consumerization” movement is shifting the sales process out of the control of the seller as enterprise buyers begin to mimic consumer shopping behaviors. With this shift, the value of the customer experience is now more important than price to business and IT decision-makers.

News Highlights

-- Customer experience now tops price as the most important factor in a buying decision by an enterprise decision-maker. Notably, business buyers are willing to pay up to 30 percent more for a product or service that offers an improved customer experience.

-- Businesses no longer have control over information shared about their products or services. Sixty-one percent of business decision-makers report third-party sites and feedback from business partners, industry peers or social channels is more important than conversations with a company’s sales teams when making a purchasing decision.

-- To help navigate this change, companies are enlisting new people and departments to manage the customer experience. Compared to three years ago, customer service and call centers, IT and marketing are the leading groups now playing a larger role in the customer experience.

-- Seventy percent of respondents believe technology will primarily replace human interaction with customers in the next 10 years. Anticipating this change, businesses are making new technology investments, changing business processes and redesigning organizational roles. More than 80 percent of companies have changed at least one business process in the past three years to better interact with customers.

This new global study builds on findings from Avanade’s Work Redesigned research conducted in January 2013. Progressive companies are changing business processes to adapt to a new style of work influenced by mobile devices, collaboration tools and social technologies. In this latest survey, Avanade found that businesses are changing processes to embrace the new business buyer and by increasing customer service and support technologies (44 percent), increasing the number of employees interacting with customers (40 percent) and adding automation to the sales process (32 percent).

 There are business benefits to making these changes. The research shows that businesses investing in technology to support better customer service and modifying internal roles are seeing positive results. Specifically, the companies making these changes are experiencing increases in customer loyalty (61 percent), revenues (60 percent) and customer base (60 percent).

Avanade surveyed 1,000 C-level executives, business unit leaders and IT decision-makers in 19 countries across more than 12 industries.

More information on mobile and social technologies can be found at www.CRMindustry.com

Gartner Says by 2017 Your Smartphone Will Be Smarter Than You

Smartphones will soon be able to predict a consumer’s next move, their next purchase or interpret actions based on what it knows, according to Gartner, Inc. This insight will be performed based on an individual’s data gathered using cognizant computing — the next step in personal cloud computing. 

The first services that will be performed "automatically" will generally help with menial tasks — and significantly time consuming or time wasting tasks — such as time-bound events (calendaring) such as booking a car for its yearly service, creating a weekly to-do list, sending birthday greetings, or responding to mundane email messages. Gradually, as confidence in the outsourcing of more menial tasks to the smartphone increases, consumers are expected to become accustomed to allowing a greater array of apps and services to take control of other aspects of their lives - this will be the era of cognizant computing. 

By 2017 mobile phones will be smarter than people not because of an intrinsic intelligence, but because the cloud and the data stored in the cloud will provide them with the computational ability to make sense of the information they have so they appear smart.

More information on CRM and mobile solutions can be found at www.CRMindustry.com

Study Reveals More than 2/3 of Marketing & IT Leaders Report Being “More Effective” Due to Collaboration

To meet the needs of today’s evolving digital, mobile and social world, marketing and technology executives are finding collaboration across people, processes and technologies is leading to more effective business outcomes. To demonstrate how organizations are embracing collaboration, Oracle, in partnership with Leader Networks and Social Media Today, launched an executive study revealing opportunities and obstacles for senior marketing and technology leaders to more effectively collaborate and to deliver real-world business value. The results of the survey highlight how marketing and technology teams are working together, when they are working in silos, and the business value of becoming a socially enabled enterprise.

Key Findings

-- Marketing and technology roles are changing: Both marketers and IT leaders report seeing their roles evolve due to a greater emphasis on social business activities. Both groups indicate they now have the ability to collaborate more effectively. They also recognize the need to acquire new skills and hire new skillsets to meet the needs of today’s evolving digital, mobile and social landscape.

-- Marketers lead the collaboration charge: Marketing respondents were more likely to report a higher level of collaboration than their IT/technology counterparts.

-- Current collaboration leaves room for growth: Only 36 percent of marketing respondents and 26 percent of IT/technology respondents report collaborating with each other “frequently” on projects. Slightly more than half of marketing and IT/technology respondents classify their collaboration as “adequate.” Sixteen percent of IT/technology respondents reported that collaboration with marketing is “non-existent.”

-- Despite challenges, collaboration is better than before: Very few respondents reported collaborating less than they did a year ago. Moreover, 41 percent of marketing and 38 percent of IT/technology leaders indicate improved collaboration from last year.

-- Collaboration delivers business value: More than two thirds of both marketing and technology leaders stated that they are “more effective” professionally due to increased collaboration. Reported benefits included stronger and more compelling marketing messages, faster speed-to-market, greater product adoption, project cost reductions, and fewer defects in product and services.

More information on IT, marketing and CRM can be found at www.CRMindustry.com

Investing in Digital Technologies and Improving Customer Experiences is Enabling Companies to Identify New Growth Opportunities and Enhance Performance

While many organizations are focused on IT cost reduction, productivity gain and process improvement, the latest global research from Accenture reveals that companies that invest in digital technologies and improving customer experiences are able to identify new growth opportunities and enhance performance.

The research report, HighPerformers in IT: Defined by Digital, features insights from senior IT executives in more than 200 global companies across a range of industries. The report shows that high performers devote 55 percent of their information technology (IT) budgets to delivering strategic capabilities that support growth and business performance. Their counterparts, however, invest only 37 percent. Moreover, five times more businesses (50 percent) that excel in their use of IT, look beyond a narrow IT lens to consider broader business implications - social, economic and geopolitical factors - as part of their strategy and planning.

Accenture’s research found that the adoption rate of key technologies, including cloud computing, analytics, social, mobility and security, was greater across-the-board for companies that excel in their use of IT than their counterparts. According to the research, these companies have recognized and embraced the transformational impact of digital IT to create new products and services that supports growth. 

For example, the high performers are leading the way in “mobilizing” their businesses. According to the research, 69 percent of them are committed to mobile transactions compared to 42 percent of other organizations, which allows their customers to reorder their favorite pair of shoes, book travel, pay for their coffee and even transfer cash between bank accounts on the go. And approximately twice as many IT leaders than non-leaders are achieving or exceeding expected business value from their investments in predictive and descriptive analytics.


Mastering a Hybrid IT Environment
According to the findings, the leaders in IT are also moving to the cloud faster and reaping more benefits sooner than other organizations. One-third (33 percent) of the executives representing those companies responded that they are effectively replacing legacy components with private and public cloud alternatives while almost one in six (15 percent) already centrally manage a fully virtualized, dynamically provisioned hybrid infrastructure.

The survey also found that companies expect to operate in a hybrid IT environment for the foreseeable future. The top performers predict that a substantial part of their IT footprint – whether infrastructure, middleware or applications – will remain “traditional,” both hosted and on-premise. In fact, these leaders believe that they will still maintain nearly six in 10 of their applications (59 percent) in a traditional license model by 2020.

It’s clear that high performers are more effective in taking advantage of cloud technology considering that:
 

       -- 40 percent see measurable improvements in IT agility, with only 9 percent of other organizations claiming the same.

-- 43 percent declared strong results in aligning between project portfolios and IT business goals, a 23 percent advantage over other organizations.

      --  33 percent see direct cost reductions as a result of their cloud investments while only 14 percent of other organizations see similar results.

Having the Right Data Creates Competitive Advantage
Leaders in the use of IT have been investing in master data management and data quality assurance for years, and as a result, they hold a significant advantage in the race to getting the right data. Their investments are now paying off. According to the research, twice as many high performers as other organizations are achieving or exceeding the business value they expected in key areas such as data management (77 percent vs. 30 percent), content management (77 percent vs. 23 percent)  and predictive analytics (54 percent vs. 21 percent).

By successfully navigating the dynamics between information and business processes and systems, those performing at the very top are much better equipped to build strategic analytic capabilities than their counterparts. Almost half (46 percent) say they already have developed and capitalized on new insights on changing customer behavior, compared to just three percent of other organizations.

It Really is All About the Customer
Leaders in IT consistently chose customer-focused business objectives among the top three priorities that guide their IT investment strategies. This includes providing the right information to the right person at the right time, finding better ways to interact with customers and delivering new services and products to customers. They also rated front-office applications among their best-performing in terms of technical and business adequacy, which was significantly higher for their companies than for other organizations.

Managing IT Security and Business Risk
Organizations are increasingly focused on ensuring the security of their growing digital business but many struggle to keep pace with new security technologies. Although most survey respondents believe they currently have the right level of investment in compliance and overall security, 44 percent concede that they have been underinvesting in cyber-security. There is a general acknowledgement that endpoint security is not sufficient.  But the shift to active defense strategies – staying one step ahead of the attackers – has not yet taken hold. Still, 75 percent of high- performing organizations have made it a priority to further lower their risk profile and more rapidly upgrade their IT security practices within the next year. 

More information on CRM and customer service can be found at www.CRMindustry.com

 

Technology CEOs should consider nine disruptive forces that are impacting businesses

The accelerated pace of business disruption is being triggered by the impact of new technologies combined with the challenges and opportunities of creating a connected experience, which are bigger than ever before, according to a new PwC report, The new digital ecosystemreality: Nine trends rewriting the rules of business. The nine trends outlined in the report are too inter-related to be tackled with an independent strategy.  PwC recommends two complementary strategies, one targeting the short-term trends and the other targeting long-term challenges.

Trend number 1: Disruptive innovation

Radical shifts in technologies translate to radical shifts in business models. In order to prepare, technology CEOs should consider a variety of steps, including: developing an appropriate innovation strategy that ties in with the corporate vision and company capabilities; determining the best ways of fostering and sustaining organic innovation; identifying opportunities for growth; determining strategic investment bets and identifying appropriate partners for highly integrated digital ecosystems.

Trend number 2: Managing cost and complexity

According to PwC, in terms of IT complexity, more than half of all companies are turning to the cloud to reduce expenses. They must also adjust their operating model to increase agility through focus on innovation both in technology and processes, in order to lay the foundation for a more-efficient cost structure. Additionally, companies are using technology to get better information faster and cheaper through using social analytics within the connected experience they have with customers and creating a connected experience with suppliers and partners through digital ecosystems.

Trend number 3: Convergence

The convergence of consumer and corporate capabilities has forced most companies across industries to become technology companies. Many companies will need to increase the pace of their customer communications in order to meet these increased expectations.

Trend number 4: Consumerization of IT

Employees have become accustomed to the ease of accessing information online, whether through mobile devices, tablets or personal computers. Companies will need to develop enterprise applications that are easier to learn to improve productivity and those that are easier to use on smartphones and other mobile devices.

Trend number 5: Changing dynamics between developing and developed countries

Technology companies will likely be looking to emerging markets for new business opportunities. Therefore, technology CEOs should think about rationalizing their global operations and simplifying and standardizing business processes and products so that development can be applied across any region, and also tailored for a particular region.

Trend number 6: Social media

According to PwC surveys, 90 percent of technology companies are focusing on strengthening relationships with customers and clients by increasing engagement and 84 percent are enhancing their focus on social media in search of new customers. Companies can use social media to interact on a regular basis, to deliver information and advice, and thus potentially increase the value of the experience.

Trend number 7: Data explosion

Technology companies must be able to accommodate input from social media with input from sales results in order to harness the broad flow of information. This requires developing a variety of systems, for example: data warehouses, analytic tools, storage systems, and business intelligence.

Trend number 8: IP and data protection

Being able to compete in the global world of technology requires maintaining a balance for technology companies. Companies need to ensure that their systems are accessible to their friends (i.e. employees and business partners) and unavailable to their competitors.

Trend number 9: Changing political and regulatory landscape

Technology CEOs have already been subjected to extensive regulatory conditions, therefore they must be prepared to track manufacturing and product information, and to be audited on a regular basis.

To address these nine trends, PwC recommends that technology companies focus on extending their own digital transformation across their business units, including manufacturing, supply chain and finance.  Digitization supports automation, which decreases response time and increases the accessibility of information which in turn enables companies to be more agile and able to respond to change faster.

More information on managing customer relationships can be found at www.CRMindustry.com

Gartner Identifies Top Vertical Industry Predictions for IT Organizations for 2014

Gartner, Inc. has revealed its top industrypredictions for IT organizations and users for 2014 and beyond. Most industries are facing accelerating pressure for fundamental transformation, including embracing digitalization in order to survive and stay competitive.

CIOs and other IT and business leaders should use Gartner's predictions and recommendations to better understand the forces that are changing their world and develop strategies to address the requirements of this fast-changing business environment.

Top industry predictions include:

-- By 2016, poor return on equity will drive more than 60 percent of banks worldwide to process the majority of their transactions in the cloud.

-- By year-end 2017, at least seven of the world's top 10 multichannel retailers will use 3D printing technologies to generate custom stock orders.

-- By 2017, more than 60 percent of government organizations with a CIO and a chief digital officer will eliminate one of these roles.

-- By 2017, 40 percent of utilities with smart metering solutions will use cloud-based big data analytics to address asset-, commodity-, customer- or revenue-related needs.

-- By year-end 2015, inadequate ROI will drive insurers to abandon 40 percent of their current customer-facing mobile apps.

-- Full-genome sequencing will stimulate a new market for medical data banks, with market penetration exceeding three percent by 2016.

-- By 2016, 60 percent of U.S. health insurers will know the procedure price and provider quality rating of shoppable medical services in advance.

-- Through 2017, K-12 online education spending will increase 25 percent, while budgetary constraints will keep spending on traditional instructional categories stagnant.

-- By 2018, 20 percent of the top 100 manufacturers' revenue will come from innovations that are the result of new cross-industry value experiences.

-- By 2018, 3D printing will result in the loss of at least $100 billion per year in intellectual property globally.

-- By 2017, 15 percent of consumers will respond to context-aware offers based on their individual demographics and shopper profiles.

-- By 2015, 80 percent of life science organizations will be crushed by elements of big data, exposing poor ROI on IT investments.

More information on IT and CRM can be found at www.CRMindustry.com

Digital Business Incompetence Will Cause 25 Percent of Businesses to Lose Competitive Ranking by 2017

Digital business incompetence will cause a quarter of businesses to lose competitive ranking by 2017, according toGartner, Inc. During the second quarter of 2013, Gartner conducted a survey of 151 participants who were intimately involved in making digital business strategy decisions or in locating, developing and acquiring talent for those digital business strategy endeavors. Ninety percent of respondents thought that competition for talent will make or break digital business success.

According to Gartner, a digital business strategy creates value and revenue from digital assets. It goes beyond process automation to transform processes, business models and customer experience by exploiting the pervasive digital connections between systems, people, places and things.

Digital business has rapidly become a lingua franca of modern business, a common and unifying language across people whose native languages — in the modern age, the languages of organizations, companies, cultures and occupations — are different.

To jump-start digital business activity, Gartner recommends identifying key strategy players and possessors of technology and business expertise both inside and outside the enterprise and engaging them to launch a digital business community of practice to enrich cross-business understanding. CIOs who learn to orchestrate talent across multiple employment models and channels can take advantage of global ecosystems to build digital expertise quickly.

The world of digital business does more than pose challenges for CIOs and other executives. It also opens opportunities to use digital technology to reach beyond organizational boundaries, to assemble problem-solving expertise from around the world, to weave a fabric of knowledge and expertise across communities of practice, and to understand and exploit new models of work. Notably, the quest for digital business expertise provides an undeniable opportunity for CIOs and HR executives to create a robust alliance that helps them meet their respective outcomes. Leading-edge CIOs become leading edge because their HR and talent strategy counterparts support them.

Gartner advises CIOs to work with high-influence HR executives to investigate talent orchestration and to redesign the learning programs required to build digital business expertise. The focus should be on hiring, developing and deploying versatile and multidisciplined teams of people. Once teams are hired, the organization should promote employee engagement as doing so will make the organization more attractive to prospective employees and increase talent retention rates throughout the shift toward the digital strategy.

More information on digital strategy and CRM can be found at www.CRMindustry.com

US Consumers Want Today's Companies to be Proactive in Customer Service

inContact, a provider of cloud contact center software and contact center agent optimization tools, announced the findings of their July 2013 customer service survey, that examined the preferences of consumers when it comes to incoming calls and other proactive communications from companies.

The study, conducted online by Harris Interactive, on behalf of inContact, among 2,034 U.S. adults aged 18 years or older, shows that consumers are open to being contacted proactively by companies. According to the findings, 87 percent of U.S. adults want to be contacted proactively by an organization or company.

Yet a major hindrance to proactive customer service is the initial pause or delay that often occurs in traditional legacy predictive dialers. The inContact survey uncovered that the pause is not only common, but it prevents customers from talking to companies. The most common initial reaction to a delay or pause, among those who answer calls from unfamiliar numbers, is to simply hang up (49%).

Customers would be more receptive if the pause could be eliminated. Over half (55%) of those who answer incoming calls from unfamiliar numbers say that if there was no delay or pause they would be more receptive to what the caller might have to say and/or more interested in hearing who’s calling them from an unfamiliar number.

Additional Key Findings Include:

-- Nearly one-in-five (17%) of those who answer incoming calls from unfamiliar numbers believe the delay/pause conveys that they are not important to the caller.

-- The most popular reasons why U.S. adults would want to be contacted is about fraudulent activity on their account (65%), for setting appointments or reminders (53%) or with questions about an order they placed (51%).

-- Nearly three-quarters (73%) of those who have had a pleasant surprise or positive experience with an incoming call from a business/service provider report they had a positive change in their perception of the organization calling them.

-- 62% of those who have had a pleasant surprise or positive experience with an incoming call from a business/service provider have taken an action as a result of that positive experience.

More information on customer service, support and CRM can be found at www.CRMindustry.com

 

Disconnect Between CMOs and CIOs Threatens Marketing Effectiveness of Companies

A disconnect between chief marketing officers (CMOs) and chief information officers (CIOs) threatens the ability of companies to deliver effective customer experiences, according to a new study by Accenture. The study, based on a survey of 400 senior marketing and 250 information technology (IT) executives in 10 countries, revealed that only one in 10 of the executives believes collaboration between CMOs and CIOs is currently at the right level.

CIOs appear to be more committed to greater collaboration than CMOs, according to the report, The CMO-CIODisconnect. More than three out of four CIOs surveyed – 77 percent – agree that CMO-CIO alignment is important, compared to 57 percent of CMOs participating in the survey. However, despite CIOs appearing more open to engaging with CMOs, only 45 percent of CIOs say that supporting marketing is near or at the top of their list of priorities.

Regarding the use of technology, CMOs and CIOs agree that technology is essential to marketing and that its primary purpose is to gain access to customer insight and intelligence (60 percent of CMOs and 73 percent of CIOs). But while CMOs claim that gaining customer insight is their number one motivator for collaborating with IT, CIOs rank this tenth on their list of reasons to work together. CIOs’ top motivation for collaborating is to improve the customer experience, which CMOs rank as their third most important motivator.

Challenged Collaboration in Action
The report reveals that when collaborating on a marketing initiative, neither the marketing executives nor the IT executives come away satisfied. According to the survey, 36 percent of CMOs say that IT deliverables fall short of the desired outcome, and 46 percent of CIOs say marketing does not provide an adequate level of detail to meet business requirements.

The survey also shows that a disagreement over the freedom and control of the use of technology and data also prevents effective collaboration. While 45 percent of CMOs say they want to enable their teams to leverage and optimize data and content without IT intervention, 49 percent of CIOs counter that marketing uses technologies without consideration for IT standards.

A Positive Shift
Despite the issues in collaboration raised by the survey, both CMOs and CIOs believe their relationship has improved over the past year: 45 percent of marketing executives and 47 percent of IT executives share this opinion. Additionally, almost an equal number of CMOs (41 percent) and CIOs (42 percent) believe that significantly more collaboration with each other will be required to drive relevant customer experiences. 

More information on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) can be found at www.CRMindustry.com

Gartner Survey: 75% of Government CIO Budgets Flat or Increasing in 2013

Despite a continuing drive to lower the cost of IT services, nearly 75 percent of government IT budgets globally were reported as flat or increasing in 2013, according to the Gartner Executive Programs 2013 CIO Agenda survey.

When compared to other sectors of the economy, the relatively brighter IT budget outlook in government may be short-lived, according to Gartner analysts. Gartner's CEO and Senior Executive Survey 2013 indicates that private-sector business leaders are poised to boost investments in e-commerce, mobile, cloud, social and other major technology categories. Despite this, Gartner projects a modest compound annual growth rate of 1.3 percent for IT spending in the government and education sectors through to the end of 2017, with increased spending for IT services, software and data centers. These increases are offset by reductions in internal technology services, devices and telecom services.

CIOs in government indicated that reducing overall business costs is now more important than reducing IT costs alone, which will permit government CIOs to accelerate enterprise-scale initiatives. The business and technology priorities of government CIOs are strongly aligned with their peers from all industries globally, with a few small differences.

For the third consecutive year, reducing enterprise costs ranks among the top three business priorities for government CIOs in 2013. In conjunction with the imperative to deliver operational results and the need to modernise IT applications and infrastructure, CIOs have affirmed the means by which IT can be used to transform government agency operations and their own bottom-line accountability to do so.

The top three technology priorities in 2013 have all changed since 2012, with business intelligence and analytics moving from No. 5 to the top spot, followed by legacy modernization and IT management. By placing analytics and business intelligence at the top of the list, government CIOs are addressing government's need to proactively manage programs and services.

As part of the CIO agenda survey, strategic priorities are also investigated and ranked. Improving the government IT organization and workforce has moved to the No. 2 spot in 2013 from No. 9 in 2012, which shifts the responsibilities of CIOs and IT professionals away from most legacy technology services to underserved areas of business need.

The CIO Agenda Survey also indicated that 76 percent of government CIOs have significant leadership responsibilities outside of IT, with only 24 percent having no responsibilities beyond IT. The average tenure of government CIOs is 3.8 years, compared to an average of 4.6 years across all industries.

More information on customer relationship management, visit www.CRMIndustry.com

U.S. workers found to outperform offshore staff

U.S.-based workers show more initiative and are more innovative and more understanding of the business than offshore workers, a new study that looks on sourcing services in the U.S has found.

These qualities are helping to boost use of domestic IT services, especially as companies move to cloud-based services, said HfS Research, an IT services research firm and consultancy.

Domestic workers also work harder than offshore staff, but not by much. The difference was 83 percent to 79 percent when responders were asked to assign attributes to their U.S.-based and non-U.S.-based staff, said the report, which was based on a survey of 235 enterprise buyers of $1 billion or more in revenue.

In most areas associated with productivity, U.S.-based staff exceeded offshore staff by wide margins in this survey. When it came to cultural and communication skills, U.S. based staff was rated 82 percent versus 33 percent for offshore staff. In taking initiative, it was 77 percent to 40 percent, and for being innovative, it was 77 percent to 45 percent.

When the survey looked at specific IT services functions, the findings narrowed some, but with U.S.-based workers maintaining leads nonetheless. Survey takers were asked, for instance, how satisfied they were with application development work, 77 percent said they very satisfied and satisfied with U.S.-based staff, versus 61 percent for offshore. For IT help desk, it was 71 percent to 54 percent, in favor of U.S. workers.

source: InfoWorld

More information on CRM can be found at www.CRMindustry.com

New Research Shows How Social Media, Mobile, and Advanced Self-Service Help Shape the Customer Experience

The International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) has released its 2013 research report, Extreme Engagement in the Multichannel Contact Center: Leveraging the Emerging Channels Research Report and Best Practices Guide. The study results were collected, compiled and analyzed from a 2013 second quarter poll with over 300 respondents – a mixture of call center executives, directors and managers. Their input painted a compelling picture of how channels such as social media, mobile, and advanced self-service help shape and improve the customer experience, first contact resolution, and customer engagement.  

Key findings from the research study include:

-- Only 25% of companies feel their customers are extremely engaged in their brand

-- 90% of customers find the features of social customer service extremely useful or somewhat useful

-- 93% of customers would be MORE satisfied with customer service if they were offered their channel choice

-- Self-service is said to increase deflection rate or lower volume to other channels by 57% of study participants

-- Agents use social media personally, but don't feel comfortable doing so in the contact center

-- 72% consider Mobile a necessary channel; although only 39% of companies support it as a channel.

More information on CRM and social media can be found at www.CRMindustry.com

Customer Experience Innovation: You're Doing It Wrong

"Innovation" has become a buzzword in the customer experience field, and many firms are banking on it as a tool for market differentiation. A recent Forrester survey of 100 Customer Experience Professionals shows that nearly half of respondents say their executive team strategy for customer experience is market differentiation, and an ambitious 13% will settle for nothing less than having the best customer experience across every industry. What's more, a whopping 73% of interviewees plan to launch "innovative" customer experiences in the coming year, and two-thirds claim to have already delivered such experiences in the past year.

But despite their ambition, most firms that believe they're innovating are actually thwarting differentiation and wasting massive amounts of time and money in the process. A startling 58% of respondents say their firm drives customer experience innovations by watching what direct competitors are doing, and another 62% report that technology advancements drive their firms' innovation activities. So let's face it: The market is confused on what it actually means to innovate. In their research, Forrester outlines three steps CX pros must take to put their innovation efforts on the right track: 1) reframe innovation opportunities; 2) ground innovation in the ecosystem; and 3) infuse innovations with the brand.

More information on CRM and Customer Experience can be found at www.CRMindustry.com

 

 

 

43% of US contact centers now offer a web chat option to customers

New research published by ContactBabel, contact center industry analysts, reveals that web chat (or instant messaging) is one of the fastest-growing technologies used by US contact centers. 43% of this year’s survey respondents offer web chat as a customer service channel, compared to only 15% five years ago, with volumes of web chat increasing by 125% over the same timescale.

Furthermore, 18% of respondents state that they intend to implement web chat over the next 12 months, the highest of any of the 13 contact center technologies surveyed in the report.

The report's author, Steve Morrell, commented:

"While web chat has been around for many years, we are seeing a definite increase in the use of this channel, which has huge potential. The real-time nature of web chat means it is akin to a voice conversation in immediacy, giving it an advantage over email. Multiple concurrent web chat sessions can be run, cutting cost per interaction, which means there are sound commercial reasons for businesses to support this channel.

“Survey respondents indicate that the cost of a web chat is roughly equivalent to that of an email – around $3.50 – which is less than half the cost of a typical phone call.

“Web chat is ideally suited to provide assisted service, in case where a customer has tried to use a website but cannot find the information that they are looking for. Customers do not have to break from the website in order to call a business, but can quickly and seamlessly move from self-service to assisted service, improving customer satisfaction, cutting call queues and closing more sales. Furthermore, the rise in smartphone usage means that customers will access websites through mobile devices more often, and will require an assisted service option in case the less feature-rich mobile website does not have what they require.” 

"The US Contact Center Decision-Makers' Guide (6^th  edition - 2013)", is a major study of over 200 US contact center operations, looking at all areas of performance, investment, technology, HR and strategy. The study can be downloaded at www.contactbabel.com.

Worldwide Customer Relationship Management Software Market Grew 12.5 Percent in 2012

Salesforce.com passed SAP as the lead vendor in the worldwide customer relationship management (CRM) software market in 2012, according to Gartner, Inc. Total worldwide CRM software revenue totaled $18 billion in 2012, up 12.5 percent from $16 billion in 2011.

Vendors benefited from strong demand for software as a service (SaaS), which represented nearly 40 percent of CRM total software revenue in 2012, as organizations of all sizes sought easier-to-deploy alternatives to replace legacy systems, as net-new applications or to provide alternative complementary functionality.

The top five CRM vendors accounted for nearly 50 percent of CRM software revenue in 2012. Salesforce.com replaced SAP as the largest vendor in the CRM market as its direct sales pushed its CRM revenue to more than $2.5 billion. Second-place SAP's growth was less than one percent in USD terms, largely because currency headwinds were stronger in 2012 and the euro was weak. While SAP was not the worldwide leader in CRM for 2012, it was still the largest vendor in terms of revenue in Western and Eastern Europe.

North America and Western Europe remained the largest regions for CRM, accounting for more than 80 percent of total software revenue, but all regions saw growth. Western Europe's growth was less than one percent, due in part to the strong dollar, which made overall comparisons with prior years difficult. Overall spending in the IT market in Western Europe has been muted because of economic reasons. Areas of growth continued to be in Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and the Middle East and Africa, which saw IT spending for the modernization of countries' infrastructure (utilities, telecommunications, banking and government).

In 2012, vendors continued to expand their offerings with new features and functionality, often through acquisition. The wave of consolidation activity that began flowing through the market in 2009 continued throughout 2012, with more than 50 acquisitions, resulting in increased competition at the top end of the market, with the real start of the global sales forces kicking in some sales. Marketing has been the focus for investment in the past couple of years, growing at more than four times the software industry forecast norm in 2012. Marketing was also the target area for acquisitions by IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and others as analytics, lead quality and multichannel support for social and mobile technologies continue to lead the list of requirements by line-of-business buyers.

More information on CRM can be found at www.CRMindustry.com

Study Shows U.S. Consumers Want a Seamless Shopping Experience Across Store, Online and Mobile that Many Retailers are Struggling to Deliver

Retailers that deliver on their customers’ expectations and provide them with a seamless shopping experience – whether they are shopping in a store, online or through a mobile device – will win their loyalty and gain a competitive advantage that drives sales, according to new research by Accenture.

Based on a poll of 750 consumers in the United States, and an analysis of how top retailers operate across multiple sales channels, the AccentureSeamless Retail Study found that half (49 percent) of consumers believe the best thing retailers can do to improve the shopping experience is to better integrate in-store, online and mobile shopping channels. An overwhelming 89 percent of consumers said it is important for retailers to let them shop for products in the way that is most convenient for them, no matter which sales channel they choose.

Consumers remain bullish on the in-store shopping experience: almost all survey participants (94 percent) found in-store shopping easy. They are less bullish, however, about their experience with other shopping channels: 74 percent said online shopping is easy, but only one-quarter (26 percent) found the mobile phone shopping experience easy.

 Choosing Channels for Seamless Shopping

Regardless of their original shopping touchpoint – in-store, online or mobile – consumers expect their interaction with retailers to be a customized, uncomplicated and instantaneous experience, according to the survey. The research also indicates that consistency weighs heavily on the consumer experience. For example, 73 percent of consumers expect a retailer’s online pricing to be the same as its in-store pricing, and 61 percent expect a retailer’s online promotions to be the same as its in-store promotions.

Yet, a benchmark analysis by Accenture of the top retailers globally indicated that while 73 percent offer the same promotions online as in the store, only 16 percent offer the same prices online as they do in the store. Additionally, while 43 percent of consumers surveyed expect a retailer to offer the same product assortment online as they do in the store, only 19 percent of retailers actually offer the same product assortment, according to Accenture’s analysis of top retailers.

“Showrooming” and “Webrooming” Are Here To Stay

The survey found that as online shopping continues to grow as a consumer preference, there is a mutually beneficial relationship between stores and online channels. For example, while in the six months prior to the survey, 73 percent of respondents indicated that they participated in the practice of “showrooming”, or browsing at least once in-store and then buying online, an even larger number – 88 percent – said they participated in “webrooming”, or browsing first on the internet then buying in-store.

The survey also highlighted the following findings:

 

  -- After purchasing, 81 percent said it is important for a retailer to enable them to pick up or arrange for delivery of their purchase regardless of how they paid for the item.

  --  One-quarter (25 percent) of survey respondents said they would be willing to wait a whole two weeks for free shipping.

  --  Other consumers are willing to pay for speed and convenience: 24 percent said it is important for retailers to offer same-day delivery, including 30 percent who are willing to pay $5-$10 and 19 percent who are willing to pay $11-$20 for same-day delivery.

  -- The ability to offer a range of different fulfillment capabilities is something offered by just over half (56 percent) of retailers; however, only one quarter (26 percent) have a same day delivery capability

 

  --  When respondents were asked what they would do if a retailer has a product they want but it was outside normal business hours, 39 percent said they would wait until the morning for the store to open to purchase, 36 percent would buy it online from that retailer, 22 percent would search for the best price and buy the product somewhere online.

   --  49 percent surveyed are influenced by in-store offers (via promotional displays, salespeople, etc.), 56 percent are influenced by email coupons and offers and an equal amount of respondents say they are influenced by coupons mailed to their home.

 
-- 69 percent and 62 percent respectively said that online pop-up ads and mobile banner ads would never influence their purchasing.

 
More information about online shopping and CRM can be found at www.CRMindustry.com