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.

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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.

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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

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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