Software Assets -- Not Financial Assets -- Will Determine Business Success Over The Next 10 Years

Software assets — not financial assets — will be most critical to your brand in the age of the customer, a 20-year business cycle in which the most successful companies will reinvent themselves to systematically understand and serve increasingly powerful customers, according to a recent Forrester report.

Mobile, big data, the Internet of Things, and digitization have changed the ways customers interact with brands: Customers expect to be able to interact with brands through software. Digital business in this era will be akin in scale and complexity to the ERP re-engineering that took place in the '90s to address Y2K issues. Why? In the age of customer, a good software experience can build trust, capture consumer attention, create unique customer experiences, and make a brand essential.

A bad software experience? "The next 10 years will see more change than any time since Great Depression in the makeup of the Fortune 1000 as some companies figure out the power of software and others do not. Increasing customer expectations fueled by an accelerated pace of technology will increase the delta between the haves and have-nots in term of overall financial performance," writes John McCarthy, author of the report.

According to George Colony, Forrester CEO, in the age of the customer, all companies will be software companies. Your most important assets will not be financial assets, they will be software assets. Software will allow brands to become customer-obsessed: to know what their customers want — and how, when, and where they can meet (and exceed) that expectation.

More information on Mobile, big data, the Internet of Things can be found at www.CRMindustry.com.

While Many Companies Try SaaS for Cost Savings, Top Performers Discover Competitive Advantage

IBM announced that nearly half of the businesses using Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) are achieving competitive advantage, rather than simply reducing costs. Leading enterprises—those gaining competitive advantage through broad SaaS adoption—are collaborating more effectively  through social business tools, improving the customer experience, and accelerating time to market through their SaaS initiatives, according to a recent survey conducted with more than 800 IT and business decision makers worldwide by the IBM Center for Applied Insights.

Global spending on SaaS is expected to reach $45.6B by 2017, according to industry estimates. SaaS is often used by line-of-business leaders who are looking to deploy technology to rapidly provide their teams with needed functionality, increase productivity and address new market opportunities. In fact, industry analysts estimate that by 2017, CMOs will spend more on IT than CIOs, while Forrester reports that 65 percent of business leaders have plans to buy technology for their group without involving IT at all. 

However, circumventing IT to deploy SaaS without provisioning and securing it first can have unintended consequences, and IBM’s study suggests that organizations in which IT and business leaders work together to select, secure and deploy SaaS applications are in fact the ones who deliver the greatest value to their organization. Further, organizations that are gaining the most out of their SaaS deployments are more likely to see it as a critical piece of their enterprise cloud strategy when compared to their peers. 

Nearly one in five companies that responded to IBM’s survey has deployed SaaS broadly and is now gaining competitive advantage as a result. By developing mature and cohesive enterprise-wide SaaS strategies, these Pacesetter organizations are able to improve market agility, achieve a deeper level of collaboration and make better decisions than their peers. Specifically, compared to peers that are newer or less advanced with their SaaS adoption, Pacesetters are:

-- 79 percent more likely to have increased collaboration across their organization and ecosystem through SaaS

-- More than twice as likely to have leveraged analytics across the organization to turn big data into insights using SaaS

-- More than twice as likely to have increased innovation using SaaS

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

Measurement and Analysis Across the Entire IT Infrastructure Is Key to IT Operational Excellence

Continuity Software™, a provider of service availability risk management solutions, announced the results of the Continuity Software IT OperationsAnalytics Benchmark. Based on results collected across a variety of industry verticals - including financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail - the benchmark underscores the importance of operational analytics in meeting IT performance goals. 

The IT Operations Analytics Benchmark survey's key findings include:

Large organizations are the most common users of analytical tools to monitor and measure IT performance goals.

-- 57% of the large organizations surveyed use analytical tools to monitor, and measure IT performance goals (versus just 29% of small companies).

Cross-domain operational excellence is mostly measured by uptime.

-- 89% of the organizations surveyed measure uptime across most or all IT domains; 66% measure performance; 51% measure the number of open issues.

Frequently tracking configuration consistency helps organizations meet their goals.

-- 53% of the organizations that track configuration consistency on a daily basis across the IT infrastructure are meeting or exceeding their goals, compared to 31-33% of the organizations that track only portions of the infrastructure.

Better measurement and analysis tools are required for IT operations excellence.

-- 40% of organizations surveyed cited better measurement and analysis tools as the most effective means for achieving operations excellence, followed by tools to detect cross-domain IT configuration issues (22%) and tools to enforce IT best practices (19%).

Storage and network performance rank highest.

-- 71% of the organizations surveyed monitor storage and network key performance indicators (KPIs); other areas of IT operations that are commonly monitored and measured include applications (69%), databases (66%), and clusters (49%).

Cloud environments continue to lag behind.

-- Only 14% of the organizations surveyed monitor and measure cloud KPIs.

-- 43% of the organizations never analyze configuration consistency in their cloud environment.

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

ForeSee Releases the ForeSee Experience Index (FXI): 2013 U.S. Retail Edition

ForeSee, the global leader in technology-driven customer experience analytics, today released the ForeSee Experience Index (FXI): 2013 U.S. Retail Edition. Based on data gathered during 2013’s holiday shopping season, the report features company-level and channel-specific customer satisfaction analysis for the top 100 U.S. retailers.

The new FXI Retail report offers a comprehensive view of satisfaction at the Company-level and across every applicable sales channel including Store and Contact Center as well as Web and Mobile. The study is based on more than 67,600 surveys collected between Nov. 29 and Dec. 17, 2013, for the 100 biggest U.S. retailers as reported by the Fortune 500 and Internet Retailer’s top 100 websites. Retailers listed in this report include Amazon, Dell, L.L.Bean, Apple, QVC, Keurig, Costco, Ralph Lauren, Victoria’s Secret, Barnes & Noble, eBay, Groupon, Family Dollar, Best Buy, Toys“R”Us, zulily and others.

Key Findings:

Company-level: retailers that satisfied the most (and least) during 2013’s holiday shopping season:

Amazon (90) and L.L.Bean (90) tied for the highest Company-level satisfaction. While this is the first time ForeSee has studied Company-level satisfaction during the holidays, the L.L.Bean website has scored an 80 or above in Web satisfaction eight out of the nine years measured, and Amazon has topped the Web satisfaction list every year. Amazon and L.L.Bean set the bar for customer experience excellence.

Priceline.com came in with the lowest Company-level satisfaction (76), as well as one of the lowest Web satisfaction (75) and Mobile satisfaction (73) scores.

Store channel: Apple, which prides itself on stellar Apple Store customer experiences, lost to the supermarket chain Publix Super Markets in Store satisfaction with a score of 86 – three points higher than Apple’s score of 83.

53 percent of retailers register merchandise as the main priority affecting in-store purchase, and 35 percent register service.

Web channel: While Amazon (88) led the pack for Web satisfaction, some retail sites such as vitacost.com (86), keurig.com (84) and llbean.com (84) are creeping closer. Basspro.com (83) and crateandbarrel.com (80) tied for the most improved sites with seven-point gains in customer satisfaction from last year. 

57 percent of retailers identify merchandise as the top driver affecting customer web experience, compared to only 7 percent that register price.

Mobile channel: In a category that saw satisfaction stagnate this year, Walmart (80) was the only company to experience a significant increase of more than three points in Mobile satisfaction, seeing a five-point improvement from 2012’s score. Again, Amazon led the pack with a Mobile satisfaction score of 87.

38 percent of retailers register functionality as the top priority affecting the mobile customer experience, above both merchandise (34 percent) and content (31 percent).

Contact Center channel: QVC (88) beat Amazon (85) in Contact Center satisfaction by three points. Costco (85) and O’Reilly Auto Parts (85) tied Amazon in Contact Center satisfaction.

55 percent of retailers record knowledge of the customer service representative as the top priority affecting the customer contact center experience.

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