Dovetail Software Blogs: The Courage-Centric Corporation
“Today’s
corporation, having survived countless threats from the markets of the
past, now faces perhaps its greatest challenge ever, simply trying to
face its customers. Becoming a customer-centric company requires a
great deal of executive courage – there is no other word for it.”
Executives are human, too
“I
don’t know about you, but I’m continuously bombarded with reasons why
executive managers (assistant vice president and above) should not have
to deal with the same security controls as everyone else. In addition
to being far too busy to deal with minor annoyances like Blackberry
passwords or enforced email encryption, they’re much more reliable and
vigilant about how they expose data and the network to exploits. Well,
maybe not.”
BI Tools Still Face User Pushback
“Chris Festog, CIO
at Virginia Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance in Richmond, Va., said he was
hired about two years ago to help turn around an IT department ‘that
had not performed for years.’ He developed a strategic plan that leaned
heavily on business intelligence technologies. Despite the increasing
investment in BI projects, he said, some users continue to resist the
effort.”
Introduction to Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
“What is it: A consistent API
to handle both synchronous and asynchronous messaging in the Microsoft
Windows ecosystem. Why use it: Transportation details of messages are
handled through configuration files and so Service Oriented
Architectures can be redeployed to handle changing business needs
without changing code.”
Is the Chinese labor pool drying up?
“China is therefore the country that produces today the highest number of IT engineers, by far, more than India and the USA together!”
Not too wiki?
“The issue is, ‘How should organizations develop enablers like wikis to make knowledge management more effective?’
“Introducing
wikis without considering change management, or denying how newer
collaboration methods can increase interactivity will likely lead to
less than satisfactory results. Neither approach alone will get us
there.”
The Dead Pool: E- and Phone Service
“Forrester
interviewed 75 customer-service vendor and user companies for its
report, ‘The Forrester Wave: Customer Service Management Software.’ The
report offers an up-to-the moment snapshot of the customer-service
management software industry. ‘We found that e-service is dead as a
category,’ says Chip Gliedman, vice president at Forrester and author
of the report. ‘Phone service is also dead. They’re both separate
aspects of total customer service.’”
Crossing Channels: Q&A With Best Buy’s Matt Smith
“As
Senior Director, Customer Insight at Best Buy, Matt Smith oversees Web
analytics, one-to-one marketing, the Reward Zone customer-loyalty
program, market-share measurement, in-store test-and-measurement and an
analytics research and development team that serves multiple operating
groups. Smith explains the retailer’s move into cross-channel analysis,
which he says is essential to transitioning from customer acquisition
to relationship building.”
