Dovetail Software Blogs: The Risk of SaaS in CRM
“Beyond
this, the scope of challenge in customer relations today is literally
life-threatening to the enterprise. Technology has to be the handmaiden
of the critical business needs for completely integrated data
cross-enterprise, and genuinely useful business intelligence in real
time. Only IT can deliver these ends.
“The great risk with
on-demand proliferation is a “calving” of the enterprise – like an
iceberg – into smaller ice-floes, subdivisions of function that have
given up the freedom of the perpetually licensed, on-premise system,
and choose vendor lock-in for short-term gains. Over the long term, IT
is largely helpless to customize a hosted service. And there are other
ways to cut the cloth.”
MySpy: Intel Community Embraces Social Networks
“Using
tools like A-Space, ‘a junior analyst may be able to raise insights
that wouldn’t be heard in more hierarchical systems,’ Stephenson said.
Today’s intelligence agencies ‘need to be able to alter strategies on
the fly based on rapidly developing situations,’ he said.
”’Sometimes
the important thing is a different thread that comes out in the
conversation. Almost anyone involved in a collaborative process can
come up with valuable insights,’ he said. If a social-networking
approach can streamline the analysis process, ‘it really could result
in an acceleration of decision-making where rapid decision-making is
necessary.’”
Companies that close networking doors jeopardize their future
“Research
at institutions such as Harvard and M.I.T. has consistently shown that
employees’ personal networks are in many cases the single biggest
factor impacting their productivity and ability to contribute to the
company.
“This is why organizations such as IBM, Procter & Gamble, PricewaterhouseCoopers and most world-class organizations I am aware of are focusing on how they can HELP their employees to network and build connections inside and outside their organizations, not hinder them. “
Dashboard Yea or Dashboard Nay?
“This enables a new kind of RAD
design. ‘When things can be built this fast, throwaway code is
possible, and new and more sophisticated customized contextual apps can
be done. The IBM guys are calling them
“situational apps”. Makes me think the BI tool thrust with universal
interfaces will continue to miss unless they start working on
re-architecting their products,’ he argues.
Madsen is
speaking about Web 2.0-boards [...] in a whole different class from the
packaged dashboards marketed by most BI and PM players. Not that
packaged dashboards aren’t being (or haven’t been) Web 2.0-ified, of
course. Most major players—including Business Objects SA, Cognos Inc.,
MicroStrategy Inc., and Oracle Corp. (which purchased dashboard champ
Hyperion Solutions Corp. earlier this year), among others—deliver Web
2.0 features sets in their own dashboard offerings. These include
support for both Asynchronous Java over XML (AJaX)
and Adobe Flash, along with the requisite support for Web services
standards like the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), eXtensible
Access Control Markup Language (XACML), and others.”
Government looks to CRM with Citizen Relationship Management
“Currently, government purchases account for a small but healthy 6% of the CRM market, according to Framingham, Mass.-based IDC, which projects a 5.5% annual growth rate in public sector CRM. One reason is that CRM
can put a contemporary face on aging, siloed legacy systems, according
to John Kost, managing vice president for Gartner’s government and
healthcare research. “
Georgia Government Gets Peachy on Customer Service
“An
initiative launched 18 months ago to improve customer service Get
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Georgia state government is bearing fruit that the public can notice,
according to agency records. Gone are the long lines for driver’s
licenses or months of waiting to resolve a contested tax Free Trials.
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return or get help collecting child support. Though the makeover has
barely begun in most agencies, the effort has a few notable successes
already.
“At the state’s 27 call centers, telephones are
answered 65 percent faster with 36 percent fewer dropped calls. At the
Family and Children’s Services call center, for example, the time on
hold was cut 70 percent. “
The 2.0 Effect
“He
also mentioned the employee-to-consumer ratio typical at Web 2.0 sites,
noting that at MySpace the ratio stands at one employee for every 300
million customers.
”’Is there any business model that
currently exists in corporate America that could run their business on
such a ratio?’ he asked the attendees, before answering himself: ‘Not
that I know of.’ Among other distinctions between CRM and Web 2.0, he said, CRM
content is professionally created (and typically generalized) by
companies, whereas amateurs create the majority of the content for Web
2.0 sites, where the content is also personalized. ‘CRM is going to
have to learn to tailor itself to these Web 2.0 attributes,’ Davis
said.”
