Dovetail Software Blogs

"Microsoft hopes its efforts to improve the usability of its Dynamics ERP (enterprise resource planning) software can give it a boost in taking on more-established rivals like SAP and Oracle. Jakob Nielsen, principal user experience manager for Dynamics at Microsoft, told an audience at the company's Convergence conference that ease-of-use upgrades in the next Dynamics version could prove attractive to the many dissatisfied corporate ERP software users."

"A new study from Accenture found that 59% of people had actually stopped doing business with companies in the past year due to poor service. That's based on a survey of 3,500 consumers on five continents. Just under half of those polled said their service expectations were met only sometimes, rarely or never." This story also mentions a survey conducted by Amdocs.

"Our initial involvement was to help them implement a CRM system that delivered better customer service metrics, which in turn the client used to improve the quality of support they were offering. However the system also started to provide better insight into the issues that customers were reporting, which in turn led to a series of product improvements, which improved product reliability, further enhanced customer service, but also reduced the number of customer support calls, which alongside productivity improvements meant, over time, that customer service reps weren’t replaced when they left, and staff costs for the unit dropped 30%."

"I know that there is badly written software out there, but my real concern is that it is a problem I can't resolve. I have to do nasty hacks and workarounds to get this software to work, which is just as likely to break something else as it is to hold up to long-term use. What I wouldn't give to have an environment where software cannot be introduced until it has been tested to my satisfaction. Still, I can dream."

"IT cost reduction methods fall into ten categories. Some have much more potential than others. I have spent the past few years exploring IT cost reduction. Looking back, I see that I have fallen into the trap of presenting my views as 'the solution," and not giving a fair account of other approaches."