For a while now, IBM has been shifting their focus from hardware to software, and recently, CFO Mark Loughridge told us that they were investing lost in business analytics. Today, the company announced a very large fruit of that endeavor: the IBM Smart Analytics Cloud. This product is the for IBM clients, and is accompanying the release of Blue Insight, which is an internal product that will be the world’s largest private cloud-computing analytics environment for business analytics.

Predating this release are the recent acquisitions of data analytics company SPSS for $1.2 billion, business analytics firm RedPill, and Canadian business intelligence developer Cognos. In addition, IBM recently performed a Global CIO study and found 83% of respondents were looking to business intelligence and analytics to boost competitiveness.

Blue Insight, the internal offering, will give IBM’s sales and development department (some 200,000 employees) the ability to gather data and information—from customer relationships to demand trends to shipping times—for more efficient decision making to gain further insight at point of sale. One of the most impressive aspects of Blue Insight is its scope: information will come from about 100 different info warehouses that make up more than a petabyte of information—100 times the content of the Library of Congress.

IBM Smart Analytics Cloud will provide customers with the same scalable architecture of Blue Insight, and like its internal sister, will tout many of the Cognos 8 BI tools. Customers will be able to create reports, dashboards, and scorecards for monitoring business performance, and also import data for strategic analysis. And the addition of this vast information source also gives IBM the opportunity to offer an impressive bundle: hardware, software, middleware, and consulting and maintenance services. And the folks at Forbes posit that if IBM adds data mining and real-time analytics, they will strike gold.

IBM’s foray into the software market has been extremely fruitful, and this new product will certainly spark copies from other software companies. It will be interesting to see who else joins the business analytics-cloud race.

Social networking have given rise to a new phase in business software, dubbed Enterprise 2.0, and many tech pundits say that with its emergence will come the need for insightful community management. Communities and forums are expanding within enterprise solutions, as they offer key customer insight and accelerate customer service. Enterprise strategists Dion Hinchcliffe and Dennis Howlett are two experts encouraging companies moving into the 2.0 space to pay appropriate attention to community management.

Hinchcliffe argues that community managers must be dedicated to the post—not volunteers within the company who are splitting their time between it and another task—and thinks they must be a jack of all trades, versed in the corporate culture from HR to IT help desk practices. Howlett, on the other hand, does not think community managers need to be so widely versed, but he does acknowledge the asset they are to companies wanting the greatest ROI from implementing forums. Howlett’s argument comes as a slight surprise, as he has written of “Enterprise 2.0” as a space that only deserves a fraction of the consideration it has lately received. Still, the two both agree that community managers are a must.

Both Hinchcliffe and Howlett suggest a few guidelines for selecting a community manager, but perhaps more importantly urge employers to remember that these people will be the public face of their corporate culture. These ambassadors will need to be versed in social networking mediums, and naturally be very good with people. On this note, Howlett rightly points out that employers shouldn’t assume that community management is a simple task just because the tools of Enterprise 2.0 are pervasive and cheap. The extent of the community manager’s role will be better articulated with time, and according to the dictates of a company’s culture. The underlying message is to have one—from the very beginning if possible—to fully exercise what could be an extremely useful tool.

Learn how to increase responsiveness and meet every deadline without straining your staff or your budget.  Join PhaseWare’s Randall Nelson and Hoyt Mann for a short session on practical ways to automate your support operations.    
 
At this online event, you’ll learn how to:

• Keep your customers in the loop, not in the dark, about when a problem will be fixed. 
• Maintain Service Level Agreements without breaking a sweat.
• Keep the pulse of your customers and know exactly when it goes up.
• Escalate incidents without escalating the workload.

Details:
7 Ways to Automate Customer Support
 Friday, July 31st, 2008
8:30am PDT / 10:30am CDT / 11:30am EDT

Register for this webinar or learn more

The CRM Advisor
You ask the questions, and our resident CRM guru shares her wisdom.

This week’s question:
“We recently implemented a call center management system as part of our CRM strategy. What key metrics should we be measuring?”

A: For many businesses today, the call center is the “front line” to the customer. Therefore, you want to make sure your agents are performing at optimum levels and delivering the highest quality experience. Read more »

In the past, field service operations were often disconnected from other customer-facing functions. While call centers, sales and marketing departments, and help desks have always been viewed as key contributors to customer satisfaction and loyalty, field support teams were considered a cost of doing business.

In recent years, this perception has changed. Many businesses now see field support as playing a major role in the customer experience, and as a result, have made efficient, cost-effective and profitable field service operations a top priority.

In fact, according to the Service and Support Professionals Association (SSPA), “field service is now finding itself in the customer experience spotlight, often for the first time. Driving costs out of field service operations continues to be the primary goal for most organizations, and more companies realize that field agents, with their face to face interactions with customers, have a major impact on customer satisfaction and incremental revenue.”

Read more »

You ask the questions, and our resident CRM guru shares her wisdom.

Q: “My company has an internal help desk that provides IT support to employees. Can a CRM system help make it more efficient?”

Read more »

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) solutions have long been used by companies of all types and sizes to increase the efficiency of customer service personnel and reduce the cost of service delivery. But, now, IVR is proving to be one of the best complimentary technologies to CRM applications.

IVR is a phone-based software system that detects entries from a touch tone keypad, as well as live speech, during the course of a call. Callers can enter or speak their account numbers, order tracking numbers, or other identifying data to retrieve important information, which is delivered via pre-recorded text messages. More sophisticated IVR systems allow for processing and execution of simple transactions, such as funds transfers between bank accounts.

With an IVR system, customers have immediate, around-the-clock access to service – without the assistance of a live representative. Companies who use IVR as part of their overall CRM strategy can boost satisfaction by delivering faster, more convenient service to their clients, while dramatically reducing support-related expenses.

Some of the leading IVR vendors include Avaya, Nortel Networks, Genesys, InterVoice, and Cisco.