Since CRM (customer relationship management) is supposed to mean any one or any system that interacts with customers one would logically think that email marketing would be an integral part of any CRM solution.
But it isn't.
Email marketing has been around as long as email itself has. Yet most companies who do email marketing for customer retention (up selling and cross selling) or acquisition (acquiring new customers) do so blindly using third party lists or hobbled together lists. Some may use Templates found on Microsoft's template section of their website. Others use a variety of software or internet based solutions -- and there same to be a plethora of them out there.
Most companies seem to use the axiom: throw enough mud on the wall and some of it is bound to stick when sending out corporate marketing emails.
No tracking of the ROI (return on investment). No knowing if you are "ticking off" your best customers. No knowing how many hit the SPAM filter. No knowing how many people get multiple emails from you (annoying them). Bad email marketing hurts every other aspect of CRM, and does more damage than good.
This is mass emailing. My friend, Sundeep Kapur (other wise known as the Email Yogi) has been an email marketing guru since around 1999 and he has outlined "Seven Stages of eMarketing" in a Whitepaper – available, with just a simple request. The first is exactly what I outlined above: mass marketing with the hope someone, somewhere will read it.
I don't want to "give away" everything in Sundeep's excellent paper, but suffice it to say that email CRM isn't any different than CRM in general -- know thy customer. You must target your existing customers and potential customers by market segment (customer segmentation), by demographics, by buying history, etc. None of this is rocket science, but it is all hard work -- that results in qualified leads that generate new customers.
The more you can customize the email to the prospect the better. And if you can make it FUN even better still!
Customer segmentation allows you to target your email messaging.
Once you've created an email offer, newsletter, etc. it is a good idea to set up two separate tests with similar, but not identical, offers. The test audiences must be the same segmentation for this to work. Try to make an offer that requires a response (buy in) before the scroll down point (above 400 pixels in height) and if this is the first email one of those should be an opt in to get more emails from you.
Design the email using HTML and a plain text file. If you start getting fancy with CSS or flash -- even Java -- many email programs won't read it properly.
When CRM and email marketing work together it is a beautiful thing. Email marketing can also extend into social networking (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter) via RSS and SMS.
Sundeep works for my old boss, NCR -- a leader in retail and hospitality solutions. Software solutions vary based on your own corporate needs (and budget). RWD uses Constant Contact. The design of emails is pretty easy, but it isn't your standard Windows "look and feel" so there is a learning curve and difficulty if you want to copy or paste from it into another program. They do offer a free 60 day trial, so if you are new to email marketing take a look at them and try them out.
More mid-range companies might look at Gold Lasso. The UI is also not the easiest to use, but they do have some analytics thrown into the mix. Also good in the mid-range and even enterprise (big) company range is Responsys. JupiterResearch awarded Responsys the highest combined score in “market suitability” and “overall business value” among all enterprise-oriented email service providers. It also ranked high with Forrester and Gartner (in a niche category). The Enterprise level also includes the market leader, Cheetahmail (now part of Experian).
Cheetahmail is the most entrenched, and it is very feature rich. The UI (user interface) suffers from some of the same issues as Constant Contact and Gold Lasso.
In a future blog I'd like to delve into how well email marketing soltuions tie into legacy systems (the back end CRM, ERP and industry specific apps which hold the wealth of customer data) -- both from a push and pull perspective.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Friday, August 14, 2009
The World is Upside Down
This blog spends a lot of pixels on the topic of CRM (Customer Relationship Management). How can companies manage their customers. How can we keep current customers loyal and retain them? How can we find new customers who will be profitable and love us and stay with us?
Simple answer?
You can't.
You don't really manage customers anymore -- if you ever did. Perhaps the idea was always unreasonable.
Customers are people. Newsflash.
People are unpredictable. People are not, by nature, loyal. If they were the divorce rate wouldn't be at 50%.
People only care about what they care about NOW. Today. If you are selling Christmas trees to Jews they won't care. They don't use them (well, some do but not many).
Customers buy what they WANT to buy and the key today is not in trying to manage your customers but in understanding who they are, what they want (or need) and making it easy for them to be in the right place at the right time with the right story. Story is key here -- because customers need to be able to find what they need when they need it.
And it needs to be simple. Simple for customers to understand what your widget is. Easy for them to understand why it matters to THEM (not you, they could care less about you) and then make it easy for them to get to the end result of what they want. Intuitive (like a iPod, like a GUI (graphical user interface) versus a c: prompt).
The customer is now in charge of the world. Realize it. Embrace it. So now more than ever is "know thy customer" and realize that while you need them, they don't need you. Unless you give them a reason to need you.
Simple answer?
You can't.
You don't really manage customers anymore -- if you ever did. Perhaps the idea was always unreasonable.
Customers are people. Newsflash.
People are unpredictable. People are not, by nature, loyal. If they were the divorce rate wouldn't be at 50%.
People only care about what they care about NOW. Today. If you are selling Christmas trees to Jews they won't care. They don't use them (well, some do but not many).
Customers buy what they WANT to buy and the key today is not in trying to manage your customers but in understanding who they are, what they want (or need) and making it easy for them to be in the right place at the right time with the right story. Story is key here -- because customers need to be able to find what they need when they need it.
And it needs to be simple. Simple for customers to understand what your widget is. Easy for them to understand why it matters to THEM (not you, they could care less about you) and then make it easy for them to get to the end result of what they want. Intuitive (like a iPod, like a GUI (graphical user interface) versus a c: prompt).
The customer is now in charge of the world. Realize it. Embrace it. So now more than ever is "know thy customer" and realize that while you need them, they don't need you. Unless you give them a reason to need you.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
CRM or BPM?
Last week I had the chance to travel to beautiful Cambridge, MA. Years ago AT&T sent me to MIT for various business courses, but I hadn't been there in years. Coming from Orlando with its 100 plus degree days it was a pleasure to walk by the Charles River along with many others. The weather was perfect and I wasn't the only one enjoying the gorgeous day.
I was in Cambridge to visit with Pegasystems, the leading BPM (business process management) software leader. Pega (as they are known) boasts major customers including Bank of America, three or four of the "Blues" (Blue Crosses) and many others.
BPM automates common work practices -- and since many companies are like silos -- marketing is independent of sales is independent of engineering is independent of shipping, most processes that cross departments (and don't they all?) get there via email, voice mail, forms, excel spreadsheets. . . Even when the systems are the same the receiving department has to proactively pull the work into their world.
BPM not only automates processes across organizations, but using quality improvement methods and workflow automation work gets done faster and more efficiently -- thus saving time and money. In the world of government regulation (such as Sarbanes-Oxley aka SOX) where companies had to keep a tighter track of financial information for auditing purpose) being able to not only automate processes, but to track them becomes a necessity.
Pega is #1 in the BPM software world with their SmartBPM® product. Their president, Alan Trefler was named “Computer Software Executive of the Year” at the 2009 American Business Awards. So in the world of BPM they are not only the market leader, but the thought leader. Pega is the leader in the Gartner Group "Magic Quadrant" for BPM.
Recently Pega has dipped its toe into the CRM (customer relationship management) world with their solution CPM (Customer Process Manager). They have build a contact center customer service support module on top of this BPM engine. While certainly not a "threat" to the more complete CRM vendors who go beyond the customer service space, the Pega solution is the next logical step for CRM.
Today's CRM solutions are, for the most part, records based. Whether we're talking of Siebel (Oracle), Salesforce.com or Microsoft Dynamics CRM they all start by creating a record.
Remember those corporate silos I mentioned a few paragraphs ago? All that great customer information winds up "usable" beyond the CRM application only if it is in a field in said record. Otherwise that valuable customer "gold" becomes embedded in notes that a CSR or sales rep makes of the contact, and are only available to those who sit and read those notes.
What Pega's CRM does well is to integrate end-to-end customer-facing processes across not only departments but existing applications. If you already have Siebel and an (enterprise resource planning) ERP solution and a (supply chain management) SCM solution you can bring in Pega underneath them to streamline the hand off of a sale or problem resolution across organizations. Over time you can begin to implement some of their desktop apps that can be very easily modified on the fly. The power of Pega's ability to pull this off is shown in their 50% plus growth in the last year.
The most amazing thing about Pega is that they are aimed at the big companies -- 1,000 plus users. Many CRM applications simply can't scale to large implementations, but Pega can -- and it does so based on an open architecture (java).
Pega does have competitors in this new CRM hybrid space. Chordiant and Sword Ciboodle (a really excellent offer from a Scottish company who is making inroads into the States) to consider along with Pega if the process oriented CRM approach makes sense in your company.
The traditional CRM vendors have noted the interested a hybrid BPM / CRM approach and all have some iteration of it on their product roadmaps. If you're interested in the CRM world, take a look at Pega, Chordiant ans Sword Ciboodle to get a feel for your future.
I was in Cambridge to visit with Pegasystems, the leading BPM (business process management) software leader. Pega (as they are known) boasts major customers including Bank of America, three or four of the "Blues" (Blue Crosses) and many others.
BPM automates common work practices -- and since many companies are like silos -- marketing is independent of sales is independent of engineering is independent of shipping, most processes that cross departments (and don't they all?) get there via email, voice mail, forms, excel spreadsheets. . . Even when the systems are the same the receiving department has to proactively pull the work into their world.
BPM not only automates processes across organizations, but using quality improvement methods and workflow automation work gets done faster and more efficiently -- thus saving time and money. In the world of government regulation (such as Sarbanes-Oxley aka SOX) where companies had to keep a tighter track of financial information for auditing purpose) being able to not only automate processes, but to track them becomes a necessity.
Pega is #1 in the BPM software world with their SmartBPM® product. Their president, Alan Trefler was named “Computer Software Executive of the Year” at the 2009 American Business Awards. So in the world of BPM they are not only the market leader, but the thought leader. Pega is the leader in the Gartner Group "Magic Quadrant" for BPM.
Recently Pega has dipped its toe into the CRM (customer relationship management) world with their solution CPM (Customer Process Manager). They have build a contact center customer service support module on top of this BPM engine. While certainly not a "threat" to the more complete CRM vendors who go beyond the customer service space, the Pega solution is the next logical step for CRM.
Today's CRM solutions are, for the most part, records based. Whether we're talking of Siebel (Oracle), Salesforce.com or Microsoft Dynamics CRM they all start by creating a record.
Remember those corporate silos I mentioned a few paragraphs ago? All that great customer information winds up "usable" beyond the CRM application only if it is in a field in said record. Otherwise that valuable customer "gold" becomes embedded in notes that a CSR or sales rep makes of the contact, and are only available to those who sit and read those notes.
What Pega's CRM does well is to integrate end-to-end customer-facing processes across not only departments but existing applications. If you already have Siebel and an (enterprise resource planning) ERP solution and a (supply chain management) SCM solution you can bring in Pega underneath them to streamline the hand off of a sale or problem resolution across organizations. Over time you can begin to implement some of their desktop apps that can be very easily modified on the fly. The power of Pega's ability to pull this off is shown in their 50% plus growth in the last year.
The most amazing thing about Pega is that they are aimed at the big companies -- 1,000 plus users. Many CRM applications simply can't scale to large implementations, but Pega can -- and it does so based on an open architecture (java).
Pega does have competitors in this new CRM hybrid space. Chordiant and Sword Ciboodle (a really excellent offer from a Scottish company who is making inroads into the States) to consider along with Pega if the process oriented CRM approach makes sense in your company.
The traditional CRM vendors have noted the interested a hybrid BPM / CRM approach and all have some iteration of it on their product roadmaps. If you're interested in the CRM world, take a look at Pega, Chordiant ans Sword Ciboodle to get a feel for your future.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Is CRM Dying? Not Hardly!
With all the confusion around CRM -- is it sales force automation (SFA)? Is it customer support (CSS)? Is it the contact center? The sales rep? The service tech? ALL of the above?
Do we define CRM as anything or anyone that touches a customer (I do), or just a call center application?
Well, for years people have been saying CRM fails. CRM didn't live up to expectations. We need something "new."
Shakespeare once wrote that "it is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves."
When CRM has failed it is generally because the users of any CRM technology were not an integral part of what was needed. The CRM solution didn't automate the things that were critical to the business needs, but an application was forklifted in and people were made to mold their business to it.
To further complicate things, many CRM applications are just that -- applications. They are silos -- a customer service application that may pull information from other systems (or not), but the critical customer data winds up as "notes" that don't in turn become knowledge across the enterprise. Can you say "bottleneck"?
The true power of customer relationship management (CRM) is its ability to not only solve an immediate customer problem or make a quick, non-complex sale -- it is the value of the knowing the customer buying pattern or recognizing recurring problems before they become damaging to the corporation.
This is a great value of the Teradata Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) which they dub the "active data warehouse" where individual customer information is analyzed in near real time and becomes actionable -- "pervasive business intelligence." Decisions are no longer guesses, they are logical outcomes based on hard facts.
Microsoft Dynamics, who just announced its 1 millionth customer and free accelerators grew sales by 75% last year. See my last blog: Microsoft is Dynamic!
Far from dying, CRM is evolving. Gartner Group just announced that in this Recession CRM was actually $9.15 billion in 2008, up 12.5% from 2007. See "Dataquest Insight: CRM Software Market Share Analysis, Worldwide 2008." "Despite financial market volatility, the worldwide CRM market enjoyed its fifth consecutive year of double-digit growth as businesses continued to invest in solutions across all sub-segments," Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner.
The report places SAP as #1 in sales (same as last year), with Oracle second (Oracle had their own CRM and they aquired both Siebel -- the former leader -- and Peoplesoft's CRM), Salesforce.com (a pure Software as a Service aka SaaS play), Microsoft is third but growing fast and Amdocs (formerly Clarify) in fourth place, primarily focusing on the Telecom industry. There are some strong contendors focusing on a workflow / business process approach versus the traditional records based approach. Pegasystems CPM (the leader in business process management aka BPM software) has built CRM as a framework that integrates into business operations and the powerful solution is resulting in some very high profile Fortune 500 customers, including SunTrust.
The next generation CRM products are all incorporating some level of workflow and BP -- because the silo problem of all that information flowing into, but not out of CRM software is becoming a bottleneck to customer satisfaction and the business bottom line.
Do we define CRM as anything or anyone that touches a customer (I do), or just a call center application?
Well, for years people have been saying CRM fails. CRM didn't live up to expectations. We need something "new."
Shakespeare once wrote that "it is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves."
When CRM has failed it is generally because the users of any CRM technology were not an integral part of what was needed. The CRM solution didn't automate the things that were critical to the business needs, but an application was forklifted in and people were made to mold their business to it.
To further complicate things, many CRM applications are just that -- applications. They are silos -- a customer service application that may pull information from other systems (or not), but the critical customer data winds up as "notes" that don't in turn become knowledge across the enterprise. Can you say "bottleneck"?
The true power of customer relationship management (CRM) is its ability to not only solve an immediate customer problem or make a quick, non-complex sale -- it is the value of the knowing the customer buying pattern or recognizing recurring problems before they become damaging to the corporation.
This is a great value of the Teradata Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) which they dub the "active data warehouse" where individual customer information is analyzed in near real time and becomes actionable -- "pervasive business intelligence." Decisions are no longer guesses, they are logical outcomes based on hard facts.
Microsoft Dynamics, who just announced its 1 millionth customer and free accelerators grew sales by 75% last year. See my last blog: Microsoft is Dynamic!
Far from dying, CRM is evolving. Gartner Group just announced that in this Recession CRM was actually $9.15 billion in 2008, up 12.5% from 2007. See "Dataquest Insight: CRM Software Market Share Analysis, Worldwide 2008." "Despite financial market volatility, the worldwide CRM market enjoyed its fifth consecutive year of double-digit growth as businesses continued to invest in solutions across all sub-segments," Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner.
The report places SAP as #1 in sales (same as last year), with Oracle second (Oracle had their own CRM and they aquired both Siebel -- the former leader -- and Peoplesoft's CRM), Salesforce.com (a pure Software as a Service aka SaaS play), Microsoft is third but growing fast and Amdocs (formerly Clarify) in fourth place, primarily focusing on the Telecom industry. There are some strong contendors focusing on a workflow / business process approach versus the traditional records based approach. Pegasystems CPM (the leader in business process management aka BPM software) has built CRM as a framework that integrates into business operations and the powerful solution is resulting in some very high profile Fortune 500 customers, including SunTrust.
The next generation CRM products are all incorporating some level of workflow and BP -- because the silo problem of all that information flowing into, but not out of CRM software is becoming a bottleneck to customer satisfaction and the business bottom line.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Microsoft is DYNAMIC
A little play on words there. Microsoft bought a number of ERP software vendors a few years ago -- Navision, Axapta, Great Plains and Solomon Brothers. They renamed them under the heading of "Microsoft Dynamics" -- replacing the names with initials. Navision begame "Microsoft Dynamics NAV", Axapta became "Microsoft Dynamics AX" and so forth. Each had a particular niche in ERP (mid-range companies) so there wasn't much conflict, and one day (promised Microsoft) there would be a common code base.
Along with the plethora of ERP offerings Microsoft came out with "Microsoft Dynamics CRM." This has become the "little product who could." This week Microsoft announced its 1 millionth CRM customer.
The Microsoft CRM product is pretty cool and really is a "contender." If considering sales force automation (SFA) then Microsoft Dynamics CRM should be on your short list. The contact center and customer service is not yet a strong suit -- but give them time!
Microsoft's CRM product grew over 50% last year -- in a market where most software companies are simply trying to survive. The customer base is global -- with plenty of systems integrations, value added resellers and even a SaaS (software as a service) model.
Aside from the familiar Microsoft Outlook desktop (so very intuitive "look and feel") the product has workflow automation and analytics at a very reasonable cost. Today at Worldwide Partner Conference 2009, Microsoft announced new sales and marketing programs for xRM.
xRM is the name Microsoft has given its new development platform. With xRM sophisticated relationship-tracking applications can be built (says Microsoft). Microsoft has come out with some pretty sweet licensing options if you also align with Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft SharePoint and other MS technologies.
One of the coolest announcements is "CRM accelerators." This allows Microsoft Dynamics CRM users to pull data from social networks (didn't I write a blog about CRM and social networking? Yes, yes I did!). The first accelerator is for Twitter, with others to follow soon. The best part? They are FREE.
Along with he social network accelerator is the Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Accelerator for distributing sales leads to channel partners, as well as the ability to centrally manage sales opportunities and a Portal Integration Accelerator connecting Microsoft Dynamics CRM to an organization’s Web site.
Cool stuff.
Congrats, Microsoft.
Along with the plethora of ERP offerings Microsoft came out with "Microsoft Dynamics CRM." This has become the "little product who could." This week Microsoft announced its 1 millionth CRM customer.
The Microsoft CRM product is pretty cool and really is a "contender." If considering sales force automation (SFA) then Microsoft Dynamics CRM should be on your short list. The contact center and customer service is not yet a strong suit -- but give them time!
Microsoft's CRM product grew over 50% last year -- in a market where most software companies are simply trying to survive. The customer base is global -- with plenty of systems integrations, value added resellers and even a SaaS (software as a service) model.
Aside from the familiar Microsoft Outlook desktop (so very intuitive "look and feel") the product has workflow automation and analytics at a very reasonable cost. Today at Worldwide Partner Conference 2009, Microsoft announced new sales and marketing programs for xRM.
xRM is the name Microsoft has given its new development platform. With xRM sophisticated relationship-tracking applications can be built (says Microsoft). Microsoft has come out with some pretty sweet licensing options if you also align with Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft SharePoint and other MS technologies.
One of the coolest announcements is "CRM accelerators." This allows Microsoft Dynamics CRM users to pull data from social networks (didn't I write a blog about CRM and social networking? Yes, yes I did!). The first accelerator is for Twitter, with others to follow soon. The best part? They are FREE.
Along with he social network accelerator is the Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Accelerator for distributing sales leads to channel partners, as well as the ability to centrally manage sales opportunities and a Portal Integration Accelerator connecting Microsoft Dynamics CRM to an organization’s Web site.
Cool stuff.
Congrats, Microsoft.
Friday, July 10, 2009
CRM the Contact Center and Unified Communications Get Real
A few blogs ago I wrote about the natural link between the contact center and unified communications.
Unified Communications (UC) can empower the contact center by directing nontraditional call center calls to the center. Most people think of UC as a way of combining multiple contact points for one person to a single point of contact (thus John Smith’s office phone, cell phone, email, IM, etc. can all be directed to “ring” on his cell phone). In the lives of busy executives (or even busy sales people) there are people whose calls don't merit being directly to you "live."
Traditionally UC would route such a call to a secondary point such as voice mail or email. If you put a contact center into the mix the call can be routed to a live person who can try to resolve the need (whether a sale or customer service) thus improving customer service at a lower price point (executives and sales types tending to be expensive).
SearchCRM has an article about Eastman Chemical doing exactly what I suggested. Eastman Chemical uses the SAP CRM contact center solution and claims to be deploying unified communications in the contact center. The article doesn't give details as to HOW they are using UC or even whose UC they might be using. The SAP Duet product has some presence capability "built in" partnering with Microsoft OCS, so this could be what is in use, but the article doesn't say. Possibly it is SAP NetWeaver. Unfortunately the article is short on details and a search of SAP didn't turn up anything either.
Maybe someone from SAP can enlighten us?
Datamonitor’s “Market Share Insight: The Contact Center Universe,” writes that Aspect (a UC vendor) has 29% of the outbound contact center marketshare. If you go to Aspect's home page you'll see them heralding UC. Aspect leverages Microsoft's UC including Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 (Microsoft's UC platform), Microsoft® Active Directory™ for single sign-on and authentication and Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 for unified messaging (UM).
What is the difference between UC and UM? UC = unified communications, the ability to unify live and passive forms of communications (office phone, cell phone, email, voice mail, etc.) to direct important people to the live person wherever he or she may be. For example, an executive needs to speak to a key employee, but that employ is away from his (her) desk. In earlier times the executive would either leave a voice mail or try to "zero out" to an admin who could search various cell phones, home phones, etc. trying to find the employee.
Unified communications allows its users to direct their various points of contact (office phone, email, etc.) to where they currently are (home, cell phone, client office. . .). The end user can selectively allow only key people to access them "live" re-directing others to a secondary resource such as voice mail or a contact center.
Unified messaging (UM) is an older technology that may be a subset of UC. UM brings together different electronic messaging technologies such as email, SMS, voice mail, video messaging and even faxes. Using UM a "road warrior" can dial into voice mail and have email read to them electronically. Likewise, voice mail can be left as an MP3 file on email or in some cases converted to text. It is not as "live" and immediate as UC and is more advantagious to the receiver of the message than the sender.
UC brings sender and receiver together without "phone tag" or enless messages -- giving it the power of much faster response to sales opportunities and problem resolution.
At any rate, it is interesting that the value of combining the contact center with UC is getting more and more attention. Thought you might want to know.
Unified Communications (UC) can empower the contact center by directing nontraditional call center calls to the center. Most people think of UC as a way of combining multiple contact points for one person to a single point of contact (thus John Smith’s office phone, cell phone, email, IM, etc. can all be directed to “ring” on his cell phone). In the lives of busy executives (or even busy sales people) there are people whose calls don't merit being directly to you "live."
Traditionally UC would route such a call to a secondary point such as voice mail or email. If you put a contact center into the mix the call can be routed to a live person who can try to resolve the need (whether a sale or customer service) thus improving customer service at a lower price point (executives and sales types tending to be expensive).
SearchCRM has an article about Eastman Chemical doing exactly what I suggested. Eastman Chemical uses the SAP CRM contact center solution and claims to be deploying unified communications in the contact center. The article doesn't give details as to HOW they are using UC or even whose UC they might be using. The SAP Duet product has some presence capability "built in" partnering with Microsoft OCS, so this could be what is in use, but the article doesn't say. Possibly it is SAP NetWeaver. Unfortunately the article is short on details and a search of SAP didn't turn up anything either.
Maybe someone from SAP can enlighten us?
Datamonitor’s “Market Share Insight: The Contact Center Universe,” writes that Aspect (a UC vendor) has 29% of the outbound contact center marketshare. If you go to Aspect's home page you'll see them heralding UC. Aspect leverages Microsoft's UC including Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 (Microsoft's UC platform), Microsoft® Active Directory™ for single sign-on and authentication and Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 for unified messaging (UM).
What is the difference between UC and UM? UC = unified communications, the ability to unify live and passive forms of communications (office phone, cell phone, email, voice mail, etc.) to direct important people to the live person wherever he or she may be. For example, an executive needs to speak to a key employee, but that employ is away from his (her) desk. In earlier times the executive would either leave a voice mail or try to "zero out" to an admin who could search various cell phones, home phones, etc. trying to find the employee.
Unified communications allows its users to direct their various points of contact (office phone, email, etc.) to where they currently are (home, cell phone, client office. . .). The end user can selectively allow only key people to access them "live" re-directing others to a secondary resource such as voice mail or a contact center.
Unified messaging (UM) is an older technology that may be a subset of UC. UM brings together different electronic messaging technologies such as email, SMS, voice mail, video messaging and even faxes. Using UM a "road warrior" can dial into voice mail and have email read to them electronically. Likewise, voice mail can be left as an MP3 file on email or in some cases converted to text. It is not as "live" and immediate as UC and is more advantagious to the receiver of the message than the sender.
UC brings sender and receiver together without "phone tag" or enless messages -- giving it the power of much faster response to sales opportunities and problem resolution.
At any rate, it is interesting that the value of combining the contact center with UC is getting more and more attention. Thought you might want to know.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Unified Communications: Part 2
And the shake out in Unified Communications (UC) continues!
In the early days of UC Siemens worked closely with Microsoft. This was in the days of LCS (live communications server), not the current Microsoft OCS. As time went by Microsoft cozied up to Nortel (for those who don't know, Nortel used to be Northern Telecom which was the Canadian AT&T in ancient times). In the days before Cisco began to eat traditional telephony vendors' lunch (Avaya, Nortel, Siemens aka Rolm) Nortel was one of the big two competitors to the AT&T equipment spin-off, Avaya.
So when the honeymoon between Siemens and Microsoft ended with the release of Microsoft OCS which was targeted as a competitor to Siemens' highly acclaimed UC product, OpenScape, Microsoft tapped Nortel as its technology and channel partner in UC.
Musical chairs! Fun to watch from the outside, but not only confusing to outsiders but job threatening to IT folks who hitched their career star to the wrong vendor! There is a reason IBM has ruled in the IT space for about fifty years and it is FUD.
FUD = Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
FUD means no one got fired for buying IBM even if they didn't have the best solution out there. Sometimes if one is on the IT hot spot it makes more sense to buy the safe choice rather than the best and right choice for your company.
Well, the Nortel / Microsoft alliance didn't turn out to be a life saver for Nortel. Read the news lately? Nortel is on the block -- the sales block! Just as Avaya went private and Siemens was (mostly) bought out now it is Nortel's turn. Nortel went into bankruptcy in January, 2009 and now Nortel Networks Limited is looking for a buyer. Nortel's Enterprise Solutions is its second largest revenue source -- and has a whopping 59% of the American market share (per Dell'Oro Group).
With Nortel on the block many of its partners are moving to Avaya. Carol Giles Neslund, Avaya's North American channels VP, claims that 19 of Nortel partners (including 10 of their biggest partners) have signed up to Avaya (17 in the U.S and 2 in Canada).
Also on the chopping block is Nortel's wireless assets for $650 million to Nokia Siemens.
To add to Nortel's woes (as if they needed more headaches) Microsoft just inked a four-year agreement with Hewlett-Packard (HP) worth $180 million in enhancements to their joint unified communications solutions. What does that mean for that much ballyhooed Nortel/Microsoft UC partnership? You might ask Siemens who was Microsoft's ballyhooed UC partner prior to Nortel.
Nortel isn't going down without a fight. No sooner did Nortel sell its wireless group to Siemens it turns around and announces Release 3.0 of its SCS unified communications solution! Right on the heels of this Nortel announced that Telecom Liechtenstein (obviously in Liechtenstein!) had invested in Nortel's UC offer - in its partnership with Microsoft -- integrating Microsoft's OCS with Nortel's voice communication ifrastructure.
So what is my advice to potential unified communications buyers? First, look at the ROI and value to your company. Even if you choose a UC product whose vendor goes bankrupt or is acquired if the product meets your needs and has a fast enough "payback" I'd still consider it. Technology is always changing and the good news is that these days most if not all are standards based.
Unlike the good folk in Liechtenstein I don't know if I'd short list Nortel until it gets acquired or things get clearer, but Microsoft is in UC for the long haul. OpenScape by Siemens has a user face interface which integrates with third-party unified messaging as well as instant messaging applications, such as Jabber. OpenScape works with Microsoft's OCS and IBM Lotus Sametime. Openscape partnered with IBM when Microsoft chose to embed part of Nortel's UC offering into OCS. Siemens OpenScape is embedded as part of IBM’s Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony UC solution.
If you have a Genesys(of Alcatel-Lucent) contact center, the good news is that Genesys has UCConnect connects their contact center software with UC offerings from their parent (Alcatel-Lucent) company's MyInstant Communicator, IBM Lotus Sametime, Microsoft OCS and Siemens OpenScape. So even if you choose a UC that goes away due to a merger or bankruptcy if you have a UC connect ability you can disconnect from one UC offer to another without disaster to the contact center.
Odds are that Nortel and its UC offer won't disappear any time soon. Most likely this part of Nortel will be bought by someone -- maybe Avaya. The latest rumor is that MatlinPatterson Global Advisors may buy them out compleely.
For now, if I were looking at UC offers, I would look at Nortel, but I'd do so with knowledge aforethought.
In the early days of UC Siemens worked closely with Microsoft. This was in the days of LCS (live communications server), not the current Microsoft OCS. As time went by Microsoft cozied up to Nortel (for those who don't know, Nortel used to be Northern Telecom which was the Canadian AT&T in ancient times). In the days before Cisco began to eat traditional telephony vendors' lunch (Avaya, Nortel, Siemens aka Rolm) Nortel was one of the big two competitors to the AT&T equipment spin-off, Avaya.
So when the honeymoon between Siemens and Microsoft ended with the release of Microsoft OCS which was targeted as a competitor to Siemens' highly acclaimed UC product, OpenScape, Microsoft tapped Nortel as its technology and channel partner in UC.
Musical chairs! Fun to watch from the outside, but not only confusing to outsiders but job threatening to IT folks who hitched their career star to the wrong vendor! There is a reason IBM has ruled in the IT space for about fifty years and it is FUD.
FUD = Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
FUD means no one got fired for buying IBM even if they didn't have the best solution out there. Sometimes if one is on the IT hot spot it makes more sense to buy the safe choice rather than the best and right choice for your company.
Well, the Nortel / Microsoft alliance didn't turn out to be a life saver for Nortel. Read the news lately? Nortel is on the block -- the sales block! Just as Avaya went private and Siemens was (mostly) bought out now it is Nortel's turn. Nortel went into bankruptcy in January, 2009 and now Nortel Networks Limited is looking for a buyer. Nortel's Enterprise Solutions is its second largest revenue source -- and has a whopping 59% of the American market share (per Dell'Oro Group).
With Nortel on the block many of its partners are moving to Avaya. Carol Giles Neslund, Avaya's North American channels VP, claims that 19 of Nortel partners (including 10 of their biggest partners) have signed up to Avaya (17 in the U.S and 2 in Canada).
Also on the chopping block is Nortel's wireless assets for $650 million to Nokia Siemens.
To add to Nortel's woes (as if they needed more headaches) Microsoft just inked a four-year agreement with Hewlett-Packard (HP) worth $180 million in enhancements to their joint unified communications solutions. What does that mean for that much ballyhooed Nortel/Microsoft UC partnership? You might ask Siemens who was Microsoft's ballyhooed UC partner prior to Nortel.
Nortel isn't going down without a fight. No sooner did Nortel sell its wireless group to Siemens it turns around and announces Release 3.0 of its SCS unified communications solution! Right on the heels of this Nortel announced that Telecom Liechtenstein (obviously in Liechtenstein!) had invested in Nortel's UC offer - in its partnership with Microsoft -- integrating Microsoft's OCS with Nortel's voice communication ifrastructure.
So what is my advice to potential unified communications buyers? First, look at the ROI and value to your company. Even if you choose a UC product whose vendor goes bankrupt or is acquired if the product meets your needs and has a fast enough "payback" I'd still consider it. Technology is always changing and the good news is that these days most if not all are standards based.
Unlike the good folk in Liechtenstein I don't know if I'd short list Nortel until it gets acquired or things get clearer, but Microsoft is in UC for the long haul. OpenScape by Siemens has a user face interface which integrates with third-party unified messaging as well as instant messaging applications, such as Jabber. OpenScape works with Microsoft's OCS and IBM Lotus Sametime. Openscape partnered with IBM when Microsoft chose to embed part of Nortel's UC offering into OCS. Siemens OpenScape is embedded as part of IBM’s Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony UC solution.
If you have a Genesys(of Alcatel-Lucent) contact center, the good news is that Genesys has UCConnect connects their contact center software with UC offerings from their parent (Alcatel-Lucent) company's MyInstant Communicator, IBM Lotus Sametime, Microsoft OCS and Siemens OpenScape. So even if you choose a UC that goes away due to a merger or bankruptcy if you have a UC connect ability you can disconnect from one UC offer to another without disaster to the contact center.
Odds are that Nortel and its UC offer won't disappear any time soon. Most likely this part of Nortel will be bought by someone -- maybe Avaya. The latest rumor is that MatlinPatterson Global Advisors may buy them out compleely.
For now, if I were looking at UC offers, I would look at Nortel, but I'd do so with knowledge aforethought.
Monday, July 6, 2009
The Lazy Hazy CRM Days of Summer and the Holy Grail of Unified Communications
This is the first entry in awhile. After my last blog the folks at IT Toolbox asked me to begin a blog for them on the topic of CRM. "Making Cents and Sense of CRM" is focused on how CRM has gone from being the next great invention to improve corporate ROI since the invention of ERP (enterprise resource planning) into a mess of all kinds of applications that have nothing to do with one another (from sales force automation (SFA), to customer service, to business intelligence, to contact center. . .). You name a solution and no doubt someone has called it "CRM."
This mis-use of the term has caused the market to falter. Why would people buy something when they either don't know what it is supposed to do, or when it over promises and under delivers?
I think this is where the expression "duh" aptly fits.
So as I sit in Central Florida in 100 plus degree heat (farenheit) pondering how soon I can get back to the beach or at least the pool I've been focusing on the question of whether we need to "re-label" real CRM or whether we can save it with a hail Mary pass?
That "hail Mary" may be tying CRM with Unified Communications. We've discussed this a little bit before -- how the ability to provide accessibility to people where ever they are from a "virtual" office phone or email address makes the ability to improve customer service. . .but let's take a look at some "real world" examples.
Toshiba just announced their Unified Communications Suite, Strata® CIX™. ShorTel (a VoiP vendor) recently linked their UC to their call center quality assurance processes. Why are vendors big and small suddenly jumping on the "CRM / UC" bandwagon?
Well, a survey by Computerworld Hong Kong showed that users are worn out from accessing multiple communications points (email, voicemail, cell phone, office phone, etc.) only to be bombarded by people that keep them from getting their work done, while getting to important things and people "too late." The survey found that 55% were using IM (instant messaging), 42% were using video conferencing, and 29% were using person to person tools that were created original for home use (like Yahoo! and Microsoft Messenger).
While hte survey shows that people need UC (and may even WANT UC) they still don't understand what it is!
Forrester Research also conducted a survey and their's showed that most small and large companies still are uncertain about the benefits of UC! Forrester surveyed 2,187 North American companies and 55% (55%!) were confused about what it was, let alone its value to them!
Wow, here we are contemplating how to get CRM out of the mess of "what is it and why do I care?" when it has enormous potential to improve the bottom line, when unified communications perhaps has a faster ROI (probably less overall over time, but a huge, quick payback for UC) but no one knows exactly why!
Amazing!
Granted the economy is confused right now and some companies are in panic mode -- but this makes both UC and CRM even more compelling given the ROI -- especially with a shrinking workforce. Yet 55% are confused about the VALUE of Unified Communications?
Wow, we are sure lousy communicators!
Ellen Daley, (the Forrester Research analyst who authored the report) said: "There's been a 21% increase in UC pilots since 2007 but no increase in firms buying UC. A lot of people are talking about UC, a lot more are tipping their toe in; but at the same time they're all saying they're not sure about the value."
Folks, we can't throw technology at a problem and hope that fixes things! UC and CRM both hold enormous potential for companies but ONLY if correctly applied to a specific business NEED. Pilots alone are worthless if the pilot isn't part of a business problem and specific success criteria applied to the pilot.
Far too many IT vendors sell to the TCM (telecommunications manager), or the CIO (Chief Information Officer) or some other technical manager. Definitely we need to be talking to these folks, but the REAL buyers of UC and CRM are in Marketing and Sales. These areas are outside of the comfort zone of man typical IT sales person.
UC and CRM vendors need to move up the totem pole and start cross selling into sales and marketing (and perhaps even the CFO and CEO). If you don't know how to get there and have a compelling story when you do -- prepare to fail. Sit by the beach or pool in these lazy, hazy days of summer and prepare to sit there during the blizzards of February (or in my case, Disney's Blizzard Beach).
If you lack the ability to get outside of IT you'd better partner with someone who can.
Or we'll attend the funeral of your awesome CRM or UC product -- along (perhaps) with the whole field. See you at the beach!
This mis-use of the term has caused the market to falter. Why would people buy something when they either don't know what it is supposed to do, or when it over promises and under delivers?
I think this is where the expression "duh" aptly fits.
So as I sit in Central Florida in 100 plus degree heat (farenheit) pondering how soon I can get back to the beach or at least the pool I've been focusing on the question of whether we need to "re-label" real CRM or whether we can save it with a hail Mary pass?
That "hail Mary" may be tying CRM with Unified Communications. We've discussed this a little bit before -- how the ability to provide accessibility to people where ever they are from a "virtual" office phone or email address makes the ability to improve customer service. . .but let's take a look at some "real world" examples.
Toshiba just announced their Unified Communications Suite, Strata® CIX™. ShorTel (a VoiP vendor) recently linked their UC to their call center quality assurance processes. Why are vendors big and small suddenly jumping on the "CRM / UC" bandwagon?
Well, a survey by Computerworld Hong Kong showed that users are worn out from accessing multiple communications points (email, voicemail, cell phone, office phone, etc.) only to be bombarded by people that keep them from getting their work done, while getting to important things and people "too late." The survey found that 55% were using IM (instant messaging), 42% were using video conferencing, and 29% were using person to person tools that were created original for home use (like Yahoo! and Microsoft Messenger).
While hte survey shows that people need UC (and may even WANT UC) they still don't understand what it is!
Forrester Research also conducted a survey and their's showed that most small and large companies still are uncertain about the benefits of UC! Forrester surveyed 2,187 North American companies and 55% (55%!) were confused about what it was, let alone its value to them!
Wow, here we are contemplating how to get CRM out of the mess of "what is it and why do I care?" when it has enormous potential to improve the bottom line, when unified communications perhaps has a faster ROI (probably less overall over time, but a huge, quick payback for UC) but no one knows exactly why!
Amazing!
Granted the economy is confused right now and some companies are in panic mode -- but this makes both UC and CRM even more compelling given the ROI -- especially with a shrinking workforce. Yet 55% are confused about the VALUE of Unified Communications?
Wow, we are sure lousy communicators!
Ellen Daley, (the Forrester Research analyst who authored the report) said: "There's been a 21% increase in UC pilots since 2007 but no increase in firms buying UC. A lot of people are talking about UC, a lot more are tipping their toe in; but at the same time they're all saying they're not sure about the value."
Folks, we can't throw technology at a problem and hope that fixes things! UC and CRM both hold enormous potential for companies but ONLY if correctly applied to a specific business NEED. Pilots alone are worthless if the pilot isn't part of a business problem and specific success criteria applied to the pilot.
Far too many IT vendors sell to the TCM (telecommunications manager), or the CIO (Chief Information Officer) or some other technical manager. Definitely we need to be talking to these folks, but the REAL buyers of UC and CRM are in Marketing and Sales. These areas are outside of the comfort zone of man typical IT sales person.
UC and CRM vendors need to move up the totem pole and start cross selling into sales and marketing (and perhaps even the CFO and CEO). If you don't know how to get there and have a compelling story when you do -- prepare to fail. Sit by the beach or pool in these lazy, hazy days of summer and prepare to sit there during the blizzards of February (or in my case, Disney's Blizzard Beach).
If you lack the ability to get outside of IT you'd better partner with someone who can.
Or we'll attend the funeral of your awesome CRM or UC product -- along (perhaps) with the whole field. See you at the beach!
Sunday, June 21, 2009
CRM and Unified Communications
My last blog focused on how Unified Communications (UC) can empower the contact center by directing nontraditional call center calls to the center. Most people think of UC as a way of combining multiple contact points for one person to a single point of contact (thus John Smith's office phone, cell phone, email, IM, etc. can all be directed to "ring" on his cell phone). This is the common way UC is explained, and it can be very valuable -- but it can also result in TMI (too much information).
Everyone may be created equal, but we can't give all of our customers, peers, bosses, and the world at large equal access to us or we'd never get any work done. We need to prioritize who can contact us and how. Thus with UC we can identify specific people (our boss, our spouse, our key customer) to reach us at our #1 end point (maybe that cell phone) while other important people get directed to voice mail -- or as I pointed out in my last blog -- this is a perfect opportunity to now direct those folks to a contact center where an inside sales rep or pool admin can hopefully handle their needs in one call (OCR = one call resolution).
So there is a natural marriage between UC and CC (contact center).
Where does CRM come into play?
CRM (customer relationship management) has become such a muddied term. It has become far too generic. To some it does mean contact center software (and it can be that), to some it means the software or software as a service (SaaS) that outside sales reps use to keep track of their accounts, where they are in the sales cycle, etc. -- and that is a good definition. . .but CRM is much bigger than that.
CRM is really broken into two broad categories: "front office CRM" and "Back office CRM."
Front office CRM are the applications that actually touch the customer directly -- the voice on the phone in the contact center, an internet interface where they can place an order, customer service (again online or over the phone) or the live customer service rep (CSR). Any part where the customer is directly interfacing with your company is a form of "front office CRM."
And a logical touchpoint for UC and CRM to link.
The holy grail of the contact center for years has been OCR - one call resolution. Any problem that isn't resolved in one call, or any sale that can't be closed in one call ("we have an internet special where for the same price you are paying today you can add XYZ. . .") costs lots of money. Any customer service call that takes too long or requires "follow up" also begins to alienate your customers making them more inclined to leave you for another firm.
UC can dramatically improve the goal of OCR -- whether that "one call" is a phone call, an internet access or even your face to face outside sales rep.
It all has to do with the "hand off." Inside a contact center this can be done with intelligent routing (which is really what UC is in a larger scheme of things). We route the call to the most logical, not the first available, agent. With UC we are now moving beyond the barrier of the contact center and able to route the call to best person no matter what department they work in, or even WHERE THEY ARE physically.
Setting up skills routing takes time, but the rewards are immense both in customer satisfaction and in cost reduction.
All of this so far focuses on the connectivity between front office CRM and UC, but back office CRM can increase this cost reduction by quantum factors. Using a data warehouse (or perhaps data mart) to identify your most profitable customers you may choose to always route them to a specific department or person -- not blindly treating all customers the same but giving platinum treatment to platinum customers.
By contrast your lower value customers (in margins) can always be routed through an IVR (interactive voice response) unit and routed to newer agents. . . The dirty little reality in sales is that there are some customers that are not worth having because the amount of work they require (and work = expense to your company) may mean you actually lose money by having them as a customer. Back end CRM identifies who is profitable and thus worth retaining.
One to one marketing is a myth. We do not market to all of our prospects and customers in the same way and we shouldn't. Back end CRM's information on customer profitability can help determine who we route to whom in our dynamic, unified communications world.
This blog is speaking in generalities -- as if we had all the money and time in the world to link all of these disparate systems together. The good news is that many of these systems are already begining to be linked -- Cisco with Salesforce.com, Aspect with Microsoft, Avaya and SAP, Nortel offers integration to Microsoft Dynamics CRM and implemented Dynamics internally. The idea is to take advantage of the technologies you may already have in place such as a legacy Siebel implementation maybe using AT&T's Siebel Solutions offer) to improve relations with your customers and business partners through a streamlined "one call resolution" that goes far beyond the silos of "outside sales," "engineering," "customer service" across your business.
Everyone may be created equal, but we can't give all of our customers, peers, bosses, and the world at large equal access to us or we'd never get any work done. We need to prioritize who can contact us and how. Thus with UC we can identify specific people (our boss, our spouse, our key customer) to reach us at our #1 end point (maybe that cell phone) while other important people get directed to voice mail -- or as I pointed out in my last blog -- this is a perfect opportunity to now direct those folks to a contact center where an inside sales rep or pool admin can hopefully handle their needs in one call (OCR = one call resolution).
So there is a natural marriage between UC and CC (contact center).
Where does CRM come into play?
CRM (customer relationship management) has become such a muddied term. It has become far too generic. To some it does mean contact center software (and it can be that), to some it means the software or software as a service (SaaS) that outside sales reps use to keep track of their accounts, where they are in the sales cycle, etc. -- and that is a good definition. . .but CRM is much bigger than that.
CRM is really broken into two broad categories: "front office CRM" and "Back office CRM."
Front office CRM are the applications that actually touch the customer directly -- the voice on the phone in the contact center, an internet interface where they can place an order, customer service (again online or over the phone) or the live customer service rep (CSR). Any part where the customer is directly interfacing with your company is a form of "front office CRM."
And a logical touchpoint for UC and CRM to link.
The holy grail of the contact center for years has been OCR - one call resolution. Any problem that isn't resolved in one call, or any sale that can't be closed in one call ("we have an internet special where for the same price you are paying today you can add XYZ. . .") costs lots of money. Any customer service call that takes too long or requires "follow up" also begins to alienate your customers making them more inclined to leave you for another firm.
UC can dramatically improve the goal of OCR -- whether that "one call" is a phone call, an internet access or even your face to face outside sales rep.
It all has to do with the "hand off." Inside a contact center this can be done with intelligent routing (which is really what UC is in a larger scheme of things). We route the call to the most logical, not the first available, agent. With UC we are now moving beyond the barrier of the contact center and able to route the call to best person no matter what department they work in, or even WHERE THEY ARE physically.
Setting up skills routing takes time, but the rewards are immense both in customer satisfaction and in cost reduction.
All of this so far focuses on the connectivity between front office CRM and UC, but back office CRM can increase this cost reduction by quantum factors. Using a data warehouse (or perhaps data mart) to identify your most profitable customers you may choose to always route them to a specific department or person -- not blindly treating all customers the same but giving platinum treatment to platinum customers.
By contrast your lower value customers (in margins) can always be routed through an IVR (interactive voice response) unit and routed to newer agents. . . The dirty little reality in sales is that there are some customers that are not worth having because the amount of work they require (and work = expense to your company) may mean you actually lose money by having them as a customer. Back end CRM identifies who is profitable and thus worth retaining.
One to one marketing is a myth. We do not market to all of our prospects and customers in the same way and we shouldn't. Back end CRM's information on customer profitability can help determine who we route to whom in our dynamic, unified communications world.
This blog is speaking in generalities -- as if we had all the money and time in the world to link all of these disparate systems together. The good news is that many of these systems are already begining to be linked -- Cisco with Salesforce.com, Aspect with Microsoft, Avaya and SAP, Nortel offers integration to Microsoft Dynamics CRM and implemented Dynamics internally. The idea is to take advantage of the technologies you may already have in place such as a legacy Siebel implementation maybe using AT&T's Siebel Solutions offer) to improve relations with your customers and business partners through a streamlined "one call resolution" that goes far beyond the silos of "outside sales," "engineering," "customer service" across your business.
Friday, June 12, 2009
In my last blog we discussed the impact of social networking on unified communications and concluded that while UC and social networking are all forms of communications one is "push" (in social networking you post and someone reads it at their own pace and discretion) whereas most of UC (unified communications) is "pull."
In UC it is the recipient, the "end user" who determines who can reach them at what end point through a single point of access. Boy that sounds verbose. To put it more simply, in today's world most people have an office phone, a cell phone, maybe a home land line phone, at least one email (usually two or more: business and personal), some still carry pagers, and then we have Twitter and the social media platforms. The promise of UC is that the end user defines where s/he "is" (maybe the cell phone) and all forms of communication are routed to that one source -- even if they are sent to another (the office phone, email, etc.).
Perhaps the greatest thing about UC in this overloaded world is that the end user can actually decide WHO accesses their primary end point (in our example the cell phone) and who is "tier II" and goes directly to voice mail to be retrieved when time is available, or even "tier III" (unknown people, for example) who go to an admin or even get funneled to another department -- for example, the call center.
You knew I'd eventually wrap back to the contact (call) center -- after all the title of this blog is "The Contact Center, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and Unified Communications.
Most people don't "see" the connection between the contact center and Unified Communications (UC), but is actually pretty obvious. UC is best suited to people with lots of contacts and who may be away from their physical office a lot (think of lawyers, physicians, business executives who attend meetings off-site, sales types, Realtors, etc.). Do we really want the "unknown" callers to go to some over loaded voice mail box where it may never receive attention due to work levels?
How about shipping that call to a $9 an hour CSR (customer service representative) who can identify the purpose and see if there is a potential sale there? If not a sale, how about resolving a problem or at least determing the correct person to handle the purpose of the original call? The result is a happier initial caller, better customer service, maybe a new sale AND OCR (one call resolution).
The contact center vendors are beginning to understand this obvious advantage. Genesys (an Alcatael / Lucent company) -- one of the two largest contact center vendors (the other being Avaya) -- has announced UC Connect. UC Connect promises integration and interoperability between the Genesys Customer Interaction Management (CIM) software platform and UC solutions from many of the major providers in the industry. From what I can tell the only integration available currently is to IBM SameTime.
I haven't seen it so can't tell you how simple or complex (integration) this solution is -- but Genesys claims it will provide connectivity to the Alcatel-Lucent’s MyInstant Communicator, IBM Sametime, Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, and Siemens Openscape. When? How? That remains to be seen.
Formerly with Siemens I'm very familiar with Openscape and love it. If you are looking into UC be sure you take a look at Openscape -- realizing that Siemens market share is far below Cisco and Avaya but knowing that feature / functionality is tops. IBM integrated some of the Siemens' Openscape code into Sametime -- and initially Microsoft partnered with Siemens in their previous UC generation. Great product, but again the caveat is Siemens market penetration, service coverage -- so be sure you feel comfortable with your support and service if you consider Openscape.
Avaya? Cisco? Genesys has taken the bull by the horn. Granted you have to be a user of their contact center software, but they are one of the two market leaders in that field. . .
Genesys has raised the bar. Cisco offers Cisco Unified Communications contact center system, proclaimed as "the Cisco IP solution for distributed contact center applications," but it is a total Cisco (one vendor) solution not the open true UC offer now available from Genesys. Stay tuned.
In UC it is the recipient, the "end user" who determines who can reach them at what end point through a single point of access. Boy that sounds verbose. To put it more simply, in today's world most people have an office phone, a cell phone, maybe a home land line phone, at least one email (usually two or more: business and personal), some still carry pagers, and then we have Twitter and the social media platforms. The promise of UC is that the end user defines where s/he "is" (maybe the cell phone) and all forms of communication are routed to that one source -- even if they are sent to another (the office phone, email, etc.).
Perhaps the greatest thing about UC in this overloaded world is that the end user can actually decide WHO accesses their primary end point (in our example the cell phone) and who is "tier II" and goes directly to voice mail to be retrieved when time is available, or even "tier III" (unknown people, for example) who go to an admin or even get funneled to another department -- for example, the call center.
You knew I'd eventually wrap back to the contact (call) center -- after all the title of this blog is "The Contact Center, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and Unified Communications.
Most people don't "see" the connection between the contact center and Unified Communications (UC), but is actually pretty obvious. UC is best suited to people with lots of contacts and who may be away from their physical office a lot (think of lawyers, physicians, business executives who attend meetings off-site, sales types, Realtors, etc.). Do we really want the "unknown" callers to go to some over loaded voice mail box where it may never receive attention due to work levels?
How about shipping that call to a $9 an hour CSR (customer service representative) who can identify the purpose and see if there is a potential sale there? If not a sale, how about resolving a problem or at least determing the correct person to handle the purpose of the original call? The result is a happier initial caller, better customer service, maybe a new sale AND OCR (one call resolution).
The contact center vendors are beginning to understand this obvious advantage. Genesys (an Alcatael / Lucent company) -- one of the two largest contact center vendors (the other being Avaya) -- has announced UC Connect. UC Connect promises integration and interoperability between the Genesys Customer Interaction Management (CIM) software platform and UC solutions from many of the major providers in the industry. From what I can tell the only integration available currently is to IBM SameTime.
I haven't seen it so can't tell you how simple or complex (integration) this solution is -- but Genesys claims it will provide connectivity to the Alcatel-Lucent’s MyInstant Communicator, IBM Sametime, Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, and Siemens Openscape. When? How? That remains to be seen.
Formerly with Siemens I'm very familiar with Openscape and love it. If you are looking into UC be sure you take a look at Openscape -- realizing that Siemens market share is far below Cisco and Avaya but knowing that feature / functionality is tops. IBM integrated some of the Siemens' Openscape code into Sametime -- and initially Microsoft partnered with Siemens in their previous UC generation. Great product, but again the caveat is Siemens market penetration, service coverage -- so be sure you feel comfortable with your support and service if you consider Openscape.
Avaya? Cisco? Genesys has taken the bull by the horn. Granted you have to be a user of their contact center software, but they are one of the two market leaders in that field. . .
Genesys has raised the bar. Cisco offers Cisco Unified Communications contact center system, proclaimed as "the Cisco IP solution for distributed contact center applications," but it is a total Cisco (one vendor) solution not the open true UC offer now available from Genesys. Stay tuned.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
How do Twitter, Facebook and other Social Networks impact UC?
Unified Communications -- the holy grail of both traditional networking companies (Cisco, Avaya, etc.) and some not so traditional network firms (Microsoft) has the lofty goal of bringing together your office phone, voice mail, home phone, cell phone, email and instant messaging into one point of contact. You (as the end point) decide who can reach you at whatever access point you are at, through a central phone number or ID. You can also identify who cannot get to you (for example that pesky sales rep goes automatically to voice mail, SPAM filter or admin).
Unified Communications puts the receiver in control of who can reach them and how they are reached.
Unified Communications, aka UC, has great possibilities to make time more productive -- no more phone tag, no more voice mail hell of trying to reach someone for a deadline and failing. It really is a time saver, can be a deal saver -- and has the possibility of being an enormous money saver. (You can have a central phone number but let many workers telecommute while still having the professional "front end" of your central business phone gateway).
UC is NOT UM (unified messaging) which centralized the voice and electronic mail together. It is much, much more than that. Yet not only has UM muddied for most what UC is and is not, now along comes social networking which has muddied it even more!
Twitter is a quick burst "push" technology that lets its users post what they are doing. Others can follow these "tweets." Facebook and other social networks lets you keep up to date with your friends and LinkedIn lets you network with business associates you know, or whom you should know.
Let's face it -- UC and social networking are all forms of communications.
Do they dove tail somewhere in the middle? Are they diametrically opposite? Is one the death knell for the other?
They dovetail.
UC allows the recipient (end point) to determine who can reach him/her, how and when.
Social networks allow the sender (send point) to broadcast messages to individuals or groups. There is no way to immediately reach the sender (even with a tweet or message on Facebook there is no way to determine when the sender will see it let alone respond to it).
So UC is the ying to social networking's yang. Opposite, yet complimentary. One is casual and end points access it when they have the time and the need and the inclination. It is a "pull" technology.
UC is more professional and allows the end point to be reached as needed (instantly) by those who should have that access as allowed by recipient.
I'm a user and huge fan of both technology camps. UC keeps a busy person spinning many activities at once more in control -- which in this world of constant demands is a refreshing technological advantage. Unfortunately UC has been slow to catch fire -- perhaps due to the economy or the inability of vendors to clear articulate its true value. Given time UC is a natural winner. It simply needs to be explained, cost justified and exploited. As with everything: what is the value to the customer?
Enormous.
Unified Communications puts the receiver in control of who can reach them and how they are reached.
Unified Communications, aka UC, has great possibilities to make time more productive -- no more phone tag, no more voice mail hell of trying to reach someone for a deadline and failing. It really is a time saver, can be a deal saver -- and has the possibility of being an enormous money saver. (You can have a central phone number but let many workers telecommute while still having the professional "front end" of your central business phone gateway).
UC is NOT UM (unified messaging) which centralized the voice and electronic mail together. It is much, much more than that. Yet not only has UM muddied for most what UC is and is not, now along comes social networking which has muddied it even more!
Twitter is a quick burst "push" technology that lets its users post what they are doing. Others can follow these "tweets." Facebook and other social networks lets you keep up to date with your friends and LinkedIn lets you network with business associates you know, or whom you should know.
Let's face it -- UC and social networking are all forms of communications.
Do they dove tail somewhere in the middle? Are they diametrically opposite? Is one the death knell for the other?
They dovetail.
UC allows the recipient (end point) to determine who can reach him/her, how and when.
Social networks allow the sender (send point) to broadcast messages to individuals or groups. There is no way to immediately reach the sender (even with a tweet or message on Facebook there is no way to determine when the sender will see it let alone respond to it).
So UC is the ying to social networking's yang. Opposite, yet complimentary. One is casual and end points access it when they have the time and the need and the inclination. It is a "pull" technology.
UC is more professional and allows the end point to be reached as needed (instantly) by those who should have that access as allowed by recipient.
I'm a user and huge fan of both technology camps. UC keeps a busy person spinning many activities at once more in control -- which in this world of constant demands is a refreshing technological advantage. Unfortunately UC has been slow to catch fire -- perhaps due to the economy or the inability of vendors to clear articulate its true value. Given time UC is a natural winner. It simply needs to be explained, cost justified and exploited. As with everything: what is the value to the customer?
Enormous.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
The Irony of it All
My last blog posed the question: "Is Microsoft the next Dinosaur?" My point was that most companies have a lifecycle, just like products do and people do.
Microsoft may or may not be at the precipice of a decline -- it is really up to Microsoft. The thing I always admired about Bill Gates in the "early days" (and I was a UNIX fan since I worked for AT&T Computer Systems) was that he was always paranoid. He knew the internet could eclipse the OS as far as the center of the IT universe and so out came Internet Explorer. Microsoft tried to win the search engine war -- and after repeated lack of success has what looks like a nice product in Bing.
But no sooner did I post my Blog and get lots of comments (most not so nice from Microsoft proponents) along comes PC World with an article that asks the very same question I asked:
J. Peter Bruzzese, InfoWorld
Microsoft may or may not be at the precipice of a decline -- it is really up to Microsoft. The thing I always admired about Bill Gates in the "early days" (and I was a UNIX fan since I worked for AT&T Computer Systems) was that he was always paranoid. He knew the internet could eclipse the OS as far as the center of the IT universe and so out came Internet Explorer. Microsoft tried to win the search engine war -- and after repeated lack of success has what looks like a nice product in Bing.
But no sooner did I post my Blog and get lots of comments (most not so nice from Microsoft proponents) along comes PC World with an article that asks the very same question I asked:
Is Microsoft Following GM's Road Map?
Analysis: GM's bankruptcy marks the end of an era. Is Microsoft repeating the automaker's mistakes?
J. Peter Bruzzese, InfoWorld
// Jun 3, 2009 6:00 pm
"Microsoft has faced a few serious bumps over the last 10 years but came out fine. . .Knowing the work Microsoft developers put into their products, I believe they are the saving grace of the company -- as long as they are allowed to hear the voice of the people. This is an area where I've seen a problem."
I worked for AT&T at the hey day of Bell Labs. We had the brightest, most awesome minds around -- just like Microsoft does today. Microsoft ca be its own best friend or its own worst enemy. Only time will tell.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Marketing used to be pretty easy to understand -- not simple mind you, but easy. Marketing consisted of branding, public relations, advertising, trade shows and the like. One could choose print media, radio, TV, billboards and such.
The company was in charge of the message. Does anyone remember "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit"?
Today the world is on its head. My last post discussed the great new book, What Would Google Do. That book focuses on the model of free core offers that are supported by the ancillary things the core touches. Content is less important than how to tap into content.
And all of this stems from the explosion of information that came about with the Internet.
I started my career in the 1980s when AT&T spun off the "Baby Bells" giving up the gold mine of monopoly POTS (plain old telephone service) customers for the holy grail of "a computer is just a node on a network."
That idea rang so true to me, who became a true believer in distributed computing and "information anywhere, any time, any place."
Everyone else laughed. This was the era of huge mainframe proprietary computers (the BUNCH were still around -- Burroughs, Univac, NCR, CDC and Honeywell, although on the decline. RCA had already exited computing. DEC, Wang (no jokes please), Data General. . .these were the 'mini" computer guys with 64 KB of RAM or LESS (yes, LESS) -- names now gone as they either went out of business or were swallowed by others. . .
Microsoft is now on the edge. It faces the same fate as the BUNCH and the minicomputer vendors if it doesn't soon wake up and realize that they've been commoditized. Software is almost a "thing of the past" just as minicomputers went the way of the buggy whip and the VCR. Will anyone buy software on a CD or DVD much longer? Why, when you can access SaaS (software as a service) online?
Why bog down your internet access device (computer seems so passe, doesn't it?) with gigabytes of software when it changes daily? Why not just tap into a secure app that is FREE or nearly free?
Years ago I interviewed for a job at Microsoft and they asked me who their competitor was. Fresh from Teradata and in a DBMS (data base) state of mind I said "Oracle?" The reply was: "Google."
Google? Google???
But it only took me a second to realize they were right -- he who owns the eye balls, owns the person. Google may have begun "life" as a search engine, but now it is so much more -- it is the gateway to the information highway.
Microsoft, I love you. You've done amazing things -- Microsoft Dynamics, your unified communication platform rocks -- but you need to realize that the world has changed. Aside from being global, it is viral. If you want to stay relevant start realizing what AT&T knew back in the 1980s -- but failed to deliver.
A computer is nothing but a node on a network.
Stop focusing on delivering products for the computer. Start thinking of the network. Start thinking of the people as if they were on a vast buffet line (network) where they can pick and choose what they want (iPhone apps ring a bell?).
Because that is today's reality. And it isn't changing any time soon.
The company was in charge of the message. Does anyone remember "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit"?
Today the world is on its head. My last post discussed the great new book, What Would Google Do. That book focuses on the model of free core offers that are supported by the ancillary things the core touches. Content is less important than how to tap into content.
And all of this stems from the explosion of information that came about with the Internet.
I started my career in the 1980s when AT&T spun off the "Baby Bells" giving up the gold mine of monopoly POTS (plain old telephone service) customers for the holy grail of "a computer is just a node on a network."
That idea rang so true to me, who became a true believer in distributed computing and "information anywhere, any time, any place."
Everyone else laughed. This was the era of huge mainframe proprietary computers (the BUNCH were still around -- Burroughs, Univac, NCR, CDC and Honeywell, although on the decline. RCA had already exited computing. DEC, Wang (no jokes please), Data General. . .these were the 'mini" computer guys with 64 KB of RAM or LESS (yes, LESS) -- names now gone as they either went out of business or were swallowed by others. . .
Microsoft is now on the edge. It faces the same fate as the BUNCH and the minicomputer vendors if it doesn't soon wake up and realize that they've been commoditized. Software is almost a "thing of the past" just as minicomputers went the way of the buggy whip and the VCR. Will anyone buy software on a CD or DVD much longer? Why, when you can access SaaS (software as a service) online?
Why bog down your internet access device (computer seems so passe, doesn't it?) with gigabytes of software when it changes daily? Why not just tap into a secure app that is FREE or nearly free?
Years ago I interviewed for a job at Microsoft and they asked me who their competitor was. Fresh from Teradata and in a DBMS (data base) state of mind I said "Oracle?" The reply was: "Google."
Google? Google???
But it only took me a second to realize they were right -- he who owns the eye balls, owns the person. Google may have begun "life" as a search engine, but now it is so much more -- it is the gateway to the information highway.
Microsoft, I love you. You've done amazing things -- Microsoft Dynamics, your unified communication platform rocks -- but you need to realize that the world has changed. Aside from being global, it is viral. If you want to stay relevant start realizing what AT&T knew back in the 1980s -- but failed to deliver.
A computer is nothing but a node on a network.
Stop focusing on delivering products for the computer. Start thinking of the network. Start thinking of the people as if they were on a vast buffet line (network) where they can pick and choose what they want (iPhone apps ring a bell?).
Because that is today's reality. And it isn't changing any time soon.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
An Epiphany
Reading is a favorite past time, and along the way I've learned a lot from books. "SPIN Selling" taught me to look at the world from the customer's perspective and try to solve problems. "Crossing the Chasm" taught me that many products die not because they aren't good, but because they don't "cross the chasm" from early adopters who have a different fear threshold than the mainstream market.
This week I found a new book that is amazing, and just as earth shaking as those books were. The title is "What Would Google Do?", by Jeff Jarvis. You can read a snippet of the book at Jeff's site, link.
Jeff's ideas definitely turn the traditional world of selling and getting paid on its ear. He writes of the model of the product being free, andt he payment ancillary. Google, he opines, doesn't make money from its search engine but from embedded Google ads and applications. It is a fascinating read, and it makes all the sense in the world.
If you haven't read "What Would Google Do" run out now and grab a copy. Just as the personal computer turned the world on its head, just as Microsoft and software over turned the hardware model of leadership, so too is the internet changing the entire world. If you don't want to wind up being a buggy whip manufacturer you'd better understand the new paradigm.
What would Google do?
This week I found a new book that is amazing, and just as earth shaking as those books were. The title is "What Would Google Do?", by Jeff Jarvis. You can read a snippet of the book at Jeff's site, link.
Jeff's ideas definitely turn the traditional world of selling and getting paid on its ear. He writes of the model of the product being free, andt he payment ancillary. Google, he opines, doesn't make money from its search engine but from embedded Google ads and applications. It is a fascinating read, and it makes all the sense in the world.
If you haven't read "What Would Google Do" run out now and grab a copy. Just as the personal computer turned the world on its head, just as Microsoft and software over turned the hardware model of leadership, so too is the internet changing the entire world. If you don't want to wind up being a buggy whip manufacturer you'd better understand the new paradigm.
What would Google do?
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Surviving and Thriving: Marketing in a Recession
Every day there seems to be more bad news: Circuit City is out of business, closing nearly 400 brick and mortar stores. Home Depot is shutting down its high end Expo chain. Even Microsoft and Apple are seeing tough times.
But every cloud has a silver lining. There are ways to market your business successfully in a recession. The key is "knowing your customer" aka customer business intelligence. Who is buying? Why? What are they buying, and what are the cross-sell and up-sell opportunities there?
Which prospects fit a similar profile (demographics) of your high margin customers?
So identifying the market is (as always) the first step, but in these economic times it is even more critical that usual. "Know thy customer!"
The next step is knowing what appeals to them and then selling to them in a cost efficient manner that meets their profile and your product line. This may mean more targeted email campaigns with coupons, or eZines -- lower cost ways to reach your audience than traditional print advertising, or even "Google ads" and other online paid advertising.
You must know your "value proposition" as you go back to your base and target strategic new prospects. In one sentence (elevator pitch) why do they need you NOW? Can you save them money? Can you make them money? Can you help them sell more to their own customers?
This is a time of opportunity. Yes, it is scary "out there" -- but as competitors fall away or draw back they leave a vacuum which a saavy firm can fill. Realize that marketing is an investment, not a luxury. Like any investment you need to have a plan to invest wisely.
Just like the Dot.Bomb bubble burst we'll survive, and we can thrive. This too shall pass.
But every cloud has a silver lining. There are ways to market your business successfully in a recession. The key is "knowing your customer" aka customer business intelligence. Who is buying? Why? What are they buying, and what are the cross-sell and up-sell opportunities there?
Which prospects fit a similar profile (demographics) of your high margin customers?
So identifying the market is (as always) the first step, but in these economic times it is even more critical that usual. "Know thy customer!"
The next step is knowing what appeals to them and then selling to them in a cost efficient manner that meets their profile and your product line. This may mean more targeted email campaigns with coupons, or eZines -- lower cost ways to reach your audience than traditional print advertising, or even "Google ads" and other online paid advertising.
You must know your "value proposition" as you go back to your base and target strategic new prospects. In one sentence (elevator pitch) why do they need you NOW? Can you save them money? Can you make them money? Can you help them sell more to their own customers?
This is a time of opportunity. Yes, it is scary "out there" -- but as competitors fall away or draw back they leave a vacuum which a saavy firm can fill. Realize that marketing is an investment, not a luxury. Like any investment you need to have a plan to invest wisely.
Just like the Dot.Bomb bubble burst we'll survive, and we can thrive. This too shall pass.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Happy 2009!
Times are tough. Businesses large and small are shutting down or looking for government hand outs. Will GM and the other auto manufacturers survive? Are we facing a depression?? Job loss is rising and it seems that daily we see new layoffs reported. It is even rumored that Microsoft may lay off up to 17% of its workforce. Link.
I'm not picking on Microsoft, simply highlighting the situation that our economic down spiral is just that -- when one thing goes bad it impacts another line of business. . . from the mom and pop restaurants who lose customers, and thus so do their suppliers to the big firms who are household names.
Yet I started this blog saying "Happy 2009" and I really am optimistic. As FDR said so many years ago "All we have to fear is fear itself."
There have to be opportunities -- and with the new Obama administration about to take over it seems there will be a number of attractive areas. Obama has promised global Internet access -- so the network providers have a golden opportunity to come out of this downturn quickly. The new administration is also very pro "green" -- so if look for environmentally friendly solutions in your field. The other attractive markets?
Government itself as a customer (federal for now, as the local governments who rely heavily on property taxes are "hurting") and health care. Baby boomers are aging and putting more and more stress on health care. Again, the new administration is very interested in universal health care. Keep in mind that Hillary Clinton, slated to be our new Secretary of State, was in charge of the Clinton Administration's health care vision about fifteen years ago. Back then I was working closely with the Chairman and CFO at Adventist Health System Sunbelt, and the CFO was on Hillary's committee. A lot of the visions then (electronic patient records that are patient-centric, not owned by individual doctors) are part of the vision yet today.
Tom Daschle has been named as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the new administration. In his book Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis, he discusses price controls (meaning health care providers need to find a way to improve quality to reduce costs). Daschle is a big fan of Britain's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) which has a two tier approach -- everyone has access to a base level of health care and you can pay for private access if you so desire.
Time will tell what the Obama administration will do, but the time to begin exploring how you can take advantage of the new opportunities is now. Welcome to 2009!
I'm not picking on Microsoft, simply highlighting the situation that our economic down spiral is just that -- when one thing goes bad it impacts another line of business. . . from the mom and pop restaurants who lose customers, and thus so do their suppliers to the big firms who are household names.
Yet I started this blog saying "Happy 2009" and I really am optimistic. As FDR said so many years ago "All we have to fear is fear itself."
There have to be opportunities -- and with the new Obama administration about to take over it seems there will be a number of attractive areas. Obama has promised global Internet access -- so the network providers have a golden opportunity to come out of this downturn quickly. The new administration is also very pro "green" -- so if look for environmentally friendly solutions in your field. The other attractive markets?
Government itself as a customer (federal for now, as the local governments who rely heavily on property taxes are "hurting") and health care. Baby boomers are aging and putting more and more stress on health care. Again, the new administration is very interested in universal health care. Keep in mind that Hillary Clinton, slated to be our new Secretary of State, was in charge of the Clinton Administration's health care vision about fifteen years ago. Back then I was working closely with the Chairman and CFO at Adventist Health System Sunbelt, and the CFO was on Hillary's committee. A lot of the visions then (electronic patient records that are patient-centric, not owned by individual doctors) are part of the vision yet today.
Tom Daschle has been named as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the new administration. In his book Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis, he discusses price controls (meaning health care providers need to find a way to improve quality to reduce costs). Daschle is a big fan of Britain's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) which has a two tier approach -- everyone has access to a base level of health care and you can pay for private access if you so desire.
Time will tell what the Obama administration will do, but the time to begin exploring how you can take advantage of the new opportunities is now. Welcome to 2009!
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