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.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
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!
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