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.
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