Trends

Nothing like a recession to spur business growth. In the BPM space, the current downturn has presented a major marketing opportunity for software and IT service firms. Sparked by customers seeking to cut costs and by innovations in e-commerce, the BPM market could easily double over the next several...

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told analysts last week that ultra-thin PCs will be the answer to the growing popularity of netbooks. I doubt that, but I can certainly understand Ballmer's interest in backing the ultra-thins, and this obviously has implications for larger issues like cloud computing. B...

Driven by competitive pressure to improve the customer experience, organizations are moving toward an online self-service model that pushes the boundaries of electronic information presentation, or e-presentment. Yet as they embrace this model, new challenges await, including how to ensure customer...

Today's revenue cycle is broken. Sales reps spend half their time cold-calling leads instead of interacting with interested prospects, while marketing invests its shrinking budget on costly programs and prospect lists that yield low conversion rates. The two departments seemingly operate in separate...

Increasing contact center efficiency has always been a clear path to cutting costs, regardless of economic conditions. Increasing productivity and doing more with existing resources are now more important than ever, but cutting call center costs does not have to result in poorer customer service. Un...

In today's online environments, a bad customer experience can become visible more quickly and have more lasting consequences than ever before. More and more customer interactions are taking place online, thanks to a combination of factors that make the Web an attractive place for doing business: spe...

There's a saying in the business world: Customer acquisition is an investment, but customer retention delivers profitability. So, how do you retain your customers and earn their loyalty? It's like any successful relationship: If you want customers to be loyal to you, you must be loyal to them and de...

Companies are now in the third stage of "economic downturn syndrome." Having passed through Panic and Denial, they're firmly in Acceptance. Panicky knee-jerk responses such as cost-cutting, layoffs, tightening budgets and resources are a thing of the past. Most companies have had a quick breather an...

Due to the economy, many businesses are now looking at project portfolio management solutions to help them isolate and execute mission-critical projects more effectively. These businesses have also found that Software as a Service solutions are both more affordable and easier to deploy than traditi...

Companies used to turn to outsourcing during tough financial times. The current global recession, however, has curtailed outsourcing as much as it has other parts of the economy. "Oddly enough, the global recession has hurt outsourcing significantly," said Chad Hahn, principal owner of Hahn Consulti...

Events taking place on the streets of Tehran may have an important effect on how social networking rolls out across the rest of the world, and that includes the CRM world. Last week, the media began carrying stories about a "cyber revolution" that may be happening in the Islamic Republic, but those ...

With consumers' inboxes perpetually filled with clutter, marketers are challenged to find new ways to break through with valuable, targeted messages that their customers actually want to open. The secret could lie in a largely untapped vehicle: transactional emails. The historical open rates of tra...

Mission-critical IT investments are inherently risky, even with a certified project management professional in place to guide the project. Factors like unrealistic timelines and poor planning can certainly jeopardize project success -- but could these factors be symptoms of a larger issue? Perhaps ...

Several years ago, while selling software in the British telecom market, I met the CMO of a smallish network operator. He described the issues his business was facing, and when I asked him his churn rate, he replied, almost casually, that it was "about normal for our industry: 37 percent." He must ...

Josh Nankivel of PMStudent.com recently polled project managers about how the current economic climate is affecting them, and he found that 27 percent had experienced project cutbacks, 14 percent had experienced PM layoffs, 11 percent had experienced financial scrutiny of projects, and 10 percent ha...