tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:11:04 +0000This blog brings together comment and thoughts from the team at Corizon, providers of robust, scalable enterprise mashup software that brings SOA all the way to the user interfacehttp://blog.corizon.com/noreply@blogger.com (Corizon Blog-team)Blogger52125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-514306366597165955Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:04:00 +00002010-03-17T14:11:04.126Zsocial CRMcontact centreagent desktopCRMCRM applicationWe’ve enjoyed an interesting first day at the Gartner CRM Summit in London.Gartner’s overall assessment is that social CRM - community in customer service, social sales techniques and social media marketing - will be the most hyped segment of the CRM market (surprise!), and will see the most growth. However this will (surprise again!) still not be a major spending area - traditional salesforce http://blog.corizon.com/2010/03/thoughts-from-gartner-crm-summit.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Davies)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-7208863021207078643Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:58:00 +00002010-03-10T17:35:42.095Zapplication developmentuser experienceLean SoftwareSOAcontact centrebusiness alignmentWeb servicesarchitecturecustomer experiencemashupCRM applicationIntegration technology has been on a journey that has radically improved agility and reduced TCO. It has moved from a manual craft to something more modular, reusable and business focused: • Hiding complexity behind well defined and open interfaces that encourage reuse and sharing• Replacing point to point with many to many• Minimising the custom coding required for any particular http://blog.corizon.com/2010/03/improving-user-experience.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric Guilloteau)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-6193069571554980284Fri, 12 Feb 2010 12:32:00 +00002010-02-12T13:07:19.899ZLean SoftwareEnterprise Mashupsbusiness alignmentcustomizationenterprise 2.0ERP applicationEnterprise applicationsCIOcustomer experienceInteresting comments from Jay Rosen on the iPad and what it says about where Apple think the Internet is going: "In a way it is taking us back in web time to the read only web. We had advanced from web 1.0 to web 2.0 where users are producers. That is what YouTube is about, and blogging and social media. The users are producers of some of the most popular content...it seems to be restoring http://blog.corizon.com/2010/02/ipad-return-to-web-10.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric Guilloteau)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-6670139975670912329Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:49:00 +00002010-02-05T13:37:15.273Zcontact centre agentscontact centreagent desktopagent desktopscall centerA recent paper from Gartner (Top Business Processes for Customer Service, 2010 to 2012 - subscription required) about customer service process priorities adds to my impression that the agent desktop - and in particular the complexities of using the applications on it - is in danger of being the “elephant in the room” when improving service delivery in the contact centre.The report discusses the http://blog.corizon.com/2010/02/agent-desktop-elephant-in-contact.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Davies)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-6136262182459122666Fri, 29 Jan 2010 06:18:00 +00002010-01-29T09:22:27.086ZSabioEnterprise Mashupscontact centreoperationscustomer experienceagent desktopsI attended an excellent event delivered by Sabio, one of our strategic partners, last week. Focused around the Sabio Best in Class benchmarking framework called Insight, the agenda covered individual areas of focus for Contact Centres each illustrated perfectly by a case study. Targeted at Operations Directors, IT and Senior Contact Centre Management, the event covered Demand Management, http://blog.corizon.com/2010/01/ambitions-to-perform.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Emma Chablo)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-1377297172518335523Fri, 22 Jan 2010 08:52:00 +00002010-01-22T09:03:16.950ZI have been reading Jack Trout's "In Search of the Obvious, the antidote for today's marketing mess". Trout's view is that to succeed in differentiating your offering, you need to look for 'obvious solutions' that will set your products apart from your competitors in a way that is equally obvious to your customers. To help in 'identifying the obvious (sic)', he devised 5 tests, the tests of http://blog.corizon.com/2010/01/obvious-mashups.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric Guilloteau)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-3767024964966363669Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:04:00 +00002010-01-20T12:12:28.484ZPeter Evans-GreenwoodSOAenterprise mashupHeadshiftenterprise 2.0data silosPart 2 This blog post is co-written with Lee Provoost from the social business consulting firm Headshift and started over a bowl of porridgeThe end-user of your product doesn't care what kind of data silos are laying underneath your IT system. They just want the information they need to do their work, but very importantly: taking in account the context of the work! Put yourself in the consumer’s http://blog.corizon.com/2010/01/impact-of-data-ubiquity_20.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Emma Chablo)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-8619833007527906540Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:36:00 +00002010-01-15T11:00:40.269Zknowledge workerHeadshiftapplication interfaceenterprise 2.0Enterprise applicationsdata silosThis blog post is co-written with Lee Provoost from the social business consulting firm Headshift and started over a bowl of porridgePart 1...."Content and data are everywhere. People are creating and curating content like never before. As data storage becomes cheaper, businesses are storing,archiving, and mining more data than previously possible. The increasing openness of APIs and data http://blog.corizon.com/2010/01/data-ubiquity-threatening-usefulness-of.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Emma Chablo)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-1139266998613298806Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:12:00 +00002009-12-21T10:14:34.564Zcontact centre agentsenterprise mashupcontact centremashupprocess mashupcall centerWe've created a new video that provides an introduction to Corizon enterprise mashups and their use.Please check it out and let us know what you think.http://blog.corizon.com/2009/12/corizon-introduction-video.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Davies)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-2110045107144551113Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:25:00 +00002009-12-11T10:27:43.365Zcontact centre agentsenterprise mashupagent desktopcall centerIt’s always good to be recognized, and Corizon’s inclusion in the top 10 Contact Center Technologies from Call Center Helper magazine is great feedback directly from the market. It is especially significant when you remember how varied and complex the contact center technology industry is.This provides another piece of tangible evidence of two changes that we’ve been seeing all year: Fixing thehttp://blog.corizon.com/2009/12/recognition.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Davies)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-4154083747390998694Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:14:00 +00002009-12-08T20:33:28.580Zapplication developmententerprise mashupbusiness alignmentIn a recent global survey of CIO, CTOs as well as non IT executives, McKinsey found that, during the recession, IT has become more important to improving business efficiencies. 39% of those surveyed now see the primary role of IT to improve business efficiency vs 31% a year ago. This bodes well for software and other IT products focused on improving business processes, making people more http://blog.corizon.com/2009/12/it-becoming-more-important-to-improve.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric Guilloteau)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-431218467580896428Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:51:00 +00002009-12-04T16:57:02.521Zenterprise mashupcontact centreagent desktopEnterprise applicationsprocess mashupcall centerWhen people must work with business applications and processes, it seems there is continual need to strike a balance between completely rigid process definition (when people become pure input / output devices) and completely ad hoc behaviour (no repeatability, management etc.). This is one of the themes being taken up in the BPM world at the moment. For example as Jim Sinur recently pointed out:http://blog.corizon.com/2009/12/allowing-for-human-element.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Davies)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-1897962114460703108Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:12:00 +00002009-11-27T12:21:00.344Zcontact centre agentsenterprise mashupcontact centreagent desktopmashupcall centerThe first part of the title isn’t original, but it’s certainly attention grabbing! It comes from an article by Denis Adsit. Apart from its title, I found it interesting because it has implications for the choices that call centre managers have to make when they are looking to improve performance. Anybody wanting to improve call handling time or first call resolution (to take but two common http://blog.corizon.com/2009/11/futility-of-call-centre-coaching-or-why.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Davies)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-3837422554499539033Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:24:00 +00002009-11-25T10:16:35.521ZDale Vile, from Freeform Dynamics, has written an interesting article discussing whether packaged applications are becoming less relevant: Whether it’s SOA purists telling us that we’ll all be self-assembling solutions from components, enthusiasts of modern development environments wanting to build everything from scratch, or the SaaS evangelists saying it’s all going to go into the cloud anyway,http://blog.corizon.com/2009/11/integrating-applications-for-people.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric Guilloteau)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-8305060011385971492Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:37:00 +00002009-11-19T17:23:38.648ZInteresting research from Genesys has just been published and is given a good write up in MyCustomer.com by Stuart Lauchlan. First, I must say they deserve ‘la Palme d’Or’ for the highest number one can find in a customer service press release: $338.5bn! Having said that, I think it is interesting to quantify the actual costs resulting from underperforming customer service in this way. Where do http://blog.corizon.com/2009/11/billions-of-dollars-lost-to-poor.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric Guilloteau)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-3592880178212420713Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:46:00 +00002009-11-12T18:03:40.609Zapplication developmentLean Softwaremashup patternsenterprise mashupmashupprocess mashupAnthony Bradley from Gartner provided some interesting views on how he sees the enterprise mashup market developing this week in his blog posting: Enterprise Mashups in Major Transition. The transition he has identified is chiefly concerned with a shift in the use cases he is seeing that drive demand. As Anthony says: Just about everyone, including me was talking about enterprise mashups as a http://blog.corizon.com/2009/11/comment-on-enterprise-mashups-in.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric Guilloteau)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-2014412376444281527Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:30:00 +00002009-11-03T17:48:58.278ZCTIagent desktopCRM applicationThis posting is the second part of my colleague Toby Baker's observations based on his work with contact centres and their desktop integration problems.My last blog asked why contact centre desktops are so broken, and tried to explain why. This one suggests what we could do about it.Let’s re-cap – the main problems are:There are too many apps on the desktop. The average is 6, I have seen 60.The http://blog.corizon.com/2009/11/why-are-contact-centre-desktops-so.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Davies)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-593921837301992587Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:08:00 +00002009-10-20T09:15:56.371+01:00contact centre agentsenterprise mashupagent desktopEnterprise applicationsCRM applicationcall centerMy colleague, Toby Baker has created this guest posting based on his observations from working with Corizon's customers and partners applying enterprise mashups to integration problems in contact centres.I spend a lot of time in contact centres, analyzing applications in use on the desktop, and see the same challenges and issues again and again. This is my top ten:Too many applications, each withhttp://blog.corizon.com/2009/10/why-are-contact-centre-desktops-so.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Davies)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-7213195189810676247Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:15:00 +00002009-10-16T15:48:13.096+01:00social CRMERP applicationEnterprise applicationsCIOOracle#oow09CRM applicationIT strategyJust come back from Oracle Open World 2009, where the atmosphere was very different from last year: the key focus was on making things works with a lot less hype. Most of the Oracle keynotes I attended insisted, demo after demo, on the progress made in integrating different applications from the portfolio with fusion middleware. The CRM team did a great job in demonstrating new features and http://blog.corizon.com/2009/10/quick-thoughts-from-oracle-openworld.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric Guilloteau)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-1797954927748114192Sun, 11 Oct 2009 18:57:00 +00002009-10-11T20:08:14.854+01:00application developmentLean SoftwareForrester#BTF09enterprise mashupbusiness alignmentEnterprise applicationsCIOLast week David and I attended the Forrester Business Technology Forum in Chicago. The main theme of the conference was adopting “lean” approaches to IT – which seems a particularly appropriate term for the lean times we find ourselves in. The lean concept applies across the full range of activities performed by an IT department, but I was particularly struck by the discussion on its use in http://blog.corizon.com/2009/10/thoughts-on-forrester-business.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric Guilloteau)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-5454717817036562779Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:58:00 +00002009-10-08T18:10:55.667+01:00contact centre agentsenterprise mashupcontact centreagent desktopBig ShiftCRM applicationRecent studies have highlighted the current dilemma most companies have with contact centres: they are both critical in maximising customer value and considered poor in meeting customer expectations. A YouGov survey conducted in the UK showed that phone and email were by a significant margin the most likely channels used by customers to contact a company for customer service (75% and 70% http://blog.corizon.com/2009/10/contact-centre-dilemna.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric Guilloteau)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-8619754264567360835Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:08:00 +00002009-10-07T15:27:16.998+01:00SOAenterprise mashupagent desktopSiebelCRM applicationprocess mashupEnterprise mashups transform the way organisations combine IT applications to make people and processes more effective. However, in common with most new ideas, if they remain an abstract concept, or if people form preconceptions based on isolated examples (such as the ubiquitous map based mashup), then those who stand to benefit most may find it hard to get a feel for their power or relevance. Inhttp://blog.corizon.com/2009/09/mashup-solution-patterns.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Davies)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-1101640083225403897Fri, 07 Aug 2009 08:12:00 +00002009-10-07T15:34:00.443+01:00contact centre agentssocial CRMcontact centreBig ShiftI have just experienced two very different contact centre interactions. In the first, the contact centre agent was able to address my questions and resolve my issue in a personable dialogue, making decisions along the way and accessing information easily and rapidly to make these decisions. The result was successful and my perception of the company enhanced. In fact, this was a better experiencehttp://blog.corizon.com/2009/08/how-do-contact-centres-adapt-to-big.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric Guilloteau)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-6850382346676840627Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:19:00 +00002009-07-29T10:47:04.533+01:00IT strategyMicro Focus have just launched an interesting and needed campaign to promote the technology sector in the UK, which I fully support (here). The manifesto makes five directional recommendations for fiscal, entrepreneurial and academic action to promote a more vibrant and stronger technology sector:1. Increase the availability of world-class technology talent in the UK;2. Harness the expertise and http://blog.corizon.com/2009/07/making-britain-great.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Eric Guilloteau)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7091178102090990344.post-8774592307230509235Thu, 23 Jul 2009 08:26:00 +00002009-10-07T15:35:53.606+01:00SOAenterprise mashupWeb servicesCRM applicationRecent blogs from the worlds of enterprise mashups and CRM have reinforced my impression that a lot of people are struggling with the dilemma of how to move to the flexible IT and business architectures they know they need for future success when the investment environment is focused on short term returns. A posting by Susan Bouchard at Cisco kicked off a discussion that led to Stefan Andreasen http://blog.corizon.com/2009/07/enterprise-mashups-kick-starting.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David Davies)0