CRM Daily

Many Businesses Still Reluctant To Try Windows Vista

Wed, 14 May 2008 07:11:54 -0500

General Motors may take a detour around Vista, the latest computer operating system from Microsoft. The automaker has encountered so many speed bumps getting Vista to work on its machines that it may just wait for the next version of Windows, due in 2010 or 2011. "We're considering bypassing Vista and going straight to Windows 7," says GM's Chief Systems & Technology Officer Fred Killeen.

Vista taxes all but the most modern PCs with hefty processing and memory requirements. Many of GM's PCs can't even run the system. "By the time we'd replace them, Windows 7 might be ready anyway," Killeen says. Then there are compatibility problems with all the software that needs to run on Windows. GM's software vendors still haven't ensured all their programs will run on Vista trouble-free. So the company is sticking with Windows XP for now. Killeen figures GM could install Windows 7 in three or four years.

Equal Parts Rejection and Acceptance

Many of Killeen's counterparts across Corporate America are finding themselves similarly vexed by Vista. The resulting delay or rejection of Microsoft's flagship product is stepping up pressure on the company to expand other areas of its business, including online software. Vista was first released in late 2006, but the dismay with it has come into sharper focus as slower-than-expected uptake affects Microsoft's bottom line, Google spiffs up its own free versions of competing software, and corporate tech managers move to put more Apple Macs on employee desks.

Microsoft says it has sold 140 million copies of Vista as of Mar. 31, about the same percentage of all PCs as ran Windows XP at this point in its lifetime. The 140 million includes consumers who have to take the latest version when they buy a new PC as well as businesses that are entitled to Vista rights...

Sprint: Still a World of Pain, Despite Improved Service

Wed, 14 May 2008 07:13:04 -0500

The customers kept fleeing, revenue fell, and the losses grew, but Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse says the wireless company is starting to make baby steps in its Sisyphean turnaround. "We are acting quickly and decisively to improve our performance," said Hesse during a conference call on May 12 after the company's first-quarter earnings report. But, "as I said [three months ago], the turnaround will take many quarters."

The nation's third-largest cell-phone company said its customer base shrank by more than 1 million during the first three months of 2008. Even worse, those customers who haven't left are spending less each month. All told, the first-quarter results came in shy of analyst forecasts for both revenue and net loss.

Sprint also warned that it might have to sell off some "noncore assets" or take other measures to remain in compliance with financial covenants with lenders. But that won't mean, Hesse asserted, getting rid of the Nextel business, as suggested in recent news reports.

Stressing Service

The plan, says Hesse, is to focus on improving Sprint's widely criticized customer service. And on that point, there were two positive notes in the first quarter: Hesse said the company was resolving problems on the first call to customer service at the highest rate since the Nextel merger in 2005. He also said the integration of the Sprint and Nextel billing systems, a source of chronic pain for employees and customers, is now "materially complete" and "getting positive feedback from the front lines."

After the quarterly update, Hesse's second since he took the helm in December, Sprint's battered share price sagged 1.5 percent, to 9.24, despite a strong day for Wall Street. "This is going to take a long time," says James Moorman, an analyst at Standard & Poor's. "It's a big ship to turn around. But it is...

eBay's PayPal-Only Rule Comes Under Fire Down Under

Tue, 13 May 2008 07:05:10 -0500

EBay Inc. is exploring whether to require customers to use its online payment service PayPal, a move that has angered users and prompted antitrust scrutiny in Australia, where a PayPal-only rule takes effect next month.

It's unclear whether eBay will institute a similar policy in the United States and other countries. However, the online auction company often tries big changes in smaller markets before expanding them worldwide, and says it is open to that in this case.

"We are going to take learnings from it and apply them accordingly," said eBay spokesman Usher Lieberman.

EBay says it wants to reduce disputes and restore trust in its marketplace with the PayPal-only plan. Because eBay and PayPal can share information on each transaction, eBay says use of PayPal allows it to stop fraud more efficiently than outside payment services. Pressing that safety argument in a heated discussion with Australian users, an eBay executive compared the new rule to banning the sale of heroin on street corners.

But critics lament that PayPal is costlier than other payment options, and they suspect eBay is just interested in increasing PayPal's revenue. Australian banks say the plan will eliminate competition for the sake of exaggerated benefits.

"Competition will be restricted, innovation and development will be constrained, new entry will be discouraged and PayPal will be able to increase fees and charges to eBay users," the Australian Bankers Association said in a filing with regulators Thursday.

Because eBay sellers are commonly independent merchants who don't accept credit cards, PayPal acts as a go-between. Buyers use their credit cards and bank account information to make payments, and PayPal relays the funds to sellers' PayPal accounts, charging them 30 cents plus a commission -- up to 4.4 percent in Australia. The second-most common method of payment on eBay Australia, bank transfers, cost 20 cents each.

Australia's...

Next Generation of Business Software Could Be More Fun

Tue, 13 May 2008 07:07:23 -0500

Once upon a time, people bonded with their co-workers on office softball teams and traded gossip at the watercooler.

OK, so those days aren't gone yet. But as big companies parcel Information Age work to people in widely dispersed locations, it's getting harder for colleagues to develop the camaraderie that comes from being in the same place. Beyond making work less fun, feeling disconnected from comrades might be a drag on productivity.

Now technology researchers are trying to replicate old-fashioned office interactions by transforming everyday business software for the new era of work. The historically dry-as-sawdust products are borrowing elements from video games and social-networking Web sites.

You can tell just from looking at the Beehive program under development at IBM Corp. that something is different. Beehive's color scheme is bright yellow, not IBM's standard blue. The cheerfulness reflects the fact that Beehive is meant to encourage far-flung co-workers to like each other more.

Beehive is an online portal for employees to describe their expertise, so valuable knowledge doesn't get lost inside the bureaucracy. Those kinds of tools are common, but Beehive adds an unusual dose of Facebook or MySpace. The 27,000 IBMers using Beehive can post pictures, video and one-sentence updates about themselves. They can share lists of "things I can't live without."

Such personal touches often are missing when people work at a distance from one another, says Joan Morris DiMicco, an IBM researcher developing Beehive. Co-workers in different locales can't wander into each other's offices and see family pictures on the desk. They don't shop at the same places or have children in the same schools.

These tidbits, DiMicco believes, help people understand each other better. And the usual communication tools like e-mail, instant messaging, phones and even videoconferencing do only so much to fill the gap.

This problem isn't confined to IBM, whose...

The Craig Behind Craigslist Looks at Life Beyond His Site

Tue, 13 May 2008 07:06:06 -0500

Imagine what it was like to be Dr. Kleenex. You invent a modern miracle, an inexpensive paper handkerchief, and suddenly you become the person to blame for America's disposable culture, or praised for a more convenient life.

There never was a Dr. Kleenex -- the product was created by a team of researchers in Kimberly-Clark laboratories in the 1920s. But there is a real Craig in Craigslist, Craig Newmark, and lately he has been looking at life beyond his little list that has become one of the most popular U.S. Web sites.

It is also a site that is deeply tied up with the fate of newspapers -- indeed, many in the newspaper industry blame Newmark by name for the downturn in their classified advertising business -- as well as real estate and the Internet-fueled marketplace.

An ardently no-frills, user-sensitive site, Craigslist has, in the estimation of the company's chief executive, Jim Buckmaster, generated more than 600 million free classified listings for people. (Even though nearly all listings on Craigslist remain free, it has added modest fees for job listings and real estate brokers in some big cities, and it generates an estimated $80 million to $100 million in annual revenue from those fees, with a staff, based in San Francisco, of 25, including Newmark.)

In the United States and beyond, Craigslist is digging even deeper into classified ad markets. Once, the announcement that Craigslist was expanding meant adding new cities like Miami, Minneapolis and Philadelphia. Today it means towns like Janesville, Wisconsin (population: 60,000), and Farmington, New Mexico (population: 38,000), as well as Cebu, the Philippines, and, by personal request of Newmark, Ramallah in the West Bank.

In the face of this expansion, Newmark now wants to become more of a public figure, capitalizing on his success to promote personal causes, which include...

Apple Lags in Climate-Conscious Computing

Fri, 09 May 2008 13:41:26 -0500

The nonprofit Climate Counts organization, funded by organic yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm, has released its second annual scorecard rating companies' efforts to combat climate change. While the organization reports solid gains across industries, one technology company stands out as a green laggard -- Apple Inc.

Climate Counts rates companies on a scale of 0 to 100, using 22 criteria to determine if companies have measured their climate footprint, reduced their impact, supported policy change, and clearly disclosed their climate-related actions.

In the electronics field, IBM ranked highest with a score of 77 and Apple ranked lowest at 11. Apple, the scorecard found, posted no information on its efforts to measure its impact on global warming and has not supported climate-change legislation, though the company has made a few comments on its efforts to address global warming and has engaged the issue to some extent with employees and other companies.

Even so, Apple's score this year was nine points higher than last year. The organization called Apple "A choice to avoid for the climate-conscious consumer. This company is not yet taking meaningful action on climate change."

Credibility Issues for Jobs, Gore

While Apple has not been hurt by criticism of its environmental practices, the issue is likely to cause the company -- and its most famous board member -- significant pain, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group. "With [former Vice President] Al Gore on the board, this becomes a significant embarrassment, making him look disingenuous," Enderle said. "Increasingly I expect folks to point that out, which will hurt Gore's own [environmental] efforts."

The situation also "erodes the Apple brand as people focus on this topic -- and this topic is a popular one this year," Enderle said. "It does seem inconsistent with [CEO] Steve Jobs' Buddhist beliefs and makes him look hypocritical, which...

Salesforce.com Demos New Collaboration Tools

Mon, 12 May 2008 07:26:21 -0500

Salesforce.com previewed its 26th-generation release, Salesforce Summer '08, at Dreamforce Europe, its European conference for users and developers. The release includes a host of new CRM features, but it focuses most sharply on new collaboration capabilities.

"Salesforce Summer '08 will harness the power of consumer Web technologies to deliver more application and collaboration success than ever before," said George Hu, executive vice president of marketing, applications and education at Salesforce.

New Features for Communities and Collaboration

"Saleforce has recognized that two key things are really driving innovation in CRM today: communities and networking, and collaboration," said Rebecca Wetteman, vice president of research with IT analysts Nucleus Research. Indeed, many of the new features rest on those pillars.

Salesforce Summer '08 brings new features to the Salesforce Content pillar to help manage unstructured data in an enterprise by using tagging, subscriptions and recommendations. Other new features for Content include Global Availability, allowing users to perform multilanguage searches; collaboration between Partner and Customer Portals, allowing both groups of users to share relevant content; and Content Analytics that employ usage metrics to determine the content used most frequently by users, and then optimize the use of those materials.

Salesforce Ideas, an interactive forum that allows users to share and comment on ideas, also received some updates. Companies can use the Multiple Communities feature to create a way of better organizing the ideas emerging from different groups. Users can customize fields and create validation rules and workflows using Customizable Ideas; and the Ideas for Partner Portal gives partners the opportunity to provide their perspectives.

Innovative and Intuitive

Wetteman told us that Salesforce is continuing to innovate in terms of product functionality as well as its notion of platform-as-a-service. "One thing they've tried to do is both give developers a way to create applications that are specifically suited...

Microsoft Contemplates 'Plan C' To Rebuild Online Services

Mon, 12 May 2008 07:14:13 -0500

Without the influx of Web traffic that Microsoft bet would quickly follow a Yahoo buyout, the software maker is facing a long slog if it wants to turn its money-losing online services business into a Google-killer.

Since it withdrew a $47.5 billion (EU31 billion) bid for Yahoo Inc. after talks collapsed, Microsoft Corp. has offered little insight into what "Plan C" will entail. In that vacuum, experts are scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas, with many concluding that they actually don't know what could get Microsoft out of its pickle.

It is not clear Microsoft can do this alone -- and in fact, it's not always clear what "this" is. Some analysts say Microsoft must increase its search traffic to attract advertisers. Others believe Microsoft should concede that market to Google Inc. and find success elsewhere -- leapfrogging rivals in areas such as display and mobile advertising.

All that is clear is Microsoft must come up with a Plan C soon, after acknowledging that its Plan A of going solo was troubled, forcing it to turn to Plan B of acquiring Yahoo.

Part of the problem analysts face predicting Microsoft's next moves is that the company has already tried the obvious tactics. It built its own search-ad platform from scratch and spent $6 billion (EU3.9 billion) to buy a major online advertising company, aQuantive.

Microsoft overhauled its search engine technology, and most analysts agree that its results are at least as good as Google's. It tweaked the design of its Live Search service to become more like Google. It touted its improvements on billboards and in glossy magazines.

Last year, the company seemed confident that it wouldn't take much to convert the hundreds of millions of Hotmail users, Xbox Live-connected video gamers and Windows Live Messenger chatters into a flood of search traffic.

"We've done...

Microsoft Film Contest Is Vista PR Maneuver

Mon, 12 May 2008 07:23:44 -0500

Calling all would-be Judd Apatows, Martin Scorseses and Coen brothers. Your cinematic ambitions may be supported by an unlikely patron, based not in Hollywood but in Redmond, Washington.

That geographic clue gives away the sponsor: Microsoft, which is underwriting an online moviemaking contest in an effort to stimulate sales and burnish the reputation of Windows Vista, its operating system. The product has met with mixed reviews since its introduction last year.

The contest is another example of the popular marketing trend known as user-generated content. It is intended to promote the higher-end version of Vista -- Windows Vista Ultimate -- among videophiles, early adopters of technology and filmmakers.

The contest, which was to begin on Thursday, is called the Ultimate Video Relay and has its own Web site (ultimatevideorelay.com), a spinoff of the Windows Vista Ultimate Web site (ultimatepc.com). The relay reference comes from the invitation to computer users to complete a story titled The Cube in several stages. The tale, a humorous cross between The Matrix and The Office (or Office Space), begins with a six-minute clip that can be watched on the relay Web site. The clip is directed by Kyle Newman, the director of Fanboys, a coming movie about Star Wars aficionados.

The online clip is labeled Act I of The Cube and ends abruptly.

Contestants are supposed to finish the story by providing first a middle (Act II) and later an end (Act III). The entries will be judged by visitors to ultimatevideorelay.com.

Microsoft is teaming up for the contest with TriggerStreet.com, the Web site of a production company owned by the actor Kevin Spacey that is aimed at aspiring moviemakers and screenwriters. TriggerStreet.com and Microsoft were brought together by Omelet, a Los Angeles company that works on advertising, entertainment and branding projects with marketers that in addition to Microsoft include Anheuser-Busch,...

Power of SaaS: VoIP Call Centers for a Fraction of the Cost

Mon, 12 May 2008 07:25:27 -0500

The software as a service (SaaS) trend is revolutionizing the call center industry, as companies of all sizes are now discovering the advantages of going with hosted versus on-premise solutions.

With SaaS for the call center, applications such as FVR, ACD, predictive dialing, workforce management and CRM are hosted on a shared platform in a data center and delivered to the agents via the Internet or dedicated network. Because they are completely Web-based, these solutions are quick and easy to deploy -- and furthermore, require very little up front investment, as there is usually no additional equipment needed.

Because the software is delivered over the Internet "as a service," the traditional software licensing model is replaced with a "subscription" model, or "leasing" model where the software is "rented" based on the amount of time it is used, multiplied by the number of seats. This "pay-as-you-go" model makes today's SaaS solutions analogous to a utility: You pay for only the amount you use.

Today, there are even affordable Web-based call center solutions geared for small businesses with under 12 agents. Despite their low cost, these solutions don't skimp on features: They offer many of the same capabilities found in much larger, much more expensive on-premise enterprise systems. Many small companies are already having great success with these hosted solutions and are realizing ROI in a very short time frame.

If you're running a growing small business and you're thinking about setting up your own in-house VoIP call center to better serve your customers, gain new efficiencies and improve the bottom line, you should definitely consider the SaaS model to meet your call center software needs. The first and most important step is to determine whether the SaaS model is the right fit -- for example, some SaaS solutions are better suited to out-bound call...