Help Desk
Forrestor, 4/8/04: Why Marketing Should Own The Contact Center
The declining effectiveness of traditional marketing tactics, consumer privacy legislation, and the desire to use every interaction to deepen the customer relationship are driving marketing and service together.
Contact centers should relinquish control over the customer interaction — via phone,, email, chat, direct mail, or self-service —to a marketing executive who owns and manages the overall customer experience.
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IT Management
Business Week, 4/13/04: CEOs Learn the Technology Ropes
Burned by pricey projects with scant returns in the '90s, chief execs are now savvier and watch CIOs and IT spending far closer
Not long ago, many chief executives viewed information technology as a wand that could magically transform their businesses -- in part because they didn't really understand it. As recently as 1998, surveys showed that most CEOs didn't know how to open their own e-mail, much less make wise technology decisions. So when their chief information officers painted doomsday Y2K scenarios and their chief financial officers pushed for spending on enterprise resource-planning (ERP) software, many CEOs just signed the check.
Their inexperience carried a high price. By 2000, corporate tech spending had risen to as much as 10% of some companies' sales -- vs. today's average of 2.3% or so. Preparing for Y2K did nothing to boost revenues. And worse, according to market consultancy Gartner, more than half of the multimillion-dollar ERP projects that businesses implemented to streamline their accounting and basic operations failed -- and 40% exceeded their original budgets by more than 50%. A recent survey of some 196 corporations by consultants Booz Allen Hamilton found that more than half were dissatisfied with their tech investments.
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Security
C|net, 4/13/04: Microsoft warns of a score of security holes
By Robert Lemos
Microsoft released on Tuesday fixes that cover at least 20 Windows flaws, several of which could make versions of the operating system vulnerable to new worms or viruses.
At least six of the flaws could make the OS susceptible to programs similar to the MSBlast worm and its variants, which have infected more than 8 million computers since last August. Another flaw affects a common file used by Internet Explorer, Outlook and Outlook Express and opens the way for the type of virus that executes when PC users click a specially crafted Web link.
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Open Source
Forrestor, 4/12/04: The Costs And Risks Of Open Source
Open source, including Linux, is being deployed by a majority of companies in 2004,yet we question whether customers are adequately prepared to deal with the costs and risks of managing these environments. The allure of free software is accelerating the deployment of open source platforms, but open source is not free and may actually increase financial and business risk. Discussions with five companies that tracked their total costs indicated Linux was between 5%and 20%more expensive than Windows. There were two distinct situations where Linux was the clear cost winner: Unix migrations and Linux-only deployments. Linux, and other open source software can provide big benefits to the organization, however, companies need to know what to expect, and plan appropriately to mitigate these concerns.
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