| TechnologyEvaluation.Com: It's important to make sure that software will truly fit your organization's needs after it has been customized by your supplier — especially since your supplier likely can't predict how the systems will perform in your business environment. Such testing generally involves three steps: assessing the value, discovering risks, and perhaps most important, auditing your supplier's working practices. The article says the aim is to go beyond mere functionality to also evaluate reliability, security and flexibility. It also offers valuable advice on contracts and the acceptance period, suggesting that only a portion of the payment should be made before delivery, with the rest withheld until you are satisfied the supplier has done a good job. Another good practice is to build a warranty period into contracts. (Free registration required) IT Jungle: The 300 call center workers for Prescription Solutions were spending more than 15 minutes a day logging into the medical management company's dozen applications running across OS/400, VMS and Windows servers, each of which required a separate password. Even worse, employees were resorting to security no-nos such as attaching Post-It notes with passwords to their PCs — a special concern in the compliance-conscious health care industry. Password resets accounted for about half of all calls to the IT help desk, or about 30 password reset calls per day. To simplify the login process, the company's manager of technical services opted for single sign-on software combined with fingerprint scanners. After some initial difficulties installing the system, employees can quickly and easily access apps. The exec figures the company will enjoy productivity gains that will save it $200,000 a year. InformationWeek: If users won't use a new application, ROI will be nil. According to Nucleus Research, user resistance to technology adoption falls into four categories: individual, structural, hierarchical and cultural. The author offers a number of real-world examples of how companies successfully dealt with user resistance in all four categories. For instance, one company hosted a hangman competition with its new Palm Pilots to help users learn the scripting they needed to take notes. Another company identified key users of an ERP system and gave them incentives to provide input; they became "evangelists" for other workers after identifying ways the system could make their jobs easier. Not all methods involve carrots; some used sticks. Another company trying to encourage use of a salesforce automation system withheld half of commissions for sales that hadn't been reflected in the pipeline report for more than a month. | | Special Offer: Free White Paper SOX and Internal Control Over Financial Reportings
For many large, decentralized IT organizations, achieving compliance and implementing SOX compliance controls has not been easy. This white paper examines the specific area of IT controls over financial reporting for IT organizations as they seek to comply with the ongoing directives of Sarbanes-Oxley. Read it today and learn how your organization can work to ensure governance over control processes with the ability to demonstrate ongoing compliance and accountability. | | | | IEEE Spectrum Online: There's no question that failed technology projects can cost a company big. For proof, click through to the "Software Hall of Shame," which details losses from $12 million to $4 billion by companies like Nike, McDonald's and Allstate Insurance. The author, a consultant, estimates that failed technical projects have likely cost the U.S. economy at least $25 billion over the past five years — and maybe as much as $75 billion. He lists 12 reasons such projects fail, including unrealistic or unarticulated project goals, badly defined system requirements, use of immature technology and stakeholder politics. You can follow a clickable link to a detailed analysis of the FBI's failed $170 million case management software project. On a brighter note, click through to "The Exterminator," which details how British company Praxis High Integrity Systems reduced its bug rate to one error in every 10,000 lines of delivered code by using mathematics-based formal methods in its software development.
Inc.com: Bradbury Software is one of an increasing number of companies using online forums to provide customer service. The forum started out of economic necessity; Nick Bradbury, the firm's sole employee, was having trouble keeping up with support. But the forum, in which 2,000 members answer each other's questions and swap tips about using the company's software, has evolved into a community of loyal customers and a source of valuable market research that yields many ideas for new product features. PMI Audio Group had a similar experience, with forums freeing up the firm's 10 employees to redirect their efforts from dealing with customer queries to more productive tasks. In many cases, employees found they could direct users to archived forum discussions in which questions had already been addressed. Optimize: There has been a rapid uptake in open source software over the past five years. One example: JasperReports, an open source reporting project started in 2001, averages more than 15,000 downloads a month and has been used in more than 10,000 organizations. But open source software does involve considerations not associated with more traditional vendor-provided software. For instance, because open source projects often depend on the support of developer communities, enterprises should evaluate the long-term viability of those communities and the legal risks assumed when acquiring open source software. The article offers five suggested best practices for purchasing open source software: Pick winners, understand what you need, understand the community, understand the licensing scheme, and understand how much involvement your company should have in a single project. | IT Marketplace | | | | | Tell the IT Business Edge audience of technology decision makers about your product, service, event, or job. Click here to list it in the IT Marketplace! | | 3 QUESTIONS:
Size Doesn't Matter When It Comes to SaaS
With Greg Gianforte, founder and CEO of on-demand CRM provider RightNow Technologies. RightNow is a member of the Enterprise SaaS Working Group, an independent industry association focusing on the needs and issues of large organizations seeking to make optimal use of software as a service. A white paper on the topic is available at www.rightnow.com/saas/. Question: On-demand applications have largely been the purview of SMBs until now. Are more larger enterprises becoming interested in on-demand apps and, if so, why?
Gianforte: We are selling RightNow CRM to more and more larger enterprises. The on-demand (hosted) delivery model for software applications is increasingly seen as an established and less expensive alternative to secure software. I think there was more reluctance to the on-demand model a few years ago as larger enterprises questioned the security and scalability of the model. These questions have largely been laid to rest as evidenced by the size and complexity of some of our deployments. We have customers that have automated their entire sales, service and marketing organizations, and have thousands of employees logging in everyday in multiple languages across dozens of countries. These customers have validated the security, scalability and functionality of the software, and are now realizing a ROI at a much earlier rate than they would have had they deployed the software on-premise (in-house). Question: What are some key differences in the on-demand needs of SMBs and larger enterprises?
Gianforte: Larger enterprises require choice in deployment, payment, upgrades, integration and customization. One size might fit all for SMBs, but not in large enterprises. For example, RightNow offers customers the choice of deploying either on-demand or on-premise. We have had customers who originally said they would not deploy on-demand, disqualified other on-demand vendors, and selected RightNow over other on-premise vendors due to our functionality. However, what frequently happens is that the customer wants to be live in 90 days but their IT organization is too resource-constrained to meet this timeframe. So they agree to deploy on-demand to get up and live quickly, thinking they can fall back on the on-premise option if it fails. They never end up deploying it on-premise once they see the speed to deployment and ROI with the on-demand model. Customers also require payment choice. There is a common misnomer in the marketplace that somehow on-demand means paying on a monthly subscription basis. Larger customers want the choice to pay for the software on a monthly, annual term, or perpetual basis, depending on if they want to fund it as an operational expense or a capital expenditure. So regardless of how our customers choose to deploy (on-demand or on-premise), they can choose any of the above payment options.
Most on-demand software vendors only maintain one version of their software, and whenever the next new version of the software is available, they automatically force upgrades to their entire customer base at once. This might be acceptable for a SFA deployment for 20 salespeople who only use the software for about 30 minutes each day. But some of our customers have hundreds and thousands of customer service agents. Automatically upgrading these types of larger customers when they may be having a product launch at the same time is absolutely unacceptable. We let our customers choose if and when they want to upgrade, and we provide a multi-tenet, multi-version architecture to support this. We even let our customers schedule their own upgrades whenever it's most convenient for them.
Finally, larger enterprises typically have more complex integration and customization requirements, especially when it comes to automating cross-departmental processes frequently involved in larger CRM deployments. We offer our customers the tools they need to seamlessly integrate and customize RightNow CRM, and our deployment experts are available to help them along the way. Question: Does it typically take large enterprises longer to achieve ROI with on-demand apps, when compared to smaller companies?
Gianforte: The ROI benefits of on-demand are just as compelling for larger enterprises, if not more so, than for SMBs. Regardless of company size, the ability to deploy a complex software solution in 45 days (our average deployment time) without the subsequent IT infrastructure to support it is untouchable from an ROI perspective. Add to the deployment ROI the tangible ROI benefits of our software functionality such as reducing call center call volumes by 50 percent or e-mail inquiries by 75 percent, and the cost savings can be astounding. | | Also from IT Business Edge: Leveraging Open Source Leveraging Open Source gives you a comprehensive view of open source adoption in the enterprise. From Linux's growing role in the mid-tier server market to open source corporate blogging software, the open source movement is making inroads in the enterprise. Click here to sign up! | By the Numbers
$4.9 million Average amount spent on supply chain management in 2005, accounting for 17 percent of total business application spending, according to AMR Research. $170 million Cost of an automated case management software project scrapped by the FBI in April. The project included $105 million worth of unusable code delivered by Science Applications International Corp. 30 percent to 60 percent Proportion of IT help desk calls that Gartner estimates are password resets, across all industries. Breaking Headlines
Reuters: Companies will likely have to spend more for energy, including gasoline and heating fuel, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which halted more than 90 percent of daily crude oil production from the U.S. Gulf Coast, which normally accounts for about a quarter of U.S. output. The increased energy spending could cut into technology spending, says a market strategist at the Maxim Group, forcing companies to delay tech contracts or to choose between upgrading systems or hiring staff. Several companies, including Sprint Nextel, report they are already facing unexpected hurricane-related costs. Conversely, some sectors may see economic benefits during the effort to rebuild New Orleans. A portfolio manager for the $2.2 billion Dreyfus Premier Technology Growth fund likened it to a green field opportunity. SiliconValley.com: Intel, which for years has stressed the speed of its chips, began putting a new emphasis on non-speed related features at its recent developer conference. Among them: a virtualization capability that will separate the chip's work into different compartments, allowing the chip to run a different operating system or application in each compartment. This will allow users to safely recover if, for instance, one program crashes or gets a virus. Both WMware and Microsoft will support virtualization, coming in chips by the end of 2005. Intel is also introducing a feature called "active management technology," which can be used to manage a computer or group of computers. This will be a boon to IT managers, since most of their costs are related to operating and managing computers. Computer Business Review: According to Datamonitor, U.S. state and local governments will increase technology spending over the next five years, reaching $62.4 billion by 2009. Much of the spending will go toward public safety and social services. Already, these two areas account for more than half of government IT spending. Datamonitor says government agencies will increase their investments in software and services at a quicker pace than investment in hardware and networking gear. With the aim of reducing costs and improving efficiency, many state and local governments are consolidating their IT management and operations into a single office or department of information technology under the leadership of a CIO. Emerging Trends
PC Magazine: According to the 10th annual CSI/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey for 2005, the cost of network attacks dropped from an average of $526,010 in 2003 to $203,606 in 2004, largely due to better anti-virus technology and heightened awareness. The news is mixed, however, as companies are losing more money to the fast-growing problem of electronic theft of proprietary data. Data theft cost companies an average of $355,552 in 2004, up from $168,529 in 2003. The fastest-growing threat is Web site defacement, according to the study, with 95 percent of respondents reporting more than 10 Web site incidents in the past year, compared with only 5 percent in 2003. Frontline Solutions: According to AMR Research, the supply chain management market will reach $17.9 billion in 2005, including software, services, connectivity, consulting and technology. Interestingly, 48 percent of companies plan to keep spending at current levels while 47 percent say they will increase spending. The average company plans to spend $4.9 million on supply chain management, accounting for 17 percent of total business application spending. Line-of-business execs will play a greater role in supply chain spending. AMR says 27 percent of spending was controlled by line-of-business managers and 70 percent of decisions were made by IT in 2004; the consulting firm expects those numbers to grow to 43 percent and 40 percent, respectively, in 2005. Twenty-six percent of survey respondents are considering software-as-a-service applications in 2005, compared to just 6 percent in 2004. Other survey results are highlighted.
Insurance Networking News: Insurance agencies are looking at a new approach to IT/business alignment called Complex Event Processing that identifies data and application traffic, such as a customer submitting a quotation request, as "events'' of importance, analyzes the events to reveal patterns, and reacts to them by generating actions. Event pattern trends are monitored and thresholds are set that will trigger adjustments and notifications when they are crossed. So, for instance, a customer might receive notification of a sales promotion. The CEP layer sits on top of an existing message or event delivery layer and correlates activity among applications, services, databases and middleware. CEP appears to do a better job of analyzing complex customer behavior and prompting appropriate follow-up than other IT/business alignment initiatives, such as business process management, and removes the need for custom application development. IT Business Edge: Maximizing IT Investments
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| | About the Editor
Ann All covered a variety of business topics as a newspaper reporter before switching to automated teller machines — which, unbelievably, are just beginning to migrate to a Windows-based platform and more modern networking technologies like TCP/IP — as the editor of online trade publication ATMmarketplace.com. She can be reached at investments@
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