About Forrester
Forrester Research, Inc. is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology.

Phil serves Application Development & Delivery Professionals seeking strategies that will help them streamline and manage their application portfolios. Phil's coverage includes application modernization (monitoring, renewing, replacing, or retiring existing applications/platforms); portfolio management (APM) (driving business-aligned modernization via metrics/assessments); rationalization (streamlining the portfolio to reduce lights-on IT costs and increase agility); and strategic planning (aligning business and IT vision and aligning the application/infrastructure to fulfill the joint business/IT vision).
Phil focuses his research on application professionals, but his research also draws the interest of enterprise architects, CIOs, and other IT professionals.
Phil's IT experience dates back to 1982, when he held positions with: the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (consultant); Boston University (application developer); and Cullinet Software, where he held positions as a software developer and consultant before he was promoted to IT director. When CA bought Cullinet in 1989, Phil joined insurance company startup Arbella Mutual Insurance as director of applications, working with a management team to literally create an IT department and implement its initial applications/operating environment. In 1992, Phil accepted a director-level position with the National Council on (workers') Compensation Insurance (NCCI), where he directed a team that developed and distributed a commercial software package, implemented a financial applications package, and rolled out the nation's first Internet-based information service to the worker's compensation industry. Phil held the top management position in NCCI's $26 million Y2K program office — leveraging offshore programming resources to remediate its applications and onsite staff to execute Y2K testing, effectively creating a round-the-clock remediation process.
Phil joined Giga Information Group in 1997 as an industry analyst, covering the Y2K phenomenon, and he was promoted to the position of managing director of research for its e-practices group. Since Forrester bought Giga in 2003, Phil has been bringing his broad technical and managerial experience to bear on application and IT management topics that concern Forrester's diverse client base.
Tablet applications offer a new way for customers to interact with brands, providing sustained engagement and bridging the capability-mobility gap between websites and smartphone applications. In the...
Even the best Web sites have usability flaws that stop customers from buying products or services, finding information, and getting help. Yet many of these problems are easy to find and not much...

Lately it’s become en vogue to talk about how to “surprise and delight” your customers. And why not? If companies are competing on experience, they need to find ways to impress and...
Rich Interfaces Are Critical For Building CARS Experiences
Rich interfaces are frequently used for delivering complex and valuable online experiences. But rich Internet applications (RIAs) have yet to reach their full potential because they are still...
Delivering Relevant Experiences In The Multichannel World
Firms want to deliver the right experience to the right user at the right time and on the right device — a tricky proposition in this age of device proliferation. The splinternet — and...

Best Practices From 14 Web Site Brand Reviews Across Three Industries
In 2010, Forrester reviewed the Web site brand experience of sites in industries as diverse as automotive, hotels, and skin care. An analysis of the results across industries surfaced common...
What Customer Experience Professionals Need To Know About The Year Ahead
In 2011, the customer experience ecosystem will expand to include a dizzying array of new devices, touchpoints, and physical interactions. The breadth of this emerging ecosystem and the number of...
At some point in our lives, we all go through the challenge of moving, and it isn’t a whole lot of fun, even when it should be. You have to find a place to move, make offers, secure loans and...
Tailor Apps For The iPad's Unique Form Factor And User Behaviors
The iPad's popularity has caused customer experience professionals to take a hard look at providing relevant experiences for yet another device. Because of the iPad's unique form factor and use...
Landscape: The Digital Customer Experience Improvement Playbook
Digital touchpoints support an increasingly large percentage of the overall customer experience. 2012 saw the emergence of several important digital customer experience trends that will gain momentum...

As part of Forrester’s ongoing initiative to provide annual industry benchmarks of online customer experiences, we recently evaluated the Brand Experience of four hotel brands’ Web sites...
Ever since I signed my daughter up for a frequent-flier program, she's been receiving at least one credit card offer from American Express every week. Problem is, she's 2. It's unnerving...
It's Time To Back Up The Claim That Digital Customer Experience Is Important
Companies say that digital touchpoints are critical to their customer experience efforts but don't have an approach for multi-touchpoint experience, don't know customers' expectations, and don't know...

Mega-drop-down menus enable designers to quickly route site visitors to content that resides deep within a site's hierarchy without obligating them to sort through multiple menu layers. But once...
Ever wonder why Web sites offer such lackluster brand experiences? Want to know how your site can help you differentiate your brand online? If you care about how your brand succeeds online and are...
Harley Manning recently wrote a post that explained Forrester’s definition of customer experience as: “How customers perceive their interactions with your company.” The key...
During 2010, my colleagues on the Customer Experience team at Forrester and I evaluated the Brand Experience at the Web sites of 14 companies across three industries (and wrote individual reports for...
Firms are increasing their focus on and investment in digital touchpoints. Why? Because digital touchpoints are critical parts of the customer experience ecosystem that offer your customers...
Five Emotional Design Techniques That Drive Engagement
Engaging customers and prospects in digital interfaces is difficult. But the fields of social science and behavioral economics have uncovered techniques that can be effective for encouraging...
The sensory experience is a critical part of engaging users in digital interaction points. Unfortunately, many legacy websites keep users at arm's length with static text, generic imagery, and few...
Forrester Applies Its Website Review Methodology To Six US Bank Sites
Forrester evaluated the user experience at the public-facing websites of six leading US banks by assets: Bank of America, Chase (JPMorgan Chase), Citibank, PNC Financial Services, US Bank, and Wells...