For Customer Experience Professionals

Member Registration Plagues Health Plan Sites

Interviews Of 17 Health Plans Uncover The Need For Email Addresses

by Elizabeth Boehm, November 20, 2009

The Web is becoming a bigger part of health plans' member service and member communication strategies, but health plans struggle to drive adoption. Forrester recently interviewed customer experience professionals responsible for member service Web sites . . .

For eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals

How Dutch Consumers Use The Net To Research And Buy Financial Products

The Web's Role As A Sales Channel Is Growing Fast In The Netherlands

by Alexander Hesse, November 20, 2009

The Internet's role as a distribution channel for financial products is growing fast in the Netherlands. Nearly half of Dutch Net users researched at least one financial product online in the past year, compared with 40% in 2007, and one in five bought . . .

For Customer Experience Professionals

Design Sites To Work In A High-Resolution World

The Decline Of 1024 x 768 And What To Do About It

by Ron Rogowski, November 20, 2009

The proliferation of high-resolution screens that well surpass 1024 x 768 adds a new layer of complexity to site design. Not only is there no standard resolution to design for, but higher-resolution screens pose usability challenges for sites that were . . .

For Vendor Strategy Professionals

Addressing Diverse Stakeholders In The IT And Business Services Buying Process

Planning For 2010 Requires A Clear Understanding Of Roles

by Chris Andrews, November 20, 2009

For years, Forrester has written about the evolution of information technology (IT) into business technology (BT) — an idea that is rooted in Forrester's view that technology is becoming more relevant and strategic to business processes. This trend, which . . .

For Customer Intelligence Professionals

Marketing Dashboards Advance Strategic Thinking Across The Enterprise

by Julie M. Katz, November 20, 2009

Dashboards allow Customer Intelligence (CI) professionals to better influence marketing strategy and drive corporate activities beyond marketing. But many firms don't use them. Absent a culture of sharing, sufficient resources, and clean data, dashboard . . .

For Customer Intelligence Professionals

Case Study: The UK's Channel 4 Decodes Customer Engagement

How To Measure Engagement To Drive Business Results

by Julie M. Katz, November 20, 2009

Despite Forrester's four-part engagement definition, many Customer Intelligence professionals struggle to find the best way to measure engagement. When Channel 4 (C4), a media outlet in the UK, shifted its teen programming from TV to online, it needed . . .

For B2B Market Research Professionals

The Online Panel Quality Wars: All Market Researchers Benefit — Especially B2B Tech

by Brad Bortner, November 20, 2009

At the same time that online quantitative research has taken off, dubiousness abounds about the representation of the online panel sample. Buyers ask: Are panels representative of the markets researchers use them for? What can we do about the moral hazard . . .

For eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals

Online-Influenced Sales Exceed Direct Sales In Financial Services

How The Internet Influences Sales In Other Channels

by Brad Strothkamp, November 20, 2009

In 2008, the majority of US online adults who researched a financial product did so online, and the majority of those online researchers applied in a channel other than the Web. These cross-channel shoppers illustrate the importance of online-influenced . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Peer Adoption: The State Of Server Virtualization  (471 KB PPT)

by Christopher Voce, November 20, 2009

This data chart examines the usage and trends of server virtualization in enterprises today as well as the motivations that drive adoption.

For Security & Risk Professionals

Know Your Code: How Static Analysis Tools Make Applications More Secure

by Chenxi Wang, Ph.D., Andrew Jaquith, November 20, 2009

Many companies, besieged by audit findings and application vulnerabilities, recognize the benefits of eliminating security vulnerabilities early in the software life cycle. For this reason, static analysis technologies for analyzing code-level security . . .

For Technology Product Management & Marketing Professionals

Understanding Information Worker Smartphone Usage

Emerging Smartphone Use By Information Workers Opens Doors For Vendors

by Michele Pelino, November 20, 2009

Understanding how information workers use smartphones and applications enables marketing executives across the mobile value chain to successfully develop products and services to address the needs of these workers. Currently, 13% of information workers . . .

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

For Gen Y, Mobility Trumps Web 2.0 At Work

Workforce Technographics®

by Ted Schadler, November 19, 2009

Gen Y is four times more likely to visit a social networking site at home than they are to use one for work purposes. But if they are unable to bring their Social Computing habits and sensibility to work, Gen Yers can at least use their personal mobile . . .

For B2B Market Research Professionals

What Type Of Market Research Online Community Vendor Should Tech B2B Market Researchers Use?

Three Choices Exist, Dependent On Budget, Usage Pattern, And Support Needs

by Brad Bortner, November 19, 2009

Market research online communities (MROCS) are the next wave in qualitative research, due to their combination of new qualitative research capabilities and ability to provide cheaper faster results. There is, however, buyer confusion about what type of . . .

For Interactive Marketing Professionals

Navigating The Twittersphere

How To Market On Twitter

by Nate Elliott, November 19, 2009

Successfully engaging with consumers on Twitter requires both the right overarching strategy and a series of small best practices. Interactive marketers must ensure that consumers can find their brands' accounts, confirm that they are legitimate, and . . .

For Business Process & Applications Professionals

The Forrester Wave™: Business Performance Solutions, Q4 2009

IBM Cognos, Oracle, SAP, And SAS Lead, With Clarity Systems In Close Pursuit

by Paul D. Hamerman, November 19, 2009

In Forrester's 89-criteria evaluation of business performance solutions (BPS) vendors, we found that IBM Cognos, Oracle, SAP, and SAS Institute led the pack because of their breadth of functionality and strength of their business intelligence (BI) foundations. . . .

For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals

Harnessing Social Networking To Drive Transformation

by Rob Koplowitz, November 19, 2009

When one of the world's largest defense contractors says, "We need to move from a culture of 'need to know' to a culture of 'need to share,'" you stop and listen. Competing in an industry driven by the mantra "loose lips sink ships," BAE Systems has identified . . .

For CIOs

Inquiry Spotlight: Retail Point-Of-Sale Systems, Q3 2009

by George Lawrie, November 19, 2009

Retail line-of-business executives know that technology plays a central role in helping to deliver improved customer service with increased margin. They look to CIOs to push what were once purely tactical point-of-sale (POS) systems to become solutions . . .

For Consumer Product Strategy Professionals

Inquiry Spotlight: Consumer Wireless Strategy, Q3 2009

by Julie A. Ask, Seth Fowler, November 19, 2009

Mobile is rapidly expanding as a medium for interacting with consumers, and it will only continue to do so. Many of Forrester's nontelecommunications clients — from the travel industry to consumer product goods to automotive companies to financial firms . . .

For Sourcing & Vendor Management Professionals

Status, Challenges, And Near-Term Tactics For Cloud Services In Enterprise Outsourcing Deals

by Paul Roehrig, Ph.D., November 18, 2009

The blab-o-sphere is full of warnings, proclamations, and sales pitches about cloud services and this is only making it tougher for IT decision-makers to sort the reality from the hype in the face of pressing technology challenges. Decision-makers are . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Driving Multitenancy In Your Virtual Environments

How To Get Business Units To Share Your Consolidated Infrastructure

by James Staten, November 18, 2009

As you continue to consolidate your server infrastructure and make it more cloudlike, a key hurdle you and most enterprises must overcome is the sharing of physical infrastructure between business units (BUs). While some organizations have a centralized . . .

For CIOs

The State Of Point-Of-Sale Systems

Retail CIOs Around The World Expect POS To Become More Strategic

by George Lawrie, November 18, 2009

Retail IT is challenged to support new cross-channel offerings and the ability to sell services and merchandise not provided in the store itself. It also needs to support rapid innovation in point-of-sale (POS) peripherals and the promise of more direct-to-consumer . . .

For Technology Product Management & Marketing Professionals

The State Of Global Enterprise IT Budgets: 2009 To 2010

Business Data Services Global

by Jennifer Belissent, Ph.D., November 18, 2009

This document provides enterprise highlights of an extensive data set collected via Forrester's Enterprise And SMB Global IT Budgets And Spending Survey, Q2 2009. The survey covers budget trends and priorities from 2009 through the first half of 2010 . . .

For Consumer Market Research Professionals

A Deep Dive Into Asia Pacific Consumers' Online Behavior

by Olesia Klevchuk, November 18, 2009

For the past four years, Forrester has been tracking consumers' online and offline behavior in Asia Pacific. This is a dedicated report about Asia Pacific consumers' online behavior aimed at understanding the changes in this emerging medium. This year's . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Charging Back For Your Virtual Infrastructure

How To Allocate Costs For Virtual Machines And Drive Greater Adoption

by James Staten, November 18, 2009

As you continue to consolidate your server infrastructure and make it more cloudlike, a key hurdle that you must overcome is cost allocation for the virtual infrastructure. While most enterprises are not yet charging back or tracking virtual machine (VM) . . .

For Vendor Strategy Professionals

Market Overview: The Advent Of Enterprise Carbon And Energy Management Systems

Sketching The New Opportunities For IT Vendor Strategists

by Christopher Mines, November 17, 2009

A new liability is coming onto the collective balance sheet of companies around the world: carbon. In the context of increasing awareness of the business and societal risks of climate change, corporate carbon emissions (and the energy consumption that . . .