http://www.forrester.com/ Forrester is an independent technology research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice about technology's impact on business. en-us 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 120 http://www.forrester.com/imagesV2/affiliates/logos/forrester.gif http://www.forrester.com/ http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46450&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed As part of a larger analysis of 16 firms, Forrester evaluated the cross-channel experiences of four large US department stores — JCPenney, Kohl's, Macy's, and Sears. As an industry, the department stores received average scores compared with other industries, but overall, they still delivered poor experiences — with JCPenney ranking far below the other department stores. While each firm suffered from a variety of problems, our analysis also uncovered a number of good practices, such as Kohl's contextual help on the Web, Sears' helpful phone agents, and Macy's easy transition from interactive voice response (IVR) to phone. To improve multichannel experiences, customer experience execs at department stores should conduct regular reviews of their own channels, focus on the specific needs of target users, and establish voice of the customer programs. Customer Experience Packaged Applications Consumer Industries Retail Thu, 07 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT "Vidya L. Drego" <resourcecenter@forrester.com> http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46450&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46367&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed To find out how easy it was to register for Japan's mobile social networking services (SNSes), Forrester applied an abridged version of its Web Site Review methodology to the site experiences at Japan's leading mobile social networking sites: Mixi Mobile and Mobage-town. Neither site quite achieved a passing grade — Mobage-town was let down by cute but distracting presentation, and Mixi Mobile offered unclear categories and insufficient help in the event of errors. Despite these flaws, Mobile site owners can take some valuable lessons from the pared down registration processes offered by both sites: Mixi Mobile excelled in the layout of its mobile forms, while Mobage-town made it easy for the user to fix errors and kept her aware of how she was progressing. Customer Experience eBusiness/eCommerce Thu, 07 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT "Jonathan Browne" <resourcecenter@forrester.com> http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46367&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46358&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed Late in 2007, Forrester interviewed sourcing professionals about their vendor management preferences and experience. Forrester asked respondents about the day-to-day responsibilities of staff in the vendor management office, necessary skill sets, and best practices for hiring. This document highlights best practices insight gleaned from these interviews as well as from client inquiries and feedback. IT Management Sourcing & Procurement Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT "John C. McCarthy, Allison Thresher" <resourcecenter@forrester.com> http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46358&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=45217&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed All but the smallest IT organizations need a portfolio management office (PMO). IT will always have more work in its list than it can work on, and, given the complex operating environment of most IT shops, managing all the resulting projects to successful completion will always be a challenge. But while a having a PMO is necessary to successfully navigate these demands and constraints, many PMOs struggle. The secret to a successful PMO is to: 1) understand the different PMO functions, from project management process standardization to business case development; 2) craft a firm-specific PMO model; and 3) engage the business in the development of PMO processes and reports. IT Management Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT "Lewis Cardin" <resourcecenter@forrester.com> http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=45217&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46809&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed This data chart examines the latest Forrester data on SaaS usage in China from the Enterprise Technology Adoption Survey, Asia Pacific, Q4 2007 and the Enterprise And SMB Software Survey, North America And Europe, Q3 2007. IT Services IT Spending & Budgeting Packaged Applications High-Tech Professional Services Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT "Tim Sheedy" <resourcecenter@forrester.com> http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46809&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46770&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed Examining all US online leisure travelers by household incomes produces three similarly sized household income groups: less than $50,000 per year, between $50,000 and $94,999 per year, and $95,000 or more annually. Although those who earn $95,000 or more a year make up just 31% of all leisure travelers, they account for 42% of all US leisure airline passengers. Shrinking travel budgets put 28% of the roundtrips that airline passengers take at risk — with those who earn the least most likely to cut back their airline flights, leaving behind a more upscale audience. Travel eBusiness professionals need to help budget-focused travelers with content and tools that help them anticipate the growing number of surcharges added to tickets. To serve higher-end leisure travelers, airlines need to consider developing defined products with more benefits and amenities that can be sold effectively online. Marketing & Advertising Consumer Industries Travel Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT "Henry H. Harteveldt" <resourcecenter@forrester.com> http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46770&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46723&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed In order to keep pace with the growth of business mobility without falling prey to its potential risks, IT must be able to efficiently address complex issues ranging from service provisioning, device procurement, help desk and infrastructure support, security oversight, and process management. CIOs can enable IT to meet these demands by establishing centralized mobile operations management to oversee and coordinate all aspects of mobility technology within the business. Enterprise Mobility IT Infrastructure & Operations IT Spending & Budgeting Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT "Alex Cullen" <resourcecenter@forrester.com> http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46723&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46321&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed The portfolio management solution space becomes more complicated as project portfolio management (PPM) tool vendors react to increasing expectations from their customers. Meanwhile, as firms mature in their portfolio management offices' (PMOs') processes, they place ever-increasing demands on their vendors. The result? PPM solutions come with self-proclaimed "all singing, all dancing" capability — out of the box. Although software capability is at or near the top of the list of selection criteria, there is more to selecting the best solution than just matching PPM product features and functions to your current PMO needs. The consequences of making a flawed choice ranges from problems with adoption to unrealized PPM tool investment value through to mismatched future business needs and vendor product strategies — all expensive and potentially damaging to business opportunity and profitability. IT Management Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT "Lewis Cardin" <resourcecenter@forrester.com> http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46321&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=44184&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed Driven by economic changes like the rising cost of gas, social trends like work-life balance, and the proliferation of collaboration technologies, consumers are changing the way that they work. Rather than commuting to a central office every day, 9% of consumers telecommute from home for an external employer, and 22.8 million run a business out of their home. When it comes to their telecommunications services, these home workers have distinct needs that are a combination of their personal and work activities. Yet telcos, cablecos, and ISPs have not focused on this attractive segment of "prosumer" home workers and thus have not yet capitalized on their unique market value. To do so going forward, providers need a designated prosumer product strategist who can mix product offerings, feature sets, and marketing messaging from the consumer and business worlds. Enterprise Mobility Information & Knowledge Management Telecommunications Services Consumer Industries Consumer Technology Adoption High-Tech Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT "Sally M. Cohen" <resourcecenter@forrester.com> http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=44184&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46315&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed Polarization between the offshore providers in India is tightening. Fast growing and enviably profitable, India's top three providers — Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), and Wipro — now drive almost half of India's total IT services exports by value. While Cognizant, HCL, and Satyam still hold their ground and continue to grow, most nonspecialized and undifferentiated tier two and tier three firms stand to lose out. Margin pressures do not allow them to invest enough in building specialization or take proactive initiatives such as process consulting or cultural workshops to help clients ramp up. The result? The majority of sub-billion-dollar firms is falling prey to a staff augmentation deathtrap and is increasing headcount without corresponding returns. Forrester predicts that many firms will shed up to 30% of their current clients to pursue a more specialized strategy and rebuild competitiveness. Forrester recommends that sourcing professionals reassess their vendor's survival readiness and review their supplier selection criteria in response. IT Services Sourcing & Procurement Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT "Sudin Apte" <resourcecenter@forrester.com> http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46315&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=43918&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed Many software vendors are facing difficult economic times and are evaluating the potential for growth beyond their traditional home markets. Expansion into new regions, especially emerging markets, sounds like a promising direction. Others know from the beginning that a local market will not provide enough market volume for them. Forrester talked with seven vendors that have internationalized successfully, either recently or in the more distant past. We also spoke with vendors that have failed in their efforts. Based on this evidence, we provide best practices and a strategy framework applicable to any software vendor looking for international growth. We describe home-bound tech vendors' ideal launch path from their local "planet" into the international "orbit," based on their business model, vendor maturity, and the nature of their product offering. Packaged Applications High-Tech Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT "Peter O'Neill, Stefan Ried, Ph.D." <resourcecenter@forrester.com> http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=43918&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46620&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed Speech analytics is becoming an important business tool that allows organizations to mine customers' conversations and better understand their attitudes and needs. Improved audio mining technology enables you to respond quickly to your customers and gather valuable business intelligence. Customer conversations during contact center calls, conference calls, or face-to-face meetings consist of unstructured data that's difficult to sort and analyze. Speech analytics solutions search and categorize customer voice interactions and analyze key words or phrases to help you build strategies around your customers' key issues and behaviors. Additionally, speech analytics supports business decisions like documenting your customers' reactions to new products and services. To optimize speech analytics results, share the analysis of customer data across lines of business, so that sales, service, and marketing departments can hear customers' statements and make informed business decisions. Networking Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT "Elizabeth Herrell" <resourcecenter@forrester.com> http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46620&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=45220&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed The growing popularity of Japan's social networking services (SNSes) is dependent on getting people to sign up for and use their services. To find out how easy it was to register for Japan's SNSes, Forrester applied an abridged version of its Web Site Review methodology to the site experiences at three major Japanese social networking sites: Mixi, Gree, and Cafesta. Major problems included convoluted registration processes, illegible content, and a dearth of contextual help. But the news wasn't all bad; we also found some good practices, like Mixi's focus on the most important content for users and Gree's navigation structure. Japan's social networking sites should improve their experiences — and bolster their businesses — by testing their registration processes from the users' perspective, accounting for the most security-conscious users, and creating a Site Improvement Matrix (SIM) to prioritize enhancements. Customer Experience Consumer Technology Adoption Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT "Jonathan Browne" <resourcecenter@forrester.com> http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=45220&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=45818&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed CIOs have been trying to pull away from their CFOs — trying to get beyond their historical relationship that was focused on cost. But increasingly, CIOs and CFOs need to work together, addressing enterprisewide issues like process optimization and risk management, figuring out how to succeed with emerging new business models like Digital Business Networks, and improving IT's value realization. The steps CIOs should take fall into two categories: addressing IT's responsibility to the finance organization and enhancing the CIO's role as a change agent. IT Management IT Spending & Budgeting Packaged Applications Mon, 04 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT "Bobby Cameron" <resourcecenter@forrester.com> http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=45818&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=42030&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed Underlying any investment is the ever-present question of "What am I going to get for my money?" To answer this question, Forrester developed the Total Economic Impact&trade; (TEI) methodology. TEI provides a rigorous cost and benefit analysis framework that explicitly incorporates an evaluation of future technology and business flexibility and associated risk. Business process and applications professionals should use TEI to better align technology decisions with business needs, boost project success rates, understand and mitigate risks, and ultimately accelerate business growth. IT Spending & Budgeting Packaged Applications Sourcing & Procurement Mon, 04 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT "Chip Gliedman" <resourcecenter@forrester.com> http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=42030&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46641&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed Around 10 years ago, in the early stages of eCommerce, a number of Web monitoring solutions appeared on the market; they focused on the ability to play back a script that described user actions when interfacing with a Web application. The original driver behind the proliferation of external Web monitoring services was the belief that client loyalty was a function of site performance. Today, in the age of Web 2.0 and social networks, this fundamental driver is still present, but the Web technology and management requirements have evolved considerably: We are now at a stage where we need to assess the overall end user experience and correlate it to revenues. As a result, Web management services seem to have moved away from products based on passive agents and appliances, as Gomez's announcement of a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution shows. This evolution in Web management services raises the question of whether SaaS solutions can match the appeal of internal resources and licensed products. Our evaluation of Gomez's ExperienceFirst solution suggests that they can. IT Services Networking High-Tech Professional Services Mon, 04 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT "Jean-Pierre Garbani" <resourcecenter@forrester.com> http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46641&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46724&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed Forrester's previous analysis of nine industries showed that good customer experience correlates highly to loyalty — especially when it comes to consumers' plans for making additional purchases. For this report, we took a look at how the correlation between customer experience and loyalty differed between the 112 firms in that analysis and each of their respective industries' averages. It turns out that 20 firms, including Cablevision and Farmers Insurance, have an above average correlation for both measures of loyalty that we examined. Forty-five firms, including Vanguard and the Gap, fell below their industry averages for correlation with both loyalty measures. There's nothing inherently good or bad about having a high level of correlation between customer experience and loyalty. The differences are driven by a combination of industry-specific and company-specific factors. But firms with a higher degree of correlation have potentially more to gain by improving their customer experience. Customer Experience Marketing & Advertising Telecommunications Services Consumer Industries Consumer Technology Adoption Financial Services Healthcare & Life Sciences Retail Mon, 04 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT "Bruce D. Temkin" <resourcecenter@forrester.com> http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46724&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=45383&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed In Forrester's 149-criteria evaluation of customer hubs vendors, we found that Siperian, Initiate Systems, IBM, Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) Purisma, and Oracle UCM led the pack because of their broad support for multiple industries, number of successful live customers, significant research and development (R&D) investment in advanced functionality, and experience with large data volumes. Sun Microsystems debuted in the top slot among Strong Performers with solid data deduplication, architecture, and open-source options. Meanwhile, SAS DataFlux debuted as a Strong Performer building from its rich data quality history. Oracle CDH and SAP continue to progress as short-list alternatives among install base clients. Evaluated vendors continue to improve their offerings awaiting improved maturity among customers. Information & Knowledge Management Packaged Applications Mon, 04 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT "R "Ray" Wang" <resourcecenter@forrester.com> http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=45383&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46744&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed Forrester has released its annual guide to US device adoption and forecasts, demographics, and technology attitudes and behaviors. This year's report offers a generational analysis to show key differences among Gen Y (ages 18 to 28), Gen X (ages 29 to 42), Boomers (ages 43 to 63), and Seniors (ages 64 and older). The report is a critical tool for eBusiness and channel strategy professionals who need to understand changing customer buying and service behavior. It provides adoption data on online shopping, banking, investing, media, travel, and healthcare that can help eBusiness and channel strategy professionals build forecasts, justify online investments and guide online and multichannel road maps. Marketing & Advertising Consumer Industries Consumer Technology Adoption eBusiness/eCommerce Financial Services Healthcare & Life Sciences Media & Entertainment Retail Travel Mon, 04 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT "Carrie Johnson" <resourcecenter@forrester.com> http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46744&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46774&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed Many information and knowledge management (I&KM) professionals consider the data warehouse (DW) appliance niche as distinct from — and a bit less mature than — the market for enterprise-grade DW solutions. There is still some validity in that viewpoint, but those days are rapidly drawing to a close, as demonstrated by Microsoft's recent announcement that it intends to acquire DW appliance pure play DATAllegro and re-architect that vendor's solutions around a pure Microsoft SQL Server stack. This deal will trigger further merger and acquisition activity in the DW industry, as other established DW solution providers acquire the strongest pure-play appliance vendors to fill out their product portfolios. I&KM professionals not keeping an eye on appliance offerings may be left behind — by 2010, most enterprise DW infrastructure and tooling will be packaged and sold through appliance-based offerings. Information & Knowledge Management High-Tech Mon, 04 Aug 2008 04:00:00 GMT "James G. Kobielus, Boris Evelson" <resourcecenter@forrester.com> http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=46774&src=RSS_TopicGroupFeed