TOM
And TIM: More Than A Couple Of IT Guys www.aperserv.com/703-760-8200
AperServ Technologies, Inc. seeks to help ensure that
your IT service outsourcer meets its service level
agreement (SLA) goals and your mission-critical IT
system performs at optimized levels. With that
objective in mind, AperServ launched a pair of
services: its Technology Outsourcer Management system
(TOM) and Technology Internal Management system (TIM).
TOM enables enterprises to proactively manage the
performance of third-party outsourcers and SLAs. TOM
is a Web-based remote service that does not require
hardware or software installation and maintenance by
the enterprise. TOM automates the SLA management
process, from identifying problems, alerting the
appropriate personnel and tracking problem resolution
to automatically comparing performance to SLA
thresholds and requesting credits from providers when
necessary. The result is less IT downtime, faster IT
performance, and fewer errors and service lapses: all
of which can translate into substantial cost savings.
TOM is designed to eliminate the need to conduct
internal troubleshooting, manage IT outsourcers, track
and prove SLA violations or work on problems that have
already been solved. TOM features the Problem
Diagnostic Alert and Problem Resolution Alert systems,
customized intelligent agents that test your
enterprise, identify and pinpoint problems before your
customers know about them and automatically work to
resolve those problems with your vendor. Problem
Diagnostic alerts are e-mailed to personnel you
specify (including internal staff and/or your IT
outsourcer) with the information needed to improve
performance. Users can indicate how, when and under
what conditions these personnel should be notified,
including via PDA devices. Problem Resolution alerts
are e-mailed to the outsourcer in real-time when the
problem is resolved. TOM also notifies the user when
the problem is resolved and how long it took to do so.
The system can be used alone or integrated with an
existing internal problem tracking system. Real-time
performance reports provide historical trends to track
recurring problems over time and better manage both
the enterprise and an IT service provider.
TIM is intended to resolve internal IT problems
before they escalate into serious end user issues, and
to help keep employees linked to their
business-critical applications and customers connected
to an enterprise's e-commerce and other Web-based
functions. TIM helps you assess your network, systems
and application needs. Built on industry standards,
TIM's technology is flexible and independent of an
enterprise's IT platform, so it works seamlessly with
any outsourced portion of the enterprise. Like TOM,
TIM immediately detects system or network problems and
provides instant notification for resolution. TIM is
customizable and provides all of the automated
diagnostics, analysis, alerts and reporting features
found in TOM.
To paraphrase Len Dubois, vice president of marketing
for Trillium Software (a division of Harte-Hanks, Inc.),
CRM is (in part) about creating an environment that
leverages the entire range of economic, demographic and
historical customer information to improve
communicating, serving and marketing to customers. Key
to fostering that environment is the ability to combine
fragments of customer data into intelligently connected
information that delivers benefits to an organization's
business goals and consistent customer experiences
across the enterprise.
Trillium 5.0 "Enterprise Energy Edition" is a
multiplatform solution that helps create a unified
customer view based on information from every touchpoint
(e.g., multiple channels, formats and languages) to
ensure accurate customer data and relationship matching.
It is an enterprisewide solution for data cleansing,
customer identification and relationship matching that
resolves data quality problems. To facilitate deployment
of a quality-driven data warehouse, operational data
store or data mart, Trillium provides functionality to
root out data held in legacy and other operational
systems, and gives the ability to transform the data
into critical decision support information for
forecasting and planning or responding to new and
existing business opportunities.
New Trillium 5.0 features include a client/server
model with a graphical user interface that makes it
easier for remote users to access data and permits all
users to access the Trillium user interface at their
desktops. A pure Java Windows NT or 2000 control center
provides users with a consistent delivery method,
eliminating the need for emulation software. The
enhanced Postal Directory Browser enables users to
browse the postal directories of nine countries for data
verification and auditing address discrepancies.
Non-name and address data processing identifies relevant
data in freeform text, recognizing any definable pattern
in text. It identifies data by literal text values and
patterns, and corrects, recodes, reconciles and
standardizes phone numbers, e-mail addresses, social
security numbers, product codes, etc. The Java-based
data dictionary language (DDL) editor now allows for
easier set-up of formats for the inputs/outputs for the
Trillium process, tying the format of the data to the
data itself. Real-time XML processing enables rapid,
more accurate online customer identification. Customer
Key Manager, a new accessory to Trillium 5.0, is a
utility that provides a consistent view of customers and
relationships over the customer lifecycle, recognizing
changes in customer data over multiple interactions. In
addition, enhancements were made to data file and format
verification and customized data matching rules.
Interaction
Management Any Way You Want www.synchrony.net/877-796-2663
Research organizations have unanimously concluded that
the CRM "market" will be worth billions of dollars over
the next five years. Whether companies are willing to
spend those billions is another matter, since corporate
retrenchment appears to be the rule of the day.
So-called Net-native solutions have an immediate
advantage over client-owned software and hardware:
rather than burdening companies with frequent upgrades
and supporting older releases, an ASP can concentrate on
delivering new features to its solution(s) that
customers can use immediately. On the other hand, many
companies, over concerns for security, prefer to own the
application(s) and run it on their own server.
Synchrony Communications, Inc., known for its ASP-
model CRM solution and services, bridged the
above-mentioned gap when, late in 2000, it launched its
Hosted Anywhere application platform: Internet-based
software offered either as a subscription service or as
a direct installation in a company's data center.
Synchrony 4.0, the latest incarnation of this customer
relationship and interaction management solution,
provides new features and functionality in a variety of
areas. It is a full-featured product, offering
multichannel communication, intelligent routing, front-
and back-office integration, and provides real-time
customer analysis, employee performance and other
business metrics. Synchrony's Integrated Workflow
Management (IWM) allows organizations to automatically
process complex tasks and workflows, providing
operational improvement (and cost savings), better case
management, improved customer service handling and
better alignment of suppliers and partners into a
company's business processes. Two features drive IWM:
Nested Activities and Task Management. Nested Activities
are the relationships created between activities. They
enable full automation of business processes and related
dependencies. Countless sub-activities (and multiple
branches of them) can be mapped to a "parent" activity
and can be graphically displayed in a tree structure.
Task Management enables users to create, prioritize and
assign tasks. Each user has a "task tab" that lists
tasks assigned to an individual or work group.
Enhanced contact management functionality,
particularly for managing complex business-to-business
relationships, permits creation of records and
activities for organizations. Individual contacts,
business activities, interrelationships between
organizations and the like can be established. Through
the client-hosted chat collaboration, users can keep
track of customers' clickstreams during chat sessions,
and agents can push pages to them as they browse.
Self-service is integrated with all communication
channels so customers needing escalation to assisted
service do not have to reidentify themselves or restate
their question or problem.
For the past eight years, TARGUS Information Corp. (TARGUSinfo)
has actively engaged in the development of real-time
intelligence solutions that help businesses to more
productively process both customer and prospect
transactions. Through the TARGUSinfo Intelligence Portal
data service, companies access information useful for
transaction-based applications and services. Through one
interface, the user has access to many pieces of
information that may be useful for identifying, routing,
profiling, locating or billing a customer transaction.
The portal simplifies access to this information by
eliminating protocol conversions, formatting issues,
network concerns and many complications of blending
data. It links virtually every household and business
telephone number in the U.S. and Canada with a variety
of information; e.g., names, postal addresses,
predictive consumer purchase scores, and both risk
management and store locator information.
TARGUS has also launched Speech-Capture Express, a
product that automates name and address capture with
high accuracy -- and with a twist. Merging speech
recognition and speech capture technology with its Real
Time Intelligence system, SpeechCapture Express is
designed to integrate into a company's existing
interactive voice response (IVR) system. It handles both
the connection to the TARGUS Intelligence Portal and
interactions with the name and address grammars
available through the client's speech recognition unit.
Name grammars are built from a knowledge base of speech
patterns, accents, phonetic representations and
occurrences. According to the company, they deliver a
potential match rate of over 90 percent of all callers.
Address grammars provide coverage of all U.S. mailing
addresses and consist of separate grammars for ZIP
codes, street names and numbers, pre- and post-delivery
directions, building names and apartment numbers. The
technology behind the product is based primarily on
dialog application components (DACs). DACs are dialog
subroutines used for specific purposes -- in this case,
capturing a caller's full name and/or address. DACs are
essentially software components residing on the client's
IVR system. They interface with the IVR application and
handle all integration with the Intelligence Portal,
allowing application developers to take advantage of the
real-time data without implementing new protocols. DACs
also communicate directly with the client's speech
recognition environment, where the grammars reside.
SpeechCapture Express eliminates "blind" calls, reduces
in-queue and abandoned calls, automates address
verification for mail delivery and integrates seamlessly
with other automated contact center applications.
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