Email	Print Reprint
	add to:
	Del.icio.us Digg Google Furl	Slashdot Y! MyWeb Blink
	TABLE OF CONTENTS Home Look Into My Call BPEL Is People The New Open-Source Model Monday Morning Quarterback

In 2007, you'll hear plenty of pundits going on about architecting "agile, competitive, strong-performing" apps that help your organization reduce costs internally, while maintaining customer satisfaction. Easy to say, hard to do. And it's even more challenging to figure out how to make those technologies work together to meet specific business needs.

2007 SURVIVOR GUIDE INTRODUCTION BUSINESS STRATEGY SECURITY WIRELESS STORAGE & SERVERS MESSAGING & COLLABORATION APPLICATION INFRASTRUCTURE ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS NETWORK MANAGEMENT NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE

Take customer churn. Recurring revenue streams aren't only for subscription-based products; selling a widget once is great, but any sales guy will tell you his forecasts include a high percentage of return business. Although not all applications running in your data center affect customer retention rates directly, they do influence the ability of customer service and sales representatives to have a positive effect on that rate. Conventional CRM and homegrown systems, for example, often require customer service representatives to page through two or three different screens of data to assist a customer. This process makes the call longer than necessary. When applications aren't tightly integrated, the rep may be forced to re-enter information. If you've ever been asked to repeat the spelling of your name multiple times, you know how cumbersome and inefficient the procedure can feel to a customer.

If your customer is the business, you might think this doesn't apply to you. Think again. Professional-services organizations across the globe are ready to step up if management decides to outsource your services. The ability to satisfy the business' needs directly translates to how well it can satisfy customers--you know, the people who ultimately pay your salary.

Mashups And EII

If you've surfed the Web in the past few months, you've experienced Web 2.0 and the applications it enables, including aggregated news feeds, instant communications and mashups.

Mashups combine a wide range of data from disparate sources and present that information in a new way. Chicagocrime.org, for example, mashes Google maps with the Chicago Police Department's database of reported crimes. Although enterprise mashup technology is in its infancy, it's taking significant strides, with specific apps to help customer-service organizations access key data in a single screen, and the toolkits to build them.

Companies To Watch Click to enlarge in another window

Take the customer service rep busily retyping a customer's address: Enterprise mashups and EII can alleviate this problem by aggregating customer data from disparate systems for display within a single screen. Vendors such as Composite Software, IBM and Metamatrix have been working to address this issue by expanding the number of packaged applications that can be aggregated. EII vendors currently support PeopleSoft, Salesforce.com, SAP and Siebel, and give IT an opportunity to collate and display all the information about a customer in a single screen.

Enterprise mashup technology will also take great leaps in 2007, as vendors begin to provide toolkits to build these interactive and dynamic applications. Already, companies like ActiveGrid and Laszlo Systems are offering nearly codeless development environments, in which Web 2.0-like interfaces can be developed quickly. These new mashup tools will take advantage of the newest technologies available to build applications that provide a competitive advantage.

1 | 2 Look Into My Call | 3 BPEL Is People | 4 The New Open-Source Model | 5 Monday Morning Quarterback Next Page

RELATED ARTICLES No Related Articles		TOP 5 ARTICLES No Top Articles.