May 2005 Archives

I think it's in the nature of many business people to not trust software vendors. It's easy to get confused over the proliferation of features and benefits, and many companies end up throwing in the towel rather than making a bad decision, paricularly if they've been burned before.

But casual observation leads me to believe that companies are more willing to trust their service providers, particularly if they have had a successful relationship with that service provider in the past.

Verizon and Genesys today announced a plan to bring hosted contact center services to customers via a partnership, with Verizon offering Genesys' IP contact center platform to the customers already using Verizon services. (The announcement was made at Genesys' user/partner conference, which is ongoing as I write this.)

Used to directly servicing enterprise customers' needs, Verizon may be in a better position to help customers understand why hosted contact center service can improve a gamut of metrics in their call centers, while taking advantage of the trust factor Verizon possesses with its current customers.

The full release is below.

TES

Verizon’s Upcoming Hosted IP Service Will Bring Big Benefits to Call Centers, CTO Wegleitner Says

Large contact-center customers can benefit from hosted IP-based services to quickly and cost-efficiently deploy a variety of advanced applications without having to invest in premises-based hardware, said Verizon Chief Technology Officer Mark Wegleitner. And Verizon and Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories plan to meet that need, he said.

“Verizon will soon offer a hosted IP service with Genesys that will enable our customers to efficiently deploy sophisticated contact-center solutions within a flexible, cost-efficient hosted environment,” he told the Genesys User Conference here.  “Call-center customers would be able to take advantage of Verizon’s network expertise and extensive network investments so that they can concentrate on their core business.

“Each customer will get a robust, customized plan to enable them to quickly staff up or down, create ‘virtual call centers’ and have the flexibility to outsource as many or as few of their network needs as their situation warrants.  Verizon wants to be a single-source provider to make it as easy as possible for our customers,” Wegleitner said.

During his speech, Wegleitner addressed some common myths about voice-over-IP services such as voice quality being poor on an IP network.  Then he stressed the potential benefits for call-center customers that will use Verizon to set up the framework for their IP services:

·        Operational cost reductions for equipment such as servers and switches and infrastructure could result in significant savings.

·        Efficiency gains using one network for both voice services and data could reduce maintenance and staff costs.

·        Ability to make agent resources “virtual,” enabling call center employees to work from almost anywhere.

·        Business continuity plans that provide enhanced disaster recovery.

Customers will be able to choose from a list of applications that include: automatic call distribution, an interactive voice-response unit, call control, and monitoring and customer-history databases, Wegleitner said.

Verizon and Genesys are working closely together to develop a hosted IP call center service that will be unique for Verizon’s customers.

“By coupling Verizon’s extensive investment in a secure, voice-ready data network with one of the industry’s leading voice platforms, customers will be able to deploy a first-class service without a large capital investment,” Wegleitner said.

Verizon Enterprise Solutions Group manages the design, operation and maintenance of end-to-end integrated network solutions for large business, government and education customers across the United States. With over 7,800 employees in 35 states, Verizon Enterprise Solutions Group offers a complete range of basic and advanced communications products and services to meet the voice, video, data and IP-related needs of its customers. In addition, over 5,200 field operations personnel support enterprise customers nationwide. In the enterprise market, Verizon Select Services Inc. provides Verizon long-distance service. For more information on products and services available through Verizon Enterprise Solutions Group, visit www.verizon.com/enterprisesolutions.

Oops...it's always amusing to watch two large companies in a competitive space react to one another like two teenage girls showing up at the prom in the same poufy strapless gown. Hard on the heels of SAP's announcement about the next generation of mySAP CRM, Siebel felt the need to issue a statement. I faithfully reprint it below:

German software giant SAP today announced it has released the newest version of its mySAP Customer Relationship Management, the company's offering to the contact center/customer care industry. Coinciding with SAP's enormous user conference, SAPPHIRE '05, in Boston, the product release includes details on the update from the previous mySAP.

Release is below.

TES

Demonstrating continuing evidence of its CRM market leadership, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced the next evolution of mySAP™ Customer Relationship Management (mySAP CRM), the culmination of a series of innovations inspired by customers across more than 25 industries. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE® ’05, SAP’s international customer conference being held in Boston, Massachusetts, May 17 - 19.

Building on the input and best business practices from its base of more than 2,900 CRM customers, mySAP CRM 2005 will deliver new levels of innovation across key business processes for the telecommunication, public sector and financial services industries, as well as key cross-industry business capabilities such as service management, marketing resource management and mobile sales for handhelds. Powered by the SAP NetWeaver™ platform, complete with embedded analytics and featuring enhanced dashboard-like analytical applications, the new version of mySAP CRM focuses on helping customers enhance user productivity by empowering users with a complete view of all relevant information from diverse enterprise systems to drive insight, decisions and cross-enterprise collaboration.

“We have worked closely with our member customers to define enhancements that best support their evolving business processes and industry demands,” said Tim Ronan, Influence Council Coordinator, CRM Solution User Group, Americas’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG). “We took this insight and worked with SAP’s product development team to help ensure that present and future SAP customers have the business processes they need to seize opportunities and help take their business forward—mySAP CRM continues to be truly customer-inspired innovation.”

Cross-Industry Enhancements
mySAP CRM 2005 will bring a slate of custom-developed extensions into the globally available CRM capability stack, including cross-industry processes to address all lines of business across marketing, sales and service through all customer interaction channels. These capabilities include:

Enhanced marketing capabilities:

• Marketing resource management (MRM) – lets marketers focus on strategic planning, freeing up time spent on administrative marketing tasks
• E-mail response management system (ERMS) – increases accuracy and efficiency of outbound communications while turning inbound queries into sales opportunities

Enhanced sales capabilities:

• Mobile sales functionality – new and improved capabilities for field sales representatives to access and update information from mySAP CRM in real time via handheld devices
• Channel management – improves sales opportunities though integrated campaign management, partner notification and collaborative planning and forecasting

Enhanced service capabilities:

• Significant service management enhancements—in areas such as service contract and entitlement management, service order management, warranty, complaints and returns processing—provide real-time control and visibility across service network activities, improving service delivery times while reducing internal costs, tapping new sources of income and boosting customer loyalty

“With mySAP CRM 2005, SAP has reassured customers of the continuity of their IT investment,” said Mary Wardley, VP CRM Applications, IDC. “The incorporation of these new cross-industry, role-based enhancements coupled with attention to a more user-friendly interface are all additive in helping to speed user adoption, increase productivity and ultimately to enhance ROI.”

• Industry Innovation for the Public Sector, Telecommunications and Financial Services Having achieved CRM leadership in its stronghold industries, SAP has focused on enhancing business processes in growth industries.
• New case management processes will enable public sector organizations to better collect structured and unstructured information related to an individual case, making it easier for case managers to determine entitlements, compliance and service deployment with an eye on improved social outcomes.
• By creating a single view of the customer across all departments and partner networks, mySAP CRM 2005 will help telco companies unify their increasingly diversified operations and maintain one interface with the customer. The faster, more actionable customer insight and capabilities enabled with the new version will help telco companies model, launch, sell and more quickly fulfill the multitude of products and services necessary for business growth in this highly competitive industry.
• In the financial services sector, where banks have relied traditionally on paper-based processes in managing customer loans, mySAP CRM 2005 will enable real-time collaboration across departments and credit bureaus worldwide. Banks can better serve customers through a tightly integrated business and IT landscape that supports the complete loan origination and contract management process from inquiry to acceptance.

Empowering the User with Role-Relevant Insight
Embedded analytics in mySAP CRM 2005 bridges the gap between operational, collaborative and analytical processes. For example, new account planning capabilities in mySAP CRM 2005 enable account managers to more effectively manage their daily sales business from wherever they are located, leveraging the tight integration of sales analytics with account, opportunity and territory management.

Enhanced Ease-of-Use to Boost Productivity
Because end-user adoption and ease-of-use contribute to greater success and lower costs of a CRM rollout, mySAP CRM 2005 will feature a more intuitive user interface that leverages the enterprise portal, Web application and business intelligence capabilities of SAP NetWeaver. By making it easier for users to extract information and perform business tasks, the latest evolution of the CRM user interface will help reduce task handling times, training costs and number of clicks. For example, hyperlinks enable users to navigate from any analytical report directly to the original document, such as a cumulated order list to the single order document. By optimizing task handling within order management, mySAP CRM is expected to help telecommunication companies reduce the time it takes to enter an order by 80 percent.

“While other CRM vendors have been focused on trying to get their houses in order, SAP has remained above the noise—continuously investing in new R&D and setting a safe, solid and steady course of innovation for our customers’ success,” said Peter J. Kirschbauer, general manager, SAP Applications, SAP. “mySAP CRM 2005 manifests our continuing commitment to delivering value through solutions that help customers achieve business value quickly, adapt to changing demands and innovate for future growth.”

Modular elements of mySAP CRM 2005 are currently being evaluated by customers. The complete and newest version will be globally available in October of 2005.

In response to my column in the May issue of Customer Interaction Solutions called "Clean Up In The Self-Service Aisle," I got a response today from a reader who relates the following story:

Siemens today announced it's launching Version 6.5 of its popular HiPath ProCenter Agile and ProCenter Standard apps today. I had the pleasure of meeting with Al Baker, VP of product management for Siemens Global eCRM Solutions, in TMC's office last week. I admire the HiPath ProCenter Agile product (and Siemens) for launching essentially dual versions of this product: one product (Agile) was designed to make the functionality of HiPath ProCenter available to the SMB market (small to medium-sized businesses). This is a step that has not been taken by many of Siemens notable competitiors. Companies that think they can survive by servicing only the large enterprise market may have a rude awakening in the next year or two if they ignore the fertile smaller business market.

Additionally, Siemens updated the HiPath ProCenter Stanard product (it's large enterprise version of the software). New functionality has been added to both versions. See details below.

TES

I know...this industry doesn't need another buzzword...it's already got more of them than the average teenage girl in a shopping mall. But this buzzword, besides being somewhat geographically improbably, is interesting.

"Homeshoring" refers to the practice that some call centers are implementing to prevent being forced to send jobs overseas to save money. It involves, as one might imagine, the use of carefully selected home agents connected to all the call centers' systems and software through delivery on an IP-enabled platform. The result: instant agents who aren't using up the call center's capital resources.

Using home agents allows call centers to engage the services of people they perhaps could not use before: parents of small children, handicapped workers or non-mobile older (or student) workers. Because the home agent is tapped into the workforce management system and the monitoring/call recording system, there's no danger that the worker will be charging his/her employer for time actually spend playing croquet with the kids in the back yard.

In the upcoming June issue of Customer Interaction Solutions, Jim Ball of the company Alpine Access (www.alpineaccess.com) discusses the concept in detail in an article called "The Real Case For The Home-Based Agent Model."

An excerpt:

"It is important that the company [that engages in home-shoring] has solid processes, specifically designed to identify those candidate characteristics that will lead to outstanding performance. Once on board, those agents expect a professional and efficient operation, with appropriate training, communications and support. The company that can meet all of those expectations will be rewarded with an agent workforce that is extremely difficult to replicate in an affordable manner at scale with a traditional call center model."

Watch for Jim's article in the June issue of CIS.

TES

Speech technology is a funny thing...its potential is great, it certainly hasn't suffered from a lack of hype, but many companies are STILL dragging their feet when it comes to even experimenting with speech. According to Benchmark Portal, these companies may have reached the end of their dithering and are ready to make a commitment: According to their research, fifty percent of companies currently not using speech are considering implementing it within the next year. We're looking forward to see the market heating up.

TES

Federal do-not-fax legislation goes into effect July 1st of this year. Are you ready? Are you sure? (You thought you were ready for the Teleservices Sales Rule, too, remember.) Just as with previous do-not-call laws, this one is far-reaching (and doesn't exempt you from state do-not-fax lists) and comes neatly packaged with large fees per violation.

Software from a company called CTAP works with your PBX to check the outgoing fax traffic and make sure you're not contacting anyone on federal, state or third-party "do-not-fax" lists. See full release below.

TES

CTAP Launches CTAP FaxShield; Blocks Outgoing Faxes from Connecting With Restricted Numbers

 Innovative Product Ensures Compliance with Federal Law

 DALLAS, May 12, 2005 – CTAP, a strategic provider of telecommunications services, technology and applications for helping businesses leverage the power of convergent networks, announced today the release of CTAP FaxShield™, a Web-based application that puts companies in compliance with the Federal Communications Commission’s “Do Not Fax” regulation to be implemented July 1, 2005. This technology provides customers with an up-to-date, centralized source of data for every state, federal and third party “do-not fax” list, plus a solution for automated call blocking to fax numbers in those databases.

            Under the new rules for the delivery of facsimile advertisements, it is unlawful to send unsolicited advertisements (also known as junk faxes) to a fax machine without prior written permission of the recipient. This includes faxes sent to servers and personal computers and means that businesses continuing to send faxes to other businesses or consumers without their expressed approval will be subject to enforcement actions, including the issuance of citations and fines.

            CTAP FaxShield blocks outgoing faxes from connecting to restricted machines and sends them back to the originator to get approval from the recipient to receive the fax. “All processes involved with ensuring customer compliance with federal law through CTAP FaxShied is handled behind the scenes,” said Max Adams, president and CEO of CTAP. “Once the customer implements the product, their headaches end, and our work begins.”

            Once a customer has implemented FaxShield, CTAP then programs PBXs to send fax traffic to an Internet Application Device (IAD) where it is converted to SIP/T38. At that point CTAP FaxShield takes control and checks to ensure the recipient is on the company allowed database or approved EBR (established business relationship). If the recipient is on the allowed list, the fax continues through. If not, FaxShield begins the process of checking state and federal “Do Not Fax” lists. If the proposed recipient is found to be on one of these lists, the fax is sent back to the originator to solicit approval. A link is provided for the originator to send an approval form to the proposed recipient who then signs and returns an image of the form. Once CTAP FaxShield receives the signed form, it updates the database. The recipient is now on the company allowed database for receiving future faxes. 

            CTAP FaxShield is easy to implement and offers broad geographic scalability to support an infinite number of calls, giving it the ability to support growth efficiently and economically.

            “We are very committed to providing our customers innovative solutions to keep their businesses running smoothly and profitably,” said Adams. “Businesses are looking for more control over their communications services today, and CTAP FaxShield is an example of how we assist our customers in protecting the rights and privacy of their clients in a very technologically efficient and cost-effective manner.”    

About CTAP

 CTAP, Converged Technology Application Partners, provides state-of-the-art telecommunications products and services nationwide, implementing the convergence of voice and data network solutions as well as the applications that ride on this infrastructure, giving customers the competitive advantage they need to be successful in today’s economy. CTAP is uniquely positioned as a system integrator that has the capability to manage both the customers’ network as well as premise requirements. In concert with joint partnerships, CTAP provides best of class services and solutions. CTAP is privately held and headquartered in Richardson, Texas. For more information, please visit the Web site at www.ctap.com or call (888) 879-2827.

It's that time of year: time to crunch the numbers to prepare for the Global Call Center Outsourcing Summit on May 25th in Dallas at the Westin Park Central Hotel, the event during which TMC and Customer Interaction Solutions magazine hold a dinner event to honor the Top 50 Teleservices Agencies companies and the recipients of the MVP (Marketing Via Phone) Quality Award.

I'm an editor, but I usually look forward to this time of year: it's nice to work with numbers sometimes. Numbers are absolute: they have no versions, innuendo or verb declensions.

Since we're the only company that conducts a ranking of this nature (companies are ranked by their size, as determined by number of billable minutes for a one-year period), we're the only organization that has a complete view of both the status quo and the growth of this industry.

An interesting picture of the teleservices industry in 2005 has emerged, and it's significantly different from the one we saw in 2004.

The average teleservices agency in 2005:

* Has 2,309 full-time workers;

* Has 881 part-time workers;

* Services 134 clients;

* Has a nearly 60 percent change of having at least one foreign call center;

* Has a statistically insignificant number of home-based agents; and

* Has 3,778 work stations.

Want to hear more? Join us at the Global Call Center Outsourcing Summit on May 25. Details may be found here: http://www.tmcnet.com/gccos/

TES

The speech technology industry is changing shape, though I'm sure that's not news to most people in the contact center industry. With yesterday's announcement of the merger of Nuance and ScanSoft, and the below announcement of cooperation between LumenVox and Nuance 8.5, we can presume that we haven't seen the last of the shifting of both the speech behemoths and the smaller speech application innovators.

Industry insight tells us that the market as a whole has been slow to adopt speech. We can presume that a lot of companies have been scared off by what they perceive to be the tech-intense process of creating dialogs and scripts...companies foresee themselves as having to hire nine engineers just to maintain their speech applications.

What companies like LumenVox and TuVox are trying to tell the market is: You don't need to be an expert. These companies are automating the creation of speech processes in the way that call center software companies created automated, easy-to-use processes to create workflows, schedules, outbound scripts, recording rules and other tasks.

The moral of the story? Don't be afraid of speech.

TES

Anyone else been wondering what's up with ScanSoft lately? Now, we have an answer. This merger will create the largest and most powerful speech technology organization in the world. Competitors, put your running shoes on. Release below.

TES

ScanSoft and Nuance to Merge, Creating Comprehensive Portfolio of Enterprise Speech Solutions and Expertise

Combined Company Poised to Accelerate Technology Innovation for Customers and Partners around the World

Acquisition Expected to be Accretive to ScanSoft Shareholders for Fiscal Year 2006

Peabody, Mass. and Menlo Park, Calif., May 9, 2005 – ScanSoft, Inc. (Nasdaq: SSFT) and Nuance Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: NUAN) today announced that they have signed a definitive agreement whereby ScanSoft will acquire all of the outstanding common stock of Nuance, merging the two organizations into a single company with the expertise and resources required to satisfy the increasing demand for powerful speech solutions.

Under the terms of the agreement, ScanSoft will issue approximately 28 million shares of its common stock to Nuance shareholders, who will receive 0.77 shares of ScanSoft common stock for each share of Nuance common stock that they own. Additionally, each Nuance shareholder will receive $2.20 of cash per share of Nuance common stock owned. The transaction is valued at approximately $221 million based on the closing price of ScanSoft common stock of $4.46 per share on May 6, 2005, or $122 million net of Nuance’s cash and equivalents of $98.7 million on March 31, 2005, which includes $11.1 million of restricted cash.

Upon closing, ScanSoft expects to have approximately $80 million in cash and marketable securities. The transaction is expected to generate cost synergies between $25 million and $30 million per year through headcount reductions, office site consolidations and elimination of duplicate operating expenses. In ScanSoft’s fiscal year 2006, the company expects combined revenue to exceed $315 million. ScanSoft expects that the transaction will be accretive to ScanSoft shareholders for fiscal year 2006.

"Speech software is transforming the way people use digital devices and access information systems," said Paul Ricci, ScanSoft chairman and CEO. "As businesses increasingly turn to speech solutions to manage and improve customer interactions, combining our organizations creates a trusted provider of industry-defining technologies and applications. Together, we are better positioned to accelerate the development and adoption of innovative speech-enabled applications and services worldwide. We look forward to welcoming Nuance’s talented and motivated employees as we deliver on our shared vision."

Today, ScanSoft and Nuance combined automate more than 20 million contact center and directory assistance calls per day; bring the power of speech to millions of people through mobile phones, automobiles, consumer electronics and games; and provide dictation solutions for more than 3,000 hospitals and more than one million consumers worldwide. The combined company is committed to making speech-enabled systems, devices and interactions as effective and ubiquitous as the Web.

The combination of ScanSoft and Nuance brings together the industry’s most comprehensive portfolio of speech applications, technologies and expertise that will enable customers to effectively deploy innovative speech-based solutions. The combined organization will have the technical resources and intellectual property required to develop new and innovative speech solutions that deliver enhanced value to customers. With leading technology, a premier partner network and an organization dedicated to speech, the company will be able to compete more effectively in new and expanding markets and provide value for its most important stakeholders – its customers, partners, investors and employees.

"This merger brings together the customer successes, technical talents and sales and marketing competencies of both companies," said Chuck Berger, president and CEO of Nuance. "Paul and I agreed that by combining our companies, we will be in the best position to advance the emerging speech industry into stronger growth and maturity and provide superior financial results for shareholders."

In connection with this transaction and for other corporate purposes, Warburg Pincus, the global private equity firm and a leading investor in technology companies, has agreed to purchase ScanSoft common stock in separate transactions as follows:

• 3.54 million shares at a purchase price of $4.24 per share, the closing bid price on Thursday, May 5, 2005, for an aggregate investment of $15.0 million. This transaction closed today and is independent of the Nuance transaction.

• 14.2 million shares at a purchase price of $4.24 per share, for an aggregate investment of $60.0 million. This transaction will close concurrent with, and is contingent upon, the closing of the Nuance transaction.

• In addition, Warburg Pincus has acquired a warrant to purchase 0.86 million shares of ScanSoft common stock along with the first investment, and will acquire a warrant to purchase 3.18 million shares of ScanSoft common stock upon the closing of the second investment. Both warrants have an exercise price of $5.00 per share and a four-year term.

William H. Janeway, a Vice Chairman of Warburg Pincus and a ScanSoft Director, stated: "Warburg Pincus enthusiastically supports the merger of ScanSoft and Nuance. Based on the foundation of ScanSoft’s strong performance in recent quarters, we have confidence that the combined company will have the technical and operational resources to meet the increasing demand for speech technologies and to increase shareholder value."

A Comprehensive Portfolio of Enterprise Speech Solutions and Expertise Benefits of the combined organization include:

• Proven Experience that Drives Better Results – Customers and partners of both companies will benefit from the experience behind thousands of successful speech services deployed worldwide. Combined, ScanSoft and Nuance have deployed more than 3,000 speech applications that automate approximately seven billion phone conversations for some of the world’s most respected companies, including Bank of America, British Airways, Citigroup, General Electric, NTT, Verizon and Vodafone. Together, ScanSoft and Nuance maintain speech-focused, deeply tenured professional service organizations with a combined team of approximately 250 speech and voice user interface experts that offer more than 800 cumulative years of speech experience.

• A Comprehensive Speech Portfolio that Delivers Choice and Completeness – ScanSoft and Nuance each bring a broad set of speech applications and technologies to the combined company. These assets will allow the combined company to satisfy a wider set of customers’ speech needs from a single source. As speech technologies continue to converge, the combined company will be able to leverage an unparalleled set of resources that spans the full breadth of speech capabilities – including network speech, embedded speech, and dictation – to drive innovation and more complete speech applications.

• Deep Technical Expertise that Results in Better Performing Products and Accelerated Innovation – The combined organization will bring together an array of resources – from 300 speech scientists and engineers to a patent portfolio comprising more than 250 patent families. With these assets, the combined company is well suited to handle complex implementations and solve more difficult problems with speech technology. Both ScanSoft and Nuance have been strong, active proponents of speech industry standards. Both companies are strong participants in the development of VoiceXML including providing multiple editors, and both companies were founding drafters of the MRCP specification.

• A Commitment to Premier Partner Relationships that Provide Total Solutions – The combined company will build upon the strong relationships that have been developed with industry leaders, such as Avaya, Cisco, Genesys, and Nortel, to further promote the innovation and adoption of speech. These partnerships are critical to providing complete solutions for our mutual customers and dramatically broadening the awareness and availability of speech solutions.

Maybe the following story will give you visions of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, complete with George Carlin in a phone booth in cool sunglasses, like it did me. Then again, maybe not.

An MIT student is this weekend hosting a "time traveler convention" on the Boston campus of the elite science and technology school. (It's at 8:00 pm tomorrow night, if you're a time traveller with no weekend plans, incidentally.) 

He's providing chips and dip, and the open invitation is out, across the galaxy, for all time travellers to show up and share their experiences. They must bring proof, however, that they are indeed time travellers. But it can't be anything cheesy, like a button that reads "Four More Years: Marilyn Manson For President, 2024." It should be something worthy, like a cure for cancer or a solution to global child poverty.

I'm not making fun, here...being a devout sci-fi fan myself, I never miss a space shuttle launch, a new book from Arthur C. Clarke or an episode of Stargate SG-1 (Claudia Black from "Farscape" joins the cast in tonight's episode, by the way).

But I wonder if chips and dip is enough to attract time travellers. I mean, are there any people travelling through the space-time continuum who often say, "Man, I'd really like to visit Earth in 2005, but the lack of chips and dips and a good kegger keeps me away"?

Just to make sure the time travellers can arrive in the proper spot, the student, Amal Dorai, has provided cosmic coordinates to the East Campus Courtyard of MIT (42:21:36.025 degrees north, 71:05:16.332 degrees west). He's also been having his friends slip paper invitations into obscure books, assuming these rare books will have found their way into the libraries of book collectors (and time travellers) of the future.

Personally, I figure that if time travelling was ever going to be possible, someone would have come back and told us about it by now. Then again, maybe someone has, and he's sitting in the drunk tank of the New York City lockup. (Cops: "We've got a live one in there. Says he's from the future. Wants chips and dip.")

TES

Has anyone else noticed that with each new rendition of Windows, particularly in MS Word, the "help" factor (otherwise known as the "idiot" factor) keeps getting ratcheted up? MS Word used to be a very basic, stripped down word processing solution. That was great. We thought for ourselves.

Today, creating a document in MS Word involves a spasm-inducing mess of happy characters parading animatedly across the screen, mysterious functions that cause certain words to change colors and blink for no apparent reason and mysterious lines that swarm through your document horizontally and vertically with no reasonable means to remove them.

Did one person who worked on the document use the "track changes" function? If so, forget it...you're lost forever, even if it's been turned off. You can never completely obliterate the the stentorian messages that this function dredges up. "You changed a word!" I know. "Did you want to change that word?" Yes. "Did you consider the ramifications of what will happen if you change that word?" "Do you REALLY want to eliminate that formatting? Consider the feelings of the person who wrote that block of text!"

I wish there was a single button called "Piss Off And Leave Me Alone, MS Word" that would immediately give me an utterly blank, totally unformatted, all-but-basic-features-free, dancing paperclip-less document, minus the spelling and grammar cybernannies.

Are you listening, Microsoft?

TES

According to a report announced this morning by Datamonitor, "Global sourcing in European and North American Financial Services," financial services companies are in part driving the boom growth numbers in offshore outsourcing. Both North American and European financial services providers (particularly U.K. and Scandinavian companies) are increasingly sending core competency processes (mortgage processing, insurance underwriting, claims processing) offshore. Part of the reason, according to the report, is the increasing flexibility to do so that today's enterprise technologies provide for.

The summary of the report is posted below.

TES

Outsourcing of core financial services functions offshore on the rise 

While outsourcing of contact center and application services are relatively established, independent market analyst Datamonitor's (DTM.L) latest report on the subject "Global sourcing in European and North American Financial Services," expects increasing performance in core financial services functions - such as mortgage processing, insurance underwriting, claims processing - to be outsourced to alternative offshore locations. "Offshoring of core competencies amongst financial services institutions in Europe and North America is increasing as confidence in the offshore markets - be it via vendor or an in-house offshore operations - is improving rapidly," says Anders Maehre, financial services Technology analyst at Datamonitor and author of the study.

A global sourcing strategy is the dynamic use of distributed global resources in accordance with a balanced view of these issues across financial services institutions' (FSI) functions - not just the offshoring of certain individual tasks. The crux of a global sourcing strategy, as Datamonitor sees it, is the awareness of global and regional sourcing options and actively making sourcing decisions about all business functions, rather than using internal resources or resources in a certain location as a default position.

While the benefits of offshore outsourcing are well documented - lower costs, higher quality to name but a few, its use has remained mostly limited to certain function areas such as contact centers and application services. Whilst this immature view remains the primary perception of offshore outsourcing - even in the relatively speaking advanced financial services sector - it is developing rapidly in parallel with the growing acceptance of offshore services provision.

In terms of acceptance and take-up, North America and the UK remain significantly more advanced than the rest of Europe. However, Nordic FSIs are also increasingly showing signs of embracing nearshore alternatives for certain services.

The current shift, in terms of business process outsourcing (BPO) sourcing strategies in financial services, is enabled by a growing number of outsourcing service providers and IT services vendors having a credible global delivery capability, an ongoing simplification of the outsourcing process from the FSI point of view and improving industry specific expertise among the service providers.

FSIs need to develop global sourcing strategies that enable them to choose between operational locations and sourcing set-ups in accordance with their strategic objectives, weighing up a number of factors such as political and operational risk, regulatory issues, cultural barriers, cost considerations, vendor offerings and local skill sets.

Maehre concludes: "Offshore outsourcing has gathered tremendous pace in recent years. Political pressure and controversy has done little to deter top-line growth. The improving credibility of many of the offshore providers and increasingly global delivery capability of the leading outsourcing service providers will push FSIs in both North America and Europe towards intelligent use of global resources."

Unless you're referring to the opalescent green dude from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

This is an error made by so many people in business that today, using the word correctly sounds "odd." It may sound odd, but the word "data" is plural. The singular form of the word is "datum."

Examples:

Correct: That datum is curious.

Correct: Those data are indicative of the fact that our help desk employees spend the day playing Tetris.

Correct: Data rescued Captain Jean-Luc Picard from a group of methane-breathing green aliens.

If advanced business analytics tell us that increased efficiencies create more profit, by observing this rule, you'll be doing TMC and its editors a favor by allowing them to to save the aggregate time it normally takes them to change the verb tenses after "data" in contributed articles and news items. Those data cannot be disputed.

TES