Security has emerged as a major concern for businesses that are storing and sharing more and more sensitive information through IP communications. Recently TMC's Michael Dinan had a chance to speak with Lance Vaughn, director of managed security services sales for the Americas at Tata Communications, a global telecom player.
During a podcast interview that's available on Tata Communications' Data Voice Solutions community on TMCnet, Vaughn discussed the challenges that some telcos encounter when they enter the managed security space, and how the company adds value with its sticky offering.
They also talked about Tata Communications' time-to-market, subject-matter expertise and how the end-user sees the managed security services.
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If the experience of CRM vendor Chordiant Software is any indication, the recession and burgeoning SaaS trend have not been kind to other established online CRM vendors.
"While many companies have been investing in CRM software for the overall benefits of improved customer relationships, this move may slow as budgets get tighter and the pressure to reduce costs heightens," TMC's Stefania Viscusi wrote recently.
"For smaller businesses, who must fight even harder to win and keep customers, CRM software is even more vital. In this economic climate however, many of these businesses may look to cutting their spending on customer relationship management," Viscusi said.
But, as InformationWeek reported recently, "if a planned $161.5 million acquisition announced this week goes through, Chordiant buyer Pegasystems, a business process management and rules management firm, may end up with a bargain."
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Lifetouch National School Studios is a Minneapolis-based school photography company providing pictures for schools, houses of worship and the retail market. Company officials like to refer to themselves as "the largest employee-owned photography company in the world."
Their customer service center and call center operations are located in Muncie, Indiana, and a few years back they needed to expand. So naturally they went looking for a company specializing in call center furniture, and found one right there in good ol' Muncie.
Having chosen a former elementary school for their new call center location, Lifetouch had "architectural design obstacles," company officials say, such as columns, a wall-mounted heating system, gum under the desks and "Billy (Heart) Sandy" carved on the walls. They wanted to be able to run at the capacity they needed while respecting the architectural integrity of the building.
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Call recording and call monitoring systems provider Coordinated Systems has put together a terrifically useful white paper listing 10 ways quality monitoring creates better-trained agents, and the Top 10 Tips for implementing a quality monitoring product in your call.
We can't do justice to 20 tips here, so we'll give you the top few. Hit the link for the full article.
How quality or call monitoring creates better-trained agents:
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A recent article in MercuryNews.com noted that "the spoken word is becoming an effective way to overcome the frustrations and limitations of typing on a smartphone."
As proof, it pointed to the fact that Google and Microsoft now offer speech-enabled Web search on a variety of mobile platforms and that, "a growing number of iPhone and Android apps -- and services like Google Voice and YouTube's recent launch of automatic captioning of videos -- can transcribe speech into text."
It cited Mike Cohen, Google's manager of speech technology, saying "speech will soon be an option for almost every function of a mobile device."
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