The International Customer Management Institute has launched its 2010 Call Center Workforce Management Practices survey to provide an analysis of call center best practices, explore the greatest challenges in forecasting and scheduling, evaluate how workforce management technology is being embraced and examine various staffing strategies such as home agents, outsourcing and staff-sharing.
A recent ICMI look at outsourcing found that selecting the proper vendor is of key importance: "Many times, outsourcing relationships bring disappointment and frustration. When I'm called in to resolve outsourcing problems, I find that most of the time, it comes down to a poor match between the company and the outsourcing vendor," wrote ICMI's Francoise Tourniaire.
This is "something that could have been prevented through a better selection process," she noted.
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Atlantis Technology Group subsidiary Global Online Television Corporation has released demonstration of the GoTV IPTV service.
"We have provided several mirror downloads due to the large volume of anticipated viewers and high quality resolution of the demonstration," company officials say.
Global Online Television Corporation was originally established by Atlantis Technology Group as a media subsection to develop research in the advancement of media-based technology. GoTV's mission, company officials say, is to bring Internet protocol television networks "together for your home television viewing. "
By using the IPTV and Microsoft Windows Media Player, they explain, the video stream "is delivered to your home television over broadband Internet connection. Any broadband Internet connection can be used, so there is no need to change providers."
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You might recall a couple weeks ago, when Microsoft tried to lure midsize businesses away from NetSuite back to the reservation, offering "a new incentive to switch from NetSuite to Microsoft Dynamics ERP."
The Redmond behemoth is offering companies in the U.S. a credit of up to $850 "for every NetSuite user that switches to either Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics NAV or Microsoft Dynamics SL through June 25.
The NetSuiters were tickled.
"An internal memo from NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson dismisses Microsoft's bid to attract NetSuite customers as 'the last gasp of a dinosaur trying to protect its Stone Age software products'," CRN reported a few days later.
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Mountz US, based in San Jose, designs, manufactures and sells torque tools and accessories to businesses across the United States and Canada.
Company officials said they'd been dealing with fragmented in-house IT systems slowing business processes and raising costs, customized business applications being difficult and time-consuming to upgrade and the manual input of sales data and inventory assignments resulting in lost sales opportunities and slow or incomplete product shipments.
A torque wrench functions like a regular wrench, but it includes a precision gauge that shows exactly how much pressure is being applied to tighten a bolt. They're used for assembling automobile engines, because components that are tightened unevenly can come apart under high pressure.
Mountz began its business in the '60s by selling torque wrenches to a young company named Hewlett-Packard, and things took off from there.
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Twenty-one days until your taxes are due, but hey, who can remember? You're welcome for the reminder!
This tax season MyFax, an Internet fax service, offers a free service for individual users looking to fax paperwork to file tax returns.
There you go - the words "tax" and "free" together in the same sentence. Put 'em together and what do you have? "Fax!" (Yes, and "tree" too.)
Instead of mailing or hand delivering paperwork to a tax preparer, company officials say, you can now do your part subsidizing ObamaCare from any Internet connection.
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More and more businesses are availing themselves of mobile workforces, thanks to communications technology. The voice phone portion of that is key, and it's more widely available than ever, thanks to Voice over IP.
The rise of VoIP as a mobile workforce enabler has had notable results. According to a new forecast from research firm IDC (News - Alert), "Worldwide Mobile Worker Population 2009-2013 Forecast," the world's mobile worker population will pass the one billion mark this year and grow to nearly 1.2 billion people - more than a third of the world's workforce - by 2013.
The IDC forecast finds the most significant gains will be in the emerging economies of Asia/Pacific, "where a strong economic recovery and new interest in unified communications will drive healthy growth in all aspects of mobility spending."
The United States has the highest percentage of mobile workers in its workforce, with 72.2 percent of the workforce mobile in 2008, the study's authors say: "The U.S. will remain the most highly concentrated market for mobile workers with 75.5 percent of the workforce, or 119.7 million workers, being mobile in 2013."
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