A helpful recent study by David Tabor in CIO kicks off with "CRM systems are where the richest data about customer relationships is supposed to live, and most CRM systems provide a report-writing system as well as dozens of canned reports."
 

Reports, he notes, "immediately expose data quality problems and some of them can provide dangerous misinformation... reports really do make a difference in managing your business. But first, let's look at the foundation: meaningful data."

 

Ay, there's the rub. Data hygiene. As Tabor correctly observers, "nobody achieves 100 percent data quality. Perfectionism in data is prohibitively expensive, and those last few percent yield asymptotically less real business value. "

 

In other words, "in the real world, we can live with 5 to 10 percent data impurity, particularly if we know which parts of the data have lower quality than others." But as Tabor points out, there are three areas where central IT can add real value to CRM systems:

 

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Telephony developers, Web developers, both are included in Voxeo's Evolution developer portal.

 

For Telephony developers, company officials say, Voxeo's Evolution developer portal provides "free hosted access to our Prophecy Platform, resources, and technical support for the creation of Interactive Voice Response, VoIP and voice recognition applications, integrated with modern XML and Web development solutions."

 

And for you Web developers, it lets you use "your XML and Web skills, platforms, and tools to create voice recognition and touch-tone driven applications that can be called from, or call out to, any telephone or VoIP device."

 

The Free Voxeo Evolution developer portal, company officials say, includes "free access to our hosted XML IVR platforms, support for inbound and outbound calls, free direct-dial phone numbers, Skype access, or open SIP access, IVR prompt playback, audio recording, DTMF entry with VoiceXML or CallXML, VoiceXML voice recognition and text to speech, advanced call routing, conferencing, and control with CCXML, free Extreme Support for developers, over 50 tutorials and sample applications, extensive VoiceXML, CCXML, and CallXML references, local static web hosting for your voice applications and free tools, resources, and special offers from our partners."

 

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The Gadgeteer's Julie says she reviewed the Moshi Voice Control Alarm Clock last winter, "and have been using it ever since. I've come to rely on the ability to control my alarm clock with my voice. It's no longer just a novelty for me."

Occupational hazard of you bleeding-edge first adopters. She now reviews Moshi's new model with a built in radio and two alarms, which she finds not quite so indispensable.

 

"I have had pretty good luck controlling the original Moshi voice control clock," she says at the outset, noting "I've only had two problems with that clock. Once in a while it will not correctly recognize an alarm time. This is almost always when I say five thirty or another time with thirty." No matter, she has "learned to replace 5:30 with 4:29 or 5:31."

 

The other issue is a bit more serious: telling Moshi to turn off the alarm. "I think this is mainly due to the fact that I almost always have a radio playing in the same room because I have a radio wake me up first."

 

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Zacks Investment Research recently reported that enterprise software company BMC Software announced that the Swiss utility provider Wasserwerke Zug will deploy its Remedy Service Desk solutions.

Wasserwerke Zug "will integrate BMC Software's products into its telecom business to provide improved customer support to its growing customer base in central Switzerland," Zacks says, adding that "strong customer service is a prerequisite in the intensely competitive Swiss telecom market. Wasserwerke's customer service has been hurt since its IT infrastructure reached its performance limit."

 

Moreover, according to Zacks, "its ticketing system is also dated and has been unable to meet growing customer requirements." The BMC service desk product was chosen with the expectation that it will boost customer retention rate "by reducing complexity in delivering customer support," and help WWZ "better handle telecom customers' queries."

 

Wasserwerke will also deploy BMC Software's Business Service Management to "assess the competitiveness of its customer relationship management application.," Zacks says: "The solution is expected to simplify the customer service operation by automating the process of diverting queries into the serviced desk for quick and efficient service.

 

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