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Technology and productivity

Enterprise-ing Web 2.0

Greg Stone's picture
Mon, 16/06/2008 - 09:40 — Greg Stone

Interoperability is emerging as the key to making Web 2.0 transferable to the corporate environment.

There have been countless discussions on how consumer expectations set by Web 2.0 are being transferred to the workplace. Based on working with Web 2.0, users increasingly expect to exert more control over their work experiences and to participate in them. They expect business applications to adjust to the way they work, rather than accept a suboptimal experience. This we know.

Ultimately, Web 2.0 is not really about the technology. It's about social networks and users' control of their experience. The way to achieve this movement of power to the end user in the enterprise is through a composite solution that meshes software, services and the web and considers the business user as well as the developer.

Composite applications are the business users' equivalent of Web 2.0 and mash-ups. They provide a mechanism for multiple technology vendors to participate in a solution that, in its simplest form, decouples information from line-of-business (LOB) applications like CRM or ERP and surfaces it in a more usable way.

CRM solutions - avoid the pitfalls; reap the rewards

James Simpson's picture
Fri, 06/06/2008 - 09:07 — James Simpson

For the midmarket, integrated CRM solution improves business productivity at a low total cost of ownership.

Building and maintaining strong, solid relationships with customers is essential to the success of any business. According to Adam Sarner, an analyst with Gartner who focuses on the customer relationship management (CRM) industry, obtaining a new customer is 10 times more expensive than retaining an existing one.

It's no secret that automating and integrating processes and procedures previously confined to paper and incompatible, disparate applications is proving to be a  cornerstone for effectively managing customer relationships.

Until recently though, affordable technology designed specifically to meet the customer CRM needs of midmarket businesses, was not available to these organisations. That's all changed - and for the better.

When it comes to customers, sales and service are fundamental to an organisation's success. If salespeople can't manage leads and opportunities, sales will doubtlessly be lost. And the service they do deliver is likely to be inconsistent.

Working smarter

Mon, 25/08/2008 - 10:13 — msweeks@cisco.com

Martin Stewart-WeeksWith a rich mix of work tools and capabilities, you can be as productive in the office, at home, in hotel rooms and airport lounges all around the world. 

The nature of work is changing and consequently we're witnessing a proliferation of workstyles that reflect new demands for flexibility, balance and autonomy. Organisations in all sectors confront the need to respond urgently to a bunch of demands that include the ability to work in less predictable patterns of time and location and to work in new and more complex patterns of collaboration and co-presence. 

Some days you need to work on your own, some days you need to work with a team of people who are all in the same physical space and the next day you need to work with team members who are all on different continents. On top of that, people are juggling professional ambition with personal commitments to family and community. 

Maintaining personal good health and looking after the health of the planet are dimensions of life that can't be conveniently forgotten or pushed to one side in the face of work demands and routines that are physically, emotionally and environmentally unsustainable.