PUBLIC MARKS from longhorn2000 with tags dovetail & soa

"The enterprise network is monetized differently, wherein all its users receive a paycheck to participate. To a great extent, the market economics required to generate widgets (with the Darwinist elimination of many failed concepts along the way, at no real cost to the network) can’t exist on the enterprise network. In-house IT can only create so many custom utilities. Both worlds need each other, and the corporate net can afford to buy the cream of the Web’s produce."

"For the owner of a Clarify™ system, the path is simpler, less politically complex, and branded by name: Dovetail Software. The headache disappears with proposing adoption of Dovetail CRM applications, because they’re specifically designed either to augment the existing install as additional seats, or to replace the Clarify applications across the board. In either case, Dovetail slips into the Clarify environment seamlessly, without a ripple of disturbance. Dovetail interfaces with the database with no change in look or feel, except for the many new features suddenly available."

"Those who have called Daylight Savings Time a folly from the beginning may snicker at the Congressional decision to alter the dates, but those who have anything to do with software aren’t laughing. Changing the dates of the Daylight Savings Time active period, for the first time in decades, will throw a lot of clocks out of sync."

crm, cs&s, customer service and support, soa, Amdocs Clarify, dovetail, dovetail software, knowledge management, KM, amdocs, clarify, saas, customer, customer service & support, service oriented architecture, software as a service, customer relationship manager, customer relationship management, first choice software, dovetail, dovetail software, daylight savings time

crm, cs&s, customer service and support, soa, Amdocs Clarify, dovetail, dovetail software, knowledge management, KM, amdocs, clarify, saas, customer, customer service & support, service oriented architecture, software as a service, customer relationship manager, customer relationship management, first choice software, dovetail, dovetail software

"Software-as-a-Service, SaaS, is driving – or perhaps riding shotgun with – an enormous, sea change in CRM. The model of “monolithic business function and application” is being broken down into smaller transaction sets and granular processes. The model is using easy-to-build interoperable services that further empower the customer-facing agent, and also deliver real-time analytics that personalize the customer experience.." "Software-as-a-Service, SaaS, is driving – or perhaps riding shotgun with – an enormous, sea change in CRM. The model of “monolithic business function and application” is being broken down into smaller transaction sets and granular processes. The model is using easy-to-build interoperable services that further empower the customer-facing agent, and also deliver real-time analytics that personalize the customer experience.."

"At Dovetail Software, the solutions we offer to the Clarify™ user’s installed base, and the scenarios and ramifications we encounter, generally mirror the larger world of SOA. This is a world of cross-platform integrations, and custom services creation that we see in the news feeds and blogs, which is why we’re so interested in events outside the Clarify box. We supply essentially the same revolution to the enterprise with our Web Services and huge library of APIs, and the Dovetail SDK (Software Development Kit) on the .NET platform."

"More than a decade ago Sun Microsystems proclaimed that “the network is the operating system.” Software developers are of course attuned to the development path and behavior of operating systems, since this is where their users and their applications will work together. It should be no surprise that the Internet, as the largest network ever created, demonstrates almost daily new and original uses of applications. Here at Dovetail we take note of these innovations."

"Collaboration between teams, departments, and individuals within the enterprise is a growing business goal. Enterprise-wide integration throughout the computing environment is the current IT lodestone, and it delivers the infrastructure for two huge benefits: collaboration, and resource sharing. Within this scenario, the sharing of “known” knowledge, and the discovery and subsequent propagation of “unknown” knowledge can occur."

"Yesterday we talked about the dictatorship of software, or hopefully, the liberating aspect of it. We described the euphoria that happens in the workplace when agents start exploring their new Dovetail CRM applications as replacements for their legacy Clarify™ applications. Ironically we often claim that new software doesn’t just pour out of the box like breakfast cereal, but we have to admit that for the agents on the front lines of customer service and support, their first days of working with Dovetail’s thin-client applications are a lot like unwrapping Christmas presents."

"Customers, stakeholders, and other departments notice as agents provide faster and better answers, close cases, and convert problems to repeat business. All this comes from access to knowledge that always existed but couldn’t be retrieved, and the empowerment to forward newly processed data to other agents – as in cases moving from support to sales with satisfied customers interested in additional offerings. Software liberates or enslaves. We like the kind we create (the liberating kind)."

“Forrester in its latest survey of the CRM field provides useful analysis of the Amdocs position, and also of Microsoft. We watch the development paths of both companies of course, since Dovetail Software provides long-running extensibility to Clarify™ databases, and the Dovetail CRM system, developed for Microsoft’s .NET platform, which opens up the options for legacy Clarify owners."

“Flexible software that enables the enterprise to integrate its CRM system end to end is where IT budgets are trained nowadays. This is satisfying to us at Dovetail: our open design philosophy exposes virtually all our software components to extensibility across the enterprise computing environment. For users with Clarify™ CRM systems – which are not known for their flexibility – our open design gives them back a development path."

“Historically, CRM has a bias toward technical control rather than technical freedom at the process end. There was always the expectation at the sales transaction level that the new software would bolt on to the enterprise and “solve” everything. As the IT department knows only too well, nothing ever works like that."

“A recruiter’s ability to hone in on the right match for a job quickly ensures that the recruiter and the client will have a better chance of bringing in top talent. In order to do this, the recruiter needs a system that allows candidates access to information on the culture of a company, the full nature of the job, and how they can bset make an immediate impact on the bottom line."

“Knowledge is power, but only to the extent that it can be wielded like a sword, and brought into the realms of judgment, decision-making, and execution. Corporate effort is awash with data, and one serious concern of every enterprise is to find better ways to turn raw data into actionable information, and subsequently into its knowledge repository."

As we’ve often said, CRM success comes from the ability of the agent to work efficiently and productively. Customization requires integration with existing systems, which is the greatest demand made of CRM software, in our view. This is especially true in the area of Customer Service and Support.

“Enterprises nowadays are spending more to upgrade the systems that their agents use, recognizing that information at the agent’s fingertips results in credibility and confidence with the customer, and cleaner disposition and resolution of each case. The net nominal result to the enterprise is a measurable boost in the productivity of customer-facing workers."

“Email integration with CRM is an important part of the CRM deployment for any enterprise. This is true simply because we all live and conduct our business in our email clients to a very large degree. RSS feed readers and IM (instant messaging) both have their place in our lives, as does the visual Web browser. In some sites the visual Web browser is now more commonly used as a thin client for CRM consumption than for surfing the Web. But email is the one ubiquitous thing we can’t ignore, and always turn to."

Current trends in CRM today include a drive towards end-to-end system unity, and this aligns with the Forrester prediction that companies will prefer to get more out of their existing systems than to purchase completely new systems.

"Nowadays in CRM we see great strides made in analytics, which serves both to help the enterprise determine the value of each customer, and also to create a personalized experience for each customer across all the enterprise touchpoints."

"Users can create customizations and streamline in ways they wouldn’t dare attempt with the standard Amdocs client. One customer added a new customization where entering the most basic case information delivered a report with complex formatting and logic that they couldn’t have derived using their other options of Crystal Reports or Actuate."

Enterprises could avoid thinking in terms of “rip and replace” with systems, and instead perhaps look for the most flexible integrations and enhancements they can find or create: flexibility in this case referring to vendor culture as well as codebase. Over time we’ll talk about Dovetail’s legendary ease of integration.

Over the last 12 years of working with Clarify, email integration always seems to be a key topic of conversation, and I get many questions about email integration capabilities. So hopefully this post will answer most of these questions. I'm sure there will be details I've missed (especially on some of Clarify's later version capabilities), so please leave a comment.

"Customers with complaints or problems are the greatest opportunity for any business: help out a customer who cares enough to call you (rather than abandon you without a word), and you’ve probably just created a customer for life, and an evangelist for your company. Marketing has long believed this, and gradually the concept is being absorbed by the technologists who create software systems. The most interesting part of CRM today lies in the area of Customer Service and Support, CS&S. This is where the acquisition cost of the customer is either preserved or thrown away."