IT Looks at Recovery. Someday.

Customer self-service has seen a major uptake across multiple service segments, driven by a fortuitous combination of customer acceptance and potential for cost savings. Customers generally like the convenience of online self-service, and the transaction cost for the enterprise is dramatically lower.

As a trend, this one looks like a solid bet - all industrial segments will increasingly invest in customer self-service, with the progression from routine account maintenance to complex transactions and multi-party transactions. For complex transactions, systems will need to be designed for graceful intervention of human agents when required, especially where judgment and or dispute resolution is required. One pioneer, a Danish insurance company, apparently actually settles some class of property insurance claims online, including payment and referrals to merchants for replacement merchandise.

Another trend is alternative contact points, primarily shared kiosks in retail locations. In its early stages, the merchants pay small fees to the kiosk network to facilitate customer payments. Early users seem to be utility, regional retailers and banks. Target customers for these services are the lower demographic and technographic segments who do not have online access.

An ongoing trend is the refresh and optimization of core infrastructure, under the guise of storage consolidation and server consolidation programs. StorageStorage initiatives are well along with most major companies in the financial services arena, with other segments following. Server consolidation projects are getting a new lease on life with the availability of better management tools that offer the promise, in conjunction with newer servers and advances in Linux and MicrosoftMicrosoft operating environments, to raise the operating efficiency of the masses of Intel servers that populate most large enterprises. Again, the emphasis is on cost first, with other considerations following. The good news is that most infrastructure optimization projects also come out with a more adaptable and responsive environment as well, setting the enterprise up for the inevitable upturn. Alles zu Microsoft auf CIO.de Alles zu Storage auf CIO.de

A Good Time to Invest?

For technology users, this is both an incredibly frustrating time and a very empowering time. While budgets are tight, and senior management is pushing very hard for control, this is arguably one of the best times in the history of IT to be investing in technology-enabled business initiatives. The flow of technology continues unabated, driven by an ongoing stream of R&D investment, and the vendors are all hungrier than they have ever been, with competition at an all time high.