customer focus - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• Inside an ICT ‘shared services-plus’ model

  Deane Johns, chief information officer of the New Zealand Association of Credit Unions, talks about delivering shared services and more to its member organisations.
  

• Westpac NZ to deploy private cloud

  Westpac New Zealand will roll out private cloud infrastructure under a new five-year agreement that will see the bank migrate some of its critical systems across to IBM’s Highbrook, Auckland data centre.

• How Bay of Plenty District Health Board sped up Active Directory provisioning

  IT now spends less time in user creation and more in supporting users, says IT manager Mark Roberts

• 'We are building a bigger digital capability': Tower CEO David Hancock

  Launch of SmartDriver app is first in a series of technology innovations from the insurance company.

• Vodafone NZ paid out $268,231 to customers in settlement over 'Broadband Lite' promo

  Case highlights potential problems with ’opt-out’ sales promotions, says Commerce Commision.

• CIO to CEO: Career advice from Rob Fyfe

  ‘The CIO can be an incredibly powerful position’ – the relentless pressures of the job are also opportunities to forge a great career and help the organisation outrank the competition.

• Kiwibank: Taking a different approach to a business process

  The bank’s head of customer experience, Anand Ranchord, talks about his approach to business process when tasked to create a new mobile app for home loans.

• Rob Fyfe: The value of unfiltered feedback

  Former Air New Zealand CEO Rob Fyfe talks about ways to foster a customer-centric culture - from answering the most difficult customer complaints, to working the night shift to get first-hand account of what is happening in the organisation.
  

• North Shore City Council website takes five local government awards

  The website of the North Shore City Council won five awards in the recent Association of Local Government Information Management’s (ALGIM) annual survey of council websites – including second place in the Supreme Web Award.
  The council’s website was awarded first place in the best redeveloped website category, in both the expertly judged and People’s Choice divisions. It also got the top prize in the best new feature website – large council category, for its innovative online consenting solution, in both the expertly judged and People’s Choice divisions. As well, it secured second place in the Supreme Web Award, which was won by the Porirua City Council.

• Landmark ruling Against HP's EDS gives customers new power

  In what could be an important decision for the IT outsourcing industry and its customers, a London court recently ruled that EDS ( now part of Hewlett-Packard) must pay damages to a former outsourcing customer for failing to live up to its sales pitch.
  British Sky Broadcasting (BskyB) had signed a £48 million outsourcing contract with EDS to build a customer service system in 2000, but terminated the deal early in 2002 after what it said was "woeful" performance by the IT service provider. BSkyB alleged deceit, negligent misrepresentation and breach of contract by EDS.

• Don't let CRM leads die prematurely

  Even if you're not a Monty Python fan, "Bring out your dead" from The Holy Grail movie is a sick but funny sequence. That vignette is surprisingly relevant to how you handle leads in your CRM system.
  Most leads are declared dead too early. Many a sales rep will give up on a lead after a couple of emails or phone calls. All too often, reps don't even go that far, declaring leads as unqualified without even having a conversation with the individuals. The irony here is that the reps will scream for more leads after having preemptively dropped 70 percent or more of the leads that were presented to them.

• Smart networking tips

  Your network is the amount of people you know. That is your personal brand; grow it regardless of the economic situation, advises former Merrill Lynch stockbroker turned strategic communications consultant Mark Jeffries.
  At last week’s SAS Premier Business Leadership Series in Singapore, Jeffries shares what he calls the “three Rs of networking” – radar, reach and reward.

• The growing consumer location-based services market

  Worldwide consumer location-based services (LBS) subscribers and revenue are on pace to double in 2009, according to Gartner.
  Despite an expected four per cent decrease in mobile device sales, LBS subscribers are forecast to grow from 41.0 million in 2008 to 95.7 million in 2009 while revenue is expected to increase from US$998.3 million in 2008 to US$2.2 billion in 2009.

• Gas industry registry goes live

  Specialist technology services company Jade Software has delivered the gas industry’s first customer registry system.
  Since the system went live on 1 March, it has received more than 5000 switch requests. GIS expects the average monthly figures to be 3000. Pre-Gas Registry switches were estimated by the industry at 1000 a month.

• A clear vision for a rapid rollout

  Specsavers opened 11 stores in New Zealand late in 2008, with plans to have 30 stores operating locally by the end of the year. In 2010 it aims to open more stores, says Simon Baxter, director of IT, Asia Pacific, of the global optical group.
  This rapid rollout is facilitated by its agreement with Reliance Globalcom, which designs, implements and manages Specsavers’ global wide area network (WAN). This network currently connects more than 1100 stores in nine countries.