• Blog
• Articles
• Books
• Training
• Consulting

Articles

• "Service-Oriented World" Cheat Sheet

  A Guide to Key Concepts, Technology, and More…

  by Brenda Michelson

  Are you thinking about SOA? Are you trying to separate fact from fiction? Do you want to learn the key concepts, technology, and keys to success? Then read this “service-oriented world” cheat sheet!
  Jun. 2, 2005

  All Members

  

• Let Customers Co-Design Your Customer-Critical Initiatives

  How and When to Use Customer Scenario® Mapping

  by Patricia Seybold

  What’s the best way to gather customer requirements? Invite customers to co-design their ideal processes with your cross-functional team. Design your requirements to meet your customers’ future requirements.
  May. 26, 2005

  All Members

  

• Nurturing Customer Loyalty in the B2B World

  Know and Nurture Your Internal Advocates

  by Patricia Seybold

  We spend a lot of our time these days working with the customer advocacy and customer experience teams at large software and systems companies.
  May. 26, 2005

  All Members

  

• Content Management Goes Back to the Future

  Content Management Is Evolving Today as Data Management Did Twenty-Five Years Ago

  by Mitchell Kramer

  What is the future of content management? Just look at data management’s past.
  May. 19, 2005

  All Members

  

• Enterprise Service Bus Q&A

  Considering the Enterprise Service Bus as a Backbone Candidate for the Networked Integration Environment

  by Brenda Michelson

  What is an enterprise service bus, really? How does it fit in your enterprise integration architecture? How about your SOA? Read this report to get answers to the hot questions surrounding the ESB.
  May. 19, 2005

  All Members

  

• Discovering Findability Requirements from Customer Scenario Maps

  Building Your Search and Navigation Approach

  by Susan Aldrich

  Our findability requirements discovery methodology is centered on customer requirements and the customer’s perspective.
  May. 12, 2005

  Strategies

  

• SOA, All Over Again

  The Second Coming of Service-Oriented Architecture

  by Patricia Seybold

  Service-oriented architecture is back, and now it's in the mainstream.
  May. 12, 2005

  All Members

  

• Establishing and Nurturing a Customer-Centric Culture

  Lessons Learned from the Masters (Caterpillar Financial Services, Harrah’s Entertainment, and Lands’ End)

  by Patricia Seybold

  How do you build and nurture a customer-centric culture? Here are some lessons learned from three very different kinds of companies: Caterpillar Financial Services, Harrah’s Entertainment, and Lands’ End.
  May. 5, 2005

  All Members

  

• How to Think About Content Management

  Confused about Content Management and Portals? Reframe Your Questions

  by Patricia Seybold

  Some tips on how to scope your content management initiative.
  May. 5, 2005

  All Members

  

• What Are Customer Experience Best Practices?

  Summary of Our Findings from the APQC Total Customer Experience Benchmark and a Report Card for You

  by Patricia Seybold

  Here’s our high-level summary of the best practices that we discovered in a recent conference conducted by the American Productivity and Quality Council between 10/04 and 4/05. We include a Customer Experience Report Card you can use to rate yourselves.
  Apr. 28, 2005

  Strategies

  

• Building Buy-In for Customer-Centric Initiatives

  Facilitate Group Interviews with Key Stakeholders to Build Trust and Momentum

  by Patricia Seybold

  Use this group interview technique to build a shared mental model of both current reality and a vision for the customer experience you’d like to be able to deliver.
  Apr. 21, 2005

  Strategies

  

• Integration Scenarios and the Networked Integration Environment

  Pillars of Your IT Integration Strategy for Customer Experience

  by Brenda Michelson

  In this report, we delve into the networked integration environment, its major layers and services, and its supporting environments, framed by the business drivers—customer experience scenarios that depend on integration.
  Apr. 14, 2005

  All Members

  

• Integration and Customer Experience

  Creating an IT Integration Strategy to Deliver an Integrated Customer Experience

  by Brenda Michelson

  In this report, we discuss the importance of integration to customer experience and share our perspective on how to develop an IT integration strategy to deliver on your customer’s expectations.
  Mar. 31, 2005

  All Members

  

• Design Your Quality of Customer Experience (QCE) Scorecard

  Create a Small, Focused Set of Metrics; Measure What Matters to Your Customers

  by Patricia Seybold

  We offer three best practice examples and describe the eight steps you can take to create your own QCE(SM) Scorecard.
  Mar. 24, 2005

  Strategies

  

• Managing Findability: Critical Core Competency

  Roles, Responsibilities, Programs, and Metrics You'll Need to Make It Easy for Audiences to Find the Right Information

  by Susan Aldrich

  How do you bring the quality, control and findability to your oceans of information? You need to invest in key roles and programs.
  Mar. 24, 2005

  Strategies

  

• Streamlining Production at the Harvard Business Review

  Just Enough XML

  by Perry McIntosh

  Harvard Business Review needed to improve the efficiency and timeliness of its derivative product production. A successful bridge between its culture of craftsmanship and automation fueled by XML proved key to its success.
  Mar. 18, 2005

  All Members

  

• American Customer Satisfaction Suffers Its Biggest Drop in Seven Years

  What Are the Implications of the ACSI Decline?

  by Brenda Michelson

  The 4Q 2004 American Customer Satisfaction Index suffered its largest drop since 1997. Since customer satisfaction drives consumer spending, almost $50 billion is at stake. Read about the ACSI and learn how to keep your share of the consumer pie.
  Mar. 3, 2005

  All Members

  

• What Is the Future for Collaboration in the Knowledge Economy?

  A Report from the NSF/OECD Cosponsored Conference, “Advancing Knowledge and the Knowledge Economy”

  by Geoffrey Bock

  “Advancing Knowledge and the Knowledge Economy,” a conference held in Washington, DC, in early January 2005, focused on how public and private organizations can now benefit from the Internet and the Web.
  Feb. 11, 2005

  Strategies

  

• RedDot Solutions for Content Management

  Providing Infrastructure for Staging and Delivering Business Information across the Web

  by Geoffrey Bock

  RedDot delivers three products: CMS for Web content management; XCMS for managing documents and workflows, and providing a workspace within an intranet; and LiveServer for personalizing content delivery to Web servers, portals, and other applications.
  Feb. 10, 2005

  All Members

  

• Customer Portals: Central to Your Customer Experience Strategy

  Customer Portals Support Your Customers throughout Their Lifecycles

  by Patricia Seybold

  There are three reasons why customer portals are hot: 1) you save money; 2) you increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and profitability; and 3) you gain visibility into customers’ account information, their needs, and their preferences.
  Jan. 27, 2005

  Strategies