PSG Latest Reseach

Airbus’s Super Jumbo Content Challenge

Susan Aldrich — 5/8/2008 12:00:00 AM

When Airbus began work on the A380 Superjumbo aircraft, it also began work on building a new documentation system, one that could support a million pages of custom documentation for each aircraft and a thousand people developing the content. Axel Sellmer, Manager IS for Repair and Customer Services Germany, and his team developed the software and systems for technical documentation. This report describes the exacting requirements of the A380 documentation projects, and the systems Axel’s team developed to satisfy those requirements, which includes a layered technology architecture and an atomic information architecture.

Making Team Innovation Work

Patricia Seybold — 4/30/2008 12:00:00 AM

At FIRST’s annual world robotics championship, Patty and her Visionaries witnessed first hand how kids can work together while competing, coming up with innovative solutions to difficult challenges. The process by which these challenges are set up and executed provides important lessons on how to inspire innovation.

B2C Ecommerce Evaluation Framework

Mitchell Kramer — 4/24/2008 12:00:00 AM

Many of your customers prefer doing business with you online. They go to your Web sites to find, learn about, and buy your products that address their needs. They also set up and manage accounts with you. When those customers are consumers, we call these activities B2C ecommerce. B2C software products and services help you implement and deploy Web sites that support these consumer customer activities. In this report, we present our framework for evaluating B2C ecommerce software. Use the framework to reduce the time, cost, and risk for evaluating and selecting the B2C ecommerce software product that is best for your organization.

How Should You Manage Customer Communities?

Matthew Lees — 4/17/2008 12:00:00 AM

In today’s Web 2.0 world of ever-increasing social networking and customer engagement, forward-thinking companies are identifying new ways to connect with customers more deeply and in more ways. To deliver on this, companies must have an organizational structure that reflects the priorities and commitment to running a customer-centric business and fill the roles within this structure with the right people. In this report, we present our ideal customer community team, starting with the Vice President of Community, and discuss not only the various roles and responsibilities, but also the desirable skill sets and personality traits of team members.

IntelliResponse 5.6

Mitchell Kramer — 4/10/2008 12:00:00 AM

IntelliResponse is the customer service offering of IntelliResponse Systems Inc. IntelliResponse was introduced in 2001. To date, 91 customer organizations, mostly universities and colleges, have implemented it. IntelliResponse 5.6 is the current version of the product, the version that we evaluate in this report. We recommend that you consider adding IntelliResponse to your customer service portfolio. Add it to your Website to let customers ask questions about the capabilities of your products and services, your policies and practices for doing business with them, and, even, for helping them navigate your site’s content. IntelliResponse is a great complement to site search and Internet search.

Customer Innovation Guide: Core Competency 5

Patricia B. Seybold and Ronni T. Marshak — 4/3/2008 12:00:00 AM

Have you made it easy for customers to contribute product ideas, designs, or products themselves? Can they add value to your products by rating and reviewing them as well as peer contributions? Do you empower, encourage, and reward customers for promoting your products, developing their own marketing material, promoting your brand as well as theirs? What processes, and tools to support those processes, must be put into place to encour-age and reap the rewards from peer production and peer promotion? See how you’re doing in this self-assessment guide and what work still needs to be done.

Corporate Executive Board Responds to Customers’ Request for Increased Collaboration

Ronni Marshak — 4/3/2008 12:00:00 AM

Corporate Executive Board's Compliance and Ethics Leadership Council respond to their members' desired for a collaborative environment for sharing information. Using BizWiki from CustomerVision, service members can contribute and share messages about compliance issues with peers from other member companies. Ronnie Kann, Program Director of the council talks about the collaboration efforts and how they have made it easy for customers to create and share content.

Search Product and Company Update

Susan Aldrich — 3/27/2008 12:00:00 AM

Our review of 17 privately-held vendors on our search technology watch list shows that customers’ appetite for search technology continues to be strong, roughly equal to the very hot first half. All but one of these vendors acquired more customers this year as compared to last year, and revenue growth is enviable. Hiring has moderated after a crazy first half, but 10 of the companies have changes to the management team. The delivery of new technology was also impressive. We’ve added five European companies to our list, all of whom are establishing offices in the U.S. and multiple European countries.

CohesiveFT Makes It Easy to “Roll Your Own” Virtual Servers

Patricia Seybold — 3/20/2008 12:00:00 AM

Cohesive Flexible Technologies is a software start-up whose story to-date provides six best practices in customer-led innovation.

They ran in front of the parade to commercialize what lead users (advanced IT architects) were already doing.
They added value by tackling the hardest problems – ones these lead customers were struggling with.
They provide structure and scaffolding to enable customer creativity.
They convert customers’ free prototypes into robust commercial solutions those customers can test and use.
They make it easy for lead users to share their creations and learnings with one another.
They look for patterns in the way the customers use your tools to build their tools—that’s your competitive advantage and your future direction!

Roles and Responsibilities

Patricia Seybold with Susan Aldrich — 3/19/2008 12:00:00 AM

Our newest research collection explores the roles and responsibilities that customer-centric employees should undertake to ensure your successful customer-centric organization. Issues addressed include: Who should make up the “dream team?” What roles do portals and findability of information play in making it easy for customers to do business with you? How do you architect the technology for a stellar customer experience?