Customer and End-User Support Fueling Demand for IT Professionals
Eleven percent of chief information officers (CIOs) surveyed for the Robert Half Technology IT Hiring Index and Skills Report expect to add staff in the fourth quarter of 2008 and 3 percent forecast personnel reductions. The net 8 percent increase compares with a net 10 percent increase projected last quarter. The majority of respondents, 83 percent, plan to maintain current staffing levels. For the first time since the question was asked in the second quarter of 2003, increased customer service and/or end-user support (25 percent of the response) overtook business growth (23 percent) as the main reason firms are hiring IT staff. Installation or development of new enterprisewide applications came in third, with 21 percent of the response.

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Firms Slash an Average of $535,000 on Operating Costs from use of Optimized Workforce Scheduling
In an extremely competitive service landscape, Best-in-Class service firms are turning to schedule, dispatch and mobile solutions to: increase the efficiency of their service organizations, deliver better, faster and more accurate service, and to efficiently contain service-related costs. As such these firms are actively taking steps to map processes related to the lifecycle of incoming service work orders and implement optimization tools to boost performance, as indicated in “a recent report by Aberdeen Group.

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Knowledge Transfer is Critical to Companies' Competitive Edge, as Large Numbers Of Boomers Retire
Most companies do not have a plan to manage and transfer knowledge and even fewer factor cross-generational challenges into business strategy, says a new report from The Conference Board, the global research and business membership organization. The result can be a significant drain of business wisdom that decreases innovation, lowers growth capacity, and reduces efficiency in the organization.

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Study Reveals North American Contact Centers Tap Low Efficiency Potential of Their Workforce Management Practices
A new survey sponsored by InVision Software shows the increase of importance of workforce management (WFM) and the related investment in WFM. Contact centers with more than 500 agents raised their full time WFM positions from 17 to 24 between 2006 and 2008 which represents an increase of 41 percent. Medium-sized contact centers have also extended their WFM staff in the last two years and even contact centers with less than 100 agents have 2.5 dedicated WFM positions on average.

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Life Is Tough for Midsize Tech Departments
Information-technology leaders at midsize companies say they could compete with bigger companies, if only they had more money. And staff. And the freedom to focus on long-term projects. Instead they’re fighting to keep up. That’s according to a survey of 200 tech leaders at businesses with 500 to 3,000 employees by Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions, which sells computer gear to the consulting companies and resellers who target these companies.
Source: WSJ

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Over Half of SMBs Say They Have Not Implemented Email Archiving
A new survey by GFI Software shows that over half of small companies in the United States do not currently have an email archiving system implemented in their organization, while one in four that do rely on end-users to manage email archiving on their own.The survey also found among those companies currently using an email archiving solution, 35 percent are relying on end-users to maintain their own email archives, while 35 percent use an in-house solution to archive emails, and 33 percent use tape backups.

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Worldwide IT Spending On Pace to Surpass $3.4 Trillion in 2008
Despite current economic concerns, worldwide IT spending will exceed $3.4 trillion in 2008, an increase of 8 percent from 2007 spending, according to Gartner, Inc. Analysts said much of this growth is based on the decline in the U.S. dollar. The estimated worldwide IT spending growth expressed in constant currency is forecast to be approximately 4.5 percent.

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Unified Communications: Lifeblood of the Contact Center
In a new study exploring unified communications in the contact center, Aberdeen Group examines the business reasons for adoption of unified communications, the relationship between unified communications and customer satisfaction, customer retention and year-over-year change in customer satisfaction, and how Best-in-Class usage of unified communications have provided business, business process benefits and operational efficiencies.

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North American market for hosted outbound IVR services to more than double by 2013
A new report by independent market analyst Datamonitor reveals the North American market for hosted outbound integrated voice response (IVR) services is set to more than double from an estimated $213 million in 2008 to $524 million by 2013. Outbound IVR is the next generation contact center technology used for automated, phone-based outbound communications

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The Economy and Business Conditions Having More Impact on Small and Midsize Businesses Worldwide Than Excitement About New Technology
A new report from IDC finds more concern about the economy among SMBs worldwide than interest in the most potentially innovative new technology. Current economic growth and business conditions are by far the greatest concern for small and midsize businesses, particularly in North America, Latin America, and Western Europe, the new study indicates.

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