Cost effective technology solutions can improve your business and show a rapid return-on-investment.

GBS has compiled a list of current business trends that are driving the IT industry. These are supported by examples and implementations strategies below:

• 1. Doing More With What You've Got
• 2. Supporting the Mobile Workforce
• 3. Improving the Customer Experience
• 4. Communicating with Customers in Real-time
• 5. Managing Corporate Information
• 6. Preparing for Unforseen Events

1. Doing More With What You've Got

One trend that stands out above the rest is that our customers often do not make optimal use of what they already have. This tendency can be addressed quickly through a one-off, top-to-bottom evaluation of your existing infrastructure. A thorough assessment highlights areas where existing capabilities can be exploited without additional investment.

Critical needs are also identified and budgets are formulated for on-going support and maintenance. This approach results in laying a solid foundation for future initiatives and allows you to reduce the cost of managing your technology assets over time.

2. Supporting the Mobile Workforce

When it comes to winning in the competition game, it's hard to win against those companies that have their people in close contact with the customer or prospect. This, coupled with the fact that organisations are often widely dispersed geographically, makes it extremely important for employees to have access to corporate systems and information. Being away from the office no longer means limited access to email or calendars. Even access to company files and applications can be safely provided to the 'road warrior'.

Significant cost advantages can be realised by centralising applications and providing remote access from branch offices. Costs are reduced by eliminating management of remote PCs in favour of centrally managed 'terminals'. Productivity gains are enjoyed when remote employees have the same company desktop as when they are in the office.

For growing companies, it is common for paper handling costs to spiral out of control and to produce workflow bottlenecks. It is now possible for remote employees to capture information on paper and transmit the content in a matter of minutes. We implemented a solution recently that allows our customer to capture service-related data and make it available to their customers almost instantaneously.

3. Improving the Customer Experience

A recent survey* indicated that many companies feel they compete in a 'commoditised' market where it is difficult for prospects to distinguish between products. In this climate, it becomes even more important for companies to differentiate themselves based on the 'customer experience'. This means asking the hard question, 'What is it really like for our customers to deal with us and do we make it easy for them'? And just as importantly, 'Do we provide them with the kind of service that will secure their loyalty.'

These questions can be addressed by looking closely at the customer-facing aspects of the business and evaluating whether they meet expectations. The answers are varied but one area that is particularly promising is providing a means for customers to interactively obtain information from you. Where a simple web page may have served this purpose in the past, there is now a growing expectation that companies will provide current information and feedback on all dealings with their customers.

In some cases it may make sense for customers to have direct access to company applications. Another scenario involves providing customers with their own 'portal' that presents them with all relevant information on their dealings with the company. We recently implemented a solution that automatically sends information directly to our customer's own system as a value-added customer service.

4. Communicating with Customers in Real-time

In a recent article titled, 'The New World of Work', Microsoft chairman Bill Gates stated, 'Over the next decade, we see a tremendous opportunity to 'maximize the impact of employees and workgroups [and to] drive deeper connections with customers and partners.'

These deeper connections are driven, in part, by automating the process of communicating with clients and employees. Providing a rapid response to customers using such things as integrated fax and SMS technologies sends a powerful message. Increased customer loyalty can often be produced by simply demonstrating that you place a high priority on keeping customers informed.

5. Managing Corporate Information

The information revolution has produced at least one unintended result: we all suffer from 'information overload'. It's often not easy to find the information that we need to do our jobs. Recent innovations which revolutionized how we create and manage information have also created new challenges related to finding, visualizing and acting on that information. Some industry analysts estimate that people spend up to 30 percent of their day just looking for data they need.

These issues can now be addressed by approaches that provide information workers with easy access to information 'in-context'. Determining what information is relevant to the decisions being made at the level of an individual role allows people to work more efficiently and removes the distraction of irrelevant data. Having business procedures, documents and spreadsheets in one place and being able to search them are solutions that are now within reach for most companies.

6. Preparing for Unforseen Events

The string of natural and man-made disasters that have recently devastated US businesses underscores the importance of disaster recovery planning (DRP). What plans are in place to help your business recover from events like these' Often the emphasis of such plans is exclusively on the recovery of computer systems but business recovery is also a critical element. It doesn't help if the computers are up and running if business processes aren't also restored. Disaster recovery planning pinpoints where you are vulnerable and devises strategies to mitigate the risks of business interruption.

* 2005 Miller Heiman Sales Effectiveness Study