Customer Automation Management Analyst Report

Copyright Quocirca © 2013

Bob Tarzey Quocirca Ltd Tel : +44 7900 275517 Email: [email protected]

Bob Brown Quocirca Ltd Tel: +44 7940 526801 Email: [email protected]

Customer automation management Dealing with diversity: there is more to serving customers tha n EDI

August 2013

Suppliers have to deal with many customers, who all differ in the way they wish to interact. Automating the management of multi-format transactions

benefits all the parties involved in a supply chain and is only possible with intelligent systems in place. This, and the need to continually adapt and improve customer automation management, needs to be built on a strong foundation of supporting tools and services. This report looks at these challenges and how they can be overcome. It should be of interest to those stakeholders within suppliers that stand to benefit from improved automation, including: supply-chain managers; the customer services team; financial executives; and IT operations, which deploy the applications to support the supply chain.

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Customer automation management

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Customer automation management Dealing with diversity: there is more to serving customers than EDI Suppliers have to deal with many customers, who all differ in the way they wish to interact. Automating the management of multi-format transactions benefits all parties involved in a supply chain and is only possible with intelligent systems in place. This, and the need to continually adapt and improve customer automation management, needs to be built on a strong foundation of supporting tools and services.

The global supply chain is taken for granted

Like so much in modern life, the global supply chain that ensures goods and supplies are where we need them when we want them is taken for granted. The truth is that it is one of the most sophisticated and complicated things man has created, comprising a complex flow of materials and transactions between a bewildering array of organisations.

Standardising the supply chain has proved impossible

The supply chain involves millions of transactions and sub-transactions on a daily basis that rely on communication between many different systems adhering to many different standards. Despite numerous attempts, in particular those to produce a set of standards around EDI (electronic data interchange), the global supply chain has proved impossible to standardise.

Customers cannot be forced to change how they transact

One of the barriers to standardisation is that the customers who order and receive goods - shops, restaurants, hospitals and so on - cannot be forced or even expected to change the way they transact. Therefore, the supply-chain systems must be adaptable and able to understand the quirks of individual customers and recognise that the details may change from one transaction to the next.

Customer automation management improves levels of service

Putting in place systems that can automate non-standard, but commonly occurring, events in the supply chain will improve efficiency and the level of service provided to customers. A customer automation management system must also be able to recognise exceptions and accelerate their management, all the while updating its business rules engine for future reference.

Incremental improvements at all stages make a big difference

The benefits that can be won through customer automation management do not stop with increased automation of order receipt alone. There are also gaps that can be closed during order fulfilment and cash collection. From the customer’s point of view, this reduces delivery times, whilst for the supplier it means getting paid faster and improving key metrics, such as days-sales-outstanding (DSO).

Automation needs co-ordinating across an organisation for maximum benefit

The benefits of customer automation management are not just about reducing costs, but also reduced risk and increased value; for example, improved compliance reporting and customer service representatives being free to focus on value-added activities. Maximising the benefits requires co-ordination across a supplier’s organisation; ownership of the task needs to be taken, perhaps at board level. It may be time for a chief automation officer.

Executive summary conclusions The ultimate goal of customer automation management must be to better serve existing and attract new customers. However, through achieving this, suppliers will also recognise that there are many other incremental benefits; from improved efficiency to better cash collection. The individuals credited with such improvements and making their organisation more competitive will be seen as thought leaders in their own organisation and perhaps across their business sector.


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Introduction: the physical internet

As consumers, we mostly take for granted the supply chain that ensures goods are on the shelves in shops, food and drink appears at restaurant tables, hospitals are stocked with medical kit and so on. The only regular inconvenience we notice is getting stuck behind trucks and vans when driving on back roads. That is, until something we want has run out in the outlet where we expect it to be; only then do we ask questions like, “what happened, did your supplier let you down?” The truth is that the global supply chain is one of the most sophisticated and complicated things man has created, a complex flow of materials and transactions between a bewildering array of organisations that provides ready access to goods near our doorsteps from all over the world. The Economist once called it the “physical internet”; the comparison works in so far as goods are often moved around in discrete units (containers, pallets etc.), which is comparable to packages of data on the internet. However, one area where the analogy breaks down is that the internet operates on a set of standards where the physical supply chain struggles to do the same. From the point of view of a single transaction, the supply chain connects a customer with a supplier. While the detail will vary considerably, each transaction will likely comprise an order, order acknowledgement, shipment notice, proof-of-delivery note, invoice and payment. There will be many subordinate transactions in-between involving communication with many different systems adhering to many different standards; it is the millions of contracts between suppliers and their customers that actually drive the global supply chain. The trouble is that the detail can vary so much in almost every respect and the routing options available are so numerous that the supply chain has proved too diverse to be standardised. That does not mean that the problems faced by suppliers in serving their, sometimes fickle, customers cannot be overcome. This report will look at how suppliers can manage variety, increase automation and deliver improved service. The overall result is to reduce the length of the order-to-cash process (OTC); from receiving a new order, ensuring its safe fulfilment and being paid (see Figure 1). All this is good for both the customer and the supplier, and of course, ultimately, all of us as consumers who expect goods to be where we want them when we want them. This report should be of interest to those stakeholders within suppliers that stand to benefit from improved automation. The list is broad, including: supply-chain managers; the customer services team; financial executives; and IT operations, which deploy the applications to support the supply chain. In most organisations, it is hard to identify a single individual with the responsibility for customer automation management; perhaps someone with the title Chief Automation Officer is needed? Given the benefits outlined in this report that automation can achieve in making the OTC process more efficient, perhaps the time of the CAO has arrived?


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Why there is more to serving customers than EDI

Broadly used, the term “electronic data interchange (EDI)” refers to a generic method for transferring data between different computer systems.

Specifically, EDI is a family of standards for sending and tracking orders and payments, which goes beyond other means of electronic communication, such as email.

In an ideal world everyone would settle on a single EDI standard and stick with it, just as, for example, the Internet Protocol (IP) has become the standard for network-level communication over the internet.

The reason why EDI has not become universal is largely down to three reasons:

1. There are lots of different EDI standards, often industry based, so it has been hard for groups of companies linked by a given supply chain to settle on one, and hard for software providers to author products that cater to all.

2. Many supply-chain contractors, for example transport companies, participate in multiple supply chains, which would mean dealing with multiple standards.

3. The cost of putting any form of EDI in place is expensive, and smaller companies in particular have preferred to stick with ad hoc means of communication.

The customer is king

What do customers need to do to benefit from increased automation in the OTC process? The answer should be – nothing – at least in the way they go about placing orders. However, they should notice a considerable improvement in turnaround and accuracy. Customers want many different things and expect their suppliers to rise to the challenge of delivering to their exact specifications. Much of what goes on in a complex supply chain depends on electronic data interchange (EDI). EDI has been around for almost as long as computers. As commercial use of the internet increased from the early 1990s onwards, every business process was expected to go much faster. This has imposed considerable strain on EDI systems and the standards designed for a slower-paced world. Furthermore, despite the aspirations of numerous IT vendors, EDI has never become pervasive and fully standardised. Every supplier will have customers with whom they can operate seamlessly using EDI, and others who prefer to communicate via some other non-compatible method. The problem can be particularly acute for sub-contractors, whose operations require them to participate in several different supply chains in various industries that work to different standards. Suppliers, customers and all those in-between need a mechanism to communicate using the preferred and/or most convenient mode, and for the translation mechanism to be automated and error-free; this is the concept behind customer automation management. The ease of doing this varies depending on the communication method. Other than the desired EDI format itself, the easiest to deal with are electronic communications, such as emails, spreadsheets, word-processor documents and HTML forms. Then there are typed paper documents, often sent as faxes. Hardest to integrate are handwritten documents and verbal communication. To deal with all this diversity, the tools that support customer automation management must be capable of adaptive multi-format support. However, automation is not just about receiving the order, but all the intermediate events that take place in the OTC process. Successful automation should maximise consistency throughout. Business rules can be developed to ensure many events are automated. However, as with everything to do with the supply chain, there will be unexpected events – exceptions – the management of which needs to be accelerated. For example, it may be usual for a convenience store to send its wine order for the coming week by typed fax, but after a busy bank holiday a fill-in order may be phoned in by the manager. Some exception handling can be automated if the systems involved are smart enough. However, in many cases, customer contact will be required and the system must flag this to the relevant customer support representatives (CSRs). New business rules can then be developed so that exceptions become expected events that are handled automatically in the future; a constant on-


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Days-sales-outstanding – ready cash means more cash

Days-sales-outstanding (DSO) is an indicator of the number of days required to collect cash after invoices have been issued. DSO is one of the key performance indicators that stock markets look at to measure the health of public companies. Low and high DSO are relative terms determined by comparison with peer group companies in the same industry.

For a supplier, low DSO means payments from customers are collected quickly. This means less working capital is locked into inventory and, therefore, “idle”. Conversely, high DSO means cash is taking too long to collect, which leads to all kinds of financial problems.

Making the OTC process more efficient is a good way to reduce DSO and improve a supplier’s financial health.

going process of improvement. From the customer’s point of view, the most important thing is to get the correct goods when they need them. For customers, the key steps in the OTC process are order acceptance, fulfilment and delivery. Paying the bill is not an immediate concern although, of course, in the interests of good supplier relations they know they must, and will generally be happier to do so, if the order has arrived on time and without error. For the customer, more automation should ensure:

Orders are acknowledged more quickly Orders are processed more quickly and more accurately Deliveries are received on time and in full more often Quicker overall turnaround.

The customer is king and, if the king is happy, what are the benefits for those that serve, the suppliers?

The supplier ideal – customer automation management

The British cycling team has come to dominate its sport in recent years, not only through the efforts of one or two outstanding individuals or rounder wheels (as some competitors have suggested), but by making many incremental improvements to its bikes, the diet and training of its cyclists, race-day tactics and so on. Similarly, large-scale reductions in the time taken to complete the overall OTC process is actually about many smaller improvements that make the key stages more efficient; order processing, fulfilment and cash management. Much of this involves automation wherever possible and the subsequent elimination of human error; hence, the term “customer automation management”. Errors and inefficiencies that occur early in the OTC cycle can become amplified through time, and the impact is felt in a number of areas, including customer satisfaction and cash management. Putting in place a customer automation management system can lead to hours or days being shaved off processes (rather than just the seconds sought by the cyclists). This can be thought of as closing a series of gaps – the latency that exists for no good reason between one step of a process and the next. At the beating heart of a customer automation management system is an intelligent business rules engine that defines how things should be done and accelerates exception management, presenting the supplier with an opportunity to demonstrate superior customer service. Happier customers that pay more quickly is the headline benefit for suppliers from increased automation; however, there are numerous others within the detail. Near the top of the list for many will be speed of payment, one of the key metrics which accountants measure as DSO (see inset). Also high on the list will be the data gathered through increased automation. This improves supply-chain visibility, which enables further optimisation, so the whole thing becomes self-perpetuating as more and more of the gaps are closed. With a more efficient supply chain, the number of enquiries handled by a customer service team will fall, giving them more time to focus on value-added activities, for example up-selling


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and cross-selling, feeding the front-end of the OTC process. The freeing up of support staff from the grind of mundane back-office tasks to spend more time interfacing with and serving customers is identified as a key benefit by those that have implemented customer automation management. Staff members who feel more motivated will likely earn more bonuses and commissions; consequently, there is less overall churn. Furthermore, engaging with new customers or setting up new contracts with existing customers is quicker and the whole supply chain becomes more scalable. This includes handling peaks in demand, promotions and so on, and extending the process from physical goods to other areas; for example, repairs and other services. Better data collection also means better reporting. Key performance indicators can be checked in minutes, with improved accuracy across customers and countries. There is also increased visibility into the activity and effectiveness of supply-chain sub-contractors and their performance. Accurate reporting is also necessary for organisations to prove they are playing by the rules that govern their industry; that they are in compliance. Compliance is not just about industry rules, but meeting the requirements of individual customers. For example, a manufacturer of aircraft seats will likely supply to both Boeing and Airbus; each manufacturer will have their own specifications as well as the overriding rules that govern civil aviation. The systems used need to reflect these individual needs whilst having basic procedures in place for shipping goods. Some suppliers of customer automation management systems even enable outsourcing areas of supply-chain management that still require human intervention, the main one being accelerated exception handling. The combination of more automation and the offloading of routine, mundane tasks both contributes to delivering that high-level benefit of freeing customer service teams to focus on value-added activities, improving customer relations and boosting sales. The three main stages of the OTC process that need to be addressed through customer automation management are order receipt, order fulfilment and getting paid: Order receipt The first step is to ensure orders are captured quickly and accurately in whatever format they arrive and automate their entry into the backend systems that support the supply chain. To that end, customer automation management systems need to have off-the-shelf interfaces to all main ERP, CRM, transport management/planning and warehouse management systems. Whilst the format of e-communications can vary a great deal, individual customers will have a degree of consistency; therefore, the customer automation management system should support intelligent business rules to process orders differently based on the accumulated knowledge it has for each customer. Automatically applying rules reduces the need for manual intervention and better ensures compliance needs are met. Easiest to deal with are emails and electronic documents that can be parsed, and the key elements that describe the order captured. Paper documents can be scanned using optical character recognition (OCR). The customer name will usually be recognisable from the header and the likely format of what follows is predictable based on past experience, and the order will be processed with little operator intervention. Of course, there will be exceptions, for example where a late amendment has been added by hand, but this can be flagged for resolution by an operator who can amend the information already gleaned through OCR. Automating order capture whenever possible not only speeds up things at an early stage, but also eliminates re-keying errors; for example, “100” is not accidently entered as “10” or “1,000”.


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CAM and international integration

Most major suppliers trade across international borders. This throws up the challenge of making the customer experience feel “local” whilst benefiting from the economies of scale of centralised services. Having a common process for handling orders should not prevent there being targeted in-country promotions or, indeed, responding to local issues that affect deliveries, like transport strikes. Rules can also be set to ensure local compliance requirements are met.

International reporting is also necessary to establish the overall cash position across an organisation and to get an accurate view of DSO. Only with common processes and a view of how they are being acted on across countries can key performance indicators be put in place and meaningful comparisons made country-by-country.

Many suppliers have staff that are dedicated to processing orders in one country or another because of the amount of time needed to be spent speaking to customers in local language; this is inefficient. Being able to use all staff across all countries makes overall operations more scalable; when a problem arises or there is a peak in activity, those with local language skills can step up to the front line, whilst others work on back-office processes that are common across countries. Such sharing of tasks can be managed, even if the staff members are not all in a single location, if an effective customer automation management system is in place.

Language variation will always have to be dealt with, especially in Europe and Asia; however, with backend automation driven by a rules engine, inconsistencies between countries as to how orders are recognised, input and processed can be ironed out, whilst local compliance requirements and payment practices are still recognised.

Some orders will still be handwritten or communicated verbally. These will have to be keyed in manually; this does not mean the customer automation management system has no part to play. For example, if the customer automation management system knows that a given customer has always ordered crates of beer in batches of 100, then if the operator enters a figure of 1,000, this can be flagged as an exception to be double checked, by contacting the customer if necessary. The expense of delivering and returning 900 crates of unwanted beer may, thus, be avoided. Order fulfilment The accumulated knowledge about customers and their quirks and preferences is also essential for streamlining the efficient fulfilment of orders. A specific goal here is to capture as much of the information staff members hold in their heads about the customer automation management system as possible and establish one version of the truth. This includes information about special terms agreed by sales staff and the quirky behaviour of certain customers, which needs to be available to all operators and not just one, who may leave or go sick at any time; you don’t know what you don’t know. In one real world example a customer consistently ordered paper supplies by number of sheets instead of the usual boxes. If such knowledge is only known to one or two individuals, the wrong fulfilment of orders can be common and costly. The gathering and storing of knowledge applies not only to the customers, but also to products; master data management (MDM). For example, a customer automation management system can be programmed so that customers that order a product in short supply are offered a similar one, of which there is an excess, at a better rate; once supply levels even out or a new delivery arrives, the offer can be dropped. Changes can be made in the system for all customers; individuals or groups of customers. If the roads in a given region are affected by bad weather for a period of time, alternative delivery plans can be set up and the affected customers informed of contingency plans as their orders are processed. If there is an agreed offer across all branches of a certain retailer, it can be ensured this is honoured for the agreed period for all their orders, but not for other customers. If an order comes in with an unknown stock keeping unit (SKU) code, the customer automation management system can detect this and can raise an alert. It may be that the order needs manual processing to rectify a mistake or it may be that customer wants a new product for which the SKU code is yet to be added to the master database. Then, there is knowledge about how and when goods should be transported. There may be days of the week when deliveries cannot be accepted and customer shipments should be delayed or speeded-up. Ensuring such information gets to the right people requires integration of logistics and transport companies and the automated creation of despatch notes with all the information drivers needed to get orders to the right place as quickly as possible.


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Customer automation management in the medical supplies industry Medical supplies include both drugs (from pharmaceutical suppliers) and goods/equipment (everything from bandages to scanners). Areas that stand out in medical supplies, where customer automation management can have a positive impact, include:

The medical industry has its own EDI system called GHX. However, it is not used widely in Europe, with many hospitals and clinics preferring other ad hoc means of placing orders.

Compliance: tracking of drugs from a legislative perspective and having an electronic blueprint of their movement is better managed and more secure using an electronic system rather than a paper trail.

Replenishment of consignments: some suppliers still own their goods even when on their customer’s shelves; invoices are only issued for what is used. Automated systems make it easier to forecast the need for new supplies and recognise when expiry dates are nearing.

In countries with national services, such as the UK’s NHS, automation can ensure required standards are met and that volume discounts are applied across different outlets.

Beyond timely and accurate fulfilment, knowledge can be fed back to CSRs to help them make good use of the time that has been freed up from doing backend processing. For example, it may be that a supermarket has been regularly ordering a given product for years, but has never been made aware of a luxury version that will appeal to better-off consumers and offer higher margins. The CSR can be prompted to pursue such opportunities and may, at last, have the time to do so; a bonus for success may be in the offing.

Getting paid From the supplier’s point of view, the aim must be to start the cash clock ticking as early as possible. The customer automation management process should, so far, have helped ensure this by improving the accuracy of order entry, speed of fulfilment and improved customer satisfaction. However, proof of delivery (POD) is usually necessary before an invoice can be raised. This is an area where days can be shaved from the overall OTC process. It is not unknown for POD notes to sit in a driver’s cab for weeks on end before a whole batch is returned at once. There is no reason why POD cannot be automated with drivers using a mobile phone to access an integrated voice response system (IVR) in their native language. Faster POD also means that problems with orders, such as breakages or returns, are reported more quickly and invoices can be adjusted accordingly. Invoices that match POD notes and take into account delivery problems are more likely to be uncontested and paid first time around, promptly and in full. Undisputed invoices also mean that less finance staff time is wasted chasing late payments. Most importantly, faster payment means a lower DSO with all the important benefits outlined earlier. Finally, the information gathered by the customer automation management systems about how invoices are processed and paid gives financial managers better overall visibility of how cash collection systems are working and where they can be improved.


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Deploying a customer automation management system

The benefits of increased automation cannot be achieved across the whole of a supplier’s organisation overnight; some elements will be quicker to put in place than others. For most, it will be a gradual process. To start, someone has to take ownership of the project. As suggested in the introduction, perhaps there is a need for a Chief Automation Officer or at least someone with a mandate to mediate between different departments in the interests of improving the OTC process. This idea should be taken seriously; customer automation management has the power to increase profitability and drive up share prices. Whoever takes the initiative needs to get all the stakeholders on board early, including those from supply-chain management, commercial operations, customer services and finance, as well as the IT staff that will deploy it. A system needs to be selected and, once this is done, both in-house and from system supplier resources set aside to get the project going. As with many applications today, a customer automation management system can be sourced as an on-demand service that has a number of benefits, including reduced pressure on existing IT resources (see Table 1). Once the system is in place, the customer knowledge needs to be captured and the master data around products entered, cleaned and brought up to date. Then, there is the initial creation of rules about how to process orders and handle exceptions. Finally, there is the training of staff that will be responsible for all this as an on-going process. For many, it will also make sense to start at one end of the OTC process and move to the other. Automating order capture first and then taking action on fulfilment, transport and finally cash. It may make sense for some to start in the middle; for example if late delivery of POD notes is the issue, doing most to slow down the issuing of invoices and being paid, then start with that.

TABLE 1: The advantages of using an on-demand service for customer automation management

Economies of scale: the platform is shared by many customers instead of each having to invest in its own.

The service supplier has the resources to invest in best-in-class deployment platforms, which many of its customers could not afford alone.

Rather than upfront investment in an expensive application roll out, the cost can come out of operating expenditure (OPEX) with pay-per-unit of use; for example, per transaction. This is scalable as the cost of use only

rises in line with the increase in the number of sales.

Shared centralised information: certain data is common across customers; for example, weather and travel news (which can impact transportation). Such data can be kept up to date by the service provider.

Many suppliers will share the same transport and logistics partners. The customer automation management system can manage these many-to-many relationships, with both supplier and partners having to interface with

fewer systems.


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Conclusion – a total value proposition for customer automation management

Improving any process through the introduction of a new system has a cost, even if it is paid for out of operating expenditure, as would be the case for an on-demand customer automation management system. The cost must be offset by the benefits to the supplier that implements the system. However, it is a mistake to think of this purely in terms of cost reduction. Clearly, this is a goal but other benefits around risk reduction and value creation can be just as important and form part of the total value proposition for a customer automation management roll-out. These benefits are summarised in Table 2. Customer automation creates value and reduces both cost and risk, compared with the status quo or trying to enforce standards on unwilling customers. It enables suppliers to take full advantage of current technology capabilities, even when their customers chose not to. It also provides the insight needed to improve cash management and compliance, and provides the space to boost the front end of the OTC process through more sales activity. Many board members at a supplier which has appointed a Chief Automation Officer to oversee customer automation management would soon recognise the value provided by their new colleague.

TABLE 2: A total value proposition for customer automation management

Reduced cost from customer automation management

Reduced DSO means less cash in the supply chain and more cash in the bank.

Improved accuracy of order entry means fewer mis-shipments, disputes and returns.

Better exception handling means true exceptions are identified and dealt with faster.

Pro-active stock management means surplus goods can be moved through special offers.

Fast receipt of POD means quicker invoicing.

International visibility improves cross-border inventory and cash management.

Reduced risk from customer automation management

More accurate data across the OTC process leads to better reporting; therefore, the ability to prove compliance with industry regulations.

More information about customers’ quirks and preferences captured centrally, instead of being held in the heads of individual staff members, leads to fewer errors and better overall service.

Processes can be adapted on a customer-by-customer basis to ensure unique requirements are consistently met.

Contingency plans can be enacted as events affect logistics operations and despatch notes, and other communications can be automatically updated whilst conditions persist.

Increased value from customer automation management

Lowering of DSO leads to improved cash management, which can drive up stock price and improve reputation.

Customer service reps are freed up to focus on improving customer relations and driving more sales.

Easier and quicker to take on new customers.

Greater choice of supply-chain contractors though more integrated operations.

More accurate processing of orders, tailored for each customer, leads to greater overall satisfaction.

More comprehensive and better quality master data improves the capability to put in place special offers etc.

About OmPrompt OmPrompt is the leader in customer automation management. OmPrompt helps large companies with complex supply chains bridge gaps by eliminating the need for human workarounds when transactional systems can’t cope with diverse operational requirements from customers. OmPrompt’s award-winning platform enables companies across a wide range of industries - including FMCG, healthcare and logistics – to gain a competitive edge through superior customer service provided by resources freed from back-office functions. OmPrompt’s intelligent cloud offers multi--format support, accelerated exception management and intelligent business rules that deliver the transactional excellence enjoyed by global brands worldwide. OmPrompt processes transactions in 33 countries and 6 continents, and is headquartered in Oxfordshire, UK. To learn more about customer automation management, visit www.omprompt.com.

Customer Automation Management Customer automation management is a realistic option for completely outsourcing order-to-cash transactional processes, concentrating instead on the things that really add unique value to the relationship with customers. Customer automation management provides a perfect complement to an established EDI solution or business-ready network, enabling organisations to increase significantly the extent to which they deliver transactional excellence.

http://www.omprompt.com/


About Quocirca Quocirca is a primary research and analysis company specialising in the business impact of information technology and communications (ITC). With worldwide, native language reach, Quocirca provides in-depth insights into the views of buyers and influencers in small, mid-sized and large organisations. Its analyst team is made up of real-world practitioners with first-hand experience of ITC delivery, who continuously research and track the industry and its real usage in the markets. Through researching perceptions, Quocirca uncovers the real hurdles to technology adoption – the personal and political aspects of an organisation’s environment and the pressures of the need for demonstrable business value in any implementation. This capability to uncover and report back on the end-user perceptions in the market enables Quocirca to provide advice on the realities of technology adoption, not the promises.

Quocirca research is always pragmatic, business-orientated and conducted in the context of the bigger picture. ITC has the ability to transform businesses and the processes that drive them, but often fails to do so. Quocirca’s mission is to help organisations improve their success rate in process enablement through better levels of understanding and the adoption of the correct technologies at the correct time. Quocirca has a pro-active primary research programme, regularly surveying users, purchasers and resellers of ITC products and services on emerging, evolving and maturing technologies. Over time, Quocirca has built a picture of long-term investment trends, providing invaluable information for the whole of the ITC community. Quocirca works with global and local providers of ITC products and services to help them deliver on the promise that ITC holds for business. Quocirca’s clients include Oracle, IBM, CA, O2, T-Mobile, HP, Xerox, Ricoh and Symantec, along with other large and mid-sized vendors, service providers and more specialist firms. Details of Quocirca’s work and the services it offers can be found at http://www.quocirca.com Disclaimer: This report has been written independently by Quocirca Ltd. During the preparation of this report, Quocirca may have used a number of sources for the information and views provided. Although Quocirca has attempted, wherever possible, to validate the information received from each vendor, Quocirca cannot be held responsible for any errors in information received in this manner. Although Quocirca has taken what steps it can to ensure that the information provided in this report is true and reflects real market conditions, Quocirca cannot take any responsibility for the ultimate reliability of the details presented. Therefore, Quocirca expressly disclaims all warranties and claims as to the validity of the data presented here, including any and all consequential losses incurred by any organisation or individual taking any action based on such data and advice. All brand and product names are recognised and acknowledged as trademarks or service marks of their respective holders.

REPORT NOTE: This report has been written independently by Quocirca Ltd to provide an overview of the issues facing organisations seeking to maximise the effectiveness of today’s dynamic workforce. The report draws on Quocirca’s extensive knowledge of the technology and business arenas, and provides advice on the approach that organisations should take to create a more effective and efficient environment for future growth.

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