The fact that technological advances have tripled within the last 40 years compared to the 40 years before is astounding. While some of these advances may have made distractions at work a little more prevalent, it has also opened up the workplace to exciting new ways to conduct business and think about new ways to reach the consumer.

However, dealers have long heard about breakthroughs making it easier for them to get ahead in the industry. But just want do all these “breakthroughs” allow dealers to accomplish? Many want to know just how these technological advances can help them grow their businesses-and compete with the power channel.

Web Sites Pay Off

Of course, one of the major advances in the workplace was the everyday usage of the Internet. Although the Internet has been around for decades, it only became a workplace necessity in the 1990s. This is when companies realized that they could much more quickly-and cheaply-reach their target audience than through other traditional media sources.

The Internet has opened many doors in terms of innovation as well as the transportation of data between disparate systems. XML (extensible Markup Language) was developed as a means to pass information between those systems. Not only is the data contained within the XML format, but also the means to describe the data so that any system reading it can understand the nature of the data. As an adjunct to this, the development of Web Services, with XML at its core, allows these disparate systems to not only share data, but also share functionality. With Web Services, one system can ask another system to perform complex tasks for the other and share the results, thus making the requesting system more robust to its users.

“ECi takes advantage of XML and Web Service technologies,” stated Kyle Kappahahn, Vice President of…

Taylor Nelson Sofres, a market research company, interviews consumers on behalf of mobile phone makers like Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola, helping them figure out which buttons, bells and whistles to put on their new devices. After the cell phones reach stores, another market researcher, GfK, takes over, tracking global sales of the devices.

Taylor Nelson Sofres, which is based in London, and GfK, which is controlled by a nonprofit organization based in Nuremberg, want to bring those services together under one roof. But their plan to merge in a deal that would create the second-largest market researcher in the world, after Nielsen, has run into opposition from WPP Group, an advertising company that wants to strengthen its own market research arm, Kantar.

WPP has already made several approaches to TNS, which have been rebuffed, and might make another, higher bid, its chief executive, Martin Sorrell, said during an interview.

The 50-50 merger agreement between GfK and TNS would value the combined company at about pound(s)2 billion, or $3.95 billion. WPP’s most recent approach, in May, valued TNS alone at about pound(s)1 billion, though the value has fallen as WPP shares have slipped.

The battle over TNS reflects broader changes that are reshaping the market research industry. Midsize players like TNS, GfK and Kantar are under pressure to find partners to meet multinational marketers’ demands for standardized global information. Meanwhile, new companies are springing up, sometimes employing little more than a handful of programmers, to take advantage of a powerful, low-cost research tool, the Internet.

“In three or four years, there will probably be three or four large players and a whole lot of smaller ones,” said David Lowden, chief executive of TNS. “The middle will be squeezed out.”

According to Morgan Stanley, a combined TNS and GfK would have 14 percent of…

We’ve included 100 of each (5 DIFFERENT LAYOUTS PER TEMPLATE!) (THAT’S 2500 EYE-POPPING CUSTOM MADE TEMPLATES!!) to help you build exactly the kind of VRE (Virtual Real Estate) that you want to build; HTML, HyperVRE, WordPress, phpBB, XSitePro, 500 PLR articles/3 formats, 8 ebooks, 14 tutorial vids & 2 software’s: TOTAL VALUE: $19,694.00 YOURS FOR ONLY $197.00! THIS IS A ONE TIME OFFER, YOU WILL HAVE TO PAY $997.00 IF YOU GO TO THE PAGE AND LEAVE OR REFRESH ETC.. Thanks much for checkin us out!

Technorati Tags: | Affiliates, Blogroll, CRM, Family, Fuel Saving Performance Software Chip, Get a Loan, PPC Marketing, Partners, Refinance, call center, debt, lead management, leads, mortgage, mortgage leads, performance, sales, smoke, software, telemarketing | Add new tag, carrier, central heating and cooling contractor, fossil fuel generator, generator, heating and cooling, hvac, te young heating and cooling

It’s no secret that catering to the needs of small to medium-sized businesses (SMB) is a growth area for providers of contact center solutions and services. Though these smaller companies’ end goals are the same as those of large companies (multichannel integration, effective CRM, the most efficient call routing, first-call resolution, customer self-help), their unique needs are different, as are the ways in which it makes sense for them to purchase, implement and run these solutions.

One mistake smaller companies need to avoid is bogging themselves down — confusing their employees in the process and lessening the likelihood the solutions will be used — with features they don’t need. Many smaller companies, unsure from the get-go what their actual requirements are, become distracted by “cool” features, only to realize later they’ve paid for extras that nobody wanted and no one actually uses, despite expensive and time-wasting training on these features.

IP telephony and software-as-a-service solutions have been the greatest two factors in equalizing the playing field between large enterprises and smaller companies. Before these factors, SMBs were completely shut out from technologies from which they could gain a lot of benefits but just didn’t have the capital to lay out to purchase and maintain the solutions.

The good news is that nearly every sexy technology that has been available to large companies in years past: speech recognition, IP contact center solutions, call recording, analytics, skills-based routing, customer self-help solutions and CRM, is now available to smaller companies. In fact, the marketplace has been paying so much attention to SMBs as of late, these companies may feel they went from a lack of choice just a few years ago to too many choices today.

To help SMBs and their call centers choose wisely, we asked several companies — all experienced providers of contact center…