The Bottom-Line Benefits of Behavioral Targeting

When it comes to behavioral targeting, Amazon changed the game. Its recommendation engine set the standard for e-commerce while raising the bar on customer expectations for cross-sell and upsell opportunities. Other B2C companies followed, and now many B2B businesses have caught up, employing lead scoring and nurturing efforts based on visitor behavior.

In the years since Amazon’s debut, the opportunities and challenges around behavioral targeting have evolved. As customer expectations increase and new technology becomes available, marketers need to take behavioral targeting to the next level, experts say.

The goal is to capture as much of a user’s intent as possible, says Manu Mathew, CEO of VisualIQ. Organic and paid keyword searches, email, mobile, or website activity, and interaction with online advertisements are some of the most common types of customer behavior that companies track. But data collection is just the first step.

“While the types of behavior are important in howthey inform good behavioral marketing, where that behavioral information is used is important, too,” says Josh Gordon, director of marketing at Knotice. “Many marketers concentrate on creating traffic for their website with behavior-based targeting, but neglect the importance of carrying that relevant experience throughout the entire website experience. There is a lot of low-hanging fruit with behavior-based targeting that marketers have yet to uncover because the focus between driving traffic and converting it is imbalanced.”

Mathew agrees, saying that most behavioral data is siloed, split among departments and even agencies and other third parties. “Companies need to leverage the intelligence in a cross-channel way to understand the potential value of their audience,” he says. “Overlay attributes with other systems to inform [customers’] value and drive rules and triggers based on customer potential and lifetime value. Today, the value of the audience has not yet come into play.” He says the goal should be to use behavioral data to create deeper engagement with high-value customers. “There is still much alignment that needs to be done [across channels].”

Digging deeper for customer insight

Behavioral targeting is important, but some experts say that it in its current state the practice does not go far enough to understand customer needs. Professors Don Schultz and Martin Block of the Medill School at Northwestern University recently wrote a report Expanding the Success of Behavioral Targeting With Service Resource Availability, which recommends that marketers use deeper insights to understand consumers’ purchase intent.

“Most behavioral targeting today is based on specific products or services which the customers access,” the report states. “If no product or service trail is evident, the algorithms used in behavioral targeting are often not applicable.” Additionally, privacy concerns about data collection are growing, and there are limits to the behavioral data that is currently collected. According to Block, these limits are due in part to the challenges collecting the data:

Behavioral data may not be available, or housed with a third party
New products or those infrequently purchased may not have any behavioral tradition
Privacy issues with data collection, particularly in the digital space

The authors suggest that “the services to which the consumer has access can enhance and improve, and in some cases offer totally new behavioral targeting opportunities for the marketing organization.” Simply put, “when you don’t have perfect behavioral data, there may be other variables to look at,” says Block, who adds that individual customer’s behavioral data is best.

Using consumer survey data from BigResearch, the authors correlated purchase intention to social media activity, ownership of a video game console, and credit card ownership. “It allows the marketer to move beyond directly related consumer behaviors such as book purchases or online searches for products and services to build a holistic view of the specific customer,” the report states. “These seemingly unrelated consumer behaviors predict purchases in different product lines and categories.”

The data found a correlation between owning a video game console and purchase intentions across many product spaces, including non-obvious ones like women’s clothing and health and beauty aids. In addition, those who also own a credit card and use social media were more likely to purchase across a majority of categories.

“This is by no means perfect,” Block says, “but it’s a whole lot better than relying on demographic information if you don’t have solid behavioral data.”

He adds that the research shows that no one variable should be used to build behavioral targeting delivery systems. “Expanding the basic premise of behavioral targeting is in order and should be considered by marketers going forward.”

The benefits of behavioral targeting

Although companies should do more to advance their behavioral marketing strategies, doing any type of behavioral targeting can have its benefits. Interactive Data, a software company that provides solutions for the collections industry, started its behavioral targeting efforts earlier this year as part of a new lead nurturing program. “Before our leads never went from cold to warm to hot,” says Jacqueline Schaeffer, director of compliance. “They were just cold. Looking at a user’s behavior on our site helps us target them better.” Monitoring behavior – including what pages prospects visit, how frequently they return, and what content they download determines lead scores and treatment strategies. The company works with LeadMD on its strategy.

“They become warm leads,” she says. “Monitoring behavior allows us to find out what they’re interested in and we can hit them sooner with the information they’re interested in,” based on the product and industry pages, as well as on customized landing pages built for specific trade shows and events.

As a result of its targeting efforts, Interactive Data has seen a 40 percent lift in leads overall, and a 50 percent increase in closed deals. “The goal,” Schaeffer says, “is to make the sales cycle as efficient as possible by aligning marketing and sales with relevant customer information.”

WFM Grows Up

Addison Lee Delivers Productivity and Service

By Mila D’Antonio

It’s a never-ending struggle heightened by the bad economy: How do contact center managers increase agent productivity while ensuring that those agents work at optimal levels for the customer?

Addison Lee created its efficiency gains by staffing its contact center to match spikes in call volume. According to Chris De Souza, call centre operations manager at the London-based minicab service, call volume is influenced by factors like weather, local events, and times of the year. For example, last winter on a single snowy day, call volume spiked from the typical 10,000 calls in one day to 42,000-and adding agents in a timely manner was practically impossible.

De Souza says that until a couple of years ago the company relied on an ineffective method of managing the influx of calls: rushing to make sure all the seats in the contact center were filled when it started to get busy.

The company needed a way to better match staff to expected call volume. Addison Lee’s call center management had built spreadsheets and used simple math to determine average call duration. Management then calculated how many agents it needed for expected spikes. “You couldn’t factor in holidays or sick days. It became a laborious task,” De Souza says. “One of my people spent half his time dealing with holiday requests.”

In early 2008 De Souza investigated deploying a solution that would automate staffing requests while analyzing and forecasting increases in call volume. Today Addison Lee uses Verint’s Impact 360 Workforce Optimization to analyze call patterns and match agent staffing levels to call flows. “We can much better predict when and where the calls will come in,” De Souza says.

In addition, the company’s 300 agents can use the system to request holidays, and it automatically responds. “[Agents] don’t have to wait four days to process [a request],” De Souza says. “They feel more empoweredand they don’t have to badger management. It’s schoolyard politics. People feel more grown up about the situation.”

The forecasting component is also helping the company better plan for increases in business. For example, in the early summer local transportation chiefs went on strike and transportation was virtually nonexistent. “London grounded to a halt, effectively,” De Souza says. With the knowledge from past strikes that daily call figures would spike to around 20,000, De Souza and his department ran several scenarios using the WFM forecast tool to gauge possible workforce needs during the strike. The predictive asset was, De Souza says, “spot on,” and the improved staff planning allowed the company to comfortably maintain service levels. Answer time increased to only nine seconds, up from the typical one second.

Addison Lee’s 70 at-home agents benefit as well. The company used to manage them by telephone. “It was very inefficient,” De Souza says. Now they all have the same tool on their desktops and can see the same information as the in-house agents. The tool also helps with adherence. In the past agents used to take breaks at incorrect times, which would throw the whole scheduling system out of balance. “We’re not only interested in when people are taking calls, but also when they shouldn’t be taking calls,” De Souza says.

For De Souza, the benefits of the workforce management tools quickly became obvious. Agents used to take 20 calls per hour, now they take 26 calls. In addition, proper scheduling has allowed the company to reduce headcount by 80 agents and save 1.5 million ($2.47 million) since deploying the solution.

Now De Souza is in the process of implementing live scorecards through the workforce management tool to give agents real-time feedback about their performance; salaries will be determined by how well agents perform based on monthly reviews that include call duration, call quality, and adherence.

The company is also considering whether to use the tool to automate the processing of salaries. Currently, if an agent is absent or works overtime, a team manager must manually enter the information. If he forgets to enter the data, agents are underpaid or overpaid.

De Souza plans to keep pushing the envelope with workforce management, saying the possibilities for increased efficiency and productivity are endless. “It’s only as limited as your imagination.

“Part of the deal in doing a cross-media campaign is people get hit in the medium of their choice,” Rose says. “With Elixia, all three components, [direct mail, email, and PURLs], were made relevant to the recipient. This is the type of [technology] that for many people opens up a whole set of business opportunities.”

Fiserv Improves Its Own Financial Results ompetitive pressures compelled Fiserv to reexamine its service quality. One area of opportunity executives uncovered was agent productivity, specifically, scheduling the appropriate number of agents to match expected call volume.

“Historically, we haven’t had a way to measure how well we’re doing that,” says Jason Hogan, director of operations at Fiserv, a financial services technology provider. “We could identify what some of the gaps were, but our [question] was that if we are utilizing our existing staff, can we provide additional activities to service that customer even better than we have been?” he says.

Effectively identifying those gaps required technology, so about a year ago Fiserv deployed IEX TotalView workforce management software from NICE Systems. Today Fiserv management has an at-a-glance view of agents’ activities and schedules. “It allows us to do forecasting and call prediction[and] to decide how to optimize offline activities,” Hogan says.

It also allows Fiserv to increase its use of at-home agents by optimizing such offline activities as meetings, coaching, refresher training, breaks, vacation time, and cross-training for skills development.

According to Hogan, having efficient schedules benefits the budget in several ways. The most immediate savings for Fiserv relates to overtime. Fiserv has reduced the overtime usually needed during peak intervals by aligning agent staffing levels with the company’s call volume peaks and valleys. “With overtime being at a higher pay rate, we see immediate savings there,” Hogan says.

Increasing schedule efficiency also reduces the number of agents required to meet service level goals. This gives agents time to focus on offline activities like cross-training. “When we cross-train our agents to handle multiple call types, it increases our agent utilization by allowing us to leverage [agents] to take calls from other channels and business units during slow times of the day or week,” Hogan says. “Also, by proactively planning to leverage these agents, reduces the business’ need to staff for every expected peak and thus reduces overall headcount requirements.”

WTH Navigates Complex Workforce Management

By Jeremy Nedelka

The complexity of call center routing varies by industry and enterprise. But few routing strategies are more intricate than that of World Travel Holdings (WTH), which owns 10 travel brands, including Cruises.com and Rooms.com.

To maximize its distributed workforce, comprising of both in-house and at-home sales and service agents who specialize in various product types, WTH uses an equally complex workforce management solution. Approximately 85 percent of WTH’s agents deal with sales; 40 percent work at home. “Essentially we need to get the most out of people’s expertise,” says Jeff Smith, vice president of sales and general manager at WTH. “We sell a complex product-travel-with long talk times and a consultative sales process.”

The company’s call center operation is set up as one virtual entity across multiple locations. WTH’s skills structure means that the company has to schedule agents based on not only their availability and which brand they sell, but also whether they handle less complex or very complex (and therefore more expensive) products. “Ensuring that we’re staffed appropriately so that we can minimize overflow to a secondary agent is very important,” Smith says. “I don’t think we’re unique in wanting the right person to answer the right call every time.”

Last year WTH partnered with GMT, a workforce management solutions provider, to track, forecast, and schedule agents based on desired service levels.

According to Smith, the key metric when implementing the workforce management solution was call abandonment. “To my knowledge not a single abandoned call has bought a cruise from us yet,” he says. Improved scheduling based on forecast needs has reduced abandonment by 25 percent over the past year. Similarly, cost per transaction has declined 13 percent, and revenue per hour has increased 15 percent.

Improving scheduling has also reduced attrition by 18 percent over the past year. This is because agents are more involved in determining their hours. Rather than use a bid system in which WTH sets shift times, agents enter their availability into the system (through the employee time center) and it creates schedules that balance preference and need. Managers can also adjust the number of agents as demand changes.

One of the reasons the workforce management solution works so well in WTH’s call center environment, Smith says, is because the system helps WTH conform to its travel partners’ regulations. “We can access agent adherence throughout the day, complete with reporting, to ensure we’re in compliance.”

Since deploying workforce management there has been a 4 percent improvement in the company’s service level (80 percent of calls are answered in 30 seconds or less). “In the end, if you take care of your associates, they will end up taking care of those customers,” he says. “This takes us one step closer, from good to great.”

Fiserv Improves Its Own Financial Results

By Jennifer Munsey

Competitive pressures compelled Fiserv to reexamine its service quality. One area of opportunity executives uncovered was agent productivity, specifically, scheduling the appropriate number of agents to match expected call volume.

“Historically, we haven’t had a way to measure how well we’re doing that,” says Jason Hogan, director of operations at Fiserv, a financial services technology provider. “We could identify what some of the gaps were, but our [question] was that if we are utilizing our existing staff, can we provide additional activities to service that customer even better than we have been?” he says.

Effectively identifying those gaps required technology, so about 10 years ago Fiserv deployed IEX TotalView workforce management software from NICE Systems. Today Fiserv management has an at-a-glance view of agents’ activities and schedules. “It allows us to do forecasting and call prediction[and] to decide how to optimize offline activities,” Hogan says.

It also allows Fiserv to optimize such activities as meetings, coaching, refresher training, breaks, vacation time, and cross-training for skills development.

According to Hogan, having efficient schedules benefits the budget in several ways. The most immediate savings for Fiserv relates to overtime. Fiserv has reduced the overtime usually needed during peak intervals by aligning agent staffing levels with the company’s call volume peaks and valleys. “With overtime being at a higher pay rate, we see immediate savings there,” Hogan says.

Increasing schedule efficiency also reduces the number of agents required to meet service level goals. This gives agents time to focus on offline activities like cross-training. “When we cross-train our agents to handle multiple call types, it increases our agent utilization by allowing us to leverage [agents] to take calls from other channels and business units during slow times of the day or week,” Hogan says. “Also, by proactively planning to leverage these agents, reduces the business’ need to staff for every expected peak and thus reduces overall headcount requirements.”

Frequency Marketing Programs – Five Best Practices

In the last few days I’ve met with two airlines and discussed with each what we consider to be “best practices” for frequency marketing programs. I also got a personal experience, courtesy of British Airways, in “worst practices” for frequent flyer programs. In Martha’s and my opinion, the best frequency marketing programs (whether for airlines or other firms) have five qualities: Insight, modularity, openness, customer management, and simplicity.

1. Insight. The best practice is never to waste an opportunity to gain insight about a customer. Best-practice programs might offer a choice of services or treatments that reveals something about a customer. For example, by allowing customers to identify their own prize in advance, marketers gain additional insight into what motivates particular customers. Loyalty programs in financial services take advantage of the insights gained by identifying people who might choose an award for lifetime achievement, versus those who choose the largest prize for short-term behaviors.

2. Modularity. An effective program is structured in modules, enabling participants to mix and match aspects to their own preferences. Modular offerings are a practical way to allow for customer-driven personalization without going to the extreme of full (and costly) customization. Key aspects of a program, like member qualification, can be developed with several alternatives, and customers can be offered a set of guided choices to select from. A sophisticated marketing approach would offer different sets of choices for different groups of customers based on their value – so everybody wouldn’t be choosing from the same set. For example, lower value airline customers might chose from rewards alternatives that include additional upgrades, while high value flyers might have choices including additional redemptions. In addition, modules should allow partners to be added or subtracted from a program through a kind of “plug and play” method.

3. Openness. Consumers value openness – a service or a program which works with others. The more open the system is, the more beneficial it is to customers. Transferable points and rewards offer the customer the greatest flexibility in using program earnings. The goal of the loyalty program is not to “buy” the loyalty of customer (that’s not possible), but to act on insight about each customer, and then deliver what each customer wants, how they want it. The consumer-perceived barrier to switching brands is less about economics (i.e., the value of points), but more about convenience (having to “teach” another program about the consumer’s own desires and preferences). Openness is an inevitability in loyalty programs of all types, including frequent flyer plans. And the benefit of a loyalty program for the marketer is customer insight – so the more choices available to the customer, the better!

4. Customer management. All frequency marketing programs should be managed around customers, and not products, routes, regions, or channels. So align the organization with identified sets of customers, and measure your managers by the positive impact they have on customer behavior. Organize your marketing effort so the customers whose behaviors you want to change are taken care of by people whose annual evaluations are based on improving the numbers. That way you’ll send a clear signal to the Marketing Department that you want to make progress in each customer segment.

5. Simplicity. A program with fewer rules and restrictions is more engaging for the customer, and it’s more trustworthy. It’s better for an airline to narrow its offers to those that can be delivered dependably, rather than including elements which can’t be relied upon. Every time a frequent flyer tries to redeem miles and is frustrated by the lack of “mileage” seats available, his trust in the brand declines. If you can’t deliver reliably on what you promise in your loyalty program, you risk undermining trust in your brand. So, while it’s important to manage the provision of free airline seats in an economical way, it may be better not to offer deep-discount prizes at all, if they can’t be made available to the vast majority of flyers who will be seeking them out.

BAD EXAMPLE: British Airways mileage upgrades. BA just announced they will allow members to use their BA miles to upgrade their flights. Hooray! I thought, BA is finally doing what other airlines have been doing all along. But not so fast. I soon learned that this new BA policy is not “simple” at all, but extremely complicated. Guess what? If a travel agency books your flight (as is probably true of most business travel), then you aren’t eligible to upgrade with miles! I complained, and here’s the “fine print” that makes BA’s mileage upgrades not so simple: “Miles for Upgrade is permitted on eligible British Airways published fares only (Fare classes are: J, C, d, R, i, W, E, T, Y, B, H) but is not permitted on bookings made with a travel agent. Miles for Upgrade is not permitted where flights are sold as part of a package holiday or where flights and ground arrangements, such as prepaid hotels, cars, transfers and experiences, are booked and paid for in the same transaction. Flights booked and paid for separately from any ground arrangements remain eligible for Miles for Upgrade. Miles for Upgrade can only be applied to bookings which are made in the member’s Executive Club membership country.” Come on, BA, can the marketing department at any company really be that stupid?

What is Social Media’s Impact on CRM?

Within the ever-expanding world of social media, there’s an abundance of wild enthusiasm about the potential for new applications and ways of conducting business. There is not, however, much in the way of bottom-line value for businesses and customers.

Gartner research director Adam Sarner, the author of the firm’s recent report, The Business Impact of Social Computing on CRM, believes that this could soon change – if companies learn how to more effectively leverage social media as a CRM tool that serves customer needs.

“CRM is where the rubber meets the road, one of the places where you can see a viable business model,” he says. “The idea of CRM is to treat different people differently. Well, where else are you going to find the information that lets you do this better than in social media? I think [social media] is made for CRM.”

For now, only a minority of organizations has attempted to build online communities and fewer still have succeeded in growing them, Sarner says. “Most are still struggling with ‘what’s the business justification for any of this?'” says Tac Anderson, Hewlett Packard’s social media manager for its Imaging division.

Another obstacle is the follow-the-herd mentality when it comes to social media applications and platforms. “Companies don’t have a good understanding of the ‘what’ and the ‘why,'” Sarner says. “They’ll say, ‘Facebook – we want to do that.’ But when I respond, ‘Why do you want to do that?’ they don’t have an answer.” And if the companies themselves don’t have a social media raison d’etre, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to make a case for existing and potential customers to participate.

A third issue is the lack of a reliable roadmap. Companies struggle with linking their CRM and social media efforts because there are few examples to model those efforts after. Even if there were, many of the successes will be behind the scenes, just as they often are with direct marketing and “regular” CRM. “Companies that are integrating CRM and social media are being quiet about it,” says HP’s Anderson. “I know we are.”

Just as a company should focus on finding the right products for each customer, the company should focus on finding the right media and communication channels for customers, says Martha Rogers, Ph.D. “Companies shouldn’t engage in “social media” just to make money on that set of channels so much as to make sure they are using all the tools in their toolbox to optimize the value of each customer, and overall customer equity.”

Four steps to integrating social media and CRM
To help create a social media blueprint, Gartner has identified four steps for companies endeavoring to harness social media for CRM. The first and most important: spelling out why it matters.

Sarner likens current programs that seek to link social media and CRM to the first-generation company blogs of 1997 and 1998, which are remembered mostly for their randomness. Those entities regularly featured stock quotes and buy-now widgets on the same page; current corporate social media programs face a similar identity crisis.

“Don’t just throw technology at it,” Sarner cautions. “I see tags for Digg and everything else, and I can’t help but think, ‘There’s not a customer in the world who’d be interested in this.'”

Companies need to define the goals and purpose of their social media initiatives, and how they will tie into other CRM initiatives. “If there are no metrics around something and there’s no purpose to it, you’re basically just playing on the Internet,” Sarner says.

The second step requires companies to cede control to customers. Only by taking a step back and accepting community members’ criticism can a company generate the trust that serves as a cornerstone for any social media application. “Understand that [community members] are going to say negative things about you. If you’re not willing to make changes or be responsive, don’t have a community,” Sarner says.

Along those lines, Gartner recommends hiring a community advocate, an individual charged with monitoring the company’s social media activities and soliciting community feedback. That individual should also be vested with the authority to respond and make changes as he sees fit.

Without someone minding the shop, abuses tend to multiply. HP’s Anderson worries about the potential for privacy violations in CRM-focused social media projects, and stresses that the project’s overseers must be clear about their intent. “If you go into this trying to tell customers why your product is the best, your social network is going to suck,” he says.

A third step also hinges on company/customer interaction. Gartner’s Sarner believes that smart companies will distinguish between different types of community members and reward individuals for different types of behavior. By using social reputation technologies, companies will be able to identify the quality of an individual’s participation – separating what Gartner calls the creators (“I want to own this”) from the contributors (“I want to be a part of this”), opportunists (“since I’m here…”), and lurkers (“I’ll reap the rewards”).

“I’m not saying you give anybody money for being a shill,” Sarner stresses. “I’m saying that working with the real advocates will make the community stronger. The more involved you are with the community, the better off you’ll be.”

Finally, companies attempting to reap CRM benefits from their social media efforts must go out of their way to acquire the necessary skills to do so. What’s crucial to remember: Nobody really knows how to do this just yet; there’s not a right way or a wrong way. Sarner suggests that as companies become more sophisticated about social media, they’ll tap psychiatrists and even anthropologists to help mine their communities for psychographic data. “There’s loads of intimate information you can access. The trick is harnessing it correctly,” he says.

In any event, it won’t be easy. While many pundits assume that social media is cheap, Sarner estimates that setting up and maintaining an online community will cost about $500,000. “You have to deal with people, internal [issues], and technology. There’s a lot of hidden costs and time associated with it,” he adds. “But if you nurture a community successfully, there’s a huge payoff at the end.”

The Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Marketing

In general, marketers are good at managing their marketing systems in house on a day-to-day basis. But the skill sets used to create day-to-day reports and analyses are different than those needed to assess the information in a database to make decisions about how to track customer behavior, what data is needed, and how to attack the marketplace.

While company marketing departments have plenty of talented creative types, they may lack the left-brain analytics experts needed to better understand their customers in today’s information-rich, multichannel environment. Additionally, critical IT resources are often tasked with a company’s financial and operational systems, thus leaving marketing out in the cold. For this reason, the outsourcing of marketing activities like reporting and analysis is catching on.

Many marketing and advertising functions can and have been outsourced with varying degrees of success. From the most strategic elements like marketing strategy and program planning, to the more operational and tactical elements like customer database and customer analytics, all aspects can be outsourced.

Overall, however, while many companies will seek insight from consulting partners on the strategic elements of marketing, few outsource the tactical elements. CMOs are comfortable getting strategic advice and even using strategy consultants on their teams when developing a marketing strategy, but in the end, strategic elements such as marketing mix, spend allocations, and marketing communication strategies are just too critical to the operation to outsource them. A CMO’s best chance of leveraging outsourced resources is on the tactical side.

By far, one of the most outsourced functions is the creation and ongoing maintenance of analytical and marketing execution capabilities, including such activities as outsourcing customer database hosting/management, customer reporting, customer analytics, including advance modeling and statistical services, and overall support for the marketing lifecycle. With the focus of IT staff on business operations versus marketing, CMOs often can benefit from outsourcing these types of operational needs to a vendor. Marketers can then focus on customer segmentation, customer management, and program/campaign execution and measurement, while the outsourcer takes care of all the technology and related support services necessary to compete in today’s demanding marketing environment. In fact, the increasing interest in outsourcing the tactical elements of marketing has spurred the growth of software as a service (SaaS) providers in the marketing space.

The biggest issue, however, with CMOs outsourcing any part of their business is a perceived sense of lack of control. In the past things like data security and other factors might have discouraged companies from outsourcing part of their marketing processes. Today off-the-shelf, inexpensive technologies can not only solve these problems, but for many companies, the security and checks and balances of SaaS and marketing service providers are often much better than companies’ own processes and policies.

Prevalent is the thinking that if a person in another office or firm is doing the work, they won’t be as responsive, or will attempt to point a finger at another firm for problems. The comfort of having a person in the same company, though, is often overrated. Several CMOs and marketing executives have been very public about their increased sense of control when using outsourcers, saying things like, “If I call our marketing partner even after hours, the CEO or account manager will get back to me within hours, something that would not be possible with a fully in-sourced solution.”

Overall, if an outsourced provider is selected and managed carefully, and if the relationship is maintained at the proper levels using service level agreements, or some other type of assurance that the solution will be up some percentage of the time, many of these issues can be avoided, and moreover, a productive symbiotic relationship can exist between the outsourcer and client.

About the author: Michael Caccavale is CEO of Pluris.