Business Intelligence / Analytics Technology Drives 42% Improvement in Customer Retention in Best-in-Class Companies

Best-in-Class Companies Post Significant Gains in Service Profitability, Customer Retention, and First Call Fix Rates

BOSTON, MA–(Marketwire – December 6, 2007) – The recently published study by Aberdeen, a Harte-Hanks company (NYSE: HHS), “Get Smart: Business Intelligence and Analytics for Service Organizations,” found that leading field service organizations are adopting business intelligence and data analytics technology and best practices to enable better and faster decisions and reporting within post-sale service organizations. They are also beginning to deploy simulation modeling within their organizations to perform sophisticated “what-if” planning and forecasting.

Among the service organizations recently surveyed, companies that have implemented technology for reporting and decision support have improved:

--  Service profitability by 17%--  Customer retention rates by an average of 29%--  Service Level Agreement (SLA) performance by 33%  

Best-in-Class organizations are showing greater improvements, with service profitability up 18%, customer retention increase of 42%, and a 44% improvement in SLA compliance.

“Top organizations have realized the value of having accurate, readily available information to drive service decisions,” said Micky Long, Research Director at Aberdeen Group. “By leveraging technology and applying the right business processes and workflows, organizations are making better, more informed decisions, providing better analysis of service performance and giving service executives the tools to perform rigorous business analysis. The result is reduced costs, better customer retention and higher service profitability.”

Other service organization Best-in-Class characteristics include:

--  80% have enterprise-wide balanced scorecard initiatives in place--  71% have a vice president or higher executive overseeing service  functions--  40% have established enterprise-wide standards and process to ensure  data accuracy

Long recommends that service organizations consider the following strategies to drive efficiency and decision support within their service organization:

--  Implement technology and process to ensure data accuracy within the  service operation.--  Provide service organization with total visibility into parts,  workforce and knowledge across the enterprise.--  Implement technology to enable "what-if" simulations.--  Focus attention on longer-term customer-facing metrics like  retention as well as profit.  

Over 250 companies participated in this quantitative study, including: ABB, Circuit City, Honeywell, KLA-Tencor, Kodak, NCR, Rockwell Automation, Trane, and Siemens.

A complimentary copy of this report is made available due in part by the following underwriters: I.B.I.S., Inc., ServiceBench, Inc., and Tavant Technologies, Inc. To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, visit: http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=4189.

About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company

Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets, corporations turn to Aberdeen™ for insights that drive decisions.

As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen’s analytical and independent view of the “customer optimization” process of Harte-Hanks (Information – Opportunity – Insight – Engagement – Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit Aberdeen http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to http://www.harte-hanks.com.

© 2007 Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company260 Franklin StreetBoston, Massachusetts 02110-3112Telephone: (617) 723-7890Fax: (617) 723-7897www.aberdeen.com

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Business Intelligence on the Web

Since the turn of the century, management has had a growing fascination with “The Dashboard”. A set of metrics and visual representations of performance that allows C-level executives to understand:

- Where the company is going,

- Where it has been, and

- Provide the information to take decisions about where they want it to go.

A recent Aberdeen Group report has highlighted that there has recently been a turn in the way that companies implement Business Intelligence in their Enterprises. This indicates a large swing away from the “build-it” approach, and towards the “buy-it” approach.

For Aberdeen Group this represents not only a swing away from traditional Business Intelligence models, but also that companies are beginning to see the value in outsourcing the BI and IT skills.

In their report, they go on to say, “The current use of traditional information delivery technologies among Best-in-Class organizations will give way to emerging methods within the next 12-24 months, according to survey responses.”

Again, the potential opportunity for consultants here is enormous. Facilitating a company’s transition to a SaaS type BI model, reviewing the business processes underlying the entire data structures, and providing the expertise required to embed the Business Intelligence initiatives.

Regardless of whether your clients are leaning towards off-premise BI or not, there are still areas where you can help them.

- Asses their skill sets for BI – Poor performing companies are three times more likely to be deficient in this area.

- Determine the data sources and the timeframes that information would be required. Sixty percent of poor performing companies do not have information available to them until after one week.

- Embed the use of BI, to do this you will need to make sure that:

o Information is Actionable – relevance is tied to business goals;

o Information is Timely – information must be delivered within a time-frame that provides opportunity to act

o Information is Accessible – knowledge workers and decision makers must be able to grasp the meaning of the information and take advantage of the BI tools.

- Help them establish a BI centre of Excellence – an independent internal organization that represents all departments.

- Beware of Information overload – Ensure the right information is there to facilitate decisions, but avoid paralysis by analysis. Ensure your BI center of excellence makes sure that all measures are useful for optimal decision-making.

- Help them progress toward a self-service BI environment – Get them to a point where end users can reduce their dependence on a central IT function,

MicroStrategy and the Remaining BI market Space

The world of Business Intelligence is shrinking and growing both at the same time. With the recent purchases of Hyperion by Oracle, Business Objects by SAP, and Cognos by IBM, the top three players, the number of independent vendors has shrunk significantly.

So why have they bought into these companies? Obviously, the sector is growing exceptionally fast, booming in fact. Regardless of what else has happened technologically the dashboard remains the Killer app of the early 21^st century, particularly for senior leaders.

The three purchasing companies anticipate buying market share, a developed and mature technological solution for integration with their own products, and purchasing some of the talent that has developed the products and sales pipelines for these companies.

Sounds like a good plan, particularly the first two; but holding onto the talent in these companies could prove incredibly difficult. In fact, MicroStrategy, the remaining leader in the sector, is relying on it.

Within a day of the IBM announcement, this company was setting out its stall for disgruntled employees of the three recently purchased companies. Why not, Aberdeen Group noted in their recent report “Delivering Actionable Information to the Enterprise”, “BI skills are in limited supply”.

So there is a pool of talented people, experts in their area and knowledgeable of their markets, suddenly drafted into much larger companies, finding that their goals and ambitions are now not aligned with those of their new parent company, and quickly starting to feel like small fish in a very large pond.

MicroStrategy sees the whole acquisition phase as a great time of opportunity, possibly the greatest one they have had as a company to date. There overt statements and approaches to employees of recently acquired BI companies is one area where they can snap up disaffected talent and possibly buy their way into some long term relationships within this sector.

Other advantages come from the acts of acquisition itself. All three companies will have to focus on maintaining their client base, integrating their offerings with those of their new parent companies, and aligning their messaging and sales efforts.

MicroStrategy, on the other hand, is free to poach disaffected clients, unhappy with the change in suppliers, and they will be free to continue to develop their products and technologies, while other companies focus on integration.

This will also be a time for them to look at extending partnerships and growing their distribution channels. Why would Accenture, or CapGemini, dominant management consultancies that offer Cognos to their clients, want to represent the products of IBM, One of their direct competitors?

BI is very safe as a separate sector despite the removal of the top three players as independent companies. It will of course get tighter for the existing players, but the MicroStrategy approach shows that with a bit of innovation, and the right level of determination, this could be their best opportunity for breakaway growth.

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