Employee engagement is about creating value and meaning for staff. Companies are beginning to see that the real benefits of creating a climate of engagement with employees can ensure delivery of an excellent service. But how do you engage with employees?

Much of what I've learned over the years about Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service has to do with the critical importance of customer data. It's how companies generate the right customer data, manage and share data the right way, and use it at the right time, and to best effect to optimize loyalty and profitability, that makes them successful, or not, on an individual customer basis. It's impossible to be successful without having as much relevant insight about customers as possible.

Very often vendors describe their social CRM offerings as extensions to an older paradigm of CRM, one that I think is vanishing and becoming hard to reconcile with the reality of today’s marketplace. Denis Pombriant, Founder and managing principal, Beagle Research Group, LLC talks about how social media can be leveraged for sales and customer service analytics.

In an attempt to determine what factors lead to worker job satisfaction, psychologist Frederick Herzberg conducted a study in which people were asked to describe their most satisfying and dissatisfying experiences on the job and to give the reasons why. They also were asked to describe their levels of performance in the two experiences.

Long-term customer retention is especially challenging as social networks and new media allow customers a forum for airing complaints about companies. A new focus on the customer experience has emerged, as businesses walk a fine line of keeping a steady supply of happy customers while maintaining a healthy bottom line with their customer retention programs.

CRM failures have been costly, disruptive, and embarrassing. Red ink, shareholder losses, upset customers, lost market share, lawsuits, and career setbacks are all typical outcomes of CRM failures.

Madan Sheina, principal analyst, software application at OVUM, discusses 3 technologies - Web 2.0, smarter and high performance analytics, and virtualization - and how these technologies will impact the development and use of BI within the enterprise.

A persistent concern among chief executives and heads of business units is the question of "do we have the right talent in our organizations today?" Row Henson, HCM Fellow at Oracle, also comments that CEOs are finally recognizing that without talent, companies can not have products that customers will buy and bring in the revenue the companies need to survive and grow.

What is the measure of success? For some it is money, for others power, still for others its possession. For me, its not about what is at the end of the rainbow, but the journey along the way.

Revenues from the Malaysian IT/ITeS outsourcing industry are expected to grow at a CAGR of 15% to reach $1.9 billion by 2013, according to a joint publication by Outsourcing Malaysia and ValueNotes . Currently, IT outsourcing services in Malaysia have a greater share of the overall outsourcing market, followed by BPO services; while knowledge services outsourcing, still in its nascent stage, has a smaller share.