Connecting the Dots - SaaS Support for the 21 st century

Paul Lake - Director, Support Oracle CRM on Demand

Linda Sandgren - Director, Operations Oracle CRM On Demand

Your company is about to start selling its on premise product in a Software as a Service model. You can hear the groans ripple through your support organization.

But -- Wait a Sec! The tough road ahead can be exciting and successful! We invite you to come explore with Paul, one successful strategy for enabling your customers' success in a Saas environment.

Developing a Collaborative Global Support Environment - It Takes A Village

Andy Westlund - North America Support Director
Mentor Graphics Corporation

In the world of social networking, supporting customers is rapidly evolving into a community based activity. To move our support organizations further along the Knowledge-Centered Support continuum, the challenge is how to encourage collaboration within the support organization, especially across regional boundaries.

At Mentor Graphics we believe this challenge is akin to the challenge of motivating customers to interact with one another in an online community: A problem is presented to a loosely defined group of potential problem-solvers, none of whom are obligated to take ownership of the issue. What motivates someone to contribute an answer? How are such contributors recognized and rewarded? Or, in some cases, coached and corrected?

Andy Westlund, North America Support Director, will chronicle Mentor Graphics’ recent experiences in addressing these issues. Hear about the progress that has been made with Mentor Graphics Communities, as well as the new Mentor Ideas web site where users can vote on product improvements. Learn how lessons from external communities are being applied to encourage and increase collaboration within the support organization.

Leveraging Standards in Global Support

Todd Abney - Global Support Director
Novell

Novell continues to evolve its Global Support operations and adopting SCP keeps proper focus on quality and service improvement. This presentation will show details of Novell's journey around efficiencies, consistencies, and focusing on the right goals.

Strategies for Supporting the SMB Market

Jim Moore - VP Customer Support and Services
Sage Software

Supporting the SMB market presents some unique challenges. How do you effectively support a non-technical customer using a very technical product? How do you provide great service to customers who aren’t willing to pay as much as larger customers but can be even more demanding in their expectations of you? Can you leverage VARs to help provide support?

What's all the buzz about collaboration?

Greg Oxton - Executive Director
Consortium for Service Innovation

Is a healthy support organization a quite calm place or a beehive of activity and interaction? The Consortium for Service Innovation has been studying collaboration as a critical element of the support process; we call it intelligent swarming. In this session we will describe the work we have done on assessing the health and value of collaboration in support. We will explore questions like;

• When does collaboration create value and when is it inappropriate?
• Is your organization a collaboration friendly place?
• What can you do to improve the collaboration factor and what are the benefits?

Transforming from a Product Centric to a Customer Centric Organization

Beth Martinko - Vice President, Customer Success
Avid Technology

As the world leader in digital media creation tools for film, video, audio, animation, games, and broadcast markets, Avid Technology Inc. has had a strong product focus due to its industry leading brands. Beth Martinko, Vice President of Customer Success for Avid will discuss the strategies used in - and the challenges arising from – transforming the global support organization into a customer-centric operation. Beth will highlight how the company has aligned the efforts of its three major business units into a cohesive, customer focused organization capable of effectively serving the needs of a diverse and expanding global client base.

Vendor Management - Strategies for Managing Your Outsource Relationships

Scott C. Lessard - Sr. Program Manager, Global Support, Vendor Management
NetApp

Outsource providers often hold the keys to meeting business strategy objectives. However, many organizations either do not have a dedicated vendor management function, or worse, do not have a specific vendor management strategy. It would seem for every client-vendor relationship that is failing, there is an organization that isn't managing their vendors as effectively as they could. In this session, we will discuss the keys to having successful vendor engagements from vendor selection to multi-vendor strategy. Using NetApp's recent vendor search for outsource technical support as a case study, we will look at the steps that will help ensure the vendor you select is the right vendor. Additionally, we will look at NetApp's new vendor management function within the Global Support organization and show how your company can benefit from a cohesive strategy towards strategic vendors.