Posts Tagged ‘Study’

Study: Smaller towns lack job growth tools

Study: Smaller towns lack job growth tools
Ann Arbor — Local governments believe there are opportunities to grow existing businesses in their communities, but many aren’t engaged in economic development or have few tools to increase jobs, a new study says.

Read more on Detroit News

Love is a powerful painkiller, study finds

Love is a powerful painkiller, study finds
Researchers say just a photo of one’s beloved activates the brain’s reward centers something like a drug might. Learning how to harness this could help relieve pain without drug-induced side effects, scientists suggest. Sooner or later, love usually ends up hurting. But in its early, blissful throes, it actually lessens pain — at least of the physical kind. That’s the finding, reported Wednesday …

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Briefs | Results of mountain transit study out

Briefs | Results of mountain transit study out
Boulder County recently asked residents, commuters and recreational users of its mountain towns to provide thoughts on potential mountain transit service serving their communities.

Read more on Boulder Weekly

Feldman Law Center – Harvard?s Study, Citi?s Recommendations and Home Loan Modifications

A new report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies indicates that if there is to be any stabilization in the housing market, it will be at “…extremely low levels that will make the climb up all that more difficult.” Muting any of the recent news in the steadiness of new construction and sales are housing price declines, a record level of foreclosures, rising interest rates, and a shrinking job market. Summing up the study, Nicolas P. Retsinas, Director of the Joint Center said, “Although there are some signs of improvement or at least steadiness in new construction and sales, housing starts stand near 60+ year lows and any life in home sales is coming from distressed foreclosure sales, temporary first-time buyer tax credits, and low interest rates that moved higher in recent weeks.”

Sounding like they were trying to find anything at all possible to spin to the positive, the center was optimistic about the coming of age of the “echo baby boom”, counting on the largest generation in American history to “refuel demand for housing of all types”. Considering that the EBB’s are witnessing the meltdown firsthand, it’s hard to make a convincing argument that the collective will be urgently buying real estate any time soon.

Separately Roger Orf, CEO of Citigroup Property Investors, was calling for governments to force banks to sell their foreclosed properties in a process he dubbed “creative destruction”. Orf favors an immediate clearing of the deck in terms of toxic properties as opposed to the malaise of a gradual unwinding of assets.  Orf doesn’t expect fully functioning property lending markets to return before 2011, by when he hoped banks will have completed repair of their capital bases through a wave of real estate sales. The amount of damage to real estate prices as a result of Mr. Orf’s proposal is unknown but when the government forced savings and loans to sell their junk bond portfolios in the early 90’s prices dropped by up to 85% on bonds that were paying interest and backed with solid financials. In that instance, buyers simply stepped aside and let bond prices plummet to levels that carried no risk for the buyers.

What both reports signify is that the need for home loan modifications will continue for the next few years as prices either stabilize or drop and interest rates on mortgages continue to reset and recast. With a relatively small number of reluctant and extremely careful new homebuyers the lenders, servicers, and investors behind today’s mortgages could become much more interested in getting mortgage loan modifications completed, especially if a modification is the only way to generate cash flow from a property in a portfolio. While it’s unlikely that Mr. Orf’s proposition ever comes to pass, the foreclosure of properties will become less desirable if more buyers don’t materialize or if the value of REO’s at the banks continues to decrease.

With over six hundred completed loan modifications The Feldman Law Center proven home loan modification process can help homeowners to either avoid or stop a foreclosure proceeding. If you are struggling with your payments and worried about the possibility of foreclosure, call The Feldman Law Center at (800) 527 8497. Take the first step toward regaining control of your mortgage payments today.

Case Study: Successful Execution of CRM

Recently, a company spent $25 million in CRM system’s execution.

The company has been one of the leading forest-products companies in the world but for the past several years, office products – pens, computers, desks etc., have comprised the largest segment of its annual sales.

One-third of the company’s revenue is generated from its online business and because office product customers rely on flawless e-commerce site performance to help reduce their administrative overhead, competition within this sector is strong.

What Prompted The Company To Go For CRM?
Of late, the company’s application server was failing to meet volume and performance expectations.

The web site was not integrated with customer account information, so clients with questions about order position or account balances flooded the call centers. The customers were demanding and each customer had different needs.

As the company was in B2B business, managers of the contracted company were primarily treated as customers. After a lot of discussion, the management decided to go for CRM to:

Implement electronic report delivery – to eliminate report production costs

Scalability – to manage the growth of users and reports

Ease of use – to respond in a timely and precise manner to all users, both inside and outside of the organisation.

The initiative was started to invest in CRM to strengthen the company’s internal processes and also to provide customers with a greater economic value.

Roadmap To Implement CRM
The implementation was planned in a phased manner. During the design phase of the implementation, a cross-functional team was chalked out of business and IT managers.

This was done to ensure that the IT department had a comprehensive understanding of the business strategies and customer’s needs. Different sets of requirements were made for different customer profiles.

How each individual client interacted with the organisation was given chief importance. It was concluded that there were primarily three areas where client interaction was most – customer service center, dispatch department and online portal.

This process helped the company to focus on specific technologies that would improve customer service and discard those that weren’t right for the company’s goals.

Consequently, the company bought individual software applications (instead of a complete end-to-end CRM system) for customer interaction and operation management and integrated them with the existing order-processing technologies.

Putting CRM Into Operation
Once all the building blocks were placed in order, it wasn’t a difficult task for the IT department to implement the CRM system.

It was decided to apply the new technology to the two largest customer channels, phone and web and so it was paramount that both remain fully functional.

As the company had a huge client base, most of the production deployment was done over the weekend when there was less number of client calls and when there was less number of people accessing the company’s web site.

The data migration was another step which was carved out with utmost importance because it required cleansing of the 2.2 million customer records from multiple disparate databases into a single customer profile database.

Mantra For Successful Implementation of CRM
The company was able to successfully implement CRM because much of its focus was on customer convenience.

It always maintained the sync between the business and IT departments, so as to ensure everyone was on the same page.

Vigilant and correct choice of CRM software was another major step that helped the company to move ahead with a smooth and successful implementation.

In the end, the company was rewarded with increased revenue, customer retention and positive feedback from all sectors – both in-house and out-house.

New Study Reveals Consumers Have Strong Preferences When It Comes to Call Center Agents

New Study Reveals Consumers Have Strong Preferences When It Comes to Call Center Agents
06 August 2010 Study from Forte Consultancy Group conducted in coordination with Marmara University finds consumers have significant differences in their preferences when it comes to call center agents, preferences shaped heavily by individual demographic characteristics.

Read more on Zawya

Ambulance Study for Town of North Hempstead Concludes: “In Spite of Complexities, the System Works”

Ambulance Study for Town of North Hempstead Concludes: “In Spite of Complexities, the System Works”
An independent study of ambulance services in the Town of North Hempstead that was funded through a $180,000 grant from New York State in 2007 has concluded that “the current system works.” In fact, local ambulance providers, affiliated with volunteer fire departments, beat the average response time in New York State by two minutes. Further, local providers have major resources, such as well …

Read more on Great Neck Record