Brainwaves, the official e-newsletter of the Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum, is distributed quarterly to Forum members, content requestors and e-newsletter subscribers. Our objectives for Brainwaves are to provide relevant information, stimulate new ideas and help improve your decision-making regarding business performance management initiatives, strategies and execution. Let us know how we can improve this publication to help you achieve your goals.

Brainwaves is back and looking to continue its tradition of providing insightful commentary and content aimed at improving performance and accountability across the enterprise. Since our last edition, the Forum has released several notable reports relating to data management strategies, data storage, competitive strategy and environmental sustainability. Over the next months we will continue to deliver resources and guideposts as executives strive for improved financial, operational and strategic management to realized optimized ROI across all functions in the organization.

One program we would like to call your attention to is the recently released research, Business Gain From How You Retain. In the report, a surprising 45 percent rate the effectiveness of customer relationship management (CRM) systems as deficient or needing more work, with only 15 percent of companies rating themselves extremely good or effective at integrating disparate customer data sources and repositories.

More than 31 percent of companies surveyed had customer churn rates of more than 10 percent and 32 percent reported turnover of five to 10 percent. In comparison, more than 62 percent said they desired or expected a churn level of less than five percent. Additionally, respondents believed customer churn significantly impacts business performance through revenue loss (59.9 percent), reduced profitability (39.6 percent) and greater marketing and re-acquisition costs (36.3 percent)

Alexander J. Black, a senior partner in the Strategic Services group within CSC's Global Business Solutions organization, shared this: "The study illustrates a disturbing fact: many global companies are doing an inadequate job of integrating and applying customer data to reduce customer defections and increase loyalty."

“Unfortunately, this results in lost opportunities and revenues from up-selling and cross-selling new products - as well as higher costs incurred in replacing lost customers. Most importantly, the inability to leverage data to reduce customer turnover hinders a company's long-term competitiveness and profitability.”

On July 16, 2008 executives from Iron Mountain, Gateway and CSC will present best practices specific to data integration across the enterprise as a conduit to managing customer churn. Valuable key findings will be discussed and we invite you to share your questions and insights with the audience as we strive to minimize the burn from customer churn. To register for this complimentary webcast, please visit our registration page. If you have not had the opportunity to read the Business Gain From How You Retain report, we encourage you to download this research and learn more about the strategic interest group and the resulting report.

Brainwaves will return as a quarterly publication from the BPM Forum. We invite your content submissions for an upcoming issue. To submit your article, white paper or commentary, please contact our editorial content manager, Jessalyn Clark at jclark@globalfluency.com.

Liz Miller
Editor

Momentum strategy for efficient growth
By J. C. Larreche for Strategy Magazine
To deliver sustainable efficient growth, organizations must shift away from compensating strategy towards momentum strategy. This requires exploring customer insights, crafting 'power offers' and generating customer engagement.
Read More »

The PCI 6.6 Deadline: Are You Compliant?
By Joseph Miller, for eBiz
Are your web-facing applications protected against attacks? Another compliance deadline for the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is here. Requirement 6.6 of the PCI DSS mandates that all merchants accepting payment card transactions install a specialized firewall for protecting their web-facing applications, or complete a Web application software code review, manual or automated, which determines and fixes any Web application vulnerabilities in a Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).
Read More »

Study: Older Consumers Think Recycling Is a Waste
By Becky Ebenkamp for Brandweek
A recent Harris Interactive study found that three-quarters of Americans believe they are "doing their part" to keep the environment in check. It also found some interesting generational quirks among those who say they aren’t. Those matures who said they aren't making lifestyle changes were the most jaded of the bunch: half said these lifestyle adjustments "won't make any difference" versus only 29% of refrainers of all other age groups.
Read More »

Uptime @ Crunch Time
UPTIME @ CRUNCH TIME™ is A BPM Forum authority leadership campaign in partnership with BlueArc Corporation, committed to promoting program and industry study with media and vertical association partners in sectors where data processing is critical to both the survival and success of operations. The program’s goal is to escalate executive discussions and sensitize the market to the critical imperatives for uninterrupted, high-speed access to critical data during high-demand business events, operational disruption, or dislocation.

Learn more at www.uptimeatcrunchtime.com.

Lean & Green Leadership
The Lean & Green initiative seeks to increase and enhance executive discussion and awareness around the ways IT organizations can reduce energy drain and impact business gain by consolidating storage systems, embracing efficient computing practices, and introducing power-saving techniques. The authority leadership program will examine ways to address the accelerating energy demands and rampant waste of the data center, along with methods to increase IT yield and data productivity.

Learn more at www.getleanandgreen.org.

Business Gain From How You Retain Webcast
Wednesday, July 16
11:00 am PST / 2:00 pm EST

Continuing the Business Gain From How You Retain initiative, the CMO Council, along with its underwriting partners, CSC, International Business Machines (IBM) and Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) will host a webcast dedicated to highlighting best practices in retention marketing. The Business Gain From How You Retain Webinar "Adding Dimension to Customer Retention" will focus on mitigating the risks associated with customer churn.
Register now »

American Strategic Management Institute(ASMI)
Rolling Forecasts 2008
Date: July 21-22, 2008
Location: Washington, DC
Learn More »

The AlwaysOn & STVP Summit at Stanford
Date: July 22-24, 2008
Location: Palo Alto, CA
Register here for 50% discount »

American Strategic Management Institute(ASMI)
Succession Planning Summit
Date: July 28-29, 2008
Location: Washington, DC
Learn More »

American Strategic Management Institute(ASMI)
Green Marketing 2008
Date: August 4-6, 2008
Location: Washington, DC
Learn More »

Tech Target
Data Center Decisions Conference
Date: October 23rd - 24th
Location: Chicago, IL
Learn More »

If you would like to submit an article or recommend one, please follow these guidelines:

• Business performance management focus: people, process, policy, technology, methodologies, best practices and business innovation
• Pictures, illustrations and charts to support your submission are welcome
• Include a brief biography with relevant credentials
• Maximum 850 words

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