Released on: October 6, 2008, 5:09 pm

Press Release Author: Knoa Software

Industry: Software

Press Release Summary: Seventy-eight percent of respondents cite value of
comprehensive
end-user experience metrics for enterprise CRM deployments, but only 20 percent have
solutions


Press Release Body: NEW YORK, October 7, 2008 – Knoa, the leading provider of
end-user experience and performance management software, today announced the
findings of a survey conducted among IT executives and business stakeholders at
Global 1000 companies. The goal of the survey was to gain insight into the impact of
end-user experience on the results derived from CRM deployments.

Results of the survey clearly show that many enterprises find their end-users are
having difficulties interacting with these systems. “CRM systems are one of the
most challenging of enterprise software deployments because so much of the end-user
behavior necessary to drive results is essentially voluntary,” said Lori Wizdo, vice
president, marketing, for Knoa Software. “All too often, adoption and effective use
of CRM functionality is hampered by a below par end-user experience with the
application.”

A significant majority of the survey respondents, 65 percent, stated that end-users
within their organizations complain about the usability and/or response time of
their CRM system. And 60 percent of respondents expressed concerned that a lack of
adoption and utilization of a CRM system causes the information to be inaccurate, or
unrealistic.

The survey revealed that the stakeholders in CRM implementations recognize the
importance of end-user experience, as only 16 percent are not attempting to measure
end-user experience at all. But, the mechanisms in use to measure varied widely,
with only 20 percent of survey respondents stating that they use an end-user
monitoring technology.

Thirty percent of survey respondents said they use help desk logs to measure user
experience. “While an analysis of help desk logs will yield some insight, the
approach is blind to those end-users who do not ask for help, who have opted out of
using the application, or find non-compliant workarounds,” said Wizdo.

Fifty-three percent of respondents use survey techniques to measure the user
experience. “Surveys can emphasize the enterprise’s interest in end-user
experience, but they can only capture limited data from the most engaged end-users
who opt to respond,” said Wizdo. “Too often techniques like surveys and sampling
result in misleading data sets that leads to results that are not in the best
interest of the business.”

The research hinted that a certain degree of resignation creeps into the
expectations of the stakeholders of CRM applications as the deployments mature
through the application life cycle. Sixty-eight percent of survey respondents, who
have had their CRM system in place between two and five years, reported that it was
running smoothly. However, 55 percent of those very same respondents reported that
the users of their CRM systems complain about usability and/or response time (versus
65%) for all respondents; and 67 percent of those respondents were concerned that a
lack of adoption and utilization of CRM systems causes the information to be
inaccurate, or unrealistic (versus 60% for the group).

Seventy-eight percent of enterprises surveyed said they would find accurate, global
end-user metrics on the response times, quality issues and usability that the CRM
users are actually experiencing to be extremely valuable or very useful.

This research underscores the need for a comprehensive, systematic approach for
measuring end-user experience and behavior. “Customer-facing sales and service
organizations must continually enhance their operational performance to drive higher
revenues and improve customer experience and satisfaction,” said Ms. Wizdo. “Knoa’s
end-user experience and performance management solutions provide our customers with
comprehensive, global end-user experience metrics to identify system issues and
pinpoint targets for improving the performance of end-users on an ongoing basis,
leading to higher levels of business impact from their CRM deployments.”

The end-user experience survey was executed by ReachForce, a marketing data services
company based in Austin, Texas. All respondents were carefully screened to ensure
their executive ownership responsibility for their CRM deployment. ReachForce's
unique role-validation methodology was used to ensure the survey respondents were
either the top business or top technology owner, with responsibility for the
application.


About Knoa
Knoa® Software is leading the performance management industry with end-user
experience management solutions that reach beyond infrastructure and application
performance to monitor, measure and manage how end-users are utilizing corporate
software applications to optimize business process execution. Knoa customers not
only know if core enterprise applications are delivering an acceptable user
experience, but also, if application users are executing key processes effectively
and efficiently - the key to achieving business value and ROI. Knoa was recently
selected by Gartner as a “Cool Vendor”, for its capabilities in end-user experience
and performance management and was listed as a Leader in the “Forrester Wave:
Passive Agent End-user Experience Monitoring”. Knoa is headquartered in New York,
NY. For more information about Knoa, please visit www.knoa.com.
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Note: Knoa is a registered trademark. All other company and product names contained
herein are the marks of their respective holders.


Web Site: http://www.knoa.com

Contact Details: Erica Burns
PAN Communications
978.474.1900
knoa@pancomm.com

Greg Izbicki
Knoa Software
212.807.9608
gizbicki@knoa.com