News..................................................................................................

Shape the Future of Your Industry: A Call for Member Participation By SSPA Staff The SSPA is inviting member companies to participate in several important programs that foster the advancement of the services and support industry. Full article

Features.............................................................................................

2005 in Focus: A Look Back at the Future By Shawn Santos, Senior Program Manager, SSPA – Our 2005 Year in Focus special issue tracks the many programs and events that made 2005 a success for the SSPA and helped its member companies thrive. Use this article as your guide to the SSPA and join us in taking a look back at some of the most collaborative, insightful, and unique programs and events of 2005. Full article

Can a Virtual Engineer Defend your Bottom Line? By Gil Levonai, VP Marketing and Strategy, NextNine – With service and support revenues contributing significantly to your bottom line but increasingly coming under attack by customers, every organization must consider a line of defense. This article suggests a unique new approach, the Virtual Support Engineer, that enables organizations to defend support and maintenance revenues while providing higher levels of service and lowering costs. Full article

Delivering Support through Partners – Successfully! By Francoise Tourniaire, founder and principal of FT Works — Whether you use overseas distributors, resellers to sell packaged products, or consulting partners that embed your products into more complex products or services, chances are that you will be asked to provide support as second line to the partners – with the partners, whoever they are, providing support to the end customers. This is the partner support model, or the indirect support model, or the channel support model and the focus of this article. Full article

Technology that Drives Service Resolution Management (SRM) By Mark Angel, CTO, Knova Software — SRM is a new category of technology that optimizes service resolution with knowledge management features seamlessly integrated into the resolution business processes--both for support analysts and end users.
Gain a better understanding of the technology required to optimize service resolution in detail and why KM by itself is not enough to drive a measurable reduction in support costs and an increase in satisfaction and loyalty. Full article

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