Company: Informatica Corporation, Redwood City, CA
Company Description: Informatica is the leading independent provider of enterprise data integration software and services. With Informatica, organizations gain greater business value by integrating their information assets from across the enterprise. More than 3,350 companies rely on Informatica to reduce cost and expedite the time to address data integration needs of varying complexity and scale. informatica.com.
Nomination Category: Customer Service Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best Use of Technology in Customer Service

Nomination Title: Informatica Corporation: Informatica Global Customer Support

1. Tell the story about how technology has improved your customer service initiatives since the beginning of July last year (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

With its customer base tripling over the past three years, data integration
leader Informatica Global Customer Support relies heavily on the creative use
of technology to keep pace with increasing workloads. This includes technology
to drive both internal processes and customer-facing "self-service" processes.

The "Global" in Global Customer Support reflects how Informatica replaced a
regional support model with global, location-transparent support to ensure
effective response to fluctuating needs. To underpin the new model, Informatica
built an infrastructure that provides support personnel with holistic, real-
time views of customers so that service requests can be handled not just at the
nearest Informatica Global Support Center, but at any of nine support centers
worldwide.

To this end, data from Siebel eCRM, Cisco IPCC Contact Center, Peoplesoft
Finance and Oracle is integrated in real time by the Informatica PowerCenter
data integration platform to:
(1) Create these holistic customer views to aid support personnel in meeting
requests.
(2) Drive real-time views of Informatica's global support workload via a
command dashboard, enabling inter-center work assignments to be accomplished in
seconds.

As the customer base ballooned, particularly over the last year, this system
has supported Informatica in achieving the highest customer loyalty rating in
the data integration industry for three consecutive years, and further widening
its lead in 2008 (per independent researcher TNS).

Operationally, the system enabled the seamless on-boarding of three new
Informatica Global Support Centers (Dublin, Sao Paolo and Tokyo) in the past 18
months, all of which hit the ground running in handling requests from around
the world. Performance-wise, by removing time zone and location restraints and
accelerating resolutions, the technology has been instrumental in driving
continuous year-over-year improvements across key support performance metrics
including:
- Service Level Achievements are now 91% (Vs 88% in 2007)
- Average time to resolve service requests has decreased by 10%
- Has been rated as "Industry Best Practice" by SSPA as part of their "Rated
Outstanding" certification

In 2008, Informatica also significantly ramped up its use of innovative
customer-facing technologies. This includes launching a highly successful self-
service support platform at MyInformatica.com, the company's customer portal.
Empowering customers to be more productive, this new offering supplements
current support offerings to provide an easy-to-use service including support
forums facilitated and monitored by Informatica experts, product documentation,
Configuration Support Manager, Service Request Wizard, and Change Request
Tracking. In the 2008 TNS Survey over half of respondents indicate that 80% to
100% of their service support attempts using Knowledgebase were successfully
resolved.

2008 also saw the launch of the Informatica TechNet, the first global online
community open to customers, partners and all other data integration
practitioners. Designed to stimulate contributions from its nearly 45,000
members and supporting execution of member-generated content, TechNet enables
individuals to post documentation, integration mappings and transformations and
openly share experiences, tips and best practices - thus augmenting
MyInformatica.com and extending its self-service paradigm.

All these technology uses have enabled Informatica to support considerably more
customers in more ways, maintain profitable maintenance margins, enjoy a 95%
customer renewal rate, and strengthen an already commanding lead in loyalty -
while presenting a single support "face" to its global customer base.

2. List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

http://www.informatica.com/news_events/press_releases/Pages/11252008_technet.aspx

3. Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated customer service organization:

Ansa Sekharan is currently senior vice president of Global Customer Support. He
started his career at Informatica in 1996 and is responsible for establishing
Informatica as a trusted partner for customers worldwide by ensuring their
success with Informatica's products. During his tenure Informatica has received
prestigious industry awards recognizing its support services and has been
ranked number one in Customer Loyalty in the Data Integration enterprise
software sector for three years in a row. Prior to joining Informatica, Mr.
Sekharan served at Sybase for four years in a customer services role. Mr.
Sekharan graduated with honors from the University of Tulsa where he earned an
M.S. degree in computer science and an B.S degree in computer science from
National Institute of Technology, India.