The information age is a myth

THE INFORMATION AGE is a myth, says tough talking Bostonian Alan Tefler. We're still in the disinformation age, he says.

Nothing is how it's supposed to be, explains the CEO of Pegasystems, who promises to put it all right.

We want juicy titbits of knowledge, and all we get is data vomit. Businesses want to get closer to customers, but they end up stalking them instead. Companies want relationships with customers, but customers want restraining orders from companies they wish they'd never met.

"Instead of creating loyalty, the effect most CRM systems have is to make you rue the day you ever gave away your home number," says Tefler.

The root of the problem is the IT industry's double standards, according to the inventor of Business process management. "Have you ever seen anything more rigid and inflexible than a Siebel system? If anything needs changing on a system, you have a fill out a form, and if you're lucky you might get some feedback in six month's time," he says.

Tefler argues this is hardly an advert for automated systems. "You tell people that their businesses that they have to be agile and flexible, with decentralised power and rapid decision making. And yet when someone wants to change the IT system, it's no can do," he says.

Most call centre and customer facing organisation suffer from what Tefler calls Jerry Maguire syndrome. "When a company rep calls you and reads from a script, all they're basically saying is 'show me the money'."

It's worse when it's the other way round. Most banks use communications systems modelled on problem resolution techniques used in the Jerry Springer Show. What is a bank's contact centre, if not an automated version of "Talk to the Hand"?

Pegasystems intends to put all these injustices right, and take us out of the dark days of the disinformation age, and its data vomit.

They promise to build customer profit management systems from the top down, meaning they can be tailored by the business users as they need them. They promise to organise business information so that it's driven by business objectives.

A client list including JP Morgan, AOL and Vodafone sounds impressive. But what's this: they're part of the information strategy at Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, and DEFRA, two of the world's least efficient organisations. Not something to boast about surely?

Tefler says it's early days yet. Maturity will come. "Think of it like this. Data tells you a tomato is a fruit. Knowledge tells you never to put a tomato in a fruit salad. Again. Expect a better class of fruit salads in the future." µ