If you haven't been to EDS' Next Big Thing Blog, you should check it out. I discovered it by accident through a customer's blog, and I'm not sure how I missed this one.

One post that caught my attention was Jeff Wacker's post that sums up some meeting discussions with a number of CIOs he met up with recently. Summing of the CIOs' desires for the future, they cited some common themes:

• Scalability and flexibility
• Data to support decisions
• Integration across the lines of business
• Customer self-service
• Continuous productivity and process improvement

As Jeff points out, there's nothing earth shattering about these revelations.

Generally speaking I would agree with these, but the experiences I have had in the past six months or so have made me question the fourth bullet point. Perhaps it has to do with general weakness in the economy or a shift in how people want to be treated as customers, but I've found that a lot of people I know now want to interact with a real person. I suppose it has a lot to do with the demographics of one's customers, but the anecdotal cross section I'm thinking about is pretty random. Cuts across people trialing group blogging platforms for purchase, handling travel arrangements or bank account issues, & B2B outsourcing of broker relations. Not to change Jeff's words as he as an EDS Fellow is clearly more experienced than I, but perhaps the title for "customer self-service" should be "high-touch customer service"?

Steve Shu