RightNow Secure Government Cloud Well-Suited to Federal IT Reform Plan

RESTON, Va. (January 04, 2011) – RightNow (Nasdaq: RNOW), a leading provider of secure cloud solutions for federal, state and local government agencies, non-profit organizations, and higher education institutions, has spent more than ten years helping government clients deliver transparent, participatory and collaborative government services via the cloud. Today, RightNow CX, the customer experience suite, can assist government agencies in meeting Federal CIO Vivek Kundra’s new plan to reform federal information technology (IT) management.

“We believe that the Obama administration’s plan to reform Federal IT management is a major step in the right direction,” commented Kevin Paschuck, VP, Public Sector, RightNow. “Our government customers, and the citizens that they serve, have experienced the benefits of cloud computing and enhanced citizen engagement for over 10 years. With this new mandate, the commitment to cloud computing is stronger than ever, and RightNow stands ready to provide the customer experience tools to help achieve its goals.”

RightNow CX Addresses Key Points of Federal IT Management Reform

This month, the Obama administration announced its 25-Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal IT Management, which promises to transform how the government purchases and manages IT resources.

As Kundra noted in a recent blog post, “For too long, many government IT projects cost hundreds of millions of dollars more than they should, took years longer than necessary to deploy, and delivered technologies that were obsolete by the time they were completed.”

To address this challenge, a major premise of the plan is the shift to a ‘Cloud First’ policy. This mandate requires that each agency identify, within three months, three ‘must move’ IT services and move one of those services to the cloud within 12 months. The remaining services should transfer to the cloud within the next 18 months.

Notably, by 2015, the plan pledges to reduce the number of Federal data centers by at least 800. Additionally, approval is reserved for major IT programs that utilize a modular approach, with customer-facing functionality, applications such as self-service modules, that allow direct communication or interaction with citizens, delivered every 6 months.

RightNow CX addresses these key points of the Federal IT reform plan in several ways:

• RightNow CX, deployed in 30 days via the RightNow Government Cloud, eliminates the need for agencies to purchase servers or data center space.
• RightNow helps agencies cost effectively leverage existing IT resources and budget to deliver high-quality citizen and internal facing services.
• The RightNow CX Knowledge Foundation is a self-learning, intelligent knowledge base that provides accurate, real-time information to citizens.
• RightNow’s Software-as-as-Service (SaaS) application offers agencies a rapidly deployable, world-class solution.
• RightNow’s flexible Cloud Services Agreement (CSA) provides annual pools of transaction or seat usage, allowing agencies to accommodate seasonal business fluctuations and to manage annual budgets effectively.
• RightNow CSA provides price certainty for three years and transparent renewal pricing. Moreover, agencies have the ability to rebalance across product modules, annually turning the capacity on selected services up or down.
• With managed, optional, quarterly upgrades, RightNow CX allows federal agencies to provide new customer-facing functionality every 6 months.

Applications Built to Meet the Mandate

RightNow CX gives government the power to manage the constituent experience for maximized transparency and engagement. Solutions include a fully integrated multi-channel contact center platform that identifies, segments, and route callers to the right resource quickly and efficiently. RightNow also enables agencies to deliver 24X7 access to knowledge and subject matter experts, empowering citizens to research information and resolve issues online with or without agent assistance. Capabilities include:

• Web Self-Service
• Mobile
• Chat
• Co-Browse
• Guided Assistance
• Email Management
• Web Experience Designer

RightNow is the Customer Experience Government Cloud Leader

A leader in bringing the cloud delivery model to government agencies, RightNow has successfully served the U.S. government for more than ten years. Over 170 public sector clients, including nearly every U.S. cabinet level agency, Army, Marines, Air Force, members of the Intelligence Community and the DoD, rely on RightNow CX to provide real-time information.

Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) uses RightNow CX across multiple channels to manage email and phone service to citizens. As a result, the CBP has achieved outstanding outcomes including a 98 percent web self-service rate, which is critical to keeping its call center lean.

Air Force Personnel Center utilizes the RightNow solution in its Total Force Service Center Initiative, a program that provides benefits and personnel related support to Air Force employees, across multiple touch points. This initiative has increased satisfaction, reduced average customer inquiry times from 20 to two minutes, improved utilization of the web knowledge base from 180,000 to two million hits weekly and has helped reduce the overall cost of operations.

About RightNow Technologies

RightNow is helping rid the world of bad experiences one interaction at a time, eight million times a day. A leader in bringing the Cloud delivery model to government, RightNow has successfully served the US government for more than ten years. RightNow CX, the customer experience suite, helps agencies deliver exceptional customer experiences across the web, social networks and contact centers, all delivered via the secure government cloud. With RightNow, agencies are able to drive citizen engagement, reduce the cost of operations and increase information transparency within the secure government cloud.

Over 170 government agencies including nearly every U.S. cabinet level agency, Army, Marines, Air Force, members of the Intelligence Community, and DoD, rely on RightNow’s cloud based solutions to answer the call for better citizen service

RightNow is a registered trademark of RightNow Technologies, Inc. NASDAQ is a registered trademark of the NASDAQ Stock Market.

Contact
RightNow
Christine Randle, 240-344-5417
christine.randle@rightnow.com
or
Sage Communications (for RightNow)
Lauren Christian, 703-584-7250
laurenc@aboutsage.com

Source: RightNow Technologies