UC Applications - Recent Threads

Re: UC-B applications

annagol251 — Tue, 07 Jul 2015 04:57:46 GMT

Debet

Re: Another Article About UC Being Dead

marty — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 20:48:23 GMT

Hooray, the buzz is over! Let's party. You know a market has gone mainstream when it has "crossed the chasm" and moved though "early adoption" onto "mainstreet" as defined by Geoffrey Moore.

Just to make the point, the buzz is also over for e-mail (20 B messages per day in N. Am.), instant messaging (18 B messages per day in N. Am.) and cell phone calls (4 B per day in N. Am.) which are the three most voluminous forms of business communications.

The leading vendors of Unified Communications user software for businesses have shipped 100s of millions of clients both as packaged software (Lync, Sametime, CUPC, one-X, et al.) or modularized software (Lync, Websphere, Genesys Labs, Sphericall, OpenScape, et al.). Sure, not all of those are deployed to users, but I would estimate that IM-type clients with 'click-to-communicate' via voice, web-sharing and/or video are approaching 100 million in active use by business enterprises. Thus, UC is no longer the new buzz, rather it’s just becoming pervasive.

Those who doubt should read more case studies at:

ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-case-study-library.aspx

Now over a thousand of them tell the story of UC with more diversity and creativity and real, hard-dollar savings than any marketing spinner could imagine.

Sure, there are pockets of frustration, as Rad points out. If you think about UC as a consumer product, there will be frustrations (enterprises use IM on mobile devices, not SMS or MMS, since IM can be logged for compliance). Video conferencing may be the new buzz, but it's expensive as Rad notes; but don't blame that on UC. UC includes video, as noted, but isn't limited to video. And, I agree that renaming communiations as collaboration is just confusing when collaboration is more often document-centric, as Rad says, and uses the tools he names, including SharePoint, Quickr, Google Docs and others, most of which are available in the cloud now.

Lastly, just for fun, it's clear that when Nick Jones of Gartner called UC a scam, he was running his own scam. Known for his contrarian views, Nick draws audiences through outrageous lead-in lines. Read more case studies, Nick!

So, party on, folks. The buzz is over and UC is a real market now.

Marty Parker

Another Article About UC Being Dead

UCStrategies — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 19:54:53 GMT

Interesting article

https://blog.tmcnet.com/on-rads-radar/2010/11/the-buzz-on-uc-is-over.html

Re: Unified Communications Trends - 2010 and Beyond

gary — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 20:58:48 GMT

I agree with Mr. Rosenberg and Mr. Yedwab's comments. Would also add that IMO person-to-person video is going to sneak up and explode very soon. As everyone knows, combinations of bandwidth and CODECs have prevented any real mass adoption of P2P Video, but that has changed. Also, another component or impediment is the hardware / software clients. It's very difficult to certify and support software clients and PC cameras on each standard computer (Desk Top, Notebook, etc...), from a business enterprise perspective. That might lead one to think a dedicated hardware / software client is needed, but now the cost and end user exp will suffer as yet another peripheral (like the desk phone) is in the mix.

Also, consider the state of smartphones, IP Telephony Clients (Hard and Soft Phones) and the new market of Netbooks and Tablets. Smartphones and Tablets (thanks to Apple) are starting to evolve together. Netbooks are now sooo 2008, but if we define the difference between Netbooks and Tablets on whether or not a physical keyboard is present, then at some point these should merge. Dedicated hardware for a desktop phone "may" eventually go away, BUT just as the PC cannot replace a game console... People (desk-jockeys for sure) still prefer to have a hard phone desk use. AVAYA and Cisco have tried many times to make desk phones more useful by adding touch screens, USB ports and many other enhanced features, however a phone is a phone…until it isn’t.

That said, what if you took a Tablet (with WebOS or Android) and a companion docking station, and the device also included:

· LAN while on the docking station

· 3G/4G/WIFI while off the docking station

· Front-face video

· Voice and Video Clients (SIP based of course)

Cisco has already announced such a device based on Android. AVAYA is rumored to be working on one as well, and they just announced a partnership with HP (who also just bought Palm and WebOS) to co-develop UC products and services.

Bottom line: If you take the one hard client application the PC has not eliminated (the desk phone) and change the platform to a Tablet, then add video and basic office apps (e-mail, IM, web, etc…), you have a real chance of reducing the procurement and support cost for voice, video and real application mobility. Will a Tablet replace a PC (notebook or desktop)? For certain folk’s maybe, but most will still need their PC. That’s ok however, as you aren’t adding yet another peripheral to support. You’re actually eliminating or combining three different areas down to one, multi-function device.

Re: Avaya Aura

gary — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 20:11:59 GMT

AURA architectural information is difficult to come by for sure, however as a customer that has just recently deployed AURA, I can tell you what I have found out so far.

AURA Session Manager / ASM (SIP Server) allows both SIP Applications and SIP End-Point connections. You can connect SIP phones directly to ASM, however Communication Manager (CM) is still required for phone features. I have been told CM is not required for just basic features like call routing internal / external, but I have not yet actually connected a SIP phone to ASM to confirm this (I will do next week). So, to directly answer, AURA does support SIP end-point connections and they can be either AVAYA or others SIP phones.

Re: Actionable Intelligence through UC Analytics

william.durr — Wed, 05 May 2010 14:44:14 GMT

Nancy – Yes, getting the word out is important, especially given that I am often dismayed by the disconnect between the interest groups around Unified Communications and the emerging UC Analytics practice. They don’t seem to be aware of each other and even, at times, seem dismissive of each other.

It all reminds me of an old cartoon where a medieval warlord is standing outside and in front of a tent. Behind the tent is a salesperson selling machine guns (It is a cartoon, after all!). The caption has the warlord saying, “I don’t have time to see any salesperson, I have a war to fight.”

And, so it seems with UC and Analytics. Each camp is fighting a war of sorts; call it what you will – acceptance or awareness. But the battle can’t be won without considering using the superior tools of the other camp.

Given the issues that continue to beleaguer many organizations as they strive to increase stakeholder value, UC Analytics should be a component of any UC strategy. This is particularly true for process- and back-office intensive organizations where UC can create a baseline for improving business processes, but the analysis of information and uncovering key business issues and trends is necessary to realize process optimization.

Overall, UC Analytics furthers the process improvements that UC inherently delivers by delivering actionable intelligence from the converged communication flows into and out of the enterprise. Using two “lenses” – one internal and one external – UC Analytics illuminates how employees are performing and reveals what customers feel and tell you during their interactions with the enterprise. Organizations are better informed and strategically armed to maximize results.

Re: Actionable Intelligence through UC Analytics

njamison — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:19:31 GMT

Another thing, and this is probably an obvious question, is that for organizations presently in the midst of a unified communications initiative or planning for one, should they be considering UC analytics as part of this? I would say yes, but we need to get the word out as to what it is and how powerful it can be.

Re: Actionable Intelligence through UC Analytics

njamison — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:17:02 GMT

Bill,

I think you hit the nail on the head. A year ago I wrote a UC Views (January) on expert agents and UC. One of the points I didn't clearly make was that there has to be accountability and control as to how these experts are being used or else you have what you call chaos.

At the time I had discussions with various vendors as to how they would get buy in from different departments if all the sudden their employees were getting tapped by contact center agents as experts. How do you account for their time? How do you show that their contribution is impacting business processes and improvements so that their time isn't just being used, but accounted for. If not, then one department would end up easing the burden of the contact center, but not getting compensated budget-wise, for example.

What I think is very cool, is that by using UC analytics, meaning all of the tools we have, we can take a holistic approach to the entire organization and see the effects of one department helping another, for example.

Nancy

Re: Actionable Intelligence through UC Analytics

william.durr — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 02:25:20 GMT

Hi Nancy. I’ve been following the thread and I think your question about UC Analytics and presence is an interesting one. Presence, of course, is the technology that enables the virtual enterprise. And virtual enterprises have some clear operational advantages, as well as some disadvantages. Not the least of which is that in a truly virtual enterprise there is a significant risk of chaos.

We’ve already had some experience in the contact center, as you know, with work-at-home employees. Generally, work-at-home employees are happier and more productive than traditional office employees. But staying connected to the ethos of the enterprise and feeling a sense of team , shared effort and success is really difficult. By some estimates, fully 20% of agents who opt to work from home, return to the physical contact center within 6 months. Nevertheless, work-at-home employees are more valuable in part because they are flexible. But the flexibility must be controlled or there will be chaos. They have schedules to adhere to in order for the operation to meet its service delivery goals.

Part of UC Analytics provides rigor. Rigor, a word describing a concept, implies that there are rules that apply to everyone. And that, I think, is the connection to presence.

In some presentations and future projections of virtual enterprises where presence stitches subject matter experts together with customer service representatives as they interact with customers, I am struck by the fact that the availability of subject matter experts cannot be simply a matter of whim, when they are “free” from their day jobs. A clear high-level value of UC Analytics is that it confers a grand view of the entire enterprise in terms of interactions with customers, partners and prospects. The entire enterprise can be modeled and simulations engines provide projections of service delivery measures as well as employee “presence” requirements and schedules based on each employee’s preferences.

By bringing the rigor of Workforce Management to employees bound to the enterprise by presence, UC Analytics helps enterprises avoid flexibility chaos.

Re: Actionable Intelligence through UC Analytics

ryan.hollenbeck — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:21:42 GMT

Good question Nancy, and certainly applicable given the importance of "presence" in the overall scheme of unified communications. I'm actually going to ask a colleague of mine, Bill Durr, to respond to this. Bill is a fairly well-know figure in the contact center space and can offer some unique perspective into how UC Analytics can contribute to the improvement of presence across the enterprise. I will ask him to post a reply as soon as he can.

Re: Actionable Intelligence through UC Analytics

njamison — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 17:09:16 GMT

Ryan,

How about taking a different approach to UC analytics? One of the things that we talked about when we said that UC really came out of the contact center was that there are a lot of features that the contact center has that UC has, such as presence. So, most organizations who have taken the plunge into UC do it not only to make processes more efficient and effective, but to improve “presence.” How does UC Analytics contribute, if at all, to the achievement of this objective?

Re: Actionable Intelligence through UC Analytics

ryan.hollenbeck — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 01:39:02 GMT

Nancy, I think you are right on the mark. With organizations turning to analytics to help them operate and act more strategically, the unearthing of broken processes and other issues hampering performance will not only become more commonplace, but more of a proactive business process with more formal measures and metrics. In fact, most companies I talk with today are already thinking about how tools such as speech analytics, desktop analytics, and customer feedback can help them improve the customer relationship across all areas of the business, and they want to proactively use these tools versus just merely reacting to problems. The outcome of these tools is becoming a big component of ROI for both vendors and end users in terms of how they can take out costs and increase sales and profitability.

Re: Actionable Intelligence through UC Analytics

njamison — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 19:38:58 GMT

Ryan, that is definitely true. Its funny that in presentations at trade shows or conferences companies will often give examples of how they uncovered some back office problem that was driving calls into the contact center and costing a ton of money. Usually these presentation examples are couched in terms of "we uncovered this problem and saved a lot of money". But I think we are getting to the point, especially as we start combining tools, that these kinds of relevations won't be one off events. So not only will we uncover more of them, but we will go looking for them.

That is why I'm kind of excited about bringing out the term UC analytics, because I think it will start getting people to think about using tools to go on witch hunts to see what they can find and how it can improve all areas of the business.

Presence

shel.brooks — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 17:16:56 GMT

Every discussion of UC involves presence. Presence is free. I have multiple presence accounts - Skype, AIM, Yahoo, Google, and our own ICQ server internally. What's the big deal - companies like Avaya, Cisco, Mitel all think they invented presence. Is there any benefit I am missing to a totally proprietary implementation of presence when it is available both as a free service or free server/client software?

Avaya Aura

tom.levy — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 17:05:36 GMT

I understand how Avaya Aura manages existing phones systems as a sort of super phone system for SIP - but what I don't understand is if you can use just Aura alone as a phone system. Does aura directly support SIP endpoints or Avaya proprietary phones? I asked a few people and can't get a knowledgeable answer?

Re: Actionable Intelligence through UC Analytics

ryan.hollenbeck — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 19:50:59 GMT

Workforce optimization (WFO) and, more recently, analytics-driven WFO have been driving performance gains in the contact center, helping organizations improve everything from the customer experience to sales, for many years. Now, with UC Analytics, we are starting to see the adaptation and deployment of these same technologies and concepts to other areas of business, most notably back-office and branch operations.

This is mostly being driven by the fact that numerous functions beyond the contact center can, whether directly or indirectly, impact service delivery and, thus, the customer experience, customer loyalty, and even profitability. How many times do people call customer service frustrated by a processing delay, billing mistake, or, perhaps, confusion over a product offer? In these instances, the underlying motive for the interaction has little to do with the performance of the contact center, but rather processes that lie in back-office or branch processing areas that can be a cause of customer dissatisfaction and defections and can significantly boost operating costs.

By leveraging UC Analytics in back-office and branch operations in addition to the contact center, organizations can further focus its analysis and optimization efforts on areas prone to potential bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and underutilization given their process reliance. Effectively armed with the root cause of issues across the customer service value chain, organizations gain a more holistic view of operations and can improve the efficiency of claims processing, order fulfillment, customer administration, transaction processing, billing, and other back-office functions to transform the back office into a strategic business asset. Furthermore, UC Analytics can help strengthen the forecasting and scheduling of staff to meet customer demand, which is vital to effective branch operations, as well as determine whether or not the business applications critical to achieving process optimization are efficiently deployed and utilized.

In today’s business climate, companies that devalue or underestimate the inter-departmental impact back-office and branch operations have on service, satisfaction, and sales will remain challenged to achieve customer centricity and process optimization no matter the UC strategy deployed.

Re: Actionable Intelligence through UC Analytics

nsj — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 18:23:16 GMT

Although I understand how UC Analytics can help optimize processes inside and outside the contact center, is it actually being adopted and deployed by other areas of the business? I know that individual business units will use different analytics packages, and solve problems that are specific to their own areas, but do they see the bigger picture of combining data from different areas to improve their department as well as others?

NancyJ

Re: Actionable Intelligence through UC Analytics

ryan.hollenbeck — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 19:12:12 GMT

These solutions contribute in a very similar manner to speech analytics. Most importantly, they provide a more holistic view into operations and performance across the customer service value chain. Increasing transparency amongst stakeholders, data analytics, customer feedback, and desktop analytics can unearth issues and trends that can be leveraged to drive more collaborative process improvement more broadly across the organization, which is particularly important given the fact that numerous departments and the processes they employ generally impact service delivery in one way or another.

Data Analytics employs data mining technology to scour the attributes associated with calls—and possibly even the business issues identified by speech analytics—to uncover contact scenarios that can positively or negatively impact an organization’s ability to meet its key performance objectives. With data analytics, organizations can better leverage the volumes of data generated by customer interactions to uncover hidden issues and opportunities. Measuring everything from call metrics, such as average talk time, to productivity metrics, like interactions handled by agent per day, to customer experience metrics, such as first call resolution and satisfaction scores, data analytics can help optimize processes that directly or indirectly influence these metrics inside and outside the contact center.

Customer Feedback enables organizations to collect customer data through IVR, Web, and email surveys to determine the drivers of satisfaction, identify improvement areas, and measure customer loyalty. Using short, context-sensitive, dynamic customer surveys, organizations can capture data not only on loyalty, satisfaction, and how well staff handled an inquiry, but on the very products and processes that shape the customer experience and contribute to organizational performance. Moreover, based on survey results, alerts and workflow items can be delivered right to the desktop, with links to actual call recordings for further analysis, to improve enterprise information flow.

Desktop Analytics captures desktop productivity and application usage, delivering graphical reports that illustrate which applications your staff uses—including how they use them, when, and for how long. Providing an analytical view of desktop workflow, organizations can surface and assess employee workflow patterns and the root cause of inefficient internal processes, isolate processes or applications that may require re-engineering, and reinforce usage policies. This is particularly powerful for contact centers as well as process-intensive operational areas, such as back-office administrative functions and branch/remote operations, where there is generally a heavy reliance on business applications to perform routine tasks that can directly impact objectives such as sales, service, and expense management.

Ryan Hollenbeck

Re: Actionable Intelligence through UC Analytics

nsj — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 17:52:40 GMT

You mention the value of speech analytics extending beyond the contact center to the enterprise. How do data analytics, customer feedback, and desktop analytics contribute to enterprise process optimization? I think its the combination of all the tools that we can use that will provide the most benefit to companies.

Also, and this is for Jim, I think companies are using combinations of these already, and many just don't understand how powerful integrating more tools in can be.

Nancy J

Re: Actionable Intelligence through UC Analytics

nsj — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 15:51:09 GMT

UC analytics is more than just speech analytics. Speech analytics is just a great tool to enhance the combination of analytical tools that we have across the entire enterprise. I think in order to quantify or clarify what un analytics is we need to list the tools that are included. So what else besides speech analytics, and contact center reporting should we include in this category and why?

Nancy

Re: Actionable Intelligence through UC Analytics

william.durr — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 15:35:26 GMT

To provide some more color via customer examples, I have included a few links below to case studies where speech analytics played an important role in improving enterprise processes and performance.

verint.com/.../file.cfm

Avaya Aura

alan.patterson — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 20:41:17 GMT

Did Avaya announce anything new regarding Aura at VoiceCon?

Re: Actionable Intelligence through UC Analytics

nsj — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 15:48:58 GMT

Good point. When speech analytics was first introduced we really focused on agent training, such as doing a proper close or upselling, or using it to glean information on what customers were talking about, such as mentioning competitors names, for example. But its becoming a critical part of uncovering issues and opportunities throughout an organization as well. I hope someone jumps in with a customer example or two. If I think of one I'll post.

I wanted to add though, that speech analytics is one part of UC analytics. Blair and I both wrote UC Views on this, using what your company is doing by combining speech analytics with other analytics. Blair did an In the Spotlight article on Actionable Intelligence in UC, and I did one that had a different slant to it. This is going to be a big area that is just getting defined.

Re: Actionable Intelligence through UC Analytics

william.durr — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 02:26:42 GMT

First off, investments in speech analytics attest to the growing adoption of business analytics in facilitating more efficient and effective business processes. Specifically in the contact center, with a greater emphasis on truly understanding the “voice of the customer,” speech analytics is becoming even more integral to understanding what is happening with customers and why. As such, those in the industry, like myself, see the deployment of speech analytics continuing to gain traction in 2010 and beyond.

Generally speaking, speech analytics works by employing technologies such as word spotting, indexing, and emotion detection to systematically analyze call content—from hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of calls—and suggest root causes so you can quickly identify issues related to specific calls. In addition, speech analytics can often search unstructured audio data, such as CTI-tagged data, agent name, and customer segmentation, to facilitate deeper analysis of interactions, data mining, and drilldown to specific calls or sets of calls.

Given this, with the abundance of customer interactions that take place in the contact center, the value of speech analytics to this functional area is rather apparent. However, it’s important to remember that the contact center is only a component of the customer service value chain, and that processes in the back office and other functional areas often can impact customer service and the customer experience as much, if not more, than the contact center itself. In turn, this can affect the performance of an enterprise as a whole and its achievement of top and bottom line goals, particularly if issues go undetected or remain compartmentalized within an operational area (silo).

Therefore, in terms of overall business benefits, process optimization, and even ROI, the enterprise can stand to be the greatest benefactor from speech analytics. This is due to the fact that using speech analytics to analyze the content of customer interactions in the contact center can provide valuable customer intelligence relevant to many areas of a business. In the context of UC, this enables key departmental as well as broader enterprise issues and trends to be identified, shared cross functionally, and viewed more holistically for quicker, more informative, and more collaborative decision making that improves business processes and drives customer centricity.

These business processes may very well be directly related to customer service, such as how a customer’s technical issues are resolved, but they more often cross disciplines and functions and indirectly impact service, such as the development and launch of a new product offer that encompasses product management, marketing, finance, sales, and other areas across the enterprise. Thus, with speech analytics, an organization can more effectively identify and address communication bottlenecks and broken processes that span business functions and can impact everything from customer service to revenue generation to profitability.

Re: Actionable Intelligence through UC Analytics

nsj — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 18:15:18 GMT

1. . My first question is around the tremendous potential for analytics to help organizations better understand where there may be communication bottlenecks or broken processes that are impacting customer service, and in turn customer relationships. As an analyst, one of my favorite of these tools is speech analytics, as it provides great value in “mining for what is missing” from other analytics tools. In fact, more and more I’m hearing of companies evaluating speech analytics for the contact center, where the majority of customer interactions take place. Given this, how can the deployment of speech analytics, as one UC analytics tool help optimize more than customer service and processes resident in the contact center?

Actionable Intelligence through UC Analytics

nsj — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 18:10:44 GMT

On the UCStrategies.com site a few of us have posted articles or opinions on how UC came from the contact center because so many UC functions, such as reporting, presence, etc. have been used for decades in contact centers. This concept is getting even more interesting as vendors are beginning to combine more of the tools of the contact center in with UC tools. Analytics-driven workforce optimization (WFO) has been optimizing people, processes, and communication in the contact center for years. So now we are starting to see an emerging category within UC called “UC analytics” that tie together tried-and-true contact center WFO tools such as quality monitoring and workforce management with advanced speech, data, and desktop analytics, to help organizations uncover trends and issues that may hamper business performance. This holds true not only in the contact center, but across the enterprise. Using UC analytics, organizations are better equipped to capture, analyze, and act on information about workforce performance, customer interactions, and overall business processes in the contact center, back-office operations, and even branch and remote offices.

UC-B applications

admin — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:25:40 GMT

Ross Talbot --I don’t understand what business process automation is. Do I already have this in my company?

Tim Passios--You may. You’ll want to understand your own internal processes for getting work done to understand Business Process Automation. It doesn’t matter what industry you are in or what company you work for, we all have processes that we must go through for the work that needs to get done. The key is to find those processes that can be automated with technology. Would you like an example of a common process?

Ross Talbot--Yes!

Tim Passios--Ok! Let’s say a fax gets sent into a hospital with relevant patient information on it, it requires a human to review it and manually route it to the right location (pharmacy, doctor, emergency, etc.). There are several ways this process could be automated. Let’s look at one way it could be automated with technology. We could receive that fax and have it scanned automatically for relevant information (patient ID, doctor name, prescription information, etc.) that would then be routed to the right email inbox as an attachment. This eliminates human error and latency, automates the process, and improves efficiency and effectiveness. Get the idea?

Ross Talbot--No. What do you mean by "scanned automatically?"

Tim Passios--The old way of receiving a fax meant a piece of paper came out of a fax machine. However, it’s just as easy to receive a fax electronically and then deliver it somewhere for viewing or processing. One of those places could be a place where the fax is examined using optical character recognition and/or forms recognition software. These tools can “read” a form and extract names, addresses, patient ID, prescription name, and other information and pass that information along in the process.

Samantha Kane--I'm not really clear on the relation between business process automation and unified communications. Can someone describe the relationship?

Pam Avila--I think a lot of people wonder about that. Let’s take a look at the definition of UC and see if that helps - unified communications is defined as communications integrated to optimize business processes. By this definition, business process automation becomes the nirvana of unified communications - it's where companies can really realize a hard ROI.

Art Rosenberg--Samantha,I would keep things simple by describing the role of UC as being able to make timely contact with a person (or persons) in a variety of ways, depending upon the circumstances of the contact initiator as well as that of the recipient/respondent.

Unlike the tradtional telephone call, it's not just for "person-to-person" contacts, but also "process-to-person" outbound contacts. The latter is where an automated business process requires the participation of a person (specific individual or anyone who is available). In such cases, the business process application will act as the contact initiator and have the flexibility to initiate the contact independently of the recipient's circumstances, devices, or preferences. All the process has to do is initiate the delivery of the information or Web links and make sure that the recipient is notified and can access that information in a timely manner. I call this a new type of "I/O" that can addresss individual people device independently through UC.

Samantha Kane--Why would my business be interested in Communications-Based Process Automation (CBPA)?

Art Rosenberg--Business processes can't be fully automated like some manufacturing processes. They have to be monitored, managed, and coordinated with people who are part of every business process. Rather than depend on people to have the time and remember to check on the status of a task or situation, it is more efficient to have an automated process detect exceptions of concern and notify appropriate people in a timely manner to get things fixed or changed when necessary. That not only minimizes the high cost of labor involved in a group task activity, but also avoids or minimizes any losses resulting from the failure to resolve issues as soon as possible or to meet deadlines.

Rick Chin--Ah, this is where you start going beyond simple business process automation and into the world of Communications-Based Process Automation (CBPA). What’s the difference? Business process automation simply automates a process, leaving communications out of the picture. CBPA, on the other hand, leverages communications to further extend the effectiveness and efficiency. The ultimate end result is to unify all forms of communications for seamless interactions across all devices, applications and locations in order to improve business processes.

Ross Talbot--How does CBPA really do that and how does it go further than simple process automation?

Tim Passios--Good question! Let’s take another look at our previous fax example. So far, simple process automation got the fax into an email inbox and delivered to the right person or department. However, nothing is being done with it and unless someone is monitoring that inbox, nothing is going to happen to it.

With CBPA, that fax would never have made it into an email inbox. Instead, it would have been scanned for relevant information, identified for the right person or department needed to handle that information, and then routed into an electronic queue to wait for the next available person to read it. At the same time, it would have made an outbound communication (SMS, Email, phone call with a recorded message, etc.) to the person who sent it so that they knew it was being processed.

Ross Talbot--Is that it? Doesn't seem like much.

Tim Passios--No, there’s a lot more. CBPA continues the process to ensure that this is handled completely. Let’s say that our fax was delivered to the Doctor’s office on the 3rd floor of the hospital. The nurse sees a form presented to her on her desktop client and opens it. This form contains the patient information received from the scanned fax, a prescription request, and the attached fax (in the form of a PDF) for verification. The nurse clicks a button on the form to pass it along to the doctor for prescription approval. At this click, the form is routed back into the queue to the doctor for approval. However, using presence, the form gets rerouted to the doctor on-call because the primary doctor is currently out of the country. The on-call doctor receives the form along with a screen pop of the relevant patient information so that he can review all necessary records to be sure that this can be approved. Once approved, the form then gets routed directly to the pharmacy for fulfillment. The last step might be to automatically send a message (SMS, email, phone call with recorded message) to the person who originally sent in the fax indicating that their prescription has been filled.

Ross Talbot--What industries are best positioned to take advantage of CBPA?

Rick Chin--Lots of industries, including insurance and financial institutions, healthcare companies, higher education, entertainment and hospitality, and more!

Tom Parrot--What are a couple of examples of how my company can benefit from communications-based process automation?

Rick Chin--To be honest, it’s really easy to find these examples. Take a look around your organization and identify manual processes that could involve human error and human latency. Simple ones typically come to mind like vacation requests, approval processes, order processing, new hire HR and IT processes and many others.

Tim Seabrook--Your company can benefit from Process Automation in a number of ways across many of the processes that your company uses in every day of business. From basic communication with your customers to more complex process automation involved with Workflow Management across departments within the business.

Basic customer communication can be automated with automated outdialing applications to contact your customers for issue resolution notification, appointment reminders, or product release notification.

Workflow Management can be automated with various activities being queued / delivered to each department when the activity requires each department's skill. An example could be an insurance company handling claims. The claim is lodged and delivered to a Data Entry Operator who enters the details. The claim is then delivered to a Claims Assessor for investigation and approval. When approved / declined the claim is then passed to the Customer Service department to notify the claimant.

Through all these stages the Claim can be queued for the appropriate departments so that the activities can be automatically delivered to the properly skilled staff.

Apart from the automated delivery of the activity one of the main benefits here is that all these actions can now be reported on and monitored from a management level. You can monitor how long it is taking to process each stage of the claim and also see how many claims are being handled by various staff - in the same way that you can monitor the phone calls to your CSRs in the Contact Center.

Each process within your business can be automated in one way or another depending on the actual process and how it is implemented within the business.

Scott Todd--I’ve heard about other kinds of business process automation. How is IPA -using CBPA - different?

Rick Chin--Other companies offer products to try to automate parts of your business. Companies like IBM, Documentum, FileNet, and Lombardi all have products that attempt to do this. However, these companies are trying to take products that manage portions of tasks and extend them across the enterprise. Because their foundation was not built around communication, it’s not surprising to find that they are “walled gardens” with little ability to encompass all kinds of activity. Even other communications companies like Avaya and Genesys have taken a stab at automation. However, because their products are actually an amalgam of separate products brought together through acquisitions, they too lack the ability to present one unified view.

IPA is different. It’s the only product to use the new CBPA methodology that brings the proven contact technologies of ACD Queuing, Skills-Based Routing, Presence, Recording, and Real-time Supervision to any business process or work flow.

IPA knows how to route work, who is qualified and available to do the work, delivers the work, records what was done, and allows management and supervisors to see the status of that work in real-time.

Scott Todd--Customers are very important to my company. How would CBPA make my customers’ experience better?

Rick Chin--CBPA is built on the technologies that have existed for years within the walls of the contact center – a place founded and focused on customer service. Technologies like queuing, recording, reporting, alerting, monitoring and more are leveraged within CBPA. Simple screen-pops of your favorite CRM application with prefilled information about the customer can easily be routed to anyone within the organization during any steps of the process to ensure customer information is always at the fingertips of whoever services that process.

Jerry Brown--How high does CBPA seem to be on the priority list for CIOs?

Tim Passios--CIOs look for products that can support the business goals of their company. And CEOs, CFOs, and CIOs have all been interested in automation for quite some time.

CBPA should be high on the any CxOs priority list because it is easier to implement and maintain, does not require expensive custom programmers, brings the power of process automation to most businesses, facilitates market responsiveness, and establishes visibility into the progress and status of processes.

Existing solutions are expensive to buy, setup, maintain, and update. Expensive consulting and custom programming are constant additional costs due to complexity. Lead-time for implementation or change is very long, affecting a company’s responsiveness to the changing market. Lastly, these systems become “yet another” application with separate data to manage and they often create more “silos” of information because they only handle a small portion of the entire process.

Blair Pleasant --- Don't other vendors offer solutions similar to IPA? I've heard other vendors talk about routing, queuing, and automating back office tasks and workflows. What's different about IPA?

Michael Finneran Posted: Tuesday, June 30, 4:26 PM

We've run into some new ROI elements for CBPA recently that can really have an impact. A vendor of voice picking systems (that's where you have workers in a warehouse get their picking instructions via voice commands over a wireless headset) described his solution and along with the obvious benefits like improved accuracy, faster training, increased productivity, but then popped some real surprises. The headsets allowed the workers to be more aware of their surroundings, and that reduced accidents (a worker is killed in the US every three days from a forklift accident). One key one was that they boosted their fulfillment accuracy from under 90% to over 99.8%. That 99.8% was a magic number because it made them a "preferred supplier" with some of their biggest customers (e.g. WalMart), which meant their trucks got to go to the head of the line for deliveries.

Now no one is worrying about getting hit with a forklift in a hospital or an insurance company, but what it does tell you is that if you look deeper into the business processes (and talk to the managers who are directly involved), you can also find much more subtle but vitally important benefits that can be used to justify CBPA.

Blair Pleasant Posted: Tuesday, June 30, 4:27 PM

This all sounds great, but it also sounds like a lot of work. How can the process of CBPA be made simpler for enterprises.

Rick Chin Posted: Wednesday, July 8, 7:03 AM

Typically, other offerings only address portions of the process, leaving the company with pockets of automation in between areas of manual tasks. In between the automated parts, the company loses visibility and work can get lost. IPA seeks to automate the entire process regardless of whether it involves two people & ten minutes or fifty people & ten weeks while providing up-to-date visibility regarding work status and progress.

IPA also associates phone and email communications with work. That might mean it uses communications to reach out to the customer or places a call or email when necessary. IPA could also start a new action or continue and existing one based on an email from a customer.

One other difference in IPA is the use of presence and skills to know who is available and send work to the most qualified person.

Rick Chin Posted: Wednesday, July 8, 7:24 AM

The CBPA methodology doesn’t have to be complex. Bringing process automation and management within the reach of “normal” businesses was a key goal with IPA, the first automation system to embrace CBPA. People find that the visual design environment of IPA makes creating process flows very interactive and intuitive.

However, I would say that analyzing a process and automating it takes some practice. The first few times you do it, your eyes begin to see process and activities with much more detail and decision points. This is why engaging a consulting firm that specializes in process automation is recommended for initial implementations. Once you become familiar with the way processes are automated, you can do them without assistance. Learning how to do it right the first time is well worth the minimal investment.

Of course, you can jump right in and do it yourself if you feel comfortable with those skills.

Once you get comfortable doing automation, you will start to see automation opportunities everywhere and the CBPA methodology allows you to automate things other solutions couldn’t handle.

The Truth is the new Trend

admin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 22:46:49 GMT

Dave Michels

Posted: Thursday, August 6, 10:56 PM

Joined: 4/15/2009
Posts: 6

Techcrunch recently did an interesting story on Press Releases - suggesting 10 words that should be banned from them. The point was that every vendor seems to think they are a "leader" or "Leading provider" and that their products or services are "innovative" and/or "revolutionary"; etc., etc.

I think that is what is making Social Media so important. Real people using real words.

When I look at book reviews at Amazon, I usually jump to what the real people are saying and skip over the "book reviews" section. I love that you can actually rate the ratings.

When I get a press release from a telecom firm - about their "next generation" product or service - It takes a while to get a good feel for exactly what they are talking about. Before I even read it, I know it is "next generation" and basically the cure to all evils. Because of all this puffery - it takes way too much time and patience to just get a grip on what the heck the product/service does.

More and more, I find myself relying on sites like this one to cut through the crap. Just tell me what it does, why it is different and let's move on. A great example is the Avaya Aura Suite. This product was announced at Voicecon MCO. Try this this release and separate out what it does from all of its benefits (also great for a short game of Telecom Bingo).

Anyyay, the point: Press releases won't change. That role is well understood and ingrained. But I beleive the role of the web, interactive online commentators, is very different than that of the prior printed media. I submit that paper vs. online is not just the medium, its the message. New media is real.

Tell me I am wrong.

Dan Aronson

Posted: Friday, August 7, 3:33 PM

Joined: 8/7/2007
Posts: 5

When it comes to social media, I believe the best way to describe its output is, "you get what you pay for".

Don’t get me wrong, like you, I am sick and tired of manufacturers making blatantly false claims, let alone spewing endless gobs of puffery. And worse yet are the self proclaimed analysts/experts whose only strategy seems to be go along to get along -- not that I blame them. After all, when you depend on the people you critique to earn a living, how harsh can you really afford to be? So it would seem, as you pointed out, that the only people you can turn to for the truth are actual end-users. The question then becomes, are you actually getting truthful opinions?

I personally question the motives and self-proclaimed expertise of many LinkedIns, Tweeters, and Facebook-ians. For example, someone on LinkedIn floated a survey asking if businesses really still use fax as a method of communication. The respondents overwhelmingly said no, which puzzled me greatly. After all, anyone that knows anything about the business processes of larger companies or who deals with companies in Latin America or on the Pacific Rim knows that the most mission critical processes continue to rely on faxing for the interchange of paper-based documents, in most cases because of its legal nature. So I began looking at the profiles of the respondents and found that most were small-time consultants that typically dealt solely with SMB’s -- that is if they actually had clients at all. So in this case, social media failed wildly to produce the truth.

The fact is that thanks to the plethora of social media outlets, any nut-job can render an opinion (look I'm doing it now). Since you only need a PC and an internet connection to start blogging or tweeting, this begs the question, how do you vet these people? Take the case of George Sodini, the guy in LA who for years blogged about going into his health club and blowing a bunch of women away. And the Columbine kids left a digital trail a mile long leading up to their killing spree. So if these nutters didn’t have a problem "socializing their psychoses", how can you trust anyone on these sites?

Also, keep in mind that most social media websites do not demand proof of identity, allowing you can assume any identity you wish. As such, when you read a harsh review of a product, how can you be sure that the author doesn’t have an ulterior motive? Maybe they work for a competitor? Maybe they were just fired from that company? Perhaps they had an incompetent reseller botch their install (I’ve heard plenty of those stories), yet they rail against the manufacturer anyway. Maybe they are malicious 12 year-old kids with nothing better to do then mess with "old dudes". The problem is that in most cases, you just don’t know. It is undeniable that within the general population there exist certain people who should not be let within 10 miles of a soapbox (to stand on). Unfortunately, thanks to social media, there is no way to stop them.

Now here is the punch line; despite all of my cynicism towards social media, like you, I will still lend more credibility to a reviewer that paid for a product than to a manufacturer’s marketing claims or an analyst that gets paid by the manufacturer to say nice things about them and their offerings. So I guess I am not, as you asked, telling you you’re wrong. I am just saying that you might have found the least of all evils.

Blair Pleasant

Posted: Friday, August 7, 3:54 PM

Joined: 1/2/2007
Posts: 14

Dave:

As a "leading" analyst focusing on "next generation" technologies, I would have to agree with you (please note the tongue in cheek comment).

While social media/networking sites are great for getting advice and opinions, as Dan pointed out, you don't always know who's behind the comments made on these sites. I tend to trust sites like TripAdvisor, but you never know when a competitor from a hotel across the street is submitting a negative comment, or if the owner's son is writing a glorious review.

This is why UCStrategies is initiating the idea of private forums - where everyone who participates would have to include their real name and company email address (not a personal address or a yahoo, gmail domain) - so they can't hide behind a phony name and hide their identity. Sounds like there's a real need for this sort of thing - so let's get working on it.

Dave Michels

Posted: Wednesday, August 12, 1:46 PM

Joined: 4/15/2009
Posts: 6

I just got this email - I have no idea what these guys do. I am so sick of this stuff... (I removed company name with COMPANYX to protect the guilty).

This was a cold email designed to get me interested in their company - what do you do?

David, COMPANYX is looking for resellers and solution providers who are looking for greater revenue and wish to differentiate themselves by enhancing their solution portfolio with a pervasive customer promise; to further increase their customer’s productivity and decrease their customer's operational costs.

Our program structure is designed to build strong partnerships through incentives and rewards for companies who invest time and effort in the sale and promotion of our products.

All of our North American partners can expect:

Dedication of a COMPANYX Channel Program Coordinator
Complete sales support from COMPANYX managers
Preferred pre and post sale technical support
Deal Registration and Protection Program
High impact cooperative marketing campaigns
Participation in channel exclusive webinars
24/7 access to COMPANYX Partner Web – COMPANYXs’ partner resource library

Am I really supposed to research this company just to figure out what they even do?

Blair Pleasant

Posted: Tuesday, August 25, 2:49 PM

Joined: 1/2/2007
Posts: 14

Do reputable companies actually look for partners this way? I would have concerns about both the company and the partners they attract. Have you ever signed up with a company through non-personal solicitation? Maybe that's why some channel partners are having problems these days.

Dan Aronson

Posted: Thursday, September 3, 9:14 AM

Joined: 8/7/2007
Posts: 5

Believe it or not Blaire, they do. I get the same types of e-mails almost daily. And is seems like no matter how many times you opt out, they just keep coming. The problem with e-mail marketing, just like any other social media campaign, is that it is free. As such, executives like Dave who get 100+ e-mails directly related to his company/position get just as many of these goofy e-mails as well. And although I have not data to back it up, I would bet that a 1 in 1,000 response rate to an e-mail campaign such as this is considered a great result! But again, remember the cost of doing such a blast. And don't think for one second that a corporate spam filter will rid you of these either.

What I would like to see is a survey of executives asking just how much time they waste foraging through junk e-mails just to get to those in need of attention. My own experience finds me wasting somewhere between 30 to 45 minutes a day on junk e-mail. And if other folks have the same experience, just think of the cumulative man-hours wasted each year and its effect of that on the overall economy. Unfortunately, it took congress forever to pass junk fax laws, and they proved to be relatively toothless. So my question is, how on earth are they going to pass effective junk e-mail, twitter, etc. laws that will actually be enforceable?

I hate to be a doomsayer, but I think we are all in for a long, painful experience when it comes to dealing with free, electronic communications.

Unified Communications Trends - 2010 and Beyond

admin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 22:43:22 GMT

Art Rosenberg

Posted: Sunday, January 3, 1:15 PM

Joined: 6/16/2009
Posts: 3

Everyone in the industry now seems to be trying to identify the most important changes taking place with communications, emphasizing the technology pieces that they provide. Here is the latest from Avaya which could use more detailed clarification as to what it will mean to both enterprise IT and enterprise users.

https://www.xchangemag.com/articles/avaya-lists-10-communications-trends-for-2010.html

Marty Parker

Posted: Sunday, January 3, 1:36 PM

Joined: 6/16/2009
Posts: 3

Very interesting list. Many are contact center driven, no surprise.

Others are close to the mark, but are still overly focused on voice communications.

Jay Brandstadter

Posted: Sunday, January 3, 1:46 PM

Joined: 1/3/2010
Posts: 1

Thanks, Art. Interesting list. Another one to compare, by Zeus, is from one of our favorite Canadians:
https://nojitter.com/blog/archives/2009/12/whats_hot_and_w.html

Any comments on this nugget:

"CEBP and UC enabled applications will not be hot. This is another technology wave that will have a long adoption cycle. There will be a few verticals, such as healthcare and financial services, that will communications-enable some processes, but broader deployments will be limited until the ISV community gets more engaged in UC. This is one of the trends that the vendors are going to need to "prime the pump" and develop some processes and applications in concert with the ISV community to start the ball rolling. Once this happens, the momentum will create a "rising tide" that will initiate another wave of growth in this market."

Dave Michels

Posted: Sunday, January 3, 1:53 PM

Joined: 1/3/2010
Posts: 1

Ah, so Avaya and Zeus completely disagree on CEBP - I go with Zeus on CEBP but lumping "CEBP and UC enabled apps" together is a bit of stretch - particularly since UC apps includes everything.

I think my 3 are better than their 10. But I might be biased.
https://www.pindropsoup.com/2009/12/megatrends-in-voice.html

Marty Parker

Posted: Sunday, January 3, 2:01 PM

Joined: 6/16/2009
Posts: 3

I like your three, as well, but they are, as you say, Megatrends, reaching into music, airlines, etc. Avaya’s are “micro-trends” in enterprise communications.

And, each supplier would likely have their own list, such as “Video-based collaboration will be the new standard.” (Guess who.)

David_Yedwab

Posted: Tuesday, January 5, 7:47 AM

Joined: 7/18/2007
Posts: 1

As I mentioned in the podcast, video will become a growing component of UC deployments. It's hard to believe that telepony based video is now into its fifth decade since first introuced as Picturephone at the 1969 World's Fair (dating myself). But business video is finally beginning to emerge as mainstream with many flavors from desktop to Telepresence and certainly mobile video, too. The network and performance requirements for video being even more stringent than voice, will make the network infrastructure needs about full UC even more important and the user Quality of Experience (QoE) will be even more critical.

And we've seen major M&A interest with the pending acquisitions of Tandberg by Cisco and LifeSize by Logitech -- lots of dollars being invested in business video.

What is important to consider are not just the travel displacement opportunties from video but the improved functioning of business processes from well deployed video applications such as remote medical consults or executive/expert education and business meetings.

Art Rosenberg

Posted: Monday, January 11, 12:24 AM

Joined: 1/16/2007
Posts: 16

I have to also date myself to correct you about when Picturephone was demonstrated at the World’s Fair. Since I tried it there in New York, the year was 1964, not 1969. At that time I was involved in the first on line application developments that would highlight the role of the Internet and the World Wide Web. At that time it was called “time-sharing,” because it enabled interactive applications by sharing CPU time of a mainframe computer amongst different applications that had to be swapped in and out of main memory.

While there will always be a valid role for real-time video conferencing, face-to-face on-camera discussions are not always useful or convenient from a user “availability” perspective. Asynchronous exchange of information content will dominate UC because it is the easiest form of contact for both initiators and recipients. So, even if everyone has a mobile “smartphone” with a video camera in it, that doesn’t mean it will be used that much just for face-to-face conversation. However, it will be powerful for real-time exchanging of video information during a voice conversation, as you mentioned for medical consultations.

History as a guide to the UC Definition

admin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 22:40:11 GMT

Marty

Posted: Tuesday, December 15, 1:56 PM

Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 2

As a parallel historical example to the problem of the name for Unified Communications, the early automobiles had a wide variety of names: horseless carriage, autocar, roadster, tin lizzy, and more. The engines were electric, gas, and steam. And you couldn’t even constrain the definition by listing components. Some early automobiles could be steered with tillers, while others used steering wheels. Some had three wheels, some had four; wheels were wood, iron, solid rubber, or tubes. But the point was clear that the horse was no longer the premier form of motive power. It took almost three decades for that transition (the US Army still used mostly horse-drawn vehicles in WWI, 20 years after the first automobiles), but the change just kept coming. By the middle of the 20th century, the automobile had redefined most industrial societies, changing cities, services, and social structures. The results were more efficient business methods and more personal convenience, though with some generally unanticipated downside costs. Now, we’re faced with the same diversity of change in business communications. New methods for communications have arrived on the scene and we’re struggling to organize and maintain them into neat categories. For now, one of the broadest general terms is Unified Communications. Yet, there are also adjacent or subordinate or overlapping categories, such as Communications Enabled Business Processes (CEBP), or Collaboration, or Integrated Process Automation (IPA), names all currently in use in relationship to UC.

Clearing up the confusion around UC

admin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 22:38:57 GMT

Jim

Posted: Friday, December 11, 11:30 AM

Joined: 1/12/2007
Posts: 1

There’s been a lot of discussion about the definition of UC and what it means, and if UC is the right term to use or not. Is there consensus on what are the categories that go into making a UC solution? Also, what makes something a UC product or solution? For example, is voicemail a UC solution?

Pam Avila

Posted: Monday, December 21, 1:54 PM

Joined: 7/16/2008
Posts: 17

Jim - in the "big picture", I really don't think it matters exactly how we define UC or what goes into it. Voice Mail? IP/PBX? Collaboration? Who cares (except for the vendors who want to be offering "UC products/solutions"). Does the end-user care if they're investing in a UC solution or do they care if they're investing in a solution that has a positive impact on their business in some way? What good does it do if we end up paralyzing resellers and buyers as they try to figure out if it's UC or not UC? If the solution, whatever it is, improves a process in my business through better communication of one sort or another - I'm interested!

Some resellers talk about having a "UC story" to tell their customers. It's NOT about UC! It's about improving productivity so a company can do more with fewer people in today's economy. It's about reducing expenses, increasing profitability, providing better service to customers, meeting the needs of a mobile workforce, and much more. But it's NOT about UC.

So how do we define UC and what is and isn't a part of UC? UCStrategies has the definition that describes UC in terms of what it does. That's more than enough!

Unified Communications is a name for functionality

admin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 21:19:23 GMT

Marty

Posted: Tuesday, December 15, 1:52 PM

Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 2

It doesn't matter so much what we call it, but what UC does. Thus, our definition of UC as, "Communmications integrated to optimize business processes" is about how UC creates benefit (through integration) and about the result (optimized business processes). Any number of technology elements, from the dozen or more new communications functions that have emerged, can be combined to create a UC solution, depending on the problem that is being solved. But the point is that an improved business result is being created. So, look at our the industry case studies and the definition of UC will become prett clear. Visit the Case Study Library here: https://ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-case-study-library.aspx

Pam Avila

Posted: Monday, December 21, 1:57 PM

Joined: 7/16/2008
Posts: 17

Yea, Marty! Thanks for not getting hung up on what UC is - but rather emphasizing what it does!

Art Rosenberg

Posted: Thursday, December 31, 12:00 PM

Joined: 1/16/2007
Posts: 16

I agree with your view of UC as a means to optimize business processes, but that only describes the objective of the technology (the "Why of UC"). It provides the important business justification for supporting end users in their specific roles in a business process. The "How of UC" then becomes important in terms of functionality at the technology level and how it will actually be utiliized. That area is where I think further clarification is needed.

In my view the main "communication problems" that UC is aimed at are in initiating contact with a human being, who may or may not always be "accessible" in all modalities of communication or "available" from a time and priority perspective. Mobile users exemplify the first challenge of selectable accessibility, where a recipient may or may not be able to always talk, listen, read, or type to communicate. Further, it doesn't have to be a particular individual that must be contacted, but any person who is qualified, accessible, and available, as in tradtional customer contact centers.

It goes without saying, the contact initiator doesn't have to be a human being too, but can be any automated business process that needs to notify or deliver important information to a human being. It is also obvious that a business process will be exchanging informational messages, not trying to have a voice conversation with a person. However, message exchanges may be exploit speech if necessary.

The flexibility of UC for communicating with a person should not be limited to selecting one modality of contact for communicating, but must allow for easily and dynamically switching from one modality to another, e.g., asynchronous messaging (text, voice) to instant messaging to conversational voice to mutli-person conferencing. Too many people think UC is only about telephony capabilities via IP telephony or VoIP connectivity, but those are infrastructure and application server considerations that must support what the individual end users really need at the moment.

End user needs should actually be broken down into two functonal categories; their needs for initiating a contact and needs as a recipient of a contact. Obviously, that covers a lot of different functionality that must be kept simple and endpoint-device independent. With all the form-factors and capabilities of new mobile "smart-phones," that is not an easy challenge. However, the mobile user is the one who really needs the flexibility of UC the most!

UC-B: "The Pause That Refreshes"

admin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 21:17:09 GMT

Michael Finneran

Posted: Thursday, July 9, 11:44 AM

Joined: 3/21/2008
Posts: 3

I recently came across a rather amazing UC-B application in the most unlikely of applications: soda dispensers. Coca Cola is testing a new unit called the Freestyle that can dispense over 100 types of drinks versus the 6 or so you get from the ones you now find at the local McDonald’s. The real key is that the dispenser has an embedded cellular data connection and can provide a wealth of sales data,automatic reordering, and the ability to download new drink formulas.

From the soft drink standpoint, the key development is that the Freestyle has 30 cartridges containing highly-concentrated flavorings from which it can mix over 100 different drinks; only a few drops are needed to make a drink. Each cartridge is RFID tagged, and the dispenser contains an RFID reader that can monitor usage and determine when cartridges need to be reordered. Further, if they ever need to recall a particular batch of cartridges, those problem units can be disabled instantly from headquarters.

Fast food outlets have traditionally kept track of sales by counting the cups; since the customer fills their own cup, they really don’t have any idea what beverages are selling. With the Freestyle dispensers, they can not only determine exactly which choices are selling, they can determine different buying patterns at different times of the day. All of that information is uploaded over VerizonWireless’ mobile data network, so the machines can be plunked down in the store and don’t need to be connected to a wired network connection.

The other flexibility afforded by this design is that formulas for new drinks can be downloaded over the cellular data connection. Drinks are selected from a touch sensitive display, so a new drink can be added to the menu all by means of software. So, if they come up with another bomb like the “New Coke”, they can test market it,roll it out, or cancel it far more cheaply than with their traditional process.

Businesses are reluctant to invest in soft-dollar productivity enhancements, which is what makes UC-B so exciting. When we look to “optimize business processes”, we have to get beyond office-oriented tasks and get into the real “business”. What I loved about this application was that it took a process that hasn’t changed substantially in decades, provided a far more efficient means to deliver the product, collect detailed sales data, and includes a more flexible means of testing and introducing new products. It think that qualifies as “Communications integratedto optimize business processes”.

Art Rosenberg

Posted: Saturday, July 11, 11:08 AM

Joined: 1/16/2007
Posts: 16

I do have to agree with you that this is a business process that can benefit from wireless connectivity between a point-of-sale dispenser and a highly automated centralized control/management point. This connectivity cost-efficiently provides greater flexibility of product offerings, timely activity feedback, and options for distribution policy changes. Definitely helps optimize the distribution business process of soft drinks to consumers.

As long as the "flow" is fully automated and working smoothly, everything is fine. However, once the flow requires the need for a human skill or judgement, the process will require "UC-U" as well. That is, the flexibility of UC communication applications based on people accessibility/availability, will always be a necessary element of UC-U. Obviously, certain business processes always require people to be able to initiate or respond to communications from automated business processes (process-to-person) or other people (person-to-person). Maximizing the flexibility to communicate easily and quickly with people, not just equipment, is therefore critical to UC-U and therefore indirectly to UC-B.

Michael Finneran

Posted: Monday, July 13, 10:18 AM

Joined: 3/21/2008
Posts: 3

I agree, but I don't look at this initial implementation as the "be all and end all". Incorporating intelligence and communications capabilities in the machine opens the door to a world of other possibilities.

In this case, the question is: who is the machine talking to? The initial functionality is aimed at providing sales analysis, reordering, etc. to the back office. It will be a lot more challenging but a lot more strategic to establish a dialog with the actual customer. About as far as we have seen that go is to use the cell phone as an electronic payment device. Up until now, we have been hampered in those attempts based on the fact that we had so many different models of cell phones with different operating systems, communications interfaces, etc.

The iPhone and the library of applications that have been developed for it really has changed the game (i.e. "There's an app for that"). A vendor like Coke would be foolish to limit the functionality to iPhone owners, but we have app stores for virtually every mobile OS, and Bluetooth capability is standard in virtually all handsets and Wi-Fi is becoming a regular addition to smartphones.

Most mobile applications link the mobile device to a Web based back end, but maybe its time to turn that model around and establish a dialogue between the user's mobile device and devices that are nearby (like soda dispensers).

BPA - A Unique Approach

admin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 20:34:41 GMT

Pam Avila

Posted: Tuesday, July 28, 10:02 AM

Joined: 7/16/2008
Posts: 17

Business Process Automation is one of the high value/high ROI applications for UC, but there are different approaches to accomplishing the automation.

Pam Avila

Posted: Tuesday, July 28, 10:13 AM

Joined: 7/16/2008
Posts: 17

While no one disputes the benefits of automating business processes within a company, the "process" of automating can make an IT manager tear out their hair! If I have already endured the pain of implementing a traditional BPM (business process management) solution, why would I need or want to look at something different?

Rick Chin

Posted: Tuesday, July 28, 10:53 AM

Joined: 4/20/2009
Posts: 5

You might not need something else. Everyone should evaluate the benefits of a solution as they apply to their purposes. However, the key is to do the evaluation, not just dismiss it because you have something in place.

Many people find their BPM deployments have these downsides: expensive, slow to implement new processes and/or roll out changes in existing processes, requires highly specialized programmers, is typically applied to only some portions of the entire process, and is completely removed from the communications used to complete each step of the process.

In these instances, often CBPA can automate entire processes across the enterprise, including the use of existing BPM applications. CBPA solutions typically have more and stronger integration with enterprise business systems such as CRM and accounting systems and can extend automation (not just management or centralization) to the whole process.

In addition, because BPM solutions are typically communications unaware, they are unable to provide insight into all of the communications needed to complete the process. CBPA is the only methodology that correlates all these business transactions to related communications events like phone call history and email messages. This gives a company a complete view of interactions with customers and vendors.

Pam Avila

Posted: Tuesday, July 28, 10:58 AM

Joined: 7/16/2008
Posts: 17

OK, now I’m confused! I’ve heard about CEBP (communications-enabled business processes) and now you're talking about CBPA (communications-based process automation). Does one bring my business more value than the other?

Rick Chin

Posted: Tuesday, July 28, 11:07 AM

Joined: 4/20/2009
Posts: 5

Yes to your question! Since CBPA (the term created by Interactive Intelligence) is essentially process automation built on top of a communications platform, its main focus is managing, automating, and streamlining communications and processes, not just one or the other. CBPA acts like an umbrella over all the related communications and work within a given process, directing work to the best place to ensure the entire process is completed efficiently and initiating or responding to communications as needed or desired.

CEBP’s main focus, on the other hand, is to embed communications abilities into an application that is otherwise communications unaware. This almost always requires some customization of an application to achieve. It also means that the scope of the benefits is very specific and related to the customized application.

Blair Pleasant

Posted: Thursday, July 30, 3:59 PM

Joined: 1/2/2007
Posts: 14

How do companies go about identifying the processes that should be automated, and isn't this a big undertaking? What are some steps companies should take when looking at doing CBPA?

Dan Aronson

Posted: Friday, July 31, 6:14 AM

Joined: 7/31/2009
Posts: 1

With all due respect, and I'm sure it would be fun to argue who exactly coined CEBP and what it exactly stands for, this is hardly a new concept.

In 1988, the company I was with wrote a program to take invoices generated on a UNIX-based midrange system and automatically fax them using a Canon fax machine equipped with an RS232C interface. Previous to this, a group of five employees spent the better part of their afternoon taking these same invoices off of a continuous forms-feed impact printer, breaking them up, and then feeding them into a bank of fax machines. E Voila! Real ROI generated through the implementation of a Communication Enabled Business Process. So the question is, CEBP has been around for so many years (and they have), why haven't pervaders of UC solutions been able to capitalize its benefits? The answer lies in the following question. "Who exactly cares about CEBP"

What is undeniably unique about CEBP is the approach you must take in order to effectively utilize it. The first and most important thing to recognize is that the key contacts you will need to establish are quite different from those you are used to working with. Most UC deals are done with IT or Telecom managers. However, in most organizations of size, they are simply not that familiar with the day-to-day operations of most departments, and therefore a CEBP pitch will typically fall on deaf ears here. Instead, you need to shift gears and get to the Line-of-Business managers. These managers will always have operational budgets at their control, and may even have P&L responsibility. If you can convince them that you can save their departments real budgeted dollars and/or increase their department's profitability, they will find a way to get the necessary funds to invest in your product or service. And in fact, this is much easier than trying to get a director to carve money out of a company's overall IT or Telecom budget.

Tim Passios

Posted: Friday, July 31, 10:32 AM

Joined: 5/7/2009
Posts: 2

I agree CEBP has its roots in many individual projects that have gone before it. However, CBPA (Communications Based Process Automation) is a completely different solution.

CEBP is primarily used to enable some kind of communications within an application. This usually involves much custom programming to achieve the end result, perhaps a button in an application that dials the phone number of the customer.

CBPA manages and oversees all kinds of business processes and integrates communications into them. There will be many processes automated by CBPA that don’t have the slightest thing to do with communications.

Using queuing, routing, presence, and recording, CBPA delivers work to the most qualified and available worker, wherever they are located within the enterprise infrastructure. When that worker finishes with that step, automated steps can be executed or the work can be routed to the next worker in the process. The combination of actions and activities is virtually unlimited. If anywhere in that process any kind of call, email, or web chat needs to occur, CBPA initiates them seamlessly as the process requests them because of its tight integration with the communication system.

Throughout the process, workers and managers have complete visibility into the real-time status, progress, time-in status, and work assignments.

I also agree with you that it’s better to present these kinds of benefits to executives, line of business managers, or a CIO with an understanding of the business side of the company. Since CBPA can have a significant effect on the financial needs of a company, these executives and managers are the most likely people to recognize the potential benefits.

Arun

Posted: Friday, July 31, 1:51 PM

Joined: 7/31/2009
Posts: 1

People appreciate CEBP concept as it involves the customization of business application to enable communication. However the reverse I think involves whole lot of work in terms of developing the communication capable business process is not it more work and will enterprises appreciate it?

Dan Aronson

Posted: Monday, August 3, 6:03 AM

Joined: 8/7/2007
Posts: 5

Thanks for the clarification Tim. It sounds like, in order to take full advantage of your concept (CBPA), organizations with manual processes will have to retool their entire enterprise, while the one I described (CEBP) calls for an enhancement of process only where communication is involved (i.e. automated faxing, rules based routing of calls coming into to a call center, etc). If I have this right, then I understand Arun's concern.

The adoption of CEBP is quite simple and painless. Your statement claiming that CEBP “. . . usually involves much custom programming to achieve the end result” is simply not true. For example, many companies in my industry (fax server) have long since written standard connectors for the most commonly used ERP systems such as SAP and Oracle, industry specific systems such as McKesson and Cerner in the healthcare sector, and for the integration of multifunctional devices (all-in-one copier/scanner/printers) for handling paper-based documents. Other specific integrations might require 20 lines of XML programming, but no one is required to do months of custom programming.

Conversely, and please explain where Arun and I have it wrong, it sounds as if organizations are required to rework entire business processes in order to utilized CBPA toolsets. As you said, “The combination of actions and activities is virtually unlimited.” That would mean that the tools offered by a CBPA system would also have to be unlimited. Of course, it also sounds like CBPA might be nothing more than setting up workflows with rules based routing and triggered communication processes, all generating reports allowing the system to be managed properly. If this were the case, I would recant my statement about it being a long and arduous process to implement CBPA and encourage people to consider both. I look forward to your feedback.

Rick Chin

Posted: Monday, August 3, 9:37 AM

Joined: 4/20/2009
Posts: 5

To respond to Arun's question about the amount of work necessary to enable a communications-based business process as well as Dan's comment, ironically, the process of customizing an application to embed CEBP can be somewhat difficult. The required changes in the app and the amount of extra functionality will be indicators of how difficult the customization will be

I understand the concern about the work involved in connecting business process automation to the communications system. With traditional business process management suites, that would be a big concern. However, CBPA uses the communications system (and it’s integrations to other enterprise applications) as the foundation of the business process automation engine. The inherent queuing, routing, presence, and recording abilities of the communications system are leveraged to deliver work to the most qualified and available worker.

In an intuitive visual design environment, process flows could be drawn out in flowchart fashion. It doesn’t have to be hard or complicated. When the communications system is the foundation, most of the interfaces and integrations are already in place.

Rick Chin

Posted: Monday, August 3, 2:19 PM

Joined: 4/13/2009
Posts: 3

Using CBPA, someone can choose to automate one action or a whole process. There’s no need to “retool.” However, I do think companies who are looking for significant improvements in their productivity, time in process, or reduction in expenses and resources will want to spend some time analyzing and optimizing for automation. That is a process any company would do when using any process re-engineering. If you’re just enhancing one aspect of a process or one step, that analysis is probably not necessary.

I can see where integrating CEBP changes into some apps might take a few lines of XML, but it’s not going to be that simple to do inside a Saleforce.com, Microsoft Office, Siebel, or Oracle app unless they built-in prior support for it. As you point out, when industries have adopted a documented API to add in functionality, your workload is much lighter. We often find people trying to add in unique functionality specific to their business – functionality and flexibility not addressed by industry standards or APIs. This is especially true when companies have decided to create their own CRM, order processing system, or other key application.

CEBP is meant to add communications ability to an application that was previously not communications savvy, at least in some aspect. With CBPA, the original application still does the work it was designed to do and the communications system works with the application data and uses the UC and contact center advantages to manage and expedite that work delivery, status, and process flow. Integration to the data could be via database connection, built-in file format or application support, or a custom connector. If the process requires five applications, it doesn't matter that much to CBPA because CBPA is working at the process level and adding communications abilities at the necessary places.

In that sense, it is more like your “workflow” idea but with both queuing and routing, web service calls to additional services and resources, and the ability to take appropriate action based on changes in database records or other data changes.

Because CBPA inherently understands the communication abilities available, it can initiate a call, email, or chat to a customer, vendor, employee, or supervisor. It works the other way also; CBPA can take action based on new or additional calls, emails, or chats and thereby affect running processes with the new or updated information. CBPA immediately associates processes and interactions.

CBPA doesn’t have a huge number of commands or tools. It does have some key preset actions implemented in a very flexible way. For actions that can’t be handled within the primary set, there are tools that allow you to make web service calls and pass variables or execute subroutines to perform functions outside of the usual actions.

Additionally CBPA maintains proper data security based on roles and provides rich visibility by providing real-time monitoring and historical reporting.

I see no reason why you couldn’t use both CEBP and CBPA. In general, CBPA should help companies complete the same or improved processes faster and more efficiently while removing many areas of human latency (i.e., the file sat on my desk for two days) and errors, replacing slow tasks with automated actions, and systematizing company specific processes to provide a consistent experience.

Dan Aronson

Posted: Thursday, August 6, 10:57 AM

Joined: 8/7/2007
Posts: 5

Once again Rick, thanks for the excellent explanation. And please don't get me wrong; I can, as you envision, see a time and a place for both CBPA and CEBP. Left to choose, I think it boils down mostly to a companies individual direction and culture. There are some points in a process's life-cylce that call for a rip-and-replace mentality, clearly a perfect spot for CBPA.

In others, certain process improvements might have already been implemented which come up just short of the CBPA end-game and are just in need of a tweak or two. Still other organizations are simply not prepared to and or don't have the funds to implement larger projects, but are still always looking for ways to reduce operating budgets (hard dollar ROI). These latter two examples are often perfect for a CEBP solution.

In either case, let's just agree that the amount of work that goes into each will come out in the wash as it will be a primary factor in creating and evaluating the ROI of any such project.