CEBP with IBM Lotus Sametime to Accelerate People-Centric Business Processes
CEBP with IBM Lotus Sametime to Accelerate People-Centric Business Processes by Michael F. Finneran
Applications for unified communications can take many forms and support many kinds of employees. The popular vision of UC is the executive or knowledge worker on a desktop workstation developing business plans, collaborating on strategies, or creating proposals. However, the impact of these new networking technologies can be much broader, reaching into virtually every corner of the organization. UC tools can be used to embed real-time multi-modal communication capabilities and collaboration services into applications to eliminate human latency from a wide range of business processes.
At UCStrategies we divide UC applications into two broad categories, which we refer to as UC for User Productivity (UC-U) and UC for Business Process (UC-B). The other name for that latter category is communications enabled business processes (CEBP). UC-B or CEBP involves embedding UC functionality into existing business processes and the applications that support them to increase efficiency and minimize human latency.
As both UC-U and UC-B solutions become more widely deployed, they will coexist in devices and applications, and users at all levels will switch back and forth between them during the work day without much thought. However, at this early stage of the market, these distinctions are important for solution architects in planning their UC deployments. The key element to grasp with regard to CEBP/UC-B applications is that they are targeted at enhancing and accelerating people-centric communications and business processes.
CEBP applications address the human latency that is typically encountered at inflection points in a process workflow. These inflection points call for the type of context awareness only people can provide to keep the process moving. Analysis of these processes has identified two primary types of human latency: predictable and event driven.
Predictable human latency comes about when a routine business process requires human intervention. That intervention might be required to resolve exceptions, make decisions that go beyond the capabilities of computer software, or to comply with regulatory requirements calling for human intervention. These interventions are recognized in the business process, so the goal here is to plan for them and to minimize latency by maximizing the ways in which humans can act. By embedding those human interfaces into the applications, the process can be completed uniformly and in the most efficient manner possible.
Event-driven latency results from unpredictable, unstructured exceptions in a business process caused by anything from late deliveries, equipment breakdowns, unexpected process outcomes, or any of the major or minor emergencies businesses must deal with every day. The key to resolving these cases will be situational awareness drawing on such factors as knowing what everyone else is doing to keep the process going and aggregating the diverse multi-modal streams into a common context and a unified user experience to address the problem.
The value of minimizing or eliminating human latency manifests itself in various ways. The most visible benefit is obviously increased responsiveness and improved business agility. At a minimum, CEBP can help keep those people-centric business processes from slowing down or stopping altogether, while in the best of cases it can accelerate business process execution.
However, the most important benefit CEBP can bring to a company is the cultural transformation it sparks among its people. As users grow accustomed to multi-modal collaboration and situational awareness, the inclination to take immediate action becomes second nature. The ingrained process of leaving voice mail messages and waiting for callbacks is replaced with the expectation of reaching people immediately regardless of their device or location.
CEBP empowers people to actively seek out what they need to resolve an issue and to reach out to others to get it done. This dynamic provides the foundation for the ultimate benefit of CEBP, the development of a culture of innovation that spans both, knowledge and task-oriented workers. Once people get used to working this new way it becomes easier to evaluate business processes and re-engineer them to be communication-enabled by design, while taking into account job roles, interactions among people and between people and applications.
So while the initial goal might be to speed routine business processes, as CEBP begins to permeate the organization, the real differentiating factors start to emerge. Those would include a drive to optimal execution, better responsiveness, greater innovation and less overhead to separate you from the competition.
The key to transforming a company's culture with the benefits of CEBP is to provide people with the appropriate tools. Reaching out to others in the context of a business process works best when the communication channels are appropriate to the context.
It is not surprising then that many of the early applications of CEBP have been found in the contact center environment. Well-designed contact center applications can combine the various communications modalities (primarily voice, email, chat today) in a contact center representative’s interface that allows them to handle both predictable and event-driven processes efficiently and effectively.
One of the major UC-driven initiatives in the contact center is the drive to improve first call resolution (FCR) by embedding presence-enabled collaboration tools directly into the contact center’s core business systems and interfaces. Where routine approvals are required for repetitive transactions, links to the necessary parties can be embedded at the appropriate points in the application. For example, a contact center involved in making various types of consumer loans can have the contact center representative collect or retrieve the information required for the approval, and then with a single click bring in an available loan officer from the appropriate unit, share the collected information, and either receive the approval or conference in the loan office to complete the process. The loan officers can also adjust the workflow by managing their presence status.
In help desk or other problem resolution environments, the first-line support representative can provide that same first level data collection and triage function, identify the area in which the problem exists, and then have immediate presence-enabled access to a pool of expert resources they can bring into the process. That engagement might be by means of a side chat, a referral, a conference, or the entire transaction might be transferred to that external resource. More importantly, that resource could be located anywhere within the organization. The real productivity leap can be seen when you realize that the contact center rep might not even have known that resource existed until they clicked that button on their screen.
Most organizations, at least at the operating level, will be able to recognize countless ways that these types of capabilities could be used to increase efficiency, shorten workflow, and improve overall customer service. The key to realizing the benefits will be in having tools that allow you to respond to those requirements and deploy those capabilities quickly and flexibly. One of the companies offering such tools is IBM.
IBM Lotus Sametime software provides the tools to embed those connectivity capabilities in both line of business and Web-based applications. The ability for Sametime to add that functionality to line of business applications will be a key enabler in moving organizations on the path to CEBP.
The Sametime SDK provides tools for power users, Web developers and professional developers as well. The SDK provides tools for building plug-ins and desktop applications using the Eclipse programming model and it also provides Ajax-based toolkits for embedding communication services into portlets, mashups, and Web 2.0 applications. It features toolkits for building Web services, templates and composite applications as well.
Conclusion
Minimizing or eliminating human latency is the key to improving productivity, accelerating business process, and increasing customer satisfaction. Taking advantage of the CEBP-driven unified communications is within the reach of many organizations today. It requires both management recognition of the benefits to be gained and a set of tools that will allow you to deploy those solutions quickly and at a reasonable cost while utilizing available resources. With those pieces in hand, you can begin to reach down into the organization and work with the business process managers to enhance and accelerate your organization's key business processes with CEBP. In the end, the short term goal will be process improvement, but the long term result can be business transformation.
This paper is sponsored by IBM.