CEBP Series Part 5: Automate Communication Processes
CEBP Series Part 5: Automate Communication Processes by Marty Parker
This is part five in a review of the seven major applications for Communications Enabled Business Processes (CEBP) as introduced in “UCStrategies VAR-SI Series: Building Your UC Applications Practice.” Part five will look at the CEBP applications that will “Automate Communication Processes.”
Some communication events are highly repetitive or are part of a very specific workflow. In those cases, the communications can be automated. Many examples exist today such as workflows based on e-mail, commonly used for such tasks as expense report approvals or future delivery of business announcements or reminders. Self-service web sites and interactive voice response(IVR) applications are other examples of this, for purposes such as telephone banking or online shopping. Similarly, RSS feeds are used to automatically assemble information to meet the user’s needs.
Now, with CEBP, more complex communication tasks can be automated. Emerging basic examples include automatic joining of parties to an audio or web-sharing conference. More advanced applications integrate communication tools into business processes to:
- Complete transactions (rather than manually sending confirming messages or documents)
- Enable electronic signatures (rather than faxing documents)
- Incorporate communication recordings and electronic transcripts into project files (rather than manual note-taking or transcription)
- Link two or more parties together at the earliest opportunity (rather than manual brokering of meeting times).
- Solicit inputs or responses to process-based workflows (rather than a staff person calling, texting or writing (or all three) and logging responses).
Increasingly, the tasks performed daily in many business environments will be enhanced by embedding communications capabilities directly into software applications associated with those tasks. When issues arise, additional information or assistance is can usually be accessed directly from within the business application and presented to the user without any intervening calls or messages. For information requiring personal interaction or expert advice, presence-enabled and context-aware communications can be launched either by the employee engaged in the activity, or even automatically by the UC software within the application. Of course, Call Centers and Contact centers have been used to automate communications for the past two decades through call routing, automated agent desktops, and interactive voice response; now CEBP solutions are also delivering that communication automation for the other 90% or so of the enterprise employees and their relevant, communication-intensive work.
Benefits
Benefits from Communication Automation applications include: significant reductions in labor costs where self-service eliminates the need for staff to relay information orally or by e-mail; reduction in delays which occur when workers must manually identify and locate individuals to provide information or decisions; reduction in labor costs for basic tasks such as faxing order confirmations; improved customer responsiveness and service which usually increases revenues and margins; and reductions in the cost of waste, rework and delays caused by late or overlooked communications tasks.
Case Studies
A number of interesting case studies exist in this category.
-
Care1st Health Plan is a Monterey Park, California provider of health care services to approximately 200,000 low-income and disabled plan members. State regulations require that the members have health screening with primary care physicians and that the physicians complete an Initial Health Assessment (IHA) for each visit. Working with Microsoft partner 4PatientCare, Care1st has automated both the appointment making process and the IHA form completion by physicians. Care1st uses the Speech Server in Office Communications Server to automate calls to members to schedule appointments and also to automate the IHA form completion by context-based dictation from the physicians. Regulatory compliance was achieved without increasing the staff or budget while physician reporting time was reduced.
-
Orlando Health presented this type of CEBP application at VoiceCon Orlando 2009 (now Enterprise Connect). Steve Margolis, MD, Chief Medical Informatics Officer, Orlando Health, pointed to the communications-intensive business process of patient discharge, which had required nursing professionals to make 15 to 25 phone calls per discharge for coordination and notifications. Using a Nortel IVR system with speech recognition capabilities and integrated to the organization’s Health Care Information System, Orlando Health has automated that process of contacting care providers, ancillary departments, the financial office and family members. Responses via speech recognition or touch tone are posted to their Health Care Information System. Using this Automated Communication Process, Orlando Health can reduce discharge time by an average of 4 hours per patient, creating a significant increase in hospital capacity.
-
Extend Health deployed an interactive voice response application combined with an automatic call distributor based on the Microsoft Unified Communications platform. The software is able to route the calls to the right agent based on customer input combined with historic customer information. Agents are presented with the customer information before the call starts. Using the built-in firewall traversal capability of Microsoft Office Communicator, agents can take the call from wherever they have internet connectivity. This automated front-end to the traditional contact center reduced the costs by about $640,000 per year.
In summary, Automated Communication Processes can reduce costs, reduce errors, and accelerate business outcomes. Look carefully for this opportunity in your business, using the growing number of case studies as a guide.
Next week: Speed Information Delivery.
Also on UCStrategies.com in this series: