Getting to the Core of Unified Communications (Part 2)
Getting to the Core of Unified Communications (Part 2) by Jason Andersson
In the Post-PC Era, advocated by many Unified Communication vendors, it seems that most services will be provided from some distant cloud, using features on devices employees bring to work managed by a service provider who splits bills between what is work and what is private. In this world, being a Value Added Reseller (VAR) or Systems Integrator (SI); it can feel as stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Yes, I am exaggerating it a bit, but pushing what is happening to an extreme is a good way to identify what needs to be done, what competence is needed and who will be your competitors and partners for the future. However, there are opportunities; they lie in the land in between each point of integration, where standard clients meet business processes, where front-office meets back-office and where innovation meets legacy.
Front-office Meets Back-office
I have been involved in the call and contact center industry for nearly two decades. For the longest time there has been two areas that have been sought after and for which solutions have been developed; one is the Mobile call center (which I won't dive into here) and the other is how to get the contact center agent and the back-office staff, sometimes referred to as specialists, to work together, or as we would say now, to Collaborate.
There are basically three routes to enable back office collaboration with the contact center, and all of them require integration into core systems in the office, whether they be cloud based, premise based or managed by a service provider. First are the vendor specific client, then the Open interfaces solution and thirdly the MS Lync route.
Vendor specific clients allow non-agent staff to access contact center features, such as Instant Messaging, Presence and call control but in a client that is more business oriented. This solution would allow adding experts into the directory making them available for agents to integrate into the customer service or sales process. Vendors and SI's can increase their sale into non-contact center environments by taking this step. It is a small step that requires little training and effort.
Open Interfaces allow other clients to access information from the contact center in another solution. These clients are often web based and some have a soft phone solution to handle voice calls. These solutions are unique to each customer, but built using common toolsets and guidelines. SI and VARs with the right skills can find many opportunities for this type of business.
Microsoft Lync is becoming a much used tool by many enterprises. Therefore many contact center vendors have a solution where agents can interact with experts using the Lync client solution. This way the back-office can standardize across the enterprise on one client, while the contact center chooses the solution that fits their business needs. For SI's there are much to gain from knowing how to integrate with Lync back office, but also how to introduce business process automation features to the back-office.
Not all is easy with these solutions, they do have downsides. Many loose information about the call once it leaves the agent. Statistics from arrival to end is a key feature used in contact centers, and loosing that information when moving a customer to an expert is never a good thing. Also specific integrations, such as identification solutions, where customers identify themselves before they can trigger a business transaction (common in financial solutions) are lost many times when moving the customer to a back-office expert.
Administration is also an issue, as most contact centers come with their own management and administration suite and managing the back-office is done by another system, especially if they are using a third party client or solution.
Many times important features in dedicated collaboration solutions are lost to the experts that are connected to the contact center. One such challenge is mobility, where the expert might have to choose from a limited amount of terminals than if they were ordinary users.
Summary
The future of unified communications is bright, but much is dependent on how well your organization can acquire new skill-sets that can help enterprises to connect the front-office with the back-office. Find out who to partner with and what your competition looks like. In this environment, you will find new partners to cooperate with as well as new enemies that try to win the same part of the business as you are.
Also on UCStrategies.com in this series: