CRM - June 2008 - (Page 40)

UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS forever, and others have been revamped under new names—but they share one common trait: They all fall under one of the CRM industry’s most overused (and least understood) buzzwords—unified communications, or UC. UC for the CC Contact centers are the promised land for unified communications. It’s no wonder that UC’s promise has been shouted at the highest volume with regard to contact centers, where there’s so much emphasis on the customer and on communication. With goals that include improving firstcall resolution, contact center solution providers such as Aspect Software are thinking about what UC can do for the consumer. According to Aspect research, 10 percent of calls coming into a contact center need to be directed outside of the enterprise, eating up, on average, an additional two and a half minutes. That extra time can weigh heavily on cost and efficiency. To combat this, Aspect announced an alliance with Microsoft in mid-March to create a strong UC strategy customized for the contact center. “UC.” DON’T YOU SEE? Depending on which analyst, consultant, or vendor you ask, the notion of “unified communications” will vary. Truth be told, there’s no unified definition for THE UNIFIED FIELD unified communications. (See “The UC “I understand the rationale to [use the Glossary,” page 42, for some help with term UC]. It can garner more attention the related terminology.) The Internafor the product, but it confuses the martional Engineering Consortium defines ketplace even more,” says Christine HolUC as an industry term used to deley, director of market communications scribe—deep breath, now—all forms at Indianapolis, Ind.–based Interactive of call and multimedia/cross-media Intelligence, a software provider that has message-management functions conbeen offering aspects of UC for contact trolled by an individual user for both centers. “It makes it look like this is business and social purposes. This insomething new. And it’s not. It’s an evocludes any enterprise informational or lution of what’s already been.” Intertransactional application process that active’s product, Customer Interaction emulates a human user and uses a single, Center, has long provided elements of content-independent personal messaging UC such as converged networks, conchannel for contact access. (Seriously.) As verged applications of unified messaging, wordy as that might be, it boils down to Not quite—but it’s important to note presence, instant messaging, Web chat, this: UC is supposed to tie together the that the trend shows no sign of abating: conferencing, and collaboration with various channels of business-critical com- More than 20 UC-related product an- business process automation. And yet munication to enhance the business it- nouncements were made at this year’s Holley says that Interactive has no nearself. Gartner refers to this as reducing the VoiceCon industry trade show alone. term plans to rebrand the product under There’s some measure of agreement a “unified communications” label. “human latency of business processes.” Some vendors and industry experts that presence is a key feature of UC, but On the other side of the spectrum, it’s still view UC as a new and untapped seg- at its core UC is really about bridging been five years since Berlin-based Siement. Others, however—such as Siemens forms of communication that were for- mens began marketing its OpenScape Communications and Interactive Intellioffering as UC. “It was new and gence—claim to have been offerbusinesses weren’t ready for ing the essentials of UC for it—they are now,” speculates years, sometimes minus the Graham Howard, the venfancy title. “The market is dor’s director of global marntial to research firm says that UC has the pote changing with new playketing for large systems. “It One .” “human latency of business processes ers and new challenges,” took a while for people to reduce the says analyst Blair Pleasant, realize how compelling the founder of CommFusion and arguments were for it. As leaders, UCStrategies.com. “There have we had to do the initial education. Now been early adopters who have been imbig companies are realizing how complementing applications, but most don’t merly kept as silos. Candela, a well-known plete it is. Maybe we were just too far really value presence and don’t know how lighting distributor based in Irvine, Calif., advanced.” Atlanta-based Engage Inc., to use it. There are product limitations. relies heavily on faxes from customers, a provider of CRM, enterprise resource There is a lack of best practices cases,” she and to integrate those faxes into its CRM planning, and e-commerce solutions, was explains. So are vendors running around system it turned to another Irvine com- with OpenScape from the beginning and in a panic to slap the title “UC” on any pany, Zeacom, a producer of customer call has stuck with the software for three vermessaging or collaborative application? center and telephony integration software sions.“They were the only ones that were 40 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | JUNE 2008 www.destinationCRM.com that also has offices in New Zealand. The Zeacom Communications Center made receiving faxes as simple as opening an email. That kind of customization is integral to a unification strategy. Gary Kelly, Candela’s IT manager, says he thinks of Zeacom’s UC offering as having directly impacted his company’s efficiency.“We’re able to do a lot more with a lot less people—and that, for us, is incredible.” http://UCStrategies.com http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - June 2008

CRM - June 2008 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Making Mashup Masterpieces Trouble in the Air CRM on Twitter Is SaaS Ready for Its Contact Center Close-up? CRM: In the Public Interest Required Reading Lollipop Loyalty Best Practices Series: CRM & eCommerce eGain NetSuite Infor Longwood Software Vovici The Second Coming of 2.0 Believe the Hype About Hosted Contact Centers All Talk So Hot It’s Cool Linksys Gets Shaken, a Community Is Stirred The Risky Risk Business Awana Hears a SaaS Sermon Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Scouting Report Pint of View

CRM - June 2008

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