CRM - August 2008 - (Page 43)

UC: AS EASY AS A-B-C Pembina Trails School Division, located in Winnipeg, Canada, may not be the first place you’d expect to find a unified communications (UC) solution; but with five school buildings and the need for more than 1,700 phones, Pembina Trails wanted better connectivity than its proprietary phone system offered. The school district found Objectworld, an Ottawa, Ontario– based provider of UC, Voice over Internet Protocol, and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) solutions. A winner of several 2008 CompTIA awards—including best software product—Objectworld offered the district a next-generation communication solution. Don Reece, Pembina Trails’ director of information technology, says the district considered other vendors, but Objectworld’s UC Server offered the most seamless integration with its in-house applications, Active Directory, and its Dell PowerConnect switches. Plus, there was only one license fee with Objectworld. Reece found that with competitive products, the organization would have to pay licensing fees for each additional communication feature— namely, email and voicemail. Reece says that Objectworld UC Server provided “the ability to use what we have and leverage the extended network. We were able to double the number of phones and still save money.” Pembina Trails has added 975 phones since implementing UC Server two years ago. Every classroom in the district has a phone. Additionally, every staff member has log-in capabilities that access the UC server and collate voicemail and email messages. Reece says a future goal is videoconferencing in the classroom. Messages will be heard—and seen—via projectors in every class, no matter the location of the school. The school will also look into SIP paging from Objectworld, which will automatically notify staff in any location of important alerts. But Objectworld already gets an “A” from Pembina Trails. —Lauren McKay ALL LINES ARE NOT BUSY British Telecom sees massive turnaround in its contact centers thanks to Knoa Double the number of phones—and still saving money. W ho’s to blame when further segment some systems within BT.” BT found itself using three separate contact center handling times slow to a crawl? Siebel applications—One View for its This sort of question consumer efforts, One Siebel for large gets asked a lot, and it sets off rounds of businesses, and Open Reach for partnerfinger-pointing with an attendant lack of ships with other telecoms. Multiply that problem-solving. British Telecom (BT) by all its contact center locations, and you have a recipe for chaos. “BT was able to break this unproduchad a blind spot: What was the tive cycle with the help of New “Trends of end-user experience when York–based business perform- failures and using Siebel?” says Lori Wizdo, ance management vendor Knoa. vice president of marketing for BT’s relationship with Knoa slowdowns Knoa. “There were concerns was driven primarily by the tele- became visible.” expressed all along the line— communications provider’s prior adoption of Siebel Systems products from agents to call center managers to for CRM purposes, beginning in 2000. As line-of-business managers. Slowness and BT grew to more than 15,000 agents (and system crashes plagued the call centers, more than 30,000 total Siebel users) with no way to substantiate the truth of across 33 contact centers, it started to take what happened.” The difficulty was compounded by the a different view of how to manage Siebel. “As adoption became more aggressive, dynamic nature of BT’s offerings. “We we also needed to manage certain regu- customize and update our features every latory issues,” says Stuart Smith, BT’s di- seven weeks, so we’re a moving target for rector of CRM performance. “We had to understanding functions and processes,” CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | AUGUST 2008 www.destinationCRM.com 43 http://www.destinationCRM.com

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

CRM - August 2008 Contents Front Office Feedback Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Maximum Security A Code Win Doesn’t Blow Forming the Platform CRM on Twitter CRM Class Is in Session Making CRM Mandatory for University Administration Required Reading Cover Story: Calling it Quits Wouldja Look at That? 8 Enterprise Strategies That Stick CRM Searches for Search All Lines Are Not Busy UC: As Easy as A-B-C Even Contact Centers Have Room for Improvement Money Lying Around? Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Scouting Report Pint of View

CRM - August 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.