Brendan Read
TMC
May 2005
You are browsing the archive for May 2005.
Verizon To Team With Genesys To Offer Hosted IP Contact Center Services
May 31, 2005I think it's in the nature of many business people to not trust software vendors. It's easy to get confused over the proliferation of features and benefits, and many companies end up throwing in the towel rather than making a bad decision, paricularly if they've been burned before.
But casual observation leads me to believe that companies are more willing to trust their service providers, particularly if they have had a successful relationship with that service provider in the past.
Verizon and Genesys today announced a plan to bring hosted contact center services to customers via a partnership, with Verizon offering Genesys' IP contact center platform to the customers already using Verizon services. (The announcement was made at Genesys' user/partner conference, which is ongoing as I write this.)
Used to directly servicing enterprise customers' needs, Verizon may be in a better position to help customers understand why hosted contact center service can improve a gamut of metrics in their call centers, while taking advantage of the trust factor Verizon possesses with its current customers.
The full release is below.
TES
Verizon’s Upcoming Hosted IP Service Will Bring Big Benefits to Call Centers, CTO Wegleitner Says
Large contact-center customers can benefit from hosted IP-based services to quickly and cost-efficiently deploy a variety of advanced applications without having to invest in premises-based hardware, said Verizon Chief Technology Officer Mark Wegleitner. And Verizon and Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories plan to meet that need, he said.
“Verizon will soon offer a hosted IP service with Genesys that will enable our customers to efficiently deploy sophisticated contact-center solutions within a flexible, cost-efficient hosted environment,” he told the Genesys User Conference here. “Call-center customers would be able to take advantage of Verizon’s network expertise and extensive network investments so that they can concentrate on their core business.
SAP Shows Up In The Same Prom Dress As Siebel
May 18, 2005Oops...it's always amusing to watch two large companies in a competitive space react to one another like two teenage girls showing up at the prom in the same poufy strapless gown. Hard on the heels of SAP's announcement about the next generation of mySAP CRM, Siebel felt the need to issue a statement. I faithfully reprint it below:
"Siebel Systems is the market leading provider of customer-facing solutions. The vast majority of leading companies in vertical markets such as Life Sciences, High Tech Manufacturing, Communications, Government, and Financial Services use Siebel for their customer-facing systems," said David Schmaier, Executive Vice President at Siebel Systems.
SAP Announces mySAP CRM Update At SAPPHIRE '05
May 18, 2005German software giant SAP today announced it has released the newest version of its mySAP Customer Relationship Management, the company's offering to the contact center/customer care industry. Coinciding with SAP's enormous user conference, SAPPHIRE '05, in Boston, the product release includes details on the update from the previous mySAP.
Release is below.
TES
SAP’s Next Evolution of CRM Delivers Customer-Inspired Innovation mySAP™ CRM 2005 Delivers on Continuing Solution Investment by Putting the Power and Ease of CRM in the Hands of Users
Demonstrating continuing evidence of its CRM market leadership, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced the next evolution of mySAP™ Customer Relationship Management (mySAP CRM), the culmination of a series of innovations inspired by customers across more than 25 industries. The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE® ’05, SAP’s international customer conference being held in Boston, Massachusetts, May 17 - 19.
Building on the input and best business practices from its base of more than 2,900 CRM customers, mySAP CRM 2005 will deliver new levels of innovation across key business processes for the telecommunication, public sector and financial services industries, as well as key cross-industry business capabilities such as service management, marketing resource management and mobile sales for handhelds. Powered by the SAP NetWeaver™ platform, complete with embedded analytics and featuring enhanced dashboard-like analytical applications, the new version of mySAP CRM focuses on helping customers enhance user productivity by empowering users with a complete view of all relevant information from diverse enterprise systems to drive insight, decisions and cross-enterprise collaboration.
“We have worked closely with our member customers to define enhancements that best support their evolving business processes and industry demands,” said Tim Ronan, Influence Council Coordinator, CRM Solution User Group, Americas’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG).
A Great IVR Story
May 17, 2005In response to my column in the May issue of Customer Interaction Solutions called "Clean Up In The Self-Service Aisle," I got a response today from a reader who relates the following story:
There's an unverifiable (for a reason) story about a call center manager whose boss directed him: "We're still getting too low a percentage of calls handled by the IVR. Fix it."
His solution?
Adjust the menu options to prevent opt-out to an agent. Percentages jumped AND so too did call volumes since people kept calling back in order to try and beat the IVR.
Manager: "Well boss, not only did I increase the percentage of auto-handled calls, but I did it and at the same time our total call volume increased."
He got his performance bonus as a result.
Siemens Continually Recognizes Fertile Ground With SMBs
May 16, 2005Siemens today announced it's launching Version 6.5 of its popular HiPath ProCenter Agile and ProCenter Standard apps today. I had the pleasure of meeting with Al Baker, VP of product management for Siemens Global eCRM Solutions, in TMC's office last week. I admire the HiPath ProCenter Agile product (and Siemens) for launching essentially dual versions of this product: one product (Agile) was designed to make the functionality of HiPath ProCenter available to the SMB market (small to medium-sized businesses). This is a step that has not been taken by many of Siemens notable competitiors.
What Is "Homeshoring"?
May 13, 2005I know...this industry doesn't need another buzzword...it's already got more of them than the average teenage girl in a shopping mall. But this buzzword, besides being somewhat geographically improbably, is interesting.
"Homeshoring" refers to the practice that some call centers are implementing to prevent being forced to send jobs overseas to save money. It involves, as one might imagine, the use of carefully selected home agents connected to all the call centers' systems and software through delivery on an IP-enabled platform. The result: instant agents who aren't using up the call center's capital resources.
Companies Readying For The Leap To Speech
May 13, 2005Speech technology is a funny thing...its potential is great, it certainly hasn't suffered from a lack of hype, but many companies are STILL dragging their feet when it comes to even experimenting with speech. According to Benchmark Portal, these companies may have reached the end of their dithering and are ready to make a commitment: According to their research, fifty percent of companies currently not using speech are considering implementing it within the next year. We're looking forward to see the market heating up.
TES
Preliminary Results Indicate that Fifty Percent of Call Centers Not Currently Speech-Enabled Plan on Implementing Speech within the Next Year
SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 11, 2005 -- Edify® Corporation, a leading global supplier of voice and speech solutions, today announced it has joined forces with Purdue University’s Center for Customer-Driven Quality to determine best practices for deploying speech recognition systems. Dr.
Ready For Do-Not-Fax Legislation?
May 12, 2005Federal do-not-fax legislation goes into effect July 1st of this year. Are you ready? Are you sure? (You thought you were ready for the Teleservices Sales Rule, too, remember.) Just as with previous do-not-call laws, this one is far-reaching (and doesn't exempt you from state do-not-fax lists) and comes neatly packaged with large fees per violation.
Software from a company called CTAP works with your PBX to check the outgoing fax traffic and make sure you're not contacting anyone on federal, state or third-party "do-not-fax" lists. See full release below.
TES
CTAP Launches CTAP FaxShield; Blocks Outgoing Faxes from Connecting With Restricted Numbers
Innovative Product Ensures Compliance with Federal Law
DALLAS, May 12, 2005 – CTAP, a strategic provider of telecommunications services, technology and applications for helping businesses leverage the power of convergent networks, announced today the release of CTAP FaxShield™, a Web-based application that puts companies in compliance with the Federal Communications Commission’s “Do Not Fax” regulation to be implemented July 1, 2005.
Some Stats From The Top 50 Teleservices Agencies Ranking
May 12, 2005It's that time of year: time to crunch the numbers to prepare for the Global Call Center Outsourcing Summit on May 25th in Dallas at the Westin Park Central Hotel, the event during which TMC and Customer Interaction Solutions magazine hold a dinner event to honor the Top 50 Teleservices Agencies companies and the recipients of the MVP (Marketing Via Phone) Quality Award.
I'm an editor, but I usually look forward to this time of year: it's nice to work with numbers sometimes. Numbers are absolute: they have no versions, innuendo or verb declensions.
Since we're the only company that conducts a ranking of this nature (companies are ranked by their size, as determined by number of billable minutes for a one-year period), we're the only organization that has a complete view of both the status quo and the growth of this industry.
An interesting picture of the teleservices industry in 2005 has emerged, and it's significantly different from the one we saw in 2004.
The average teleservices agency in 2005:
* Has 2,309 full-time workers;
* Has 881 part-time workers;
* Services 134 clients;
* Has a nearly 60 percent change of having at least one foreign call center;
* Has a statistically insignificant number of home-based agents; and
* Has 3,778 work stations.
Want to hear more? Join us at the Global Call Center Outsourcing Summit on May 25. Details may be found here: http://www.tmcnet.com/gccos/
TES
The Shifting Speech Technologies Industry
May 10, 2005The speech technology industry is changing shape, though I'm sure that's not news to most people in the contact center industry. With yesterday's announcement of the merger of Nuance and ScanSoft, and the below announcement of cooperation between LumenVox and Nuance 8.5, we can presume that we haven't seen the last of the shifting of both the speech behemoths and the smaller speech application innovators.
Industry insight tells us that the market as a whole has been slow to adopt speech. We can presume that a lot of companies have been scared off by what they perceive to be the tech-intense process of creating dialogs and scripts...companies foresee themselves as having to hire nine engineers just to maintain their speech applications.
What companies like LumenVox and TuVox are trying to tell the market is: You don't need to be an expert. These companies are automating the creation of speech processes in the way that call center software companies created automated, easy-to-use processes to create workflows, schedules, outbound scripts, recording rules and other tasks.
The moral of the story? Don't be afraid of speech.
TES
LumenVox's Speech Tuner Supports Nuance 8.5
San Diego, CA (May 10, 2005) – LumenVox (www.LumenVox.com), an innovator in speech recognition technology, announces the availability of Nuance 8.5 support with their Speech Tuner.
ScanSoft & Nuance To Merge
May 9, 2005Anyone else been wondering what's up with ScanSoft lately? Now, we have an answer. This merger will create the largest and most powerful speech technology organization in the world. Competitors, put your running shoes on. Release below.
TES
ScanSoft and Nuance to Merge, Creating Comprehensive Portfolio of Enterprise Speech Solutions and Expertise
Combined Company Poised to Accelerate Technology Innovation for Customers and Partners around the World
Acquisition Expected to be Accretive to ScanSoft Shareholders for Fiscal Year 2006
Peabody, Mass.
MIT Student To Time Travellers: Party On, Dudes
May 6, 2005Maybe the following story will give you visions of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, complete with George Carlin in a phone booth in cool sunglasses, like it did me. Then again, maybe not.
An MIT student is this weekend hosting a "time traveler convention" on the Boston campus of the elite science and technology school. (It's at 8:00 pm tomorrow night, if you're a time traveller with no weekend plans, incidentally.)
He's providing chips and dip, and the open invitation is out, across the galaxy, for all time travellers to show up and share their experiences. They must bring proof, however, that they are indeed time travellers.
Death To The Dancing Paperclip
May 5, 2005Has anyone else noticed that with each new rendition of Windows, particularly in MS Word, the "help" factor (otherwise known as the "idiot" factor) keeps getting ratcheted up? MS Word used to be a very basic, stripped down word processing solution. That was great. We thought for ourselves.
Today, creating a document in MS Word involves a spasm-inducing mess of happy characters parading animatedly across the screen, mysterious functions that cause certain words to change colors and blink for no apparent reason and mysterious lines that swarm through your document horizontally and vertically with no reasonable means to remove them.
Did one person who worked on the document use the "track changes" function? If so, forget it...you're lost forever, even if it's been turned off. You can never completely obliterate the the stentorian messages that this function dredges up.
Financial Services Offshoring On The Rise
May 5, 2005According to a report announced this morning by Datamonitor, "Global sourcing in European and North American Financial Services," financial services companies are in part driving the boom growth numbers in offshore outsourcing. Both North American and European financial services providers (particularly U.K. and Scandinavian companies) are increasingly sending core competency processes (mortgage processing, insurance underwriting, claims processing) offshore. Part of the reason, according to the report, is the increasing flexibility to do so that today's enterprise technologies provide for.
The summary of the report is posted below.
TES
Outsourcing of core financial services functions offshore on the rise
While outsourcing of contact center and application services are relatively established, independent market analyst Datamonitor's (DTM.L) latest report on the subject "Global sourcing in European and North American Financial Services," expects increasing performance in core financial services functions - such as mortgage processing, insurance underwriting, claims processing - to be outsourced to alternative offshore locations.
Data Is A Plural Word
May 4, 2005Unless you're referring to the opalescent green dude from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
This is an error made by so many people in business that today, using the word correctly sounds "odd." It may sound odd, but the word "data" is plural. The singular form of the word is "datum."
Examples:
Correct: That datum is curious.
Correct: Those data are indicative of the fact that our help desk employees spend the day playing Tetris.
Correct: Data rescued Captain Jean-Luc Picard from a group of methane-breathing green aliens.
If advanced business analytics tell us that increased efficiencies create more profit, by observing this rule, you'll be doing TMC and its editors a favor by allowing them to to save the aggregate time it normally takes them to change the verb tenses after "data" in contributed articles and news items. Those data cannot be disputed.
TES
EADS TELECOM North America Changes Name To Aastra Intecom
May 3, 2005EADS Telecom, a player in the enterprise telephony and contact center software market, announced today that its North American commercial information networks division has changed its name to Aastra Intecom in the United States.
The company has stated that the name combines Aastra, which markets and sells telecommunications products globally, with the Intecom name, reflecting a historically strong U.S. reputation that includes several industry “firsts”. (Intecom was the operating name for the entity for more than 22 years.)
For more information, visit www.aastraintecom.com.
TES
Hosted CRM Plus A Little More
May 3, 2005Hosted CRM provider NetSuite recently announced its release of NetSuite CRM+, a full-service, hosted-delivery CRM product with some extras.
Unless you've been living in a closet for the past year, you will have noticed that the hosted CRM market is heating up considerably. Try reading the business and technology news on a daily basis without coming across information about Siebel or Salesforce.com, plus smaller players such as Contactual, Salesnet or NetSuite.
NetSuite, aware it's operating in a busy market, launched CRM+ to be a little more than many customers might expect. Its differentiation lies in the fact that it helps companies manage not only customer acquisition and order fulfillment, but the full customer lifecycle, through billing functionality and repeat business.
Release is below.
TES
NetSuite, Inc. today launched NetSuite CRM+, the first hosted Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application that integrates order management, partner management, incentive management, and project tracking to give growing businesses a 360-degree view of all customer interactions.
