July 1999

SERVICE-SIDE UNIFIED MESSAGING
For The Entire Enterprise

BY PAMELA THOMPSON

Much of the industry hype surrounding Internet telephony has centered on the arbitrage opportunities relative to lower transport cost. Rapid price cutting reaction from circuit-switched providers and revised estimates of capacity improvements indicate that this cost savings may be short-lived. The real play for next-gen telcos will be the applications and enhanced services enabled by VoIP and network convergence, and among these services, unified messaging perhaps holds the greatest promise, and it has been the center of much discussion.

To date this discussion has tended to focus on the features of the telephone user interface targeted at the road warrior. These include: voice-activated dialing, personal assistant capabilities, screening and filtering for wireless notification, and text-to-speech features allowing e-mail messages to be read over the phone. All of these are, of course, novel features that make for good reading and intriguing demos - and they are generally built around the scenario of a salesperson stuck in traffic. However, while such presentations are effective in highlighting certain applications, they have also had the effect of relegating unified messaging to a niche market.

This road-warrior approach may be fine for the SOHO (small office/home office- about 1-4 users) market segment, where mobility is high and the e-mail solution is an Internet subscription. The complexity of communications is relatively minor in this segment, and a change from voice mail or answering machines to the single unified mailbox in the network does not require much change in behavior, plus it brings additional features recent study conducted by the Unified Messaging Consortium found that small businesses (5-50 users) indicated a greater readiness for unified messaging services due to greater local mobility as well as a higher percentage of fax usage in their communications mix. However, this and other recent surveys of MIS personnel and telecom managers indicate overwhelmingly that those in the medium to large business market segments intend to equip only their road warrior population with unified messaging. This is in large part attributable to a mistaken impression of the benefits of unified messaging, derived from media emphasis on connectivity over communication management. The computer interface can provide significant productivity improvements to all users ? and great competitive advantage to the service provider.

FOR THE (DESKTOP) USER
Consider, for a moment, user behaviors with enterprise voice messaging systems. As users have become more comfortable with using voice mail, the voice messages they leave have evolved to contain rich information beyond a mere request for a return call. Business users routinely have 10 or more voice messages stored on the server, sometimes several minutes in length. Reviewing these messages via the telephone interface is a cumbersome FIFO/LIFO (first-in/last-in, first out) process. Forwarding these messages often involves a manual directory lookup. Plus, the system usually limits this storage to just a few days.

Where unified messaging is implemented, these basic functions are made simpler, and there are newfound capabilities as well. The ability to archive voice messages as .WAV files with meaningful names, to recall them quickly, and to forward them as attachments to e-mail messages using existing directory lookup and distribution lists emerges as a largely unanticipated benefit as users gain experience with the PC interface.
Also, while LAN faxing has streamlined the sending of faxes for many enterprise workers, most faxes continue to arrive at the departmental fax machine to be distributed in hard copy. Obviously this brings up issues of latency, a lack of privacy, and a reasonable probability of faxes being lost.

Bringing together fax and voice mail in electronic form via the unified mailbox is a huge boon to workers who increasingly organize their work in computer files. These messages can now be filed with related voice and e-mail messages, incorporated into other documents, and redistributed without loss of quality.

THE INTERFACE IS THE MESSAGE
The above capabilities suggest that there is a large potential market of desk-bound users for unified messaging for whom the compelling benefits center around a straightforward, intuitive computer graphical interface, not the much-highlighted hands-free operation and enhanced mobile connectivity. Most unified messaging approaches do not adequately address the needs of these desk-bound users.

These users are e-mail-centric, and for the most part, reside in medium to large businesses. Few, if any, will abandon their embedded e-mail solution or take on an additional “unified mailbox.” Therefore, these users need a unified messaging solution that builds upon their current e-mail solution, allowing simple but powerful productivity enhancements to their ability to organize communications consistently and to simplify their multiple directory applications.

Unified messaging enables end users to access and respond to all of their messages across a variety of networks from a single inbox, using any device. In an e-mail centric organization, it will be necessary to allow users to use whatever e-mail solution they enjoy today with their present collaboration tools and other internal processes that may have been integrated with their e-mail solution, such as expense reporting, HR processes, and material movement.

NEXT-GEN MESSAGING
This is where next-gen messaging starts. It brings an end user’s communication from all networks into their familiar e-mail interface, and complements that e-mail solution with a very targeted telephone and Web user interface. It also provides a single directory service, which presents many service enhancement possibilities, which include making the screening and filtering functions far easier to use and thus more practical and valuable. Next-gen messaging allows end users the flexibility to message however they like. In other words, it is end user configurable and very personalized.

While integrating with existing e-mail does not necessarily have the user coming to the service provider’s branded interface for every communication, the Web-based configuration/control interface for next-gen messaging will be used frequently and is a key opportunity for building value and customer loyalty. Service providers should be moving quickly to establish the computer interface that will be the launch pad for new service offerings.

Many features that are available today in voice mail systems are not used to their fullest advantage, because administering them via a telephone keypad is too complex and time consuming for the average user. Add a computer interface, and the user will soon be visiting the system to:

• Build a schedule of greetings based on day of the week and hour of the day.
• Select from a list of suggested scripts or prerecorded greetings — even novelty salutations.
• Build a schedule of notification parameters, or change them on the fly.
• Add a wireless phone or pager.
• Schedule reminder messages and wake-up calls.
• Configure user names and passwords for multi-user mailboxes (roommates).
• Select an automated attendant template and personalize the menu and announcements.

FOR THE SERVICE PROVIDER
Service providers building new networks have the opportunity to make dramatic improvements in their back office systems, enabling users to access their account information via an intuitive interface in addition to providing control over features of the messaging application. This is where true competitive advantage emerges.

Allowing users to administer their own accounts is an improvement in customer care that should have dramatic impact on the tremendously high churn rates many carriers are experiencing today. Surrounding this functionality with control over valuable messaging features entices users to also take control of their account administration. Add the ability for the user to self-provision new services, and the next-gen service provider that gets a graphical interface into the user’s hands has advantages on all fronts: improved loyalty, reduced churn, reduced cost to serve, and reduced sales cost.

CONCLUSION
Service offerings for new networks need not be especially feature rich to attract and retain users. Nor should they rely on changes in people’s style of communications — like listening to e-mail over the phone, talking to a robot assistant, or dictating an e-mail message to a machine. (These features may indeed become mainstream, but it will take time: look how long it has taken for voicemail to evolve.) What is critical is to provide users the e-mail they use today, while unifying directory services and offering users a unified graphical user interface to manage their communications more effectively.

Once this is achieved, the door is open for user self-provisioning, dramatically driving down the cost of customer acquisition and support. Rich alternatives emerge for personalization using the GUI and unified directory services. Features that are too complex to configure using the DTMF keypad suddenly become simple and intuitive. The opportunity to communicate with the customer moves from the once-a-month bill-stuffer to the computer screen that users see every time they open a messaging session. This powerful mechanism encourages the user to evolve to higher levels of functionality and higher-priced services.

Pamela Thompson is the vice president of marketing at PulsePoint Communications. PulsePoint Communica-tions develops carrier-grade solutions for progressive and competitive telecommunication service providers worldwide. The PulsePoint Enhanced Application Platform and PulsePoint Messaging Applications are carrier-grade and standards-based, open-system solutions. For more information, please visit their Web site at www.plpt.com.