SUBSCRIBE TO TMCnet
TMCnet - World's Largest Communications and Technology Community

CHANNEL BY TOPICS


QUICK LINKS




SOA Web Services

SOA/Web Services

 

SOA/WEB SERVICES FEATURE ARTICLES


December 13, 2006

Leveraging Web Services to Extract Business Value from your Telecomm Infrastructure

By Alan Rosenberg, BlueNote Networks


The cell phone revolution has made telephone calling more convenient for consumers, improved productivity for businesses, and provided tremendous financial rewards for equipment providers and mobile operators.
 
But as with most any revolution, some blood was shed in the name of progress. The mobile operators’ gains came at the obvious expense of the local and long distance telephone service providers as consumers relied less on traditional residential and coin-operated services.

 
The cell phone revolution has affected other business models as well. “Mini-monopolies,” such as universities or hotels, used to make nice fat profits on their telephone services, by charging premium rates for local and long distance calling.
 
I attended a large university in the early 80s. The college ran, in essence, a private phone company. It had its own central office switch and charged students $40 or so per month for basic phone service. I’m sure they were making a tidy little profit.
 
My son started college this past fall. Although his dorm room is wired for phone service, he and his roommates opted out. They all have cell phones. His arrangement is typical. Nearly every student has a cell phone. The university is clearly not making any money on voice services.
 
When I attended large business conferences in the late 80s it was often difficult to make a phone call at the end of the day because all the attendees rushed back to their hotel rooms and tried to place calls at the same time. Hotels charged inflated rates and reaped huge profits on their telephone services.
 
When was the last time you heard a fast busy signal or a “please try your call again later, all circuits are busy” announcement on your hotel phone? Nowadays I only use my hotel phone to order room service (business travel) or to kill cockroaches and water bugs (personal travel). (Tip: In urban areas and tropical climates, classic Western Electric handsets provide an excellent defense against hotel pests.)
 
While many universities and hotels long ago abandoned any hope of re-establishing their voice communications department as a profit center, some industry pioneers are looking at innovative ways to add interactive communications to Web applications to improve customer service, modernize the client experience, and once again extract business value from the telecommunications infrastructure.
 
We recently completed one such project with a hotel property. Like most other entries in the hospitality field, this hotel was not realizing a decent return on its telephony infrastructure.

They wanted to create an enhanced guest experience with an in-room Web portal. The portal would deliver personalized Web pages upon check in and guests could use the portal to surf the Web, order room service, book spa time, make dinner reservations, manage their accounts, book future reservations, interact with various guest services or the hotel’s retailing partners, and make free domestic telephone calls.
 
Instead of making money on telephone calls, the hotel would derive value by drawing more customers to supplemental hotel services, by delivering superior customer service and by increasing customer satisfaction and return visits.
 
The IT staff was given a limited budget and asked to bring the concept to life in 90 days. They turned to their incumbent PBX (News - Alert) vendor, who recommended a next-generation IP videophone in each room. The proposal exceeded the project’s budget and timeframes. Furthermore, the proposal required extensive reconfiguration and the vendor could not meet the 90-day deployment window.
 
To hit its budget goals, the hotel decided to go with a lower cost “thin client” device with a touch panel display for the Web terminal, and leverage the existing in-room phones for the telephone component of the solution. The hotel turned to BlueNote to bring voice calling capabilities to the portal, provide gateway capabilities to the incumbent PBX (News - Alert), and deliver connectivity to a VoIP service provider for inexpensive domestic calling.
 
BlueNote’s Web Services APIs enabled the portal developer to set up phone calls using simple XML/SOAP messages. Creating the interface logic to BlueNote took only a few days and did not require the Web developer to have specialized telephony skills or attend any training classes.
 
Guests initiate phone calls directly from the portal. They can contact hotel services, or call other hotel guests or outside parties. BlueNote sets up a call by first signaling the room phone, and then the calling party.
 
The team was able to deliver the project within budget by leveraging existing phones, re-using their entire PBX infrastructure, and introducing low cost “thin client” devices. They met their aggressive deployment schedule by leveraging a Web Services-based communications platform that simplified programming efforts and required no changes in the PBX dial plan or route table.
 
The hotel can once again extract business value from its telecommunications infrastructure by boosting service revenues, improving customer satisfaction, and increasing repeat business.
 
Although the days of making fat profits on voice services are gone forever, forward-looking universities and hotels can once again derive value from their telecommunication infrastructures by delivering interactive communications in unique and compelling ways.
 
Alan Rosenberg is director of Product Line Management for BlueNote Networks (News - Alert). With BlueNote SessionSuite platforms, enterprises, ISVs and partners can quickly and easily embed interactive real-time communication services into a range of commercial or custom software applications, Web sites and internal business processes using industry-standard interfaces and technology. He can be reached at [email protected].

SOA/WEB SERVICES





Technology Marketing Corporation

2 Trap Falls Road Suite 106, Shelton, CT 06484 USA
Ph: +1-203-852-6800, 800-243-6002

General comments: [email protected].
Comments about this site: [email protected].

STAY CURRENT YOUR WAY

© 2024 Technology Marketing Corporation. All rights reserved | Privacy Policy