TMC Labs Innovation Awards 2008

This is our ninth installment of the TMC Labs Innovation Awards recognizing the truly unique and innovative products and services within the call center industry. We proudly bestow a a TMC Labs Innovation Award on 20 deserving winners.center industry has always been — and will continue to be — at the forefront of developing and deploying bleeding edge communications and productivity technology. The results will be published in two parts in order to accommodate our in-depth write-ups for the winners.

Picking the most innovative products and services is always challenging, however the contact center industry has always been — and will continue to be — at the forefront of developing and deploying bleeding edge communications and productivity technology.

The results will be published in two parts in order to accommodate our in-depth write-ups for the winners. The complete winners list will be published in both this issue and the subsequent October issue of Customer Interaction Solutions magazine, however we will write the detailed write-ups in alphabetical order beginning with Aplicor this month and ending with Numara Software. Next month, we start with OAISYS and end with Toshiba. The complete winners list will be published in both this issue and the subsequent October issue of Customer Interaction Solutions magazine, however we will write the detailed write-ups in alphabetical order beginning with Aplicor this month and ending with Numara Software. Next month, we start with OAISYS and end with Toshiba.

Aplicor, Inc.
Aplicor Enterprise
www.aplicor.com
Aplicor offers a subscription-based hosted CRM and ERP Web-based software solutions for midmarket and enterprise organizations. The CRM application includes separate but integrated software modules for Sales Force Automation (SFA), Marketing Management, Customer Support and Partner Relationship Management (PRM). The ERP application automates accounting practices and delivers real-time and enterprise-wide performance visibility with dashboards, data warehouses and scorecard reporting. The ERP application is fully integrated with CRM and includes software modules for accounting, human resources, distribution and manufacturing.

Aplicor Enterprise is a zero footprint hosted solution requiring just a browser. Aplicor operates synchronized and redundant data centers in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. The application is hosted using SQL Server database clustering, highly redundant Web farms and a multiple layer information security infrastructure that is audited and certified by ISO (ISO 27001) and NIST (National Institute of Science and Technology Certification and Accreditation) annually.

Aplicor claims they delivered the first enterprise-wide hosted business software solution targeted specifically for midmarket and enterprise organizations back in July 2001. Since the first release, Aplicor has acquired over 150 global customers and over 20,000 subscription users.

Aplicor Enterprise was the first on-demand solution to offer an isolated tenancy hosting model. Unlike the more traditional multi-tenant hosting model, which requires all customers to share a common database and upgrade in mass without their consent, Aplicor Enterprise uses an ‘isolated tenancy’ hosting approach, which grants every client their own autonomous database. This architectural difference provides physical data segregation (from other clients), more flexible integration, more customization, predictable performance, increased security, assured privacy, and sure-safe backup. This architectural shift also permits version control whereby clients have the option to upgrade to the next software version based on their schedule and not the hosting vendor’s schedule.

Aplicor told TMC Labs, “Perhaps the ultimate litmus test of this unique delivery architecture model is Aplicor’s unmatched delivery uptime history. Since implementing this architecture in March 2003, Aplicor has incurred no downtime whatsoever. Since April 2003, Aplicor has maintained its performance visibility online with a public dashboard that displays uptime, latency, packet loss, jitter and host system speed.”

Lastly, in the last six months they’ve added a new graphical ad-hoc report writer, PPC (Pay Per Click) integration to marketing campaigns, new Asian languages, including Japanese, Chinese simplified, Chinese traditional and Korean, enhanced dashboards by role, and more.

Ascendent (News - Alert) Systems
Ascendent Voice Mobility Suite
www.ascendentsystems.com
The Ascendent Voice Mobility Suite is targeted to mid-to-large sized enterprises looking to tie mobile devices into their corporate telecommunications infrastructure. The Ascendent Voice Mobility Suite is an enterprise-level fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) software solution that helps hectic mobile employees become more efficient by providing single-number reachability, consolidated voicemail and corporate phone functions to any mobile device, ensuring that workers will never miss a call regardless of where they are or what device (cell phones, smartphones, soft phones, home phones, etc.) they are using.

Workers simply use their mobile phones as a mobile extension of their office desk phones. They can make and receive calls on their mobile phones and have it appear as if they are at their desks. They have access to all of the desk phone features normally available on the wired phone such as extension dialing, transfer, park, hold. Mobile workers also have the ability to seamlessly move a call in progress from one device to another without hanging up and reestablishing a new call. Other built-in features include find me/follow me, easy conferencing, and broadcast notification capabilities.

The Ascendent Voice Mobility Suite software is simply installed on a server and integrates with a company’s PBX (News - Alert) . Ascendent Voice Mobility Suite can work with virtually any vendors’ PBX (TDM, IP, or mixed environment) and connects to the PBX through either direct SIP or with PRI through a voice gateway.


The most recent upgrade, version 4.5, significantly advanced fixed-mobile convergence for the enterprise by offering an intuitive and secure integration with BlackBerry (News - Alert) Enterprise Solution Server with BlackBerry MVS Services to enable and provide usability enhancements for Black- Berry smartphone users. Additionally, integration with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server allows fixed-mobile convergence features to be built directly into the BlackBerry phone application, making it simple for users to access enterprise voice features (like extension dialing, hold, etc.) right from the visual phone menu on BlackBerry. Unlike other solutions on the market, there is no need for BlackBerry smartphone users to use and learn a separate application, they simply use the same phone client they have always used but now it has additional features available in the menu.

Ascendent Systems (News - Alert) told TMC Labs they are “the first to provide an on-device, visual, fixed-mobile convergence solution integrated directly into the BlackBerry smartphone phone application. However, despite Ascendent Systems’ position as a subsidiary of Research in Motion (News - Alert) (RIM) — the company that brought BlackBerry to market — Ascendent Voice Mobile Suite continues to provide device- and carrier-agnostic support, enabling enterprises to garner the benefits of mobile while keeping the appearance of being in the office.”

Cicero Inc.
Cicero
www.ciceroinc.com
The Cicero Platform is a framework for organizing, integrating, and enabling an organization’s enterprise software applications. Using Cicero, you can quickly provide three types of integration: First, Process Integration allows you to streamline workflow and business processes by simplifying navigation, eliminating searching for information, and reducing steps in business tasks without writing or altering application code. Secondly, Data Integration enables you to share data between applications and systems, reducing the need to copy/cut and paste or otherwise enter information in one or more applications. Thirdly, Visual Integration provides a logical organization of the information on the end user desktop using pass-through integration where applications are displayed and organized in their native user interface such as in a book and tab metaphor or using overlay integration where a new application such as a composite, mash-up, or dashboard is placed over existing applications. Cicero contains an extensive list of action libraries, which provide the logic to integrate applications running in a contact center.

Cicero technology leverages the relationship and communication that exists between applications and the underlying Microsoft (News - Alert) Windows operating system. Using Cicero Studio you create a logical model or map of each application’s elements or objects (such as entry fields and push-buttons) and events (such as mouse clicks) regardless of when the application was created or the programming language that was used. This logical model is created without having to modify or access the source code of any application. After mapping each application, you describe the business processes in terms of event-driven workflows using wizards and highlevel commands, plugging in the application objects as needed and adding event-driven logic and workflow. For example, Cicero can be used to integrate CRM applications such as Siebel with legacy applications without writing new code. At run-time, Cicero Runtime listens for events between the applications and operating system and inserts the integration logic between the application objects (within a single application and across multiple applications) creating the integrated desktop.

Cicero told TMC Labs, “Cicero is the original or first desktop integration product developed to integrate applications at the desktop. We are the first company to bring this new paradigm and technology to the contact center space. In particular, Cicero, Inc., was the first to develop a comprehensive toolset that provides non-invasive integration solution for applications across platforms — Web, CRM, client-server, 3270/legacy, Java, etc. — for customer service organizations.”

CosmoCom (News - Alert)
CosmoCall Universe
www.cosmocom.com
CosmoCall Universe (CCU) brings unified customer communications to large, distributed enterprises. Essentially, CCU is an IP-based contact center framework for enterprises and service providers who require a scalable, multichannel, communications infrastructure to serve both inbound and outbound contact center requirements. CCU is a high-capacity, highavailability, multi-tenant virtual contact center platform based entirely on IP. CCU leverages IP communication and open, standards-based interfaces, including standard SIP VoIP gateways, as well as software written in C++ and . NET (News - Alert) , which is object-oriented. The platform unifies all communication channels, including telephone, videophone, e-mail, voice mail, and Web chat. It also unifies the contact center functions of automatic call distribution (ACD), interactive voice and video response (IVVR), computer telephony integration ( CTI (News - Alert) ), predictive, preview, and progressive dialing with campaign management, recording and quality monitoring, interaction history, and administration and reporting. Essentially, CosmoCall Universe is what its name states, supporting every communications technology in the known “universe” that can enhance contact center communications with customers and coworkers.

While CCU is equally beneficial in a premisebased environment, when deployed in an on-demand model, all of the servers sit at the hosting location(s) and all that is needed on the customer end is an IP-connected PC with headset (for softphone) and/or an IP phone. CosmoCom’s platform is what they call “Virtual by Design” and was architected from the ground-up as a unified, all-IP contact center platform more than a decade ago. CosmoCom’s patents include “the” patent for multimedia routing over IP. CosmoCom’s platform focus early on in multi-tenancy has made it a popular choice by telcos and other service providers. Further, CosmoCom has also pioneered many technologies including IVVR or Interactive Voice and Video Response and the video contact center and unique deployment models enabled by unified customer communications.

CosmoCom explained to TMC Labs, “CosmoCom developed and patented the first all-IP contact center. In creating its first system in 1996, CosmoCom actually worked with Dialogic (News - Alert) on board-level mods that, in effect, created the first VoIP gateway. CosmoCom was also the first company to create a unified customer communication platform, which queues and routes communication sessions via all channels in one U-Queue, and to one agent client. CosmoCom was also the first to unify ACD, IVR, and CTI in one platform. Finally, CosmoCom was the first company to provide an all-software contact center platform that works with any standardsbased VoIP infrastructure and requires no special telephone interface hardware or DSP hardware of its own.”

IEX (News - Alert) Corporation, a NICE company
IEX TotalView Workforce Management
www.iex.com
The IEX TotalView Workforce Management (TWM) system enables contact centers to deliver consistent service with lower operating costs and improve employee morale. It is designed to improve the scheduling and agent management processes in both single site and multisite environments. The system’s advanced features include skills-based and multimedia scheduling, real-time and historical adherence, intraday and performance management, enterprise reporting and data exchange, vacation and holiday planning as well as short and long-term resource planning.

IEX claims their platform is the first system to support skills-based routing in a multisite environment and with multiple call routing configurations. IEX along with its parent company NICE, has been the first optimization provider to leverage a service-oriented architecture (SOA) to bring together workforce management, quality management and performance management solutions.

The IEX TWM system is further enhanced with pre-built integration to other NICE SmartCenter solutions, such as quality management and performance management. They offer a single server architecture that simplifies installation and maintenance. In the last year, IEX has added several new features, including home-based scheduling which creates optimal schedules for at-home agents by allowing them to bid for the schedules they want to work and giving them the ability to control the number of hours they work each day of each week. Another new feature is Express Messenger, which reduces the time management spends communicating last minute schedule changes by sending automated alerts via e-mail to agents and supervisors. Another new feature is “Intraday Shrinkage Management” which eliminates unnecessary overtime and identifies opportunities for meetings, training sessions and opportunities to send agents home early by helping the center more closely monitor unplanned shrinkage (tardy agents, those who call in sick, etc.). The new Overtime Bidding is pretty innovative as it enables agents to pick up extra hours by allowing them to bid on overtime. Finally, they recently added an Oracle (News - Alert) database option.

KANA Software
KANA Suite v.10
www.kana.com
KANA helps deliver exceptional service across every channel — phone, e-mail, chat and Web resulting in high customer retention and loyalty. KANA Suite v.10 is perfect for financial services, telecommunications, retail, travel, and hospitality where competition is often fierce leading to customer defections. KANA Suite 10 is a multichannel customer service solution designed help companies increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. The solution helps companies reduce costs while creating service experiences that are proactive, interactive and intuitive. KANA integrates multiple communication channels — while blending knowledge management capabilities across the end-to-end service experience.

KANA enables organizations to engage proactively with customers before, during, and after the service experience to avert escalations and boost customer satisfaction. New features include proactive service alerts with specialized rules and delivery templates, powerful classification and auto-categorization capabilities, and proactive monitoring for Web self-service and chat with offer-acceptance analysis — including the ability to monitor any field on any Web site for activity or interaction. Two other new features include self-Service accelerators — including fly-over summaries of search results, look-ahead search, and streamlined navigation and proactive inquiry deflection with intelligent de-escalation. KANA explained, “The KANA Suite enables companies to capture the voice of the customer, learn from explicit and implicit feedback, and take action on these insights. With rules, routing, and queuing applied to knowledge feedback from agents and customers you get actionable feedback.”

KANA offers advanced e-mail classification capabilities that automate the process of capturing, documenting, interpreting, routing and prescribing answers, as well as streamlining high-volume e-mail and Web form management. KANA offers survey dashboards to spotlight performance across queues, categories, and agent performance. Using KANA, a company can reduce costs, improve service levels and optimize agent efficiency, increase response consistency, and reduce reply time. Importantly, knowledge is blended in the service process across phone, e-mail, Web, and chat rather than being silos of information. This enables companies to manage customer conversations across every major communications channel while providing fast accurate responses to customer questions.

Merced Systems (News - Alert) , Inc.
Merced Performance Suite
www.mercedsystems.com

Merced Performance Suite is a performance management tool that integrates data from disparate sources across the operation and automates critical processes, helping to improve productivity and customer satisfaction. One of the components of this Suite is Merced Incentive Management, which enables companies to better manage their sales productivity and customer acquisition efforts, automating the process of commission, bonus, and incentive administration in support of any type of variable pay strategy. The application offers organizations greater calculation process accuracy, improved sales force motivation and retention, and ultimately a pay for performance system, which rewards employees for achieving targets.

Through automated reporting and comprehensive employee dashboards, Merced Performance Suite and Merced Incentive Management not only integrate and consolidate data from across an organization to offer a holistic view of performance, the applications also deliver highly personalized information to every employee in the operation, helping staff to self-correct and improve their own performance.

They offer both on-premise and hosted solution. In both cases, Merced Systems’ products are 100 percent Web-based and therefore only require a standard Web browser. The Merced Systems Hosting facility houses highly scalable, secure infrastructure of standard servers and databases to support hosted customers.

Merced Systems told TMC Labs, “Merced Systems has been and continues to be the Sales and Service Performance Management category innovator and first to have introduced integrated best practice workflows. However, with its acquisition of Practique Associates, the leading European vendor of incentive compensation management software, Merced Systems is now the first and only company on the market to offer unified performance management solutions that serve both sales and service organizations, including contact centers, field sales, retail sales, partner operations, back office functions, and field service groups, in a unified fashion.”

Sales and Service Performance Management (SSPM) enables organizations to drive performance across all customer-facing functions and dramatically improve customer lifetime economic value. Merced Systems’ unified SSPM offering includes incentive compensation management, consolidated reporting, dashboards, analytics, coaching, and other applications that drive behavior change among customer-facing and servicing staff. Other features include automated best practice workflow, such as coaching and development activities, automated incentive calculations eliminating human error associated with manual systems, and predictive modeling, which enables strategic plan definition and analysis of projected results.

NICE Systems (News - Alert) Ltd.
NICE Interaction Analytics
www.nice.com
NICE Interaction Analytics offers mass analysis of interaction content, automatic categorization, trending and root-cause analysis of multi-dimensional customer interaction data. It leverages advanced new technologies such as Advanced Speech Analytics, enabling NICE Interaction Analytics to provide valuable information based on keywords, call flow, and mood and emotional parameters, on both the customer and agent side of an interaction.

NICE told TMC Labs, “The NICE solution provides a multi-dimensional picture by integrating speech information with data from additional sources such as the company’s CRM system. This approach enables the organization to automatically identify key business issues, prioritize them and ultimately resolve them by performing an advanced root-cause analysis that is based on data-driven insights that were previously unavailable to decision makers.” They added, “Customers using Interaction Analytics are achieving noticeable improvement in service level, operational efficiency, customer churn, and agent retention — and are moving forward to increase sales and marketing effectiveness.”

Interaction Analytics from NICE utilizes speech analytics that analyzes 100 percent of the interactions in a cost-effective manner. Alternative solutions only take a sampling, such as every tenth interaction to try and gauge customer satisfaction and agent’s aptitude. This capability to analyze all customer interactions allows it to proactively identify trends, anticipate opportunities, adjust processes to meet business objectives and take action at the right time. It can for example flag calls for further analysis, such as customers at risk of defecting.

One unique capability is Fraud Detection, which enables corporations to prepare a high-risk profile database of known fraudsters’ voice prints to be used in comparison with authenticated users, allowing alerts to be placed on events where no extraordinary transaction has taken place. Being the recording vendor as well as the analytics provider the solution extracts “voiceprints” from already recorded interactions with customers, hence no enrollment is needed. The creation of a black list to prevent fraud and of a “white list” of known users is used in conjunction with customer data, such as CTI transactions etc., and will alert a contact center when fraudulent activity is being perpetrated; stopping a known identity thief or helping identify one before any irregular transaction has been reported.

NICE’s solution includes a range of speech analysis engines combined with advanced rules engines capabilities, that can determine what and when to analyze according to a wealth of information including CTI data, customer demographics, agent’s screen content, transactional data e-mail and chat. NICE’s multi-dimensional approach means that advanced analytics are performed not only on keywords, but are derived from a variety of additional sources such as call flow analysis, customer feedback, business data and screen events. NICE explained, “This contributes to the effectiveness and accuracy of the analysis and allows our customers to extract from their interactions insights that can help them address major business issues.”

NTRglobal
NTRsupport
www.ntrglobal.com
NTRsupport provides innovative end-to-end ondemand remote support that enables organizations to deliver exceptional service quality while reducing costs for their customer interactions strategy. NTRsupport from NTRglobal now offers a suite of completely integrated tools including FirstHelp, a self-service portal, remote diagnostics, unified communication tools and two-way remote control. NTRsupport provides several different ways of interacting with customers, including chat, e-mail, visiting a Web site, answering a voice (VoIP) call, and even new video call capabilities. Without disrupting the customer session and interaction between customer and agent, NTRsupport deploys remote diagnostics to speed and support the analysis of the problem, which then can according to the expertise of the live agent, can be escalated to the appropriate level and type of communication tool necessary to resolve the situation successfully all while staying within the same platform.

NTRsupport’s chat sessions are streamlined with pre-scripted greetings, answers to common queries, and Push URL (opens a browser window to a specific page on the customer’s computer). Customers can request chat logs for future reference while Operators can save logs to the incident history in the Helpdesk module. Proactive Chat, also known as NTRsupport Webcare, invites Web page users to a chat session after they’ve been browsing for a predefined period of time. Operators are able to helpfully intervene, offering assistance to clients or potential customers that have proven interest through an extended Web visit. It also features demonstration tools that enable you to draw, write or highlight areas on the customer’s screen, enabling operators to quickly explain problems and how to resolve them. Customerfacing elements of NTRsupport can be branded with any corporate identity. Multiple brands can be applied to chat windows to show identity associated with the application being support. Click-to-chat buttons, e-mail signatures, surveys, and other features can also be branded.

NTRglobal told us, “We offer an end-to-end remote support solution with self-service, remote diagnostic without user disruption, remote control by Agent, helpdesk to follow up incidences and Administration area. Some direct competitors offer self-service but through a partner, which means that you have to integrate both products.”

By integrating NTRsupport with a CRM system, an operator can see all previous communications with the customers as well as all technical information such as previous diagnostic sessions. NTRsupport can be integrated with ACD or PBX rules functionality, allowing intelligent call routing based upon specified criteria such as language needs, product type, or customer classification, such as paid premium service levels. Customer groups can be created and specific agents assigned to those groups with priorities set to specify the order in which an agent receives a call.

Additional features of NTRsupport include, desktop sharing or co-surfing that allows the representative to see where the customer is browsing and transfer files and information via a secured chat; VoIP and videoconference; support in 15 different languages; preset and customizable chat responses.

Numara Software (News - Alert)
Numara FootPrints 8
www.numarasoftware.com
The Numara FootPrints family of service desk management solutions are 100 percent Web-based service desk products and services that streamline and automate service desk and customer support operations. Their flagship solution, Numara FootPrints, provides comprehensive service desk automation with ease-of-use, fast implementation, on-the-fly customization, and flexibility for multiple uses. Numara FootPrints technology is available in multiple versions — Numara Foot- Prints, Numara FootPrints for eService, and the Numara FootPrints Hosting Service.

Numara FootPrints helps manage customer support delivery, maximize the efficiency of contact centers, speed customer problem resolution, provide agents with easy access to resources, and improve the support experience for both customers and agents. It tracks and organizes support requests, tickets, communications and issues through multiple channels, and ensures that customers’ needs are met and do not fall through the cracks.

Numara FootPrints includes extensive, built-in workflow and automation functionality that incorporates an organization’s existing best practices and business rules and processes. Organizations can use the pre-configured templates for customer support, help desk, compliance (such as HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, etc,), development and bug tracking, IT resource tracking, facilities management, and more, or create their own template in just minutes. Organizations typically set up numerous separate, partitioned projects with different database instances and cross-project reporting can be easily implemented.

Numara FootPrints offers extensive customization capabilities without requiring costly and dedicated programming, consultants, and training. Core features of the product include a centralized repository to log all service and support requests (issues, incidents, trouble-tickets, etc.) coming in via multiple communication channels (phone, e-mail, Web, live chat, and wireless PDAs), a customizable and comprehensive business rules and workflow engine, self-service online, knowledge management, service level management, two-way e-mail management, live chat, and comprehensive reporting and dashboards. Expanded capabilities are available in add-on modules for dynamic links to corporate directories (SQL, LDAP, etc.) and sales automation tools, synchronization with PIMs, change management, telephony integration, dynamic access to proven solutions knowledge, and more. Typical support management features are included such as record, assign, escalate, track, manage, and report on all requests and problems throughout their lifecycle.

New features in Footprints 8 include a personalized drag-and-drop dashboard and the ability to display live external RSS data, such as news headlines. Also, new Ajax technology has been implemented to increase the speed and usability of Numara FootPrints pages. Ajax works by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire Web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user requests a change. An enhanced workflow, including multiple work calendars for service level management, a pending clock available for SLAs, InstaCalc, AutoFields and drag and drop escalation rules was also added. One truly innovative feature is the ability to use Numara FootPrints Live eSupport to diagnose and solve issues through Web-based remote control, VoIP, live chat, a white board, and file transfer capabilities.

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