By Gustavo Garcia

Over the next two years, it’s expected that 82 percent of contact centers will be running on IP telephony infrastructures. If you’re in the process of implementing, considering implementation, or want to make sure you’re getting the most out of your existing investment, how do you go about it?

In this article we will discuss the key features of IP technology, how it should be approached by businesses of all sizes, and the vast range of measurable benefits IP can generate in the contact center.

The advent of IP technology and IP telephony — or Voice over IP (VoIP) — allows contact centers and businesses around the world to make global communications instantaneous, simple and cost effective. To implement IP you need to know exactly what it is, what it can do for your business and how to make it work for you. Knowing how standards such as Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert) (SIP) can integrate into your business to address specific needs and requirements, and how your new IP infrastructure can be fired into action can ensure improved productivity and flexibility.

IP technology has reached a stage of maturity. It is being rolled out to increasing numbers of businesses, with many more beginning, or at least considering, deployment of it. A recent survey showed that 43 percent of businesses are planning, deploying, or have deployed IP telephony in the contact center. Within two years, 82 percent of contact centers expect to be running IP telephony infrastructures.

Despite this surge of usage, there is still some uncertainty surrounding IP technology — how it works, its full range of functionality and the benefits that it can bring to your business. Because businesses today are now talking in terms of “how?” and not “if,”‘ it is important to have a clear view on these issues.

How IP Can Help

IP implementations enable businesses, particularly contact centers, to enhance the way they operate telephony environments. Adding voice interactions to the data network enables voice to be managed in the same way as Web or email channels. This means that priorities, business rules, and automated resolution can all be more easily integrated into the voice-based area of the business.

A telephony environment based on the increasingly significant SIP architecture can enable contact centers to separate voice application software from the underlying hardware infrastructure, which brings greater flexibility to the management of the business, because there are few limitations to further application deployment. SIP connects all IP endpoints and will enable applications to continue to revolutionize the way we communicate. Research shows SIP becoming more popular, with 30 percent of businesses deploying an IP infrastructure, and 38 percent of those investigating it, choosing SIP-based environments — compared to 14 percent who have already implemented.

Infrastructure is very important to the success of an IP deployment. Proprietary solutions have been popular in the past, but there is a growing movement toward Open IP because it offers greater flexibility. At a time when technology developments are ongoing, implementing a fully future-proof solution has to be a key concern.

What Can IP Telephony Do For You?

In today’s mature IP environment, there are many categories and definitions of platforms available for the implementation of IP telephony. An open-standards IP platform enables companies to integrate leading edge applications, legacy applications and hardware into the new infrastructure, improving its functionality while limiting the level of capital needed. This helps retain important data with little risk of loss, and caps new infrastructure costs through PBX (News - Alert) side savings. Because of the open nature of the platform, additional applications can be integrated into the infrastructure as requirements grow and evolve.

SIP is standards-based and media independent, and comes with a generic interface, making all applications easily interoperable. By bypassing unnecessary middleware, SIP creates a comprehensive yet transparent interface for all the applications in the enterprise. This helps agents be more effective, improves the service for callers and can also help reduce cost by up to 25 percent.

On the business side, a SIP-based solution can deliver considerable PBX savings. Because it integrates all applications and communication channels into the data network, there is no need for computer telephony integration (CTI). Thus, legacy PBXs are no longer essential. This power of open standards supports non-proprietary hardware and software for queuing, routing, and managing customer interactions. It enables these changes to be made while routing strategies, supervisory roles and key metrics will all remain essentially the same. This means that both the IT and the business benefits of the implementation can be considered.

The biggest benefits of an IP deployment tend to be longer term — the ability to mix time-division multiplexing (TDM) and IP telephony infrastructure components, as well as the flexibility to buy from multiple vendors to develop an infrastructure (pre-empting future expenditure). Gaining centralized, consolidated operations management improves business operations, while virtualization provides a single point of enterprise-wide control and routing to improve customer service. Overall, the extent to which a company is able to embrace IP technology will dictate the long-term benefits received.

How To Start An IP Implementation

An IP implementation should be designed so that it suits the business requirements. IP platforms can either be pure or hybrid, and can be added to both proprietary contact center environments as well as those with open architectures. The size and scale of the deployment should be customized to match the size of the business. Keep the limitations in mind — for example, a proprietary environment will require less up-front cost, but limits future options for growth and development.

Develop a migration strategy that is in line with your business goals — both present and future — and your infrastructure needs. By doing this, and taking a phased approach, your business will not compromise existing investments, and the implementation will not disrupt existing processes.

What Does My Business Need?

Matching your IP deployment to your business goals is critical. Large businesses should consider whether or not to consolidate multiple sites into a single, virtual contact center, as IP can reduce the volume of the contact center infrastructure by restructuring it into a single site. This reduces the maintenance and upkeep because the infrastructure is all in one place and it enhances the manageability of the enterprise. A SIP-based environment ensures there are no disparate systems, so all of the information needed is assimilated and readily accessible, and any action that needs to be taken can be affected with one change, rather than via a coordinated effort to bring every site up to speed.

• Are you a small business owner looking to increase the scope of your services by bringing in remote and home-based workers? For a small central site, employees in other parts of the country that have critical business value can be easily integrated into operations at a fraction of the cost of TDM solutions. Remote agents simply need an Internet connection and an IP headset. Because the entire infrastructure is hosted in a central site and applications can be transparently linked through SIP, one only needs to download the application to a desktop.
  
  
• Are you trying to incorporate local branch operations into your service? There has been a long-standing conflict between the low cost of a contact center and the customer-friendly local branch — but an IP platform enables you to compromise. Local branches can be integrated into the contact center network easily and cheaply. This way, customers get through to the same people every time — building a valuable relationship — and the investment needed is much more costeffective than running a branch office itself.
  
  
• Do you need to outsource some of your contact center operations, but are reluctant to relinquish complete control of the day-to-day running of your operation? Through an IP platform, you can see the same management information as the supervisors who are on location at the contact center — and at the same time. This means that changes to staffing levels can be done instantly, and you are constantly up-to-date with the performance of the agents.
  
  
• Do you want to make your operation more resistant to disaster? Open standards-based IP platforms futureproof your investment by allowing for multi-vendor application integration as the business advances. Any new technology advances that are made can be added without compromising existing solutions. In addition, the ability to move calls around more easily means that any local problems with electricity or media inputs can be dealt with more easily by re-directing traffic to other areas of the business. You can also integrate your backoffice into your data network, ensuring that the whole process is in sync and manageable from a single point. The reduction in infrastructure required on the PBX will also translate into savings in terms of both expenditure and indirectly through reduced maintenance, as the SIP server will enable a single access point to monitor all the elements of the infrastructure.

Making It Work

The balance to strike is a complex one among flexibility, reliability, functionality, and cost. Different architectures will create a slightly different balance of these factors.

For a low-cost IP deployment that doesn’t need extensive functionality, a hybrid environment based on a proprietary system is the best option. It does not require the same level of financial or technical investment as an open platform and can provide immediate IP functionality and benefits.

For a solution to solve today’s business issues and prepare the company for tomorrow’s as well, an open standardsbased platform is the best option. Open IP will adapt to new challenges more easily as it allows integration off-the-shelf applications from multiple vendors whenever necessary.

The simple way to make IP deployment work for your business involves thorough planning, rather than the deployment itself. Which elements of the enterprise need to be integrated into the platform — the remote and homebased workers, off-site experts and the back-office? These may be vital parts of the business, but ensure that they become more integrated as a result of the IP deployment, otherwise the enterprise will remain disjointed and the investment is fully maximized. It’s possible to create a SIPbased environment where all applications — contact center, enterprise and back-office — are integrated into the IP network, with every employee connected and the whole enterprise operating from the same central network.

MANAGEMENT TOOLS

Once deployment is completed, it is important to have an ongoing management structure. An IP platform offers a great deal more management information on the entire enterprise and increases the level of control that you can exert. Using this in an efficient way to manage the unified operation will further enhance the effectiveness of the deployment.

Workforce management solutions help coordinate agent resources across multiple shifts, departments, and sites more effectively. Reactive intra-day scheduling reflects changes in any part of the business, which helps enhance agent productivity across the enterprise.

Skills-based routing can be integrated into workforce management as can other value-add solutions (such as skills management software) to increase productivity and service levels. Routing calls to agents with the right skill sets improves service to the customer, reduces the pressure on the network from internal transfers, and improves resolution rates for agents. An IP platform lets you capitalize on remote experts integrated into the network. These solutions enhance the portfolio of management tools available, and enable you to coordinate the wider environment created by IP telephony.

Measuring The Benefits

An IP deployment will provide initial cost savings. Gradually, network and toll charges will visibly decrease, and the effectiveness of customer service will experience a positive spike.

IP migration is a strategic move, rather than just a costcutting exercise, so the real benefits arrive in due time. A business choosing to integrate video capabilities in three years time, can do so in the same way as voice or Web channels with an Open IP infrastructure. The Open IP platform enables video to be merged into the data network so that it becomes simply another aspect of the infrastructure. Without the option to do this, the choice is limited to “rip and replace” or “miss out” somewhere down the line.

An Open IP platform running from a SIP server also helps integrate new business applications and features to support new initiatives. If you’re restricted by your infrastructure whenever you need to launch a new campaign, your investment is failing you. Make your infrastructure investment work for you.

Gustavo Garcia is senior business development manager at Genesys (News - Alert) Telecommunications Laboratories. For more information, please visit the company online at www.genesyslab.com.