prairieFyre Contact Center Suite is a call center management suite that
interoperates with the Mitel SX-2000 and MN3200/ MN3300 switches, and the
Microsoft Distributed interNet Applications (DNA) architecture. Mitel
Networks adds a percentage of its own functionality to the suite and
re-brands prairieFyre's solution as Mitel Networks 6110 Contact Center
Solutions.
Installation Requirements
Requirements to install and run 6110 Contact Center Management from a
server: Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 5 with NT Option Pack, Windows 2000
Server or Windows 2000 Professional (MSDE support only) and Windows 2000
Service Pack 2. If the server will also be used as a client machine, Excel
97 (Service Packs 1 and 2), Excel 2000 or Excel XP must also be installed.
When 6110 is installed on the server, the set up will automatically
install Microsoft Data Access Components 2.6, SQL Desktop Engine (MSDE)
and Internet Explorer 5.5. The server's minimum hardware requirements:
Pentium II processor @ 350 MHz, 128 MB RAM and 8 GBs of space on the hard
disk, although 10 GBs is recommended. At least two free com ports are also
required for PBX connection, and a third if a call center is interested in
using a reader board. The client machine must meet minimum hardware
requirements of the necessary operating systems: Windows NT Workstation or
Windows 98. Client machines must also have Excel 97 (Service Packs 1 or
2), Excel 2000 or Excel XP.
Documentation
prairieFyre personnel have taken steps to ensure that their product is
provisioned to include 'sophomore-level' call centers in addition to
more mature, well-established call centers. They've taken into
consideration the growing company were the MIS manager may also be the
company CEO, the marketing manager and the newly self-appointed call
center manager who may not be familiar with industry concepts. Realizing
that their servers may spend most of their time untouched in a back
closet, prairieFyre has provisioned for this factor by creating a larger
focus on the end user. Incorporating a new HTML Help file system, this
solution features 'show me' links to streaming video files to aid a
user with a visual example of the 6110 CCM applications. The 6110 CCM
Tutor walks a user through nine training modules of the 6110 CCM
application.
Also important to note is the user's guide's healthy offering of
call center principles and background information on the 'whys and hows'
while also discussing the nuts and bolts of the product. Over all, the
documentation has a very clear and definitive purpose'the best product
tutorials and user's guide we've seen in a long time.
Features
6110 Contact Center Management includes historical reporting tools and
report scheduler, inbox and real-time monitoring, agent forecasting, ANI
reporting, and presentation-quality charts and graphs.
6115 Interactive Contact Center is connected on Mitel's proprietary
MiTAI' link and allows management to remove ACD queues from service
during off-peak hours and return them as needed. 6115 also permits the
moving of agents between queues, or is capable of making agents active or
inactive as important statistics are gathered on agents' performance.
6120 Contact Center Scheduling is a client-based add-on application
that works in conjunction with 4Site, prairieFyre's forecasting
software. It allows the export of forecasted data into the scheduling
module. 6120 allows the assignment of staff according to skill set and
proficiency levels.
6150 Multimedia Contact Center is designed to aid call centers in
reporting on telephone calls and e-mail. 6150 enables real-time statistics
on agent and queue activities, creates multimedia reports on voice and
e-mail activity, and assigns unique ticket numbers to each incoming
e-mail. It creates unique auto-acknowledgment messages for each alias
e-mail, unlimited e-mail aliases and specifies e-mail configuration and
routing options through a Web-based user interface.
prairieFyre's solution also supports up to eight local PBX
connections to a single enterprise server with unlimited remote PBX
connections through the Enterprise Node software. TCP/IP data collection
is utilized and complied using Access 2000 Custom Reports Integration.
New features also include: agent reporting that tracks activities by
agent group; DNIS reporting, which offers DNIS/ DNIS group by period, by
queue, by DNIS number, by day of the week and by day of the month; and
Inspector Tools, which allow the search of SMDR and ACD data to ensure
accurate database programming and reporting.
Operational Testing
prairieFyre sent us a demo machine equipped with their Contact Center
Suite containing: 6110 Contact Center Management, 6115 Interactive Contact
Center, 6120 Agent Scheduling, and 6150 Multimedia Contact Center.
Although we didn't have a Mitel PBX to create traffic, prairieFyre
provided simulated call traffic so we'd have a genuine sense of how the
product functions in a call center environment. Through our testing it's
consistently been our opinion that the prairieFyre solution is intuitive
and easy to use, however, it is simply far too comprehensive a product to
test the majority of its feature set. That said, our intention is to pass
along the description and opinion of our testing to you by reporting on
our usage of several different modules of prairieFyre's Contact Center
solution.
Real-Time Monitoring
SuperAdvisor Real-Time Monitoring allows supervisors with the correct
permissions to monitor agents for performance and training purposes.
Supervisors have the option to parse queues and agents to almost any
degree, allowing them to view exactly who's doing what. prairieFyre
believes visual cues can help track performance in the call center.
Therefore, as part of the 6115 Interactive Contact Center, they've built
in a colorful alarm feature to help call center supervisors define
performance thresholds to keep tabs on workload, workflow, queue wait time
and so forth. For example, we noted in our prairieFyre demonstration a
situation in which a supervisor was interested in being able to tell at a
glance which and how many agents were on an ACD call in just one, several
or all queue groups. From a Properties menu, the supervisor in this
example could select by name the ACD queues he was interested in, then
select (previously defined) Performance Variables from a long list: calls
waiting, long wait time, service level, on ACD and so forth. He would then
be able to specify a range of values to correspond with a respective
color, allowing him to tell at a glance what level of service was being
provided. In this particular example, when 0-2 agents were on an ACD call,
the background color of an agent's cell turned red. When 3-4 agents were
on an ACD call, the background of each agent's cell turned green, and so
on. The supervisor could have chosen to note threshold changes with a
screen pop or by designating a .WAV file to play.
Predicting The Agent Requirement
prairieFyre says that its method of forecasting involves measuring the
three components of call load: talk time, wrap-up time and call volume. In
doing this, 4Site uses the Erlang C equation to predict agent requirements
for service level percentages and time targets. In creating a 4Site
report, we selected which queue to run the report on, start and end dates,
a half hour interval, and start and stop times. Creating a forecast was a
simple process, very similar to generating other types of reports using
prairieFyre's solution. A user needs to know only what times and what
the focus of the report is' the solution handles the rest. If
applicable, 4Cast offers to automatically e-mail copies of the report to
designated recipients or print the report to selected printers. The
reports are generated in Excel and include default graphing by day. After
a report is generated, if need be, the values can be changed and the
report can be recalculated to reflect agent scheduling changes.
prairieFyre calls this 'performing a 'what if' scenario.' TMC'
Labs calls it another time-saving feature.
Contact Center Scheduling
Although 6120 Contact Center Scheduling is one of the only remaining
prairieFyre components not yet browser-enabled, it does provide a rich,
yet easily manageable UI with drag-and-drop functionality. Using 6120
Contact Center Scheduling, a forecast report can be exported from 4Site
into 6120 to further assist with scheduling. The advantage to this is the
provisioning of most of a schedule's building blocks based on previous,
real statistics from the call center. This then allows a supervisor to '
much more quickly ' adjust a 4Cast-exported schedule rather than create
a schedule from scratch. 6120 does also offer a Schedule Builder with
which a supervisor can build a new schedule. We used the Builder to create
an overnight shift for phone coverage only. Doing this required defining
the start and end time of the shift, and daily hours allotted for shift
coverage. After selecting the personnel specifics, such as the department,
workgroup, skill group, etc., the Schedule Builder created a schedule
according to defined parameters. The scheduled personnel could then be
configured further according to our preferences. All told, it took about
10 minutes to build a night shift schedule, including breaks and proper
coverage, into the neat, readable graph-style GUI.
Room For Improvement
What the prairieFyre solution covers, it covers well: tracking agent
statistics, reporting and monitoring, e-mail routing and auto response,
forecasting, agent scheduling, etc. Nevertheless, we feel it could benefit
from e-storefront service. We're referring to a customer chat offering,
the ability to push and pull Web pages, agent/customer navigation
capabilities, and perhaps most important, a knowledge base. Self-service
for the customer is paramount since a good knowledge base will not only
reduce service levels, but can be used in many ways to enhance customer
interaction, both by analysis of requested data to more effectively serve
customers, and for internal use by agents.
Conclusion
Built contingent upon offerings from both Mitel and Microsoft,
prairieFyre Contact Center Management suite is a scalable ACD Management
Information System designed for the SMB as an easy to set up and use
package. The solution incorporates industry-standard tools and houses most
applications in a familiar, Web-based interface. Many of its features are
also accessible via the Web, by authorized personnel. 6110 provides a
plethora of reporting tools to parse agent and call center statistics in
many different ways. It also allowed us to forecast the need for agents
and export to the scheduling module, 6120, to easily build shift
schedules. The real-time monitoring and alarm capabilities also proved to
be very valuable during high traffic periods, and the help system is
exemplary. Over all, our tests revealed a product that, while it maintains
a fresh, simple interface, has most of the tools to get the job done
efficiently and effectively. Had an e-storefront module been available at
the time of testing, TMC Labs would have strongly considered prairieFyre
for a full A rating. Nevertheless, TMC Labs Editors' Choice award still
deservedly decorates prairieFyre's Contact Center Management solution.
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