Much has been written in recent years about the power of IP
telephony to change the telecommunications industry. But what affect does this technology have on the end-user, particular the business end-user? What features are now available that didn’t exist before, and how are those features transforming the way companies of all sizes do business?
TMCnet recently asked Paul Vance, Vice President and General Manager at FacetCorp (News - Alert), to answer these and related questions, both generally and as they relate to his company’s FacetPhone IP-PBX
product.
What is a business phone system?
A business phone system is a corporate communications system. In today's environment it's a lot more than just a vehicle for picking up an instrument and calling another person.
In addition to the many standard features users have come to expect, today’s business phone system includes such features as presence management (the ability to visually see who is available and who is not), voice mail and unified messaging
, enterprise instant messaging, flexible call recording and monitoring, and transparent integration of multiple offices.
What type of features do small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises typically look for in a business phone system?
SMBs, historically, needed a good auto-attendant, some call routing
, voicemail, and conference calling. Those are some of the basic features. But now, SMBs can get more advanced features that previously were more expensive and used more in the enterprise environment.
A few of the features now accessible to SMBs are visual voice mail, call center functionality, and call recording. Call recording is an example of a great feature now readily available to SMBs. Call center supervisors and managers can see graphically, on the fly, what their call activity is, how many agents are needed, how many calls are in the queue. While those features tend to come into play more in enterprises, they are useful for smaller companies too.
Today's SMB tends to expect sophisticated voicemail systems that include features such as the ability to have messages forwarded to e-mail. Even though SMBs may not have had features like that in the past, they certainly appreciate them and take advantage of them.
Presence management is something that's new to both enterprises and SMBs. This feature isn't as relevant for employees of very small businesses, because they can usually look over the cubicle wall or across the room to find out who is there. But in the medium to large businesses, presence management is pretty interesting, particularly in multiple office locations.
The idea of transparent, multiple-office integration is really important for enterprises. The ability to see the phone system as a single system image can be very valuable to a large corporation.
For the enterprise, the ability to have instant messaging without bringing in AOL (News - Alert) IM is valuable. Even some large corporations have resisted IM because they don't want their employees wasting time chatting with boyfriends and girlfriends and kids. With an enterprise-only instant messaging capability, the benefits of IM are introduced to the business environment, without the detraction of wasted time.
Some vendors charge extra money for the types of features discussed here, and some don't. FacetCorp’s packaging is a little bit different. We don't charge extra for the features, we just charge for the number of ports in the system.
What type of features should customers look for in a business phone system?
One thing that SMBs should be looking for, that they don't ask for often enough in my opinion, is computer-telephone integration. Phone systems historically were just a capital expense, something a company had to have. Nowadays, when businesses look at buying phone systems, they want to see what their ROI is. One of the ways companies can really cost-justify an IP-PBX (News - Alert) phone system is by integrating it with their data systems.
The most basic features enabled by computer-telephone integration—for example, the ability to dial calls from within Outlook/Goldmine/ACT, and to get caller ID-based screen pops--are cool and wonderful, but the larger value comes by integrating with a company's customer relationship management (CRM) system.
Here's an example of the power delivered by integrating with a CRM system: One of FacetCorp’s partners, Pivotal Systems, implemented the FacetPhone NetTAPI protocol with Infor’s FACTS accounting for Relationship Management, making it possible for that program to communicate with the phone system on the fly. When an agent gets done talking to a customer, a complete record of the phone call is automatically entered into the database. That record lists who was on the call, the date and time, and the duration of the call—plus any links to recordings of the call.
Historically, this type of capability has been very difficult and expensive to implement. Where FacetPhone comes into play is making this integration with the customer’s CRM database easy and cost-effective.
How has IP telephony changed the way business phone systems are designed and used?
Every customer is different. FacetCorp has one customer, for example, that indicated FacetPhone changed the way they did business—just by making it possible to forward calls to their cell phones. It's a simple feature, but every time we talk to them they say it has saved them a lot of money. So it's hard to say what is going to be most important to every customer.
I would say that, at an industry level, the ability to transparently integrate offices over the Internet certainly has had a big impact. You can have a single phone system with tens of offices with extension-to-extension dialing, call monitoring, and an auto-attendant that routes calls throughout all the different offices. Then all of the call detail records for the overall system (all locations) can be viewed and managed from a single comprehensive file.
The transparent visibility of the phone system is another thing that IP telephony opened up for the world. In the past, if a company wanted to see what happened a week ago in the sales department via the telephone, a report would be run. That report would have to be analyzed to determine that John didn't make as many calls as Suzy did.
Now, the process is very transparent and instantaneous. With FacetPhone you can make the system just as visible to the users as you want. With the graphical user interface, you can watch on-the-fly and see that John isn't on the phone very much, and when he is on the phone he seems to be calling home a lot—while Suzy is making a ton of outbound calls to customers.
The other interesting thing that happens when this information is opened up to all of the users, is that it becomes a productivity enhancer. If John knows all his calls are visible to management and his peers, he isn't going to be making a lot of non-business calls.
What is FacetPhone?
FacetPhone is a comprehensive IP-PBX telephone system that works with an IP phone and any standard telephone, and includes a graphical user interface available to any user. Some IP-PBX systems come with over-featured IP phones. With these, users are encouraged to do lots of things with the phone, such as check the weather or a stock price via the Internet.
The FacetPhone approach is different. We think that customers should use the phone primarily for voice calls, because that's what they do best, and users are comfortable with this interface. But for other non-voice related activities, they should use the computer. It makes little sense to use the Internet access from the phone instrument to check a stock price when their desktop computer is better designed for that function.
With FacetPhone, we put the console on the computer. It's all in a graphical user interface, so it can be run on a Windows PC or a Mac or whatever desktop the customer has.
FacetPhone is a full IP-PBX with presence management, very sophisticated voicemail (what we call visual voicemail, because you can see it on the graphical user interface), and computer-telephone integration.
What features differentiate FacetPhone from competitive products?
1. Unique architecture
FacetPhone uses media gateways that are external to the server. Most competitors put PCI cards inside the server. We plug the server into the network switch, and the gateways into the switch. The great part about this architecture is that, because the gateways are outside the server, if you ever need to replace anything, you just put in another unit with an RJ-45 connection.
If you need to expand—not just with IP phone stations, but outside lines as well—you don't have to worry about how many slots you have in the computer. Plus, the gateways can be controlled from the server anywhere over the Internet. That creates a terrific environment for multi-office locations. If you have a problem with the server at one location, the server at another location can immediately claim the gateways and start controlling them.
2. Computer-telephone integration
In addition to TAPI and UTAPI, FacetPhone makes use of NetTAPI, which lets you set up a dialogue between the phone system and the application to get lots of information into the application.
3. Multi-office integration
Multi-office integration is certainly a differentiator, because FacetPhone does it transparently. Multiple offices can either be controlled by a single server, or they can be controlled locally with local servers.
4. Graphical user interface
While several other phone systems have GUIs, FacetPhone’s interface is amazingly flexible and useful. Live call control at the user level is one example of this usability.
5. Enhanced interactive voice response (IVR) system
FacetPhone’s interactive phone response (IVR) system is unusually powerful and flexible. You can route calls just about any way you want to. The customer has complete flexibility over how the call flows through their business.
For more information about FacetPhone in particular, and business phone systems generally, please visit FacetCorp’s TMCnet.com channel, Business Phone System.
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Get the latest scoop on how IP telephony is affecting both the telecom industry and business end-users at INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo East, January 23-26, 2007 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
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Mae Kowalke previously wrote for Cleveland Magazine in Ohio and The Burlington Free Press in Vermont. To see more of her articles, please visit Mae Kowalke’s columnist page. Also check out her Wireless Mobility blog.
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) | X |
| A hardware- or software-based computer system that enables incoming callers to interact with voice prompts or verbal commands....more |
Internet Protocol (IP) | X |
| IP stands for Internet Protocol, a data-networking protocol developed throughout the 1980s. It is the established standard protocol for transmitting and receiving data
in packets over the Internet. I...more |
Private Branch Exchange (PBX) | X |
| Originally, telephone features were provided by telephone central office switching systems, often called CENTREX.�PBX systems emerged as customers wanted to have more calling features and control over...more |
Routing | X |
| There are many often too many explanation of routing. Here�s one:
Hop-by-Hop Routing - IP Routing
- Distributes routing to routers
- Networks look/act like trees
- Data can traverse many routers ...more |
Unified Messaging | X |
| One of the more interesting applications for multi-media messaging
which has been around for almost a decade but not widely used is
visual voice mail. This software allows the user to see their voi...more |
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