January 2004

CIS: What is your company’s specialty and mission statement?

EB: Telephony@Work’s mission has always been to drive the democratization of contact center technology with software that unifies all communications channels — phone, fax and Internet — while eliminating the traditional costs, risks and delays associated with the services-driven approach on which “traditional” vendors have built their business models. The corollary to that, owing to our roots as a vendor of systems for top-tier carriers, is that we also empower technology centralization for multisite operations — with carrier-grade reliability and scalability. The unprecedented number of awards we’ve won and the phenomenal traction we’ve seen among top-tier accounts over the last few years is a testament to the market demand for these benefits.

CIS: What is Telephony@Work’s market positioning?

EB: While we’re probably still best known as the category leader in contact center software for hosted-services providers like MCI, we’ve worked diligently over the last few years to earn unique validation at scale among contact centers of all sizes, particularly those that want to unify geographically distributed operations with IP-based infrastructure.
From the perspective of those distributed contact centers, our comprehensive CallCenter@nywhere solution empowers their organizations to deploy centralized technology that delivers browser-based “virtual” infrastructure to all locations — a compelling alternative to implementing traditional contact center systems at each location. Our multitenant approach to centralized technology provides the best of both worlds: the cost reductions associated with technology centralization, together with the privacy and control ordinarily associated with site-specific technology. Whether for single sites or geographically distributed operations, Telephony@Work delivers value that no other vendor has ever provided to date: absolute freedom from professional services both up-front and over time.

CIS: What makes your technology unique and how can users benefit by using it?

EB: There are really three pillars to our core value proposition. The first is menu-driven provisioning. Our software actually follows the same traditional needs-analysis questions that all communications technology integrators ask before programming and integration services begin — but we empower organizations to answer those questions themselves via menu-selections instead of through custom programming and point-solution integration. The core benefit is that a contact center’s own IT staff — and even their front-line managers — can define or re-define their answers to all needs-analysis questions via Web menus; in real-time and at no cost. This empowers managers to provision and modify multimedia campaigns on-demand with highly customizable business rules — and enables companies to maximize revenue by continually capitalizing on time-sensitive business opportunities. Since the customization questions are the same as in the traditional model, nothing is sacrificed except the cost, risks and delays ordinarily associated with implementing custom business logic and routing rules. Fixed-cost deployment and fixed-cost maintenance services are just some of the other benefits of this approach.
The second and third pillars of our differentiated value proposition are carrier-grade reliability and carrier-grade scalability. The core advantage of our network-based software architecture is that our menu-driven provisioning actually “gives birth” to software processes that can live and be mirrored in real-time anywhere on the global network. Added scalability can be achieved at any time simply by adding additional processing resources to the distributed network at any location. Real-time process-mirroring delivers carrier-grade reliability and ensures that processes will continue running uninterrupted even if individual servers or data centers fail. Since all processes can live on one server for small-to-mid-size deployments — with hot mirroring on a second server — carrier- grade reliability has now become affordable even for smaller contact centers.

CIS: What is your vision of the future of the industry?

EB: It’s clear that IP telephony has arrived and is taking over. The challenge, though, is that some companies are too big and others are too small to leverage it effectively — and the rest are saddled with technologies that are too rigid to adapt on-demand as needs change. Telephony@Work’s approach addresses all three of these issues with menu-driven technology that scales both up and down to address market segments previously excluded from access to world-class infrastructure. Larger companies can now centralize technology to service users across geography without scalability limitations. Smaller companies, previously excluded because of integration and high servicing costs, can now deploy world-class capabilities.


CIS: What, in your opinion, is the most pressing issue facing our industry today?

EB: The traditional model of communications systems simply doesn’t allow companies to adapt quickly to changing needs and market demands. Studies show that this is actually costing them a tremendous amount of money in lost revenue. Our menu-driven approach empowers companies to make meaningful changes to their business rules in real-time to maximize revenue and seize the unique opportunities of each day. As a result, companies of all sizes have reported revenue increases from centers that have migrated to our solution. University studies have reported similar findings — with conclusions supporting both dramatic revenue increases and reductions in cost-of-ownership of over 90 percent arising from the migration to a menu-driven approach.

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