Voice interactions are a common element of almost any business process. Whether designing a product, executing a financial transaction, or fulfilling a sales order, workers have a natural need to speak with associates, partners, and customers. Yet, most automated business processes offer little or no voice integration.

Suppose an aeronautics firm is working with a number of outside component suppliers in the design of a new aircraft. An extranet-based CAD program enables the manufacturer and its suppliers to work in concert. An aeronautical design engineer can review a component blueprint from a supplier, add comments, and reply to the supplier with the click of a mouse. But, if she wants to discuss some details of the design she has to look up the supplier’s phone number, call the supplier, and risk a potential extended game of phone tag.

What if voice and presence capabilities were integrated into the CAD program? What if, while reviewing the blueprint, the engineer could determine if the supplier is online and available to speak, and then initiate a conversation with the supplier directly from the CAD program with the click of a button. If the supplier is not available, the application might have the capability to automatically connect the two parties when both are available.

The supplier agrees to make some changes to the component and submits the modified design after business hours. The engineer, now at home, receives an automated call to her mobile phone indicating the modified design is available for review. She goes online and approves the changes in advance of the next morning’s project review meeting.

The Interactive Communication Platform

Science fiction? Not really. A new class of software product, known as the Interactive Communication Platform (ICP), is fulfilling this next logical phase in the evolution of converged voice and data services — today.

ICPs improve communications and productivity by delivering integrated voice and video capabilities to automated business processes, Web sites, and other distributed software applications.

Until now, most organizations have treated communication services differently than information services. Voice services have been deployed on standalone PBX systems with proprietary provisioning and management systems. Information services have been hosted on separate computing platforms governed by a different set of management applications, directory services, and user authentication and authorization systems. Tying the two worlds together has been costly, cumbersome and, in many cases, not feasible.

Computer Telephony interfaces, such as TAPI, attempted to bridge these gaps, but enjoyed only limited success because they required extensive programming as well as an intimate knowledge of each PBX vendor’s specific implementation and call control and signaling nuances. Furthermore, these solutions were designed around static, device-centric models with centralized PBXs and stationary telephones and weren’t well-suited for modern mobile and Internet-based applications.

ICPs deliver SIP-controlled voice and video capabilities as services that can be invoked by any software application in an emerging distributed enterprise architecture known as a Services Oriented Architecture (SOA). ICPs provide a platform-independent, languageneutral set of development tools for fast, flexible, and reusable application development.

Unlike conventional Computer Telephony interfaces, ICPs provide an abstraction layer that shields software developers from the complexities of the underlying communication infrastructure. ICPs require no prior familiarity with SIP or other communications protocols, so software developers can focus on business-specific features and functions, rather than generic communication services. Furthermore, ICPs are based on distributed, usercentric models and are well-suited for mobile and Internet-based scenarios.

ICPs allow communication services to be treated similarly to other IT services, enabling enterprises to leverage existing IT infrastructure including network facilities, directory and AAA services, business process logic, and registry and messaging infrastructure.

Interactive Communications for Web sites and Business Processes

ICPs deliver myriad voice and video capabilities to a variety of software applications, in virtually every industry or market segment.

Click-to-Talk Functionality enables Web site visitors to communicate with enterprise employees, call center agents, or other community of interest members using voice, video, or chat.

Business Process Integration adds presence and voice/video services to CRM, ERP, SCM, or other business applications for integrated communications and pointand- click session establishment.

Business Logic Integration allows automated call establishment, based on business rules. For example, an application can notify a financial client when a stock hits a pre-defined price or connect a customer to a reservations agent when a flight is cancelled.

Session Correlation capabilities tie session information to business applications. Customer records and transaction histories can be linked to callers to better serve customers and prevent them from repeating transaction, service history, or other account information.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) empowers callers to perform business transactions, access automated systems, or connect to departments or individuals through touchtone or speech, reducing transaction costs and improving the customer experience.

Call Recording permits callers or agent supervisors to record conversations for recordkeeping, quality control, or compliance purposes.

Speech and Video Recording and Playback enables subscribers to embed audio or video recordings into personal Web pages, such as social Web sites.

Software developers can leverage these features to embed communication services into enterprise software architectures and to tightly integrate voice and video with business processes.

Potential Applications for Interactive Communication Platforms

ICPs are applicable to virtually any industry or market segment. Candidate applications include:

Conclusion
Interactive Communication Platforms improve communications and collaboration between employees, affiliates, and customers. Software developers, solution providers, and Web site designers can leverage ICPs to add SIP-controlled voice and video services to Web sites, commercial or custom software applications, or internal business processes with lower development costs and shorter development cycles compared to traditional approaches. Enterprises can reduce administrative overhead and operations costs by unifying management systems and by consolidating operations and support functions. Forward looking organizations will enjoy increased customer satisfaction, greater employee productivity, and improved economics by leveraging ICPs to weave communication services into their business processes.

Alan Rosenberg ([email protected]) is director of Product Management at BlueNote Networks. (news - alert) For more information, please visit the company online at http://www.bluenotenteworks.com.