Preparing for IP
1 May, 2005
By: Rhonda ProctorWithout a doubt, IP has become one of the contact center’s biggest buzzwords of the year, yet it is a topic that is still somewhat misunderstood. In this Profile, CP interviewed Chistopher Kearney, the convergence practice director at Greenwich Technology Partners, a vendor independent IT consultant with more than 16 years experience engineering converged communications projects, including VoIP. Here he provides straightforward answers to typical IP questions.
CP: Why would a contact center choose an IP-based solution?
CK: Deploying an IP-based contact center solution is a means to connect your customers to your resources—agents and information, in the most efficient manner, independent of the media your customer chooses to employ when contacting you, or the geographical dispersion of your resources. This transforms the call center into a contact center. There are important advantages of a converged voice and data infrastructure in which voice and data applications traverse a single network and share common communication standards. There is more to this exercise than deploying IP phones. At their best, IP-enabled contact centers represent the opportunity for business transformation, servicing customers faster, with greater flexibility, and yes, at a lower cost per contact.
CP: What are the business advantages, beside improved technology, to an IP-based solution?
CK: Migrating a contact center from legacy TDM telephony to IP communications provides three distinct advantages with nearly universal appeal:
First is geographical flexibility.In legacy environments, the location of the ACD system dictated the size and location of the contact center. Opening a new contact center required a significant up-front investment in ACD equipment and services, and an additional layer of management and administration was required to interconnect multiple ACD systems into a virtual “network” of ACD systems. Many organizations have spent years building an IP infrastructure that supports data communication between locations and the distribution of applications and information between these locations. Leveraging this infrastructure to support the distribution of voice traffic between offices is a compelling thought for remote sites or remote agents.
Second is data interface .In legacy environments, data integration into ACD systems typically required the use of custom development and vendor proprietary CTI interface. IP voice systems, by nature, exist on the data network, and most are built on open, standards-based protocols. Among the most commonly supported data standards in IP contact center solutions are ODBC for database integration, HTTP for web integration, XML for web application support, and Java for integration support. Having standard interfaces and protocols supported natively in the contact center solution typically accelerates development cycles, and makes use of more commonly available knowledge of open standards, without requiring a significant amount of vendor proprietary information or knowledge.
Third is media independence. IP voice systems convert voice to a stream of packets and deliver the packet stream across a network. Other media and application data that traverse the same network can be integrated into the solution to enable the routing and queuing of e-mail and web-based contacts—even video-based contacts are not beyond the realm of possibility in such an environment. For businesses with a diverse customer base, the ability to interact in a format of the customer’s choosing can be a significant business driver.
CP: What type of initial planning is required?
CK: It’s impossible to overemphasize the importance of research and planning. The success rates among IP voice projects vary proportionally with the amount of effort put into the planning phase of the project. It is vital to have the proper information on hand to plan effectively. Some of the critical information required in the planning phase are: valid business requirements and functional requirements, as well as voice and data traffic studies. A network assessment focused on determining if the current network topology is voice ready, with recommendations for remediation of shortcomings found, is also vital.
CP: Is ROI always the best, or strongest justification, for a project?
CK: For many organizations, the contact center is the front line of customer communication and, for many, a potential source of significant revenue. Calculating ROI in a contact center is typically fairly involved. For example, productivity gains that allow agents to complete customer transactions more quickly may lead to cost reductions in incoming toll-free costs, in addition to the less directly measurable gain in customer satisfaction that may also result.
The best cost justification exercises usually focus on creating a measurable, positive impact on directly attributable contact center metrics—reducing abandon rate, reducing average queue time, increasing the agent attach rate, increasing handled calls per day. These are easily obtainable, measurable performance indicators that can be compared to historical trends. ROI promises that cannot be validated post-deployment are of limited value.
CP: What are some of the common myths of IP Telephony ROI in contact centers that need to be dispelled or addressed?
CK: Early on, much of the buzz around IP voice communications was that there would be immediate and incredible ROI— with a promise that a converged voice and data network allows for a 50 percent reduction in IT staffing or that migrating to VoIP will eliminate all long-distance charges. As the industry has matured, organizations are requesting cost justification data that stands up to scrutiny both from a business and technical level. For many organizations there can be savings in inter-office calling, particularly for global organizations.
Real productivity gains are possible, but the old axiom about things that sound too good to be true usually are still applies. Solution vendors typically provide ROI tools, but, it is very difficult to distill the process of evaluating return on investment, particularly in a contact center, into a one- or two-page web-based form. The purpose of these tools is to promote a particular product or solution. Using vendor-provided ROI tools alone makes the process of solution evaluation extremely difficult. This is particularly true as you attempt to create a level playing field in the framework of solution evaluation.
CP: Is it necessary to look at solutions architectures and state of the whole network?
CK: Absolutely. It is vitally important, both to develop a holistic view of the network, and to evaluate any proposed contact center solution in architectural terms first. Particularly in early stages of the project, then to a lesser degree as the project matures, it is imperative that business requirements drive technical design to avoid a “tail wagging the dog” trap.
CP: Is it important to quantify the client''s requirements for availability and quality of service?
CK: Deploying an IP-based contact center solution is typically a multi-phase project, particularly if this is the organization’s first IP voice deployment on the network. The specific requirements for successful transport of voice across the IP network include tolerances for bandwidth, transmission delay, and jitter (the variance in delay). The proper provisioning of infrastructure resources is of extreme importance. Deploying mission critical applications on an inadequately provisioned infrastructure is analogous to building a home with a cardboard foundation and then putting in a gourmet kitchen.
CP: Where does strategic sourcing and the selection of service partners come into the picture?
CK: Few organizations have the resources to take on a project like this without leveraging one or more service partners. In contact center projects, service partners may be leveraged for their technical expertise or for business process development. Once the overall scope of the project is determined by the internal stakeholders, it is advantageous to build the foundation of the project team early in the project. Some partners may have to be added to a project team later in the lifecycle to configure and deploy specific elements of the solution.
CP: What else should readers know about supporting and justifying the IP project?
CK: Depending on the size and scope of the organization, creating an IP-based contact center can be a large, complex project with multiple interdependent phases delivered by teams of overlapping resources—some internal, some external. In nearly any case, disciplined project and process management is the key to a successful project. Starting with a clear definition of business requirements, and the overall scope of the project, project and process management must start and end the project. This extends to dealing with service partners. Often projects can stall due to a miscommunication between the organization and a service partner due to ambiguity in the assignment of responsibilities for inter-dependant sub-tasks within the project. A thorough and detailed Statement of Work between the organization and each service partner involved in the project removes ambiguity and protects both parties in the process.
