Unsure about IP?
1 Jan, 2007
By: Rob WinderQuestion:
I’m considering implementation of IP telephony infrastructure in my contact center and want to make sure I’m getting the most out of my existing investment. How do I go about it?
--- Unsure about IP in Iowa
Answer:
Dear Unsure,
The advent of Voice over IP (VoIP) allows contact centers and businesses around the world to make global communications instantaneous, simple and cost-effective. To implement IP, you need to know exactly what it is, what it can do for your business and how to make it work for you. You need to know how standards such as Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) can integrate into your business to address specific needs and requirements, and how your new IP infrastructure can be fired into action to ensure improved productivity and flexibility.
IP technology has reached a stage of maturity. It is being rolled out to increasing numbers of businesses, with many more beginning, or at least considering, deployment of it. A recent survey by Genesys showed that 43 percent of businesses are planning, deploying or have deployed IP telephony in the contact center. Within two years, 82 percent of contact centers expect to be running IP telephony infrastructures.
IP implementations enable businesses, particularly contact centers, to enhance the way they operate telephony environments. Adding voice interactions to the data network enables voice to be managed in the same way as Web or e-mail channels. This means that priorities, business rules and automated resolution can all be more easily integrated into the voice-based area of the business.
A telephony environment based on the increasingly significant SIP architecture can enable contact centers to separate voice application software from the underlying hardware infrastructure, which brings greater flexibility to the management of the business, because there are few limitations to further application deployment. SIP connects all IP endpoints and will enable applications to continue to revolutionize the way we communicate. Genesys research shows SIP becoming more popular, with 30 percent of businesses deploying an IP infrastructure, and 38 percent of those investigating it, choosing SIP-based environments – compared to 14 percent who have already implemented.
Infrastructure is very important to the success of an IP deployment. Proprietary solutions have been popular in the past, but there is a growing movement toward open IP because it offers greater flexibility. At a time when technology developments are ongoing, implementing a fully future-proof solution has to be a key concern.
Question:
What can IP technology (IPT) do for me?
Answer:
In today’s mature IP environment, there are many categories and definitions of platforms available for the implementation of IPT. An open-standards IP platform enables companies to integrate leading-edge applications, legacy applications and hardware into the new infrastructure, improving its functionality while limiting the level of capital needed. This helps retain important data with little risk of loss, and caps new infrastructure costs through PBX side savings. Because of the open nature of the platform, additional applications can be integrated into the infrastructure as requirements grow and evolve.
SIP is standards based and media independent, and comes with a generic interface, making all applications easily interoperable. By bypassing unnecessary middleware, SIP creates a comprehensive yet transparent interface for all the applications in the enterprise. This helps agents be more effective, improves the service for callers and can also help reduce cost by up to 25 percent.
On the business side, a SIP-based solution can deliver considerable PBX savings. Because it integrates all applications and communication channels into the data network, there is no need for computer telephony integration (CTI). Thus, legacy PBXs are no longer essential. This power of open standards supports non-proprietary hardware and software for queuing, routing and managing customer interactions. It enables these changes to be made while routing strategies, supervisory roles and key metrics will all remain essentially the same. This means that both the IT and the business benefits of the implementation can be considered.
The biggest benefits of an IP deployment tend to be longer term --- the ability to mix time-division multiplexing (TDM) and IPT infrastructure components, as well as the flexibility to buy from multiple vendors to develop an infrastructure (pre-empting future expenditure). Gaining centralized, consolidated operations management improves business operations, while virtualization provides a single point of enterprise-wide control and routing to improve customer service. Overall, the extent to which a company is able to embrace IP technology will dictate the long-term benefits received.
