From here to utopia – the path to intelligent communications

By Roger Jones, EMEA Convergence Business Development Director, Avaya

It may be a bit of a cliché, but times are a-changing in the business world. The evolution of communications and IT have allowed the modern company work-day to “chase the sun”, workforces to be spread across the globe, and organisations to coordinate activity on local, regional, pan-regional and global levels.

At the same time, business has become more transparent, with external stakeholders (customers, partners, the supply and distribution channels) increasingly invited into the inner realm of the corporate ecosystem through company websites, intranets, dedicated contact networks and other external relations efforts.

While globalisation has presented new opportunities for the canny organisation, it has also opened the market to an unprecedented level of competition. Today’s CEO must constantly find new ways to defend market share, react to new competitive threats and most importantly, seek new ways to establish competitive advantage. Communication is now at the top of the boardroom agenda, identified as a potential weapon in the battle for corporate growth.

Achieving a level of intelligent communication within an organisation, whereby communication systems are fully integrated within the business processes, should be a key strategic goal for every organisation. By allowing communications to pervade every aspect of business operation, companies can improve productivity, boost customer loyalty, react to changing market forces and fully leverage the internal talent and resources within their own walls.

Baby steps
This tends to be the point where CEOs break into a cold sweat at the idea of “yet another rip-and-replace approach”, requiring “yet another” swathe of investments to be replaced by shiny new (and proprietary) infrastructure. While “intelligence” remains the goal, few companies can afford to write off the millions of dollars already ploughed into communications systems.

To achieve intelligent communications, four main steps should be taken into consideration. This approach takes into account existing investment. Each strand brings its own business benefits meaning that even before full integration has been achieved, the Board can begin to register tangible return on investment (ROI) on the balance sheet.

Converged communications
Many companies have already taken a first step towards intelligent communications. By turning to IP to provide fixed-line voice telephony as well as data services, many global organisations have already reaped the cost benefits of VoIP communications. This convergence phase demonstrates immediate ROI and lays the infrastructure for future unified and intelligent communications phases. The impact on day-to-day business is minimal as users do not see change in the way they work.

Unified communications
Once an IP infrastructure has been successfully implemented, the sky is the limit.

Unified communications builds on the IP network to enhance worker productivity through the integration and connection of collaborative communication tools. This provides a unified interface across a wide range of devices and applications such as email on a PC, PDA or smartphone; web, video and audio conferencing; instant messaging and voice calling. By integrating these previously stand-alone applications, users obtain a much clearer real-time view of an individual’s “presence” or availability through one screen. This avoids wasting time and money leaving voicemails on both mobile and fixed-line phones, sending email to various addresses and checking an instant messenger window status.

If individuals can contact each other more efficiently, time wasted on failed contact is reduced and productivity naturally increases. Indeed, The Yankee Group estimates that productivity can improve by 15-20% per day by eliminating the need to change between different communication platforms.

Unified communications clearly represents added value, and taking a layered architecture approach to it does not require businesses to make existing investments redundant. 

Customer contact
Customer contact is a third vital element in the evolution towards true intelligent communications. Today, there are around nine million employees worldwide able to connect to customers via traditional contact centres. However, another 100 million interface daily with customers in less structured environments. In many cases, these employees play an equally important role in satisfying customer needs. Therefore, all interaction must be as rich, efficient and rewarding as possible.

Customers are notoriously unforgiving. They value their own approach and are frustrated if their “suppliers” fail to meet them on their terms. This applies to both the means of communication (be it via human or automated call centres, email, instant messaging via a company’s website, etc) and the “effort” made by the company to understand them and their relationship history.

Unified communications allows all members of an organisation to interact with customers in a structured way, allowing the customer to speak to the person best suited to their inquiry. This person could be a call centre operative or a software developer. By creating an “enterprise ready to serve” all employees are able support their organisation’s customer care standards, directly contributing to long-term business success.

Communication Enabled Business Processes
The final stage in the corporate journey to intelligent communication utopia pools all elements of the business communication and operational processes in order to dramatically change the way businesses operate.

Communications Enabled Business Processes can be seen as the ‘missing link’ in the automation of business processes. It will lead to improved business process efficiency and execution. But beyond this, it will enable organisations to design and evolve whole business processes - for the first time.

But what is CEBP? It’s a combination of software, consulting, and support services that integrate communications into business processes, making it possible to sense events in real-time and then orchestrate and track company-wide actions, creating a more responsive organisation.

Any business in any industry can benefit from communications enabling their operations. For the purpose of this article let’s see how CEBP can transform a Financial Services organisation. Imagine a dramatic fall in the value of a particular stock (not such a stretch of the imagination in these turbulent days) that will mean that 7 of the organisation’s 10 most valuable customers stand to lose millions of dollars. CEBP can “watch” the value of the stock in the smallest detail, 24 hours a day, and alert a portfolio manager of a potential issue. It can also offer that manager the ability to instantly connect to his customers via phone, email or SMS and advise them of the best action to take. With CEBP all this happens automatically, only requiring human intervention when absolutely necessary.

In essence, CEBP helps organisations enhance operational efficiency, worker productivity and customer satisfaction by streamlining human engagement in critical business processes. Communication solutions integrate with business applications to predict and sense events, then respond by setting up and managing real-time communication with process users and decision-makers.

The benefits
As this article has already touched upon, technology “for technology’s sake” is an empty promise. Today, any investment must be scrutinised to evaluate its impact on the bottom line now, and in the future. Intelligent communications represents a revolution both in terms of the mechanics of communication and its impact on the business models of the future. The advantages of such a path cannot be over-estimated. Evaluating unified communications alone, the analyst firm Gartner suggested recently (with an 80% probability) that by 2010, businesses that have implemented unified communications will have competitive and revenue advantages over those who haven’t. And that’s just step two on a journey towards true intelligent communications.

Intelligent communications is perhaps viewed as a utopian view for now, but it is also eminently achievable and will prove crucial to long-term business success.