The Payoff Killer Applications

TRANSFORMING TELEPHONY The Payoff: Killer Applications Eric Krapf Why does convergence matter? Because it’ll transform the way your enterprise end users do their jobs. A sk almost anyone in the industry, and they’ll tell you that what’s really exciting about convergence is what you can do with it. In other words, it’s all about the applications. But what, specifically, does that mean? How will your end users’ lives be different— and better—once you’ve migrated to a converged infrastructure? What new things will they be able to do? What old things will they be able to do better? Many of the applications on the cutting edge of convergence aren’t conceptually new. Applications like unified messaging and collaboration (including video) have all been around for years. But they weren’t widespread in the TDM (Time-Division Multiplexing) world because they were expensive to build, deploy and integrate. The use of IP and other industry standards makes these applications much more practical for deployment to a broad enterprise user base. In addition, many other applications are new—or at least represent new ways of doing and combining existing applications. For example, we’re moving closer to the idea of “presence,” which allows groups of users to remain constantly updated about their colleagues’ availability and preferred mode of contact at any given moment. Some Key Applications All the major enterprise telephony vendors have applications packages, which in almost all cases, are sold as add-ons to the vendor’s IP-PBX system. Business Communications Review recently published an evaluation of seven vendors’ applications packages (see September 2004, pp. 20–29). The evaluation, performed by the testing lab Miercom, looked at the following applications: s Unified messaging, which Miercom defined as “the merger of voice mail, email and fax.” s Conferencing s Collaboration s Multimedia The applications required anywhere from one to five Linux- or Windows-based servers to operate, with software to enable everything from a basic softphone—i.e., a PCbased telephone—to advanced videoconferencing. Miercom’s test revealed the state of the art in convergence applications as of today, and the specific applications they tested represent most of the major areas of concentration for vendors and customers. In this article, we’ll look at these major application classes. Unified Messaging For years, TDM PBXs have been able to integrate voice mail and email, letting users access voice mails in the form of email attachments that can be played out over the PC—or, conversely, users can have emails read to them through the voice mail system via text-to-speech (TTS) capabilities. But TDM-based unified messaging couldn’t really be cost-justified on a standalone basis, and it never really caught on. In the converged world, however, it’s a different story. The narrow capabilities that went under the heading of “unified messaging” in the old days are often simply features of today’s larger collaboration Eric Krapf is editor of BCR This article was printed in Business Communications Review in October, 2004 Use BCR’s Acronym Directory at www.bcr.com/bcrmag A SUPPLEMENT TO BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW / OCT 2004 15 A SUPPLEMENT TO BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW packages, an addition to find-me/follow-me or presence capabilities (see below). All of the IP-PBX application packages tested for BCR by Miercom offered the basic UM function of providing access to voice mail via a text interface, and vice versa. These packages either pull voice mail into a client provided by the vendor, or often can be integrated into Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes. Where’s the benefit in unified messaging? Proponents say it allows users to be more efficient, listening to email while in their cars or otherwise away from a computer. Likewise, users can scan, prioritize, forward and otherwise deal with voice mails via a PC interface that may be handier and quicker for these purposes. No more listening to multiple unimportant voice mails just to reach the one you are interested in. Conferencing And Collaboration Collaboration is advancing in the converged IP-telephony world through features such as document sharing, whiteboarding, Web co-browsing, and of course traditional audio conferences. Miercom found all of these features included in at least some of the IP-telephony applications they tested. (Video is also playing a role here, but is discussed separately below.) At the most basic level, audio conferencing as an IP-PBX application promises to avoid high per-minute service provider charges, as an enterprise can put all of its internal audio conferencing onto its IP WAN. Users have reported cutting their audio conferencing costs in half this way (see ROI Article, pp. 19–22). But the real promise is that these collaboration applications can change how employees work, allowing them to work together remotely and spontaneously. The ultimate goal is to be able combine all the capabilities in an ad hoc session, creating a dynamic collaboration environment. Here’s the scenario as typically envisioned: One colleague dials a second by detecting their on-hook status in the “buddy” or presence list of the convergence-center PC client, and right-clicks to connect on a basic phone call. They decide to add a third participant who is also available, and are able to conference her in on the fly by dragging her name over the “conference” button. The three decide they need to review a particular document, and they are able to call it up from wherever it’s located and edit it together, each passing and seizing mouse and keyboard control in turn. If all are equipped with desktop video cameras, they can decide to enable video as well. The document is updated, the colleagues agree to the actions required upon completion of the conference and the call concludes with a click. Multimedia Speaking of video, or multimedia, there are huge opportunities for growth in this market as enterprise networks converge. In the September BCR review, Miercom founder Ed Mier predicted that, “Video is coming to a desktop near you.” The immediate evidence that Mier saw was in the increased number of vendors offering video options for their IPPBXs. He noted that, a year before, in fall 2003, only one or two vendors included video in their multimedia packages; in 2004, five of the seven test participants showed off video. Collaboration apps will let employees work together remotely and spontaneously Another reason why Mier sees video coming soon is cost. Most of the packages he reviewed came in at less than $200 per seat (though if you want to host multiparty conferences, additional hardware is required in the form of a multiparty conferencing unit or MCU). And even more cost is being driven out of the networks that carry enterprise video traffic. Earlier generations of videoconferencing required expensive, less reliable ISDN connections among sites, while the new systems are built on IP. That can mean impressive savings. John Bartlett, VP at the consultancy NetForecast, has estimated that a single 75-minute ISDN videoconference costs approximately $45 per site just in usage charges (20 cents per minute for three ISDN BRI circuits to support a 384-kbps connection). Add onto this a monthly charge of $30 per BRI/PRI at each location where video is enabled. The network cost for IP videoconferencing is almost certain to be lower, since video will represent an incremental addition to an existing IP network. The exact cost won’t be 16 A SUPPLEMENT TO BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW / OCT 2004 TRANSFORMING TELEPHONY as easy to determine, however, because your IP LAN/WAN must have sufficient bandwidth and, more important, quality of service (QOS) to carry the video traffic. You’ll be implementing QOS anyway to handle voice, but whether this will be good enough for video will depend on where your IP network stood before the upgrade in terms of traffic volume and bandwidth capacity. But besides lower costs, IP will probably deliver better video quality. Wainhouse Research, the leading market research house in the multimedia space, reports that ISDN conferences have a 92–94 percent success rate, while IP can deliver greater than 99 percent. (“Success” is defined as the call not dropping off and video quality remaining strong.) Presence One type of application that’s somewhat new is “presence.” The name comes from this application’s ability to let colleagues know where you are or, more accurately, where you’re reachable. Presence packages are built on the model developed for instant messaging (IM) “buddy lists.” With basic consumer IM services from AOL, Microsoft or Yahoo, the user adds members to his/her buddy list, and each time the user goes on line, he or she sees which “buddies” are also on line and available for text chat. Six of the seven vendor packages examined by Miercom included a basic text IM feature in their client capabilities, and several went a step farther. An advanced presence “portal” may let users see not just whether a colleague is logged into IM, but their reachability status via various media: Whether their telephone is off hook, whether they’re logged into the messaging system for IM or email. Obviously an application like presence was, if not impossible, certainly impractical in a traditional environment where voice, email and instant messaging all resided on discrete systems that would have had to be integrated via APIs and expensive middleware. With IP-telephony, all these capabilities work as part of the same system. As a complement to presence, an enterprise can also deploy “find me/follow me” call routing. As its name suggests, this feature lets a user provide call routing instructions based on factors like time of day or calling party, to determine where individual calls should be delivered—office phone, cell phone, direct to voice mail, etc. Productivity Benefits Though most executives shy away from including applications-related productivity benefits in the formal business case (see Business Case article, pp. 19–22), productivity gains appear to be available from using IP-telephony. And to some extent, these gains can be estimated, if not always put into hard dollars. Peter Brockmann, VP marketing, enterprise voice solutions at 3Com, outlines a few: Cost-Based Examples s Dialing Plan—Migrating from the North American Standard 12-digit dialing (key for outside line + 1 + area code/number) to a corporate-wide 5-digit plan can save 3.5 seconds per call setup. The complete formula is: Annual savings = 3.5 seconds/call setup ! number of annual calls ! 80% (represents share of calls internal to company) ! average labor cost per employee, divided by 3,600 (seconds/hour). Brockmann says this is a conservative estimate, since dialing fewer digits will also reduce retries and wrong numbers. He also notes that this type of dialing plan can be implemented in legacy systems, but much less efficiently. With IP-telephony, dialing plans can be globally broadcast to all call controllers, whereas in legacy PBX implementations this is a more arcane and difficult procedure. s Find Me/Follow Me—Busy employees typically call three times before connecting with their intended party (I call, leave message; you call me back, leave message; I call you back, we connect.) Being able to close the loop in one call eliminates the other two, saving an average 3.5 minutes per employee per day—time wasted attempting to call, listening to and leaving messages. Find me/follow me does carry some time cost; the system may spend 30 seconds trying to locate the called party. s Visitor Offices—Many companies have one or more visitor offices in each location. Visiting employees might normally use their wireless phones for connectivity and then charge these fees back to the company. Keeping incoming calls on the company IP-telephony system saves the mobile phone charges. s Presence Management—This application increases the probability of a call completion, since the caller knows the status of the other party, and can determine whether that person is available for a phone Productivity cost benefits are “soft” but real A SUPPLEMENT TO BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW / OCT 2004 17 A SUPPLEMENT TO BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW conversation, or whether the issue can be discussed via IM alone, avoiding the need for the call. Here, you can calculate: Annual savings = Cost/internal call ! 10% (Brockmann’s estimate of calls avoided) ! total number of calls Revenue-based examples s Voice Mail Broadcasts—Sales executives can use broadcast voice messaging to motivate sales employees to achieve revenue improvement. Broadcasting timeperishable information can lead to revenue improvement. s Find Me/Follow Me—If customers can reach their salespeople 50 percent more often than competitors, stronger relationships and greater win rates will result. s Unified Messaging—If traveling salespeople can have email read to them, they can respond to customers faster. s Increasing Call Completions—With better information about the availability of the called party and more effective handling of voice messages when they do occur, employees will be more productive and more responsive to changes in the marketplace they serve. The Call Center One final application tends to be treated separately from these others, though it’s potentially one of the most important: Call centers. Computer-telephony integration (CTI) applications form the basis for today’s call center, providing “screen pops” and other features that customer service reps (CSRs) now depend on to provide strong customer service. But CTI never caught on outside the call center, nor was it affordable for most smaller call centers. That’s now changing. Many smaller companies that couldn’t afford CTI applications or integration with TDM PBXs are purchasing and deploying IP-based contact center packages. And for larger operations, the potential benefits are even greater. Just as IP allows the basic voice infrastructure to be more centralized where appropriate (see Architecture article, pp. 4–8), the customer contact applications—CTI routing, voice response, workforce management, reporting analytics—can likewise be concentrated at the enterprise datacenter, as consultant Don Van Doren of Vanguard Communications pointed out at VoiceCon 2004. Off this centralized implementation, the enterprise can serve a much more widelydispersed agent population, creating a true “virtual call center” in which customers can be routed to the optimal agent for their needs and for the company’s cost metrics. These agents can be working at any location—including their own home, saving on office space and other call center operations costs. Finally, convergence allows the “multimedia call center” to become a reality. Customers can contact the enterprise via phone, email, the Web, even video kiosks, and have their contact routed to the agent with the appropriate skill set. These media can all be provisioned as part of the same converged platform. IP-telephony is also poised to revolutionize the call center Conclusion Many of these applications, particularly in the call center, remain somewhat futuristic. Indeed, call centers are a particularly sensitive area: Convergence carries tremendous opportunities here, but the call center is among the most mission-critical parts of almost every business, so enterprises are proceeding with appropriate caution on making the transition. Many of the other applications discussed here remain nascent, both in terms of product development and as markets, primarily because we’re still so early in the IP-telephony adoption cycle. However, even at this early stage, Ed Mier of Miercom found much to praise about the vendors’ application packages, stating that, “The wealth of new and innovative wares in these [products] is staggering.” So will applications drive infrastructure convergence, or will infrastructure convergence drive applications? Probably a little of both. As customers find themselves migrating to convergence as a natural part of the infrastructure replacement cycle, they’ll start to see glimpses of what the new applications can do for them, and this will help inform and possibly even accelerate the migration 18 A SUPPLEMENT TO BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS REVIEW / OCT 2004