Optimized Enterprises Communication-Enable Their Business Processes to Succeed

The Evolution of Business

If you’re the CIO of a major enterprise today, you’ve likely been bombarded by countless sources telling you how to run your information technology operations in order to realize the greatest bottom-line business benefits. Build an agile infrastructure that can adjust to change quickly. Enable your computing platform to adapt to fluctuating business demands. Empower your IT operations to function in real time. While these are certainly valid, they’re rarely applied in conversations that extend beyond the technological capabilities of the computing platform. And it’s this lack of extension that may impede corporations when devising the most effective ways to reduce expenses, lower risk, ensure continuity of business operations and grow revenues—all critical elements to maintaining a healthy business.

Computing platforms are only one aspect of successful business processes that drive bottom-line results. An increasingly important dimension comprises the communications technologies that facilitate the use of and access to computing platforms and the interactions of users involved in mission-critical business processes. A corporation that extends its architecture beyond computing—to include communications as an equal and critical partner in success—is what Consolidated Technologies calls an Optimized Enterprise.

By strategically adopting new communications technologies that enable their businesses to present a uniform countenance to stakeholders, optimized enterprises can adapt quickly to changing demands without disrupting business operations. It is these companies—the ones that employ cutting-edge communications applications, systems and services—that can offer customers and employees the flexibility they need to get work done and to evolve to meet different market and economic conditions.

How to Optimize the Enterprise

The foundation of the new optimized enterprise must reach beyond the outer edges of the traditional computing architecture to include communication-enabled business processes.

This foundation most often exists on an IP-based communications infrastructure. The Internet-centric, packet-based world allows for portability, expansion and integration. Open standards such as SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), XML (Extensible Markup Language), and other capabilities such as Web services are bringing convergence of data, voice and video upon us. Research firm InfoTech reports that over 40 percent of businesses with more than 500 employees have already begun to implement IP LAN telephony systems. Further, according to InfoTech analysts, more than 20 percent of U.S. enterprises plan to implement IP telephony at more than five sites this year to create just such converged networks. To expand their reach, according to InfoTech, businesses are adding wireless systems that allow workers to utilize portable phones within a building or campus and still receive all the functionality of a corporate PBX or IP telephony phone system. Indeed, say researchers, the U.S. enterprise wireless market is projected to reach nearly $600 million in total revenues by the end of 2005.

There are multiple advantages to creating and encouraging a communications-enabled optimized enterprise structure. Businesses that can continually evolve will increase revenue and productivity, reduce costs and risk through open-standards communications, whether it be by mobile phone, PDA, Voice over IP—or VoIP on a PDA. The optimized enterprise also enables workers to use robust applications right out to the edge of the network, where they are more accessible, so employees can read voice mail along with their email, listen to e-mail along with their voice mail, and get Web-based information on their cell phones.

The beauty of these projects is that they can be implemented in gradual, strategic steps where they offer competitive advantage or optimal return on investment.

To reach the goal of a communications-optimized architecture, an enterprise must analyze the state of its current infrastructure, and then gauge the capabilities that it needs to support in the future based upon a shared, collaborative vision with its trusted suppliers. These suppliers must have the experience and expertise needed to help design, develop, deploy, integrate and operate the new optimized infrastructure. In turn, plans must meld seamlessly with business processes to achieve optimal bottom-line results.

Convergence is Access

No matter where the information may come from, your company should be able to assimilate it—and quickly. So just because you are traveling or are located off-site shouldn't’t mean that communications are compromised. There can no longer be second- class “edge of network” personnel.

Everything must be updated in real time, from Web-based information to inventory data to customer information. Indeed, some companies have discovered they can keep customers and employees happy with decentralized distributed systems. A major airline, for example, employs 600 contact-center agents—without a contact center. Agents work from their homes to handle customer inquiries and reservations. Yet the airline has one of the top customer satisfaction ratings, thanks to a PC-based Avaya communications and data solution that manages customer and flight information with the same speed, capacity and intelligence available to agents in traditional centers.

The convergence of voice and data can improve the performance of contact centers, which can directly improve the top line. Originally, call center management, for example, handled just the basics: recorded messages for interactive voice response, tracking customer hold times, and automatic call distribution tables. However, today’s sophisticated customer relationship management (CRM) focus and multimedia capabilities have recast call centers as contact centers, ready to optimize each customer encounter.

While yesterday’s call center was preoccupied with keeping each call as short distributed contact-center operation and expertise to integrate applications and optimize the multimedia contact center experience.

The desired end state is a consistent customer experience, whether the customer is contacting your business via phone, fax, e-mail, or Web service. Multimedia queuing can now allow a center to process and prioritize incoming customer calls regardless of format. Having instant access to information about each customer the moment contact is made with knowledge of that customer’s previous purchases and problems helps keep the customer’s business and improves productivity. No longer just an operating expense, the contact center is a source of competitive advantage.

Furthermore, a distributed contact center can be a business-transforming technology by surrounding the customer with all the best information, no matter where that information resides. Convergent technology can now allow remote workers to interact seamlessly with customers while receiving the same functionality available to agents physically located in the call center.

The result is that customers receive improved care while the enterprise actually reduces the total capital outlay for physical center expansion.

Similarly, employees (and increasingly, clients) must be able to access the information they need to adapt no matter where they are, no matter what medium they prefer to use, and no matter what time it is in Sacramento or New York to turn access into revenue and a competitive edge. Today’s employees aren’t tied to the office, so the information they need shouldn’t be either. That’s where converged communications becomes an essential business tool.

When workers can connect to customers and co-workers using speech commands on a mobile phone, a wireless handheld device, or a Web browser, they can choose the device that is most suitable at the time—speeding response times to customer requests, allowing more time for employees to pursue new sales leads, and helping to give your company a competitive edge. And of course, to ensure that your network can efficiently handle any increases in users and traffic, you should engage with a partner who can provide network optimization services. That way, network performance can be fine-tuned as new applications are added.

Avaya’s Unified Communication Center, for example, turns users’ mailboxes into a communication center. So whether your company is using an Octel, Intuity Audix or Microsoft Exchangebased system, mobile and remote users can get everything in one place to make better decisions, faster. No matter what the communications medium—cell phone call, conference call, messaging, or e-mail—it makes network applications available to the most far-flung worker, increasing productivity and improving customer loyalty.

Leverage Applications Everywhere

Of course, having the information at your fingertips won’t do you much good if you can’t do anything with the data. Enterprises that must constantly evolve must give people the tools they need—the applications—to work with the information no matter where they’re located.

In the world of professional sports, for example, you need all-star systems in the back office and on the court. Not too many years ago, fans and the media got by with very little information. New, immediate sources of information, including the Internet, have raised expectations greatly. So the NBA makes available a wealth of information about every game. For a major event, such as the NBA All-Star Game, this involves hundreds of NBA staff working on site, all of whom need full access to all their normal business applications and technology—a fully functional “office away from the office.” Just a year ago, this would have entailed building a new communication infrastructure for each event, an impractical solution.

So the NBA teamed with Avaya, leveraging the provider’s expertise in design of IP Telephony and wireless technologies, to create an innovative “Event in a Box”: a package of pretested, pre-wired Avaya communications solutions that can be brought to any arena and quickly plugged into the existing network on site. And rather than scrap a temporary network, they pack The Box up and take it to the next highprofile event.

The “Event-in-a-Box” approach has given the NBA IT Team better control of on-site network reliability and availability. Team members simply run in the needed connectivity and then completely manage their own traffic. This approach also delivers much better control over quality of service and bandwidth.

Judging the Benefits

Ultimately, the optimized enterprise isn’t about change for change’s sake. It’s about gaining new paths to grow revenues, reduce costs, lower risk, and improve productivity. But how do you know when you’ve successfully transformed your business into an optimized enterprise? The answer is when you can quantify the results—and that should be almost immediately.

In addition to improved customer retention rates and market share gains, enterprises adopting IP-based distributed systems can witness a return on investment almost immediately. For example, a 40-agent call center will typically pay $21,600 in monthly longdistance charges. Putting that traffic on an IP telephony system reduces charges to $9,145 (the cost of four T-1 circuits and associated Internet access charges). Typically, according to InfoTech, enterprises with larger call centers can expect to save 30 percent on their communications costs by making the move to IP integration.

As positive as these topdown-driven results are, an evolving business must also be able to respond to bottomup imperatives. A rapidly changing business environment demands increased collaboration and flexibility, which can improve employee morale and ease conflicts, say many industry analysts. Collaboration often involves supporting applications, such as WebEx and Microsoft NetMeeting, that foster information sharing by allowing the participants to dynamically exchange an integrated stream of voice, data and video in a single communications session. Called Collaboration Meeting Services, optimized companies encourage the adoption and use of such services for successful deployment.

Case studies from InfoTech bear witness to some of the gains that can be achieved:

A global developer of business application software aggressively introduced remote customer sales demonstrations and realized a 7.2 percent annual savings from
reduced travel expenses and increased sales productivity.

A U.S. aerospace manufacturer actively embraced collaboration in product development and saw a 2.5 percent annual savings in travel expenses.

A Fortune 200 defense contractor utilized distance collaboration approaches to its documentation development and review processes. Based on increased productivity, the company saved an estimated $3,300 per document.

In With the Old, In With the New

For many companies, scrapping established systems would mean throwing out the proverbial baby with the bath water—not wise or economically feasible in the current “do more with less” business climate.

There’s still valuable technology in those existing systems, and many customers can now leverage them in new ways. Fortunately, you don’t need to rip out old communications closets to leverage the advantages of the IP packetbased world.

While 24 percent of the 6 million telephone lines sold in 2001 were IP, that number increased to 35 percent of the 5 million lines sold in 2002, according to In-Stat/MDR. However, the upgrades weren’t necessarily dramatic: Most of those sales were in IP/PBX hybrid environments. You needn’t convert your whole system to reach the next level of optimized communications. In a hybrid system, the traditional PBX uses additional port cards to make IP telephone connections without having to rip out the existing voice network. Professional services can provide the expertise to integrate hybrid systems into existing network infrastructures, optimizing and protecting existing investments.

As enterprises expand and update systems, newer IP-based solutions can be integrated with the existing applications. Sourcing professional services expertise can address expansion project by project and reduce the need and ongoing expense of specialized in-house expertise. Before choosing a partner to help your business, you need to know that they have the systems, applications and services to integrate new components into legacy infrastructures, and optimize overall performance.

Moreover, there is no point at which an optimized enterprise can say, “the project is finished,” because by its very nature projects are ongoing processes. The one constant is that new innovations and new technologies will be introduced in the future. Your company should be able to take advantage of these technologies when they appear, and that means strategically sourcing services expertise and having a flexible enough infrastructure that can incorporate such changes.

The optimized enterprise is necessary so that it can create optimized employees. While some workers today may need access to corporate data on a cell phone, tomorrow others may have to tap into databases from a PDA while sitting in an airport lobby. But people can’t change to leverage challenges and opportunities if the tools aren’t there for them to make the move. Fortunately, the technology is available to make the promises of the communications-optimized enterprise a reality for your business today.



For more information on how Consolidated Technologies can help you optimize your enterprise, please call
1-888-477-4CTI.