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The target business for this solution ranges from mid-sized to very large call centers. Very large, in this case, means the Siemens solution can support up to 7500 agents in a single contact center. That’s larger than any that I know of. The largest in operation at companies like American Express, may range up to 4-5,000 agents
During our conversation, we took some time to really work through some of the highlights, and I thought I’d share my impressions here. The bundles are interesting, but they really are packaging of existing solutions that people can put together themselves to create the same functionality.
One of the major drivers in releasing improved contact center solutions is to aid in resolving calls on first contact. First contact resolution is a key metric for any call center environment, and typically 25% or more of calls have to be escalated outside the contact center to other enterprise resources and personnel for resolution. To increase the odds of first call resolution, Siemens is working to streamline the process. They clearly recognize the value of speedy recognition of problems.
Siemens UC server is a software only solution that will run on many hardware platforms.
The visual above shows how everythings stacks together. in terms of the OpenScape Applications, with the new addition of the Contact Center in the yellow box on the far right. The other pieces already exist. I’ts really important to note the very top row of boxes - CEBP integration. Siemens really “gets it” when it comes to the importance of Communications Enhance Business Process (CEBP), and this detail shows just how committed they are to supporting the next generation of integration between network services and enterprise business applications.
In this visua, we get a sense of the packaging that enables the SIP-based Contact Center. There’s also a softphone client, so hardware phones aren’t required.
Not, in yellow, the presence and collaboration view. I think this is one of the most important pieces of this bundling and Siemens’ approach. Agents can see each others’ presence and status information. While this is simply leveraging earlioer call center supervisor functionality that began four years ago with their Agile product, it’s a powerfula contact center tool.
Not only can the contact center agents see one another, they can be set up to see presence and status of resources throughout the entire enterprise. If 25% of calls require outreach to other parts of the business, this provides a powerful tool to increase the chances of first call problem resolution. And the presence view fully supports Jabber and Sametime, making it highly interoperable.
This visual simply providers a view of the bundling packages that will be available.
This last slide shows a couple of peeks at how things work. The top graphic is the existing desktop. On the right, we get a glimpse of the presence view. It’s a common IM client look and feel, making ease of learning and use a minimal impact on work processes,
Collaboration happens today between the contact center and the rest of the enterprise, but it happens in a very non-structured form. Siemens OpenScape Contact Center solution brings structure, manageability and reporting capabilities to improve contact center efficiencies.
Here’s the actual press release.
Siemens Announces New OpenScape Contact Center solution
for the OpenScape Unified Communications Server
Software-based offering provides Voice, UC and Contact Center capabilities
in one integrated package
BOCA RATON, Fla. — April 21, 2008 — Siemens Communications, Inc. today introduced the OpenScape Contact Center, a complete voice, unified communications and customer interaction software solution designed to work with any existing telephony environment. It is based on Siemens’ innovative new unified communications software foundation, OpenScape Unified Communications (UC) Server, which removes the artificial legacy barriers between today’s traditionally separate voice, video and unified communications systems to enable a comprehensive suite of UC applications.
The OpenScape Contact Center offering builds on the presence-enabled HiPath ProCenter Enterprise contact center application to provide a platform to enhance customer interactions across every segment of an enterprise, on virtually any existing communication or network infrastructure. Coupled with the OpenScape Voice Application, this robust solution supports environments up to 7,500 active agents and includes optional voice and contact center server redundancy with automated fail-over to ensure availability of mission critical customer interaction systems.
Leveraging the OpenScape UC Server foundation, it can provide agents with an aggregated, unified desktop client view of all contact center personnel and enterprise users’ presence and availability. This enables agents to specifically address urgent, complex, or sensitive customer interactions requiring escalation beyond the contact center and drives up first contact resolution by tapping the knowledge and expertise across the enterprise in real-time.
The OpenScape Contact Center also addresses the traditional limitations of the hardware intensive site-based contact center by migrating to SIP and providing the new OpenScape UC Application, Personal Edition, soft phone and productivity desktop for each agent. This SIP-based contact center virtualization capability makes every agent a UC user, while enabling agents to work in any location equipped with just headsets and minimally configured desktops. This easy, software-based expansion of ‘on-demand’ agents across multiple sites, branch offices, remote or home-based agents anywhere with secure IP network access offers enterprises dramatic opportunities to leverage their distributed resources.
Also announced today, the new IP-based Voice Portal application complements the OpenScape UC Server and adds to Siemens’ already robust offering by delivering a complete, natural speech enabled self-service solution. The open standards-based Voice Portal solution can help enhance the experience of customers calling in to a contact center by providing superior self-service options as well as seamless integration with the contact center routing engine and virtual agents. It can help improve the opportunity to resolve issues on the first call while optimizing the use of agents and technology.
Computacenter, an IT service & solution provider that recently migrated its contact centre service to the OpenScape Contact Center, saw the new solution as a means to achieve their stated goals as a multi-national service provider. “We saw this as a way to increase our scalability, flexibility and resiliency. We are vitalizing operations across multiple European and offshore locations using a highly scalable and cost effective software deployment model. We are looking to expand our presence and collaboration capabilities into the virtualized enterprise,” said Gavin McLachlan, UK IS director at Computacenter.
Pricing and Availability
The OpenScape Contact Center packaged offering, which includes the OpenScape UC Server, OpenScape Voice, HiPath ProCenter Enterprise, and OpenScape UC Application, Personal Editions, will be generally available June 30, 2008. The package starts at $33,750 for 100 voice users, 10 agents and 1 manager. The new Voice Portal solution is currently available, with pricing based on customer configuration starting at €43,000 based a 48-port configuration.
About Siemens
Siemens AG (NYSE:SI) is one of the largest global electronics and engineering companies with reported worldwide sales of $96 billion in fiscal 2005. Founded nearly 160 years ago, the company is a leader in the areas Medical, Power, Automation and Control, Transportation, Information and Communications, Lighting, Building Technologies, Water Technologies and Services and Home Appliances. With its U.S. corporate headquarters in New York City, Siemens in the USA has sales of $18.8 billion and employs approximately 70,000 people throughout all 50 states and Puerto Rico. Eleven of Siemens’ worldwide businesses are based in the United States. With its global headquarters in Munich, Siemens AG and its subsidiaries employ 460,000 people in 190 countries. For more information on Siemens in the United States: www.usa.siemens.com
About Siemens Communications, Inc.
Siemens Communications, Inc. is an affiliate of Siemens Enterprise Communications GmbH & Co. KG, one of the world’s leading vendors of Open Communications solutions for enterprises of all sizes, enabling business processes to be more productive, faster and more secure - with any device, network or information technology infrastructure. Siemens Communications, Inc. and Siemens Enterprise Communications GmbH & Co. KG are wholly owned subsidiaries of Siemens AG, with about 15,000 employees collectively throughout the world, including the U.S. headquarters in Boca Raton, Fla. For more information about Siemens Communications, Inc., visit />
Note: Siemens, OpenScape and HiPath are registered trademarks of Siemens AG or its subsidiaries and affiliates. All other company, brand, product and service names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
This release contains forward-looking statements based on beliefs of Siemens management. The words “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “forecast,” “expect,” “intend,” “plan,” “should,” and “project” are used to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect the company’s current views with respect to future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause the actual results to be materially different, including, among others, changes in general economic and business conditions, changes in currency exchange rates and interest rates, introduction of competing products, lack of acceptance of new products or services and changes in business strategy. Actual results may vary materially from those projected here. Siemens does not intend or assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
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