While call management rides the crest of a cutting edge technological wave, the term 'call management' is stuck in reverse. Here, we argue the case for a new, more fitting name, 'unified intelligence', to take its rightful place in the comms wordbook.
Here's an irony. The comms industry is infamous for attaching inventive jargon and modern acronyms to cutting edge technology, but the language of past glories sometimes outstays its welcome, languishing out of place and growing weak by definition. One such term is 'call management', and Phillip Reynolds (pictured), joint CEO at Oak Innovation, grapples with the old label. "As someone who has been in call management for 30 years I really struggle with the term 'call management'," he stated. "Historically, call management, call logging and communications management were all synonymous. But these days, with more sophisticated telephone systems, the advent of email, instant messaging, live chat and video conferencing available to every business from one employee upwards, the face of call management has changed beyond recognition."
Nomenclature aside, call management today is all about customer engagement, marketing, customer service and delivering efficiency across a broad platform of communications technologies. It's no longer the domain of large call centres with big budgets, it's available to every single business and is mandatory in this increasingly competitive world, according to Reynolds. "The focus should be on capturing all customer interactions, almost becoming marketing platforms," he said. "We recently changed our strapline to 'innovation in business communication' which reflects everything we do at Oak, and where we want to take the industry. It's all about managing every form of business communication, not just telecoms. I would think 'unified intelligence' would be an apt description of understanding and measuring customer interactions, as well as quality measurement in call and data recording, and of course the reporting analytics to back this up."
There's more value in data if it can help to sell more, provide better customer service, or raise retention rates. The drivers for future call management solutions must therefore be aligned to these business objectives. "Future call management solutions will be bought as part of the IT infrastructure as opposed to the current telephony bias," added Reynolds. "With the move to hosted and cloud-based solutions all of Oak's new products can be run in hosted and virtualised environments as well as the traditional CPE deployment. And with the entry level market being eroded by hosted we are seeing a seed change in an industry that's slow to evolve. This really is a cultural shock where everything takes ten times longer than the computer industry, and a trend that the telecoms channel has to embrace."
With the move from just telecoms management to all forms of communications management, Oak is seeing the big shift towards a data solution. The company is itself embracing this change by increasing R&D spend on both sides of the Atlantic, through buying other businesses for their technologies, changing its recruitment policy and by building a marketing team to spread the word on new developments. "We're currently releasing Clarify, a new mid-market real-time call recorder with sophisticated quality measurement; as well as updated versions of Evolve, our contact centre management software, and our Adapt progressive and predictive diallers," explained Reynolds. "These support the growth in informal call centres as well as increasing demand for more sophisticated call recording."
Oak has always aimed to be a one-stop-shop for resellers, offering call recording, call reporting and analytics, plus screen popping with CRM integration, all available for the SME and mid-market. "The launch of Clarify complements our existing RecordX call recording solution, so everything is covered from an entry level system right up to 4,000 extensions," added Reynolds.
"These are exciting but changing times. With good planning and wise investment, call management, or should I call it unified intelligence, will be a growth industry of which I'm happy to play a part. It's funny how things go full circle: I was developing cloud-based solutions in the late 70s and early 80s on Unix platforms. Now my team, led by my eldest son, are doing the same on Linux!"
Bart Delgado, Managing Director of Akixi, has witnessed significant growth in the enterprise space. Hosted service delivery has now entered the greenfield site and microsite markets, and Akixi has seen good uptake with multi-site deployments. "These traditionally required complex and costly, sometimes unreliable, technologies in order to provide some element of centralised management across disparate sites," said Delgado. "But hosted call management delivers this function as standard, out of the box and without a premium."
He also noted that more customers are demanding flexibility in size, tenure and even level of functionality. "Today's business is having to respond more dynamically to the demands of their customers, and as such they are favouring suppliers that are able to deliver to them on the same commercial basis. They want to be able to turn services on, off, up and down without costly penalties or long-term commitments."
Cost-effective call recording along with innovation in call management with UC and CRM integration means that SMEs can now take advantage of powerful solutions that deliver flexibility and real business intelligence. This comes at a time when more and more end customers are reviewing their business processes and communications strategies as they consider migrating to cloud-based offerings. "The availability and accessibility of business intelligence solutions, along with the same level of functionality that is present in premise-based offerings, are key factors behind the move to cloud telephony," said Tony Martino, Managing Director of Tollring.
"Expectations of business analytics applications are running high and call management intelligence has never been better. Market demand and the development of the cloud are shaping these products and services."
According to Martino, the channel is being forced to embrace cloud services to remain competitive. "The shift to the cloud is uncovering the need for new features in any call management suite, such as proactive system monitoring for revenue assurance, fraud alarming and voice quality monitoring," he said. "These cutting edge features, along with new utilisation monitoring tools for partners, can deliver a competitive advantage to the channel."
Fraud has always been a hot topic and presents its own challenges in the telecoms world, but the latest developments in cloud-based call management solutions are positively impacting the way the channel manages customers and their usage behaviour. And while recurring revenue opportunities are synonymous with the cloud, the immediacy of cloud applications and the convergence of services makes revenue management an ongoing challenge for channel partners, believes Martino.
"The channel not only has the ability to proactively advise on products and services based on customer usage profiles, but also to protect their revenue streams through rich real-time data feeds that highlight any variances to the billing team," he added. "Revenue assurance tools are becoming not only a way for the channel to bill accurately, but also a means to differentiate. Another area of significant interest is SP Analytics - enhanced value for the channel through utilisation of analytics, automated billing and self-provisioning."
For Martino, business and UC analytics are the new terms that describe Tollring's vision. It is about bringing together information from many sources, not just from calls, to deliver customer insights. "Business analytics is becoming a strategic pillar," he said. "Call management is a fundamental element of business analytics. This is evident in the fact that call management is becoming more about UC than calls. The adoption of new UC technology is being driven by the demands for business analytics to empower end users in making decisions and achieving RoI.
"In the not too distant future, this will be seen in SIP-based communications and the rapid adoption of Skype for Business and other UC tools that will extend call management and recording solutions to include real-time communications, VoIP, instant messaging, UC, video and collaboration."
End users will be looking to consolidate their suppliers and work more intelligently. So the channel must remain relevant and become experts in their fields, delivering experience, expertise and advice. "They must become the trusted advisor to ensure their customers are investing in the right technology for their business," stated Martino.
"For those customers that have made investments in the past, providers must advise them on how things have changed since they last purchased. They need to be mindful of where customers are in terms of their understanding of latest technologies, their buying attitudes and the timing of their investments.
"Customers adopting the latest cloud services and communications technology will be keen to prove that investments are right for their business and they need to understand how their people are consuming services. Analytics and BI services can help our partners to prove their relevance, and in turn, help their customers to measure efficiencies from these transformational projects."
Tollring's iCall Suite (iCS) call analytics and recording solution is sold 100 per cent via the channel. In the coming months, Tollring will launch the latest iteration of iCS call analytics and recording globally - one single solution deployed in the cloud, as a hybrid model or on-premise, and accessible on any device. "This will cover all of our channel needs as our partners look to expand their offerings," noted Martino. "We feel the hybrid model provides partners with a strong entry level solution to the cloud."
Tollring will continue to deliver call management as a suite of fully integrated modules, and intends to take what it has learnt in the UK and replicate its successes in global markets. Partnerships with significant global players such as BroadSoft, Mitel and Samsung offer a foundation to do this.
"As a software developer, we've achieved incredible growth," said Martino. "There are big opportunities for both us and our channel partners. We must evolve continuously to ensure that our products and services are relevant to what our partners and customers need and want today. Plus, we must keep an eye on what they will need tomorrow." •