OpenSpan Chairman to Help Call Centers Do More with Less
August 19, 2008
The Alpharaetta, Georgia-based company made news recently when it launched version 4.0 of its so-called “Platform Enterprise Edition,” a technology that helps businesses reduce costs by moving legacy and desktop applications off of the desktop.
I recently interviewed Carden, whose old position has been filled by industry veteran Eric Musser. We discussed trends in contact centers, the impact of unified communications on the market and his presentation at ITEXPO (
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RT: What is the biggest trend you are seeing in the contact center space?
FC: Enterprises are increasingly being faced with “do more with less” directives. The down economy is leading to flat or declining IT budgets and many larger-scale projects are being delayed or cancelled. Yet, customers still demand a quality customer experience. Contact centers and the IT departments that support them have to be even more resourceful.
This environment is actually where OpenSpan thrives because we enable contact centers to get more value out of their existing software applications. Instead of having agents constantly navigating through and toggling between applications, OpenSpan provides technology that allows an agent to shift their focus back to resolving customer issues. The result is an improved customer experience, streamlined business processes and improved agent productivity; all with minimal impact on IT budget or workload.
RT: What should contact center decision makers know before upgrading their systems?
FC: It’s important to understand the impact of system upgrades on existing business processes and user productivity. Ripping-and-replacing software is a highly risky path. It’s also a very time consuming process. You’ve made a lot of investments over time in building business logic and rules into your applications and you can’t expect to replace or migrate this functionality over night. Consider tools like OpenSpan that can help you manage the process.
RT: Where is the most call center growth taking place – US or abroad?
FC: The lines between U.S. and international markets continue to disappear. Most of our customers have call center operations around the world and expect their suppliers to be able to support them on a global basis. In terms of overall market growth, most of the data we’ve seen shows that international growth exceeds North American growth and that’s true of our business as well. We’ve seen increasing demand from foreign-based enterprises as well as from foreign operations of US-based enterprises.
RT: How is UC changing the contact center space?
FC: Unified Communications is putting even more emphasis on integration and automation. I think it all goes back to the premise that contact centers need to do more with less. Unifying communications is really all about improving productivity and optimizing business processes. It’s about connecting together a wide range of disparate systems, making it easier for an agent to do his or her job and improving the experience for customers.
OpenSpan plays a big role in UC mainly because we enable a wider range of applications to participate, including applications that reside on users’ desktops. Once integrated, OpenSpan enables you to automate workflows within applications, or more commonly, across a set of applications. This is important because ultimately you want your agents to be able to interact with a unified interface but you likely will still need to make changes to multiple applications behind the scenes.
RT: Is Web integration in contact centers finally happening?
FC: Integration is much bigger than the Web. We’re starting to see applications moved to the Web but the majority of integration is still between legacy applications. Integrating Web assets is relatively easy. Integrating new Web applications to all of the existing legacy systems is extremely hard. That’s our focus.
RT: How is Microsoft’s entrance into the market changing it?
FC: Microsoft is perhaps better suited than any vendor to lead the unified communications space and customer care has always been a focus for them. Microsoft has been helping enterprises improve their customer relationships for years including with their Customer Care Framework. OpenSpan has enjoyed a long and very positive relationship with Microsoft’s CCF team and we even offer a version of the OpenSpan Platform that was specifically designed for Microsoft CCF 2008 environments. We help to extend CCF 2008 to Java, host, and other legacy applications not supported by CCF 2008.
RT: What about Web 2.0 – is it changing the contact center space?
FC: Composite applications or mashups usage continues to grow within the contact center market because these technologies are ideal for improving contact center agent productivity. Unlike no other profession, a contact center agent has to interact with a large number of business processes that span many different applications. And keep in mind that agents are typically hired for their ability to serve customers; not for their technical skill. Composite applications provide a great way to deliver the right customer information at the right time; eliminating a lot of unnecessary application navigation. I would expect to see the use of this particular Web 2.0 technology to increase at an even faster pace throughout 2009.
RT: What is one surprise we will see in the contact center space in the next year?
FC: I think the challenging economic conditions around the world will expedite a number of changes throughout the contact center industry. For example, I think the move to Web-based self-service will accelerate as will the trend towards home-based agents. Large-scale IT projects will be replaced with smaller, quicker ROI projects such as business process automation projects. Desktop productivity is going to be a hot issue. Again, what will drive the contact center industry, at least from an IT perspective, is doing more with less.
RT: Why should people come to hear you speak at Call Center 2.0 and what will you be discussing?
FC: My presentation is titled “Workforce Optimization Strategies” and I’m going to be discussing how you can improve agent productivity and customer satisfaction in today’s challenging economy by doing more with less. More specifically, I am going to demonstrating how you can increase the value of the applications you have in place today by adding new business logic, automating common tasks and simplifying the user interface for agents. And by demonstration, I mean an actual live demonstration. My presentation isn’t about theory, it’s about how we can simply and quickly extend applications to meet new business requirements.
Mark your calendars! Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO is just around the corner. It’s not too late to register for the event, which takes place in Los Angeles, CA, September16–18, 2008. The EXPO will feature three valuable days of exhibits, conferences and networking that you won’t want to miss. So what are you waiting for? Sign up now!
