Enjoying Cisco’s Magic Umbrella
With legions of communications platforms and devices used by employees nowadays, it’s not easy for a company to assemble a proper and optimal integrated communications system.
But there is one option available: provide an “umbrella”. Cisco Systems, the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, has unveiled such an “umbrella”: Cisco Unified Communications.
Based on Cisco’s Service-Oriented Network Architecture (SONA), which was introduced in December last year, the Cisco Unified Communications system is an open and extensible platform for real-time communications based on presence, mobility and the intelligent information network.
The system provides structure and intelligence to help customers integrate communications more closely with business processes, ensuring that information reaches recipients quickly, through the most appropriate medium.
There are four main principles and activities behind the umbrella technology:
Access: You can get calls, calendars, data and e-mail anywhere on your network. So youneed to change or migrate your existing network for this purpose.
Mobility: Forward calls to your chosen devices. Youneed to miss your partner’s or client’s calls delivered to your office phone, because this technology will forward them to your handset fast and seamlessly.
Collaboration: Share all types of media with voice, Web or video-conferencing participants. You can enjoy your favorite type of gadget while still participating in your company’s teleconferencing wherever you are any particular time.
Customer Service: Integrate with applications to maximize call center performance and customer satisfaction because customerswait.
The system uses the IT data network as the service delivery platform, helping workers to reach the right resource the first time by delivering presence and preference information to an organization’s employees.
But just as importantly, “Cisco is fully embracing the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) standard on their desktop phones,” says analyst Tom Keating.
SIP is a protocol developed by IETF MMUSIC Working Group and proposes a standard for initiating, modifying and terminating an interactive user session that involves multimedia elements such as video, voice, instant messaging, online games and virtual reality.Cisco Unified Communications system is the first true second-generation Internet Protocol Communications system providing not just telephone services, but rather a rich communications environment that integrates voice, video and data collaboration in one system,” said Charles Giancarlo, chief development officer of Cisco Systems.
Managing director Cisco Systems Indonesia Irfan Setiaputra says that VoIP, IP telephony, rich-media conferencing and intelligent networks come together to provide significant cost savings and productivity benefits.
“All we need is, how to migrate these technologies into the Unified Communications - it’s the basic idea of this solution,” Irfan said.
According to him, Cisco provides a rich portfolio of voice, video and IP communications solutions designed to facilitate efficient and effective interaction, while providing the foundation for a collaborative workforce.
To make Unified Communications work, customers need IP Telephony, Unified Communications Applications, Customer Contact, Voice Applications, Voice Network Management and Communications Infrastructure in their company’s IT environment.
New to the Cisco Unified Communications are Cisco Unified Personal Communicator, Cisco Unified Presence Server and Customer Interaction Analyzer.
“Nowadays, current customers will be able to upgrade their existing systems and platforms to take advantage of the new capabilities,” he added.
Cisco Unified Personal Communicator, for instance, simplifies the way workers share information by helping them to communicate in real time. Its user-friendly GUI (Graphical User Interface) makes it easy to move through multiple communications applications.
The Cisco Unified Presence Server collects information about a user’s status, such as whether or not they are using a device such as a telephone, personal computer or video terminal at any particular time.
Customer Interaction Analyzer is also being introduced to maximize effective communications with customers, a new approach to analytics in the contact center.
Cisco Unified CallManager 5.0 and Cisco Unified CallManager Express 3.4 and Survivable Remote Site Telephony (SRST) 3.4 effectively open up the system to an emerging standards-based developer community while retaining the current security and resiliency features.
“No matter if employees are using their cell phones or accessing e-mail in notebooks, this system will automatically recognize them and forward messages or calls to them in a real-time basis,” said Irfan.
In short, this is the sort of “magic umbrella” you need to unify all communications devices into one-stop and real-time solutions.
Budi Putra
The Jakarta Post, 31 Juli 2006
Print Posted by Budi Putra on August 3rd, 2006
Possibly related posts
- DoCoMo 3G Phones Get Windows Media
- 3G Videophone Will Run Windows Mobile
- Announced, Top Executives for Nokia Siemens Networks
- Taiwan producers to start shipping 3G PDA phones
- Bakrie Telecom Grows Fixed Wireless Indonesian Network with Nortel Solutions
- Globe Telecom in Philippines deploys Nokia MSC Server
- Infineon, Panasonic team up for dual-mode 3G phone
- Top Ten: 3G Mobile Phones
- Finally, a Use for 3G
- Worldwide SMS revenues to hit $67bn by 2012
One response
E360crm Microsoft CRM Cisco IPCC Unified Enterprise Connector Released.
For enterprises looking to upgrade their call and contact centers with more effective CRM practices, it is essential to realize that the solution cannot exist independently from other enterprise applications and systems. A merger between data sources and applications is the only way to achieve greater efficiency within the enterprise (remove redundant processes), to increase revenues (cross-sell and up sell) and cut costs (brings down the cost of interacting with customers).
Also, as a crucial component of any enterprise architecture, CRM cannot be isolated. Integrating and aggregating the multiple communications and information layers within the enterprise puts a growing emphasis on integration between processes and applications.
One of these layers is of course the contact center, often the outermost layer of the CRM value chain and the face of a company for most of its customers. Yet, no effort has been made so far to extend the resources available to most call centers and to strengthen ties between the call center and the enterprise.
Developed by e360crm, the Connector for Microsoft CRM Dynamics 3.0 and Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise (Cisco IPCC Enterprise) is a merger layer that enables businesses to provide superior customer service by connecting Cisco IPCC solutions with the Microsoft Business Solution Customer Relationship Management (Microsoft CRM Dynamics 3.0) application.
The e360crm Cisco IPCC Enterprise Connector (http://www.e360crm.com) is a customer relationship management (CRM) application tightly integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0. The solution helps all sized businesses quickly gain access to customer information on inbound and outbound calls, with a 360 view to increasing operational efficiency and providing an improved customer experience.
The e360crm Cisco IPCC Enterprise Connector provides Cisco IPCC Enterprise users with a complete view of the customer, including current and past purchases, sales information, order status, account relationships and billing information. Allowing companies to focus their entire operations on customers, the solution helps businesses develop customer service excellence by providing all employees with access to caller data quickly and simply. This helps companies build stronger, more profitable relationships with their clients, increase competitiveness and minimize costs as part of long-term IT development.
When a call is received by a Cisco IPCC Enterprise, the e360crm Cisco IPCC Enterprise Connector automatically links to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM system and provides onscreen pop-up windows of the customer contact record and phone call activity so that the service agent can track the call. The same information and capabilities are also accessible remotely, so sales and service personnel in the field can also connect into the network quickly. New customer data or phone call information is uploaded back into the system, so the next interaction with the customer picks up where the last one left off.
The combination of Cisco Unified Communications with Microsoft Dynamics CRM helps companies increase employee productivity and customer satisfaction while reducing costs
Vladimir Kirushko, Head of Call Center Raiffeisen bank of Ukraine, said: “The e360crm Cisco IPCC Enterprise Connector is an important tool for our Call Center. Before our operators pick up the phone they see all relevant customer information on their screen. With the automatic creation of correlating call activities, all calls are monitored and documented in our Microsoft CRM Dynamics system. This is especially helpful when several operators are simultaneously working with the same customer. The simple configuration with xml configuration file and the intuitive legacy GUI helped ensure it was popular in our bank and with our customers.”
About e360crm
E360crm is a Ukraine firm which develops software for CISCO IPCC Enterprise, MS CRM Dynamics 3.0. Information about e360crm can be found at http://www.e360crm.com. Raiffeisen bank of Ukraine and Ukrsotsbank bank are the clients of e360crm.
With regards,
E360crm team.
Alex Vipov (May 12th, 2007 at 12:21 pm)