tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-297894502023-11-15T10:22:27.617-05:00Unified-ViewAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comBlogger198125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-65023771623549325342014-07-03T15:50:00.002-04:002014-07-03T15:50:58.838-04:00Mobile UC And The PSTN?<div align="center" class="WW-NormalWeb" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; punctuation-wrap: hanging; tab-stops: .5in 3.75in; text-align: center;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">By Art
Rosenberg, <i><a href="http://unified-view.blogspot.com/">The Unified-View</a>/
</i></span><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-professionals/art-rosenberg.aspx">UC
Strategies Expert</a></span></i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The PSTN is
still actively in use but Mobile UC and the Internet is slowly but surely
changing the way we work and do business, especially the role of telephony. In
addition to enabling business users to dynamically make contact and exchange
information in a variety of modes (real-time voice/video, chat, asynchronous
messaging, social messaging, automated notifications, etc.) with a single,
multimodal, mobile device, they also benefit from having direct access to
information, online business applications, and having “contextual” information
relating to the people they contact and the subject matter they have been
communicating about. The PSTN cannot do all of this, but it will be around for
a while to support legacy telephony users.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The increased
use of the Internet for both information access and contacts with people means
that business activities will become more time-efficient because of the
increased flexibility and accessibility of all types of end users involved in
business process performance. This, in turn, will require all organizations to
be more responsive to day-to-day operational situations and to support a
variety of individual end user communication needs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Although
multimodal mobile devices are enabling real-time voice and video connections between
people to include the exchange of information (messages, documents, video
clips, etc.) during a voice or video conversation, mobile users may not
necessarily be immediately available for a real-time connection, thus requiring
the use of multimedia messaging options (voice, video, text).</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Key Mobile UC Trends</span></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">1.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The choice of mobile devices for both
business and personal use is increasingly becoming the responsibility of the
individual end users, better known as “Bring Your Own Device” or BYOD.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">End users will
choose the mobile devices they prefer to use for all their communication
contacts, whether job-related, business-related, or personal and social.
Business organizations must support their end users’ desire to carry a single
mobile device that can securely accommodate all their mobile contacts and
interactions. That will require that such mobile devices are able to securely
separate access to job-related connections from personal connections, where the
job-related connections are fully controllable by the organization.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The multimodal
mobile devices will also facilitate the user’s ability to dynamically change
from one mode of communication to another, e.g., from a message to an IM text
chat to a voice or video call, to a group conference connection, while still
retaining access to the same “contextual” information about all interactions. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">2.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Multimodal mobile devices enable all modes
of end user contacts with people and notifications from automated business
applications.</span></i></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Smartphones
and tablets are not limited to just person-to-person communications, but are
also practical for receiving timely notifications from authorized business
process applications. The latter can also provide a convenient way for
recipients to respond to a notification by providing a connection to a person,
a service provider’s staff, or a link to a self-service application.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">3.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mobile access to people and applications is
best provided through “cloud” connectivity for interoperability and
integrations.</span></i></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Because mobile
users may be located wirelessly anywhere, and require flexible choices in how
they can communicate with others, it is most practical to provide such services
through wireless IP networks that are not dependent on legacy premise-based
servers. “Cloud” services, whether hosted, private, managed, or hybrids, offer
the flexibility of mobile access as well as centralized points of integration
that can support a variety of different end user needs anywhere, anytime, any
way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Such mobile
flexibility will change the way people access information (e.g., check their
bank accounts), perform direct online transactions (e.g., make payments),
initiate flexible text/voice/video contacts with other people (e.g.,
“click-to-connect” contextually from a document, message, web site), attend
online school courses, take tests, and interact with teachers at all levels of
education, make health care more efficient and timely through mobile monitoring
devices, notifications, and video conferencing.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">4.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Personalized, contextual information (data)
can be exploited in “cloud” storage for greater access by mobile devices and
mobile applications.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The “clouds”
are not only practical for providing access to mobile applications, but also
provide storage for contextual information about individual users and their
online activities. Such contextual data is not only useful for applications to
personalize interactions with end users, but will also provide more contextual
information to a contact recipient than traditional “caller ID” data. This can
include mobile user location information and availability (federated presence).
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">With
personalized contextual data stored in “cloud”-based applications, mobile
devices can now become virtual personal assistants that can dynamically and
automatically provide practical information to an end user, whenever an online
application is invoked, or whenever the user’s physical location detected by
the network triggers the need for information exchange. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">5.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Millennial users expect “always on”
connectivity and flexible and dynamic control over inbound and outbound
communications with people.</span></i></b>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Younger
generation users are accustomed to communicating from anywhere with smartphones
or tablets, as well as through wearable devices (smart watches, glasses) in
their modality of choice. In particular, they can be multi-tasking by texting
or talking with others, while looking up or exchanging information. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Using texting
instead of voice conversation will be particularly important to mobile users
who want to maintain maximum privacy for their communications in public places,
when the environment is too noisy, or when speaking would be disruptive to
their current activity (e.g., sitting in a meeting). In addition, such users
will want any voice messages automatically transcribed to text for faster
retrieval. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">With mobile UC
and a multimodal mobile device, users will always be able to escalate their
mode of person-to-person communication from any form of messaging to a
real-time voice or video connection, while also accessing information and
performing online transactions.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Bottom Line</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Every
organization must be prepared to support their different types of end users
with all forms of communication contact that will also be contextually
integrated with information. This need will be driven by user mobile BYOD, as
well as in the interests of increasing business process performance efficiency
and reducing both operational and technology costs. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The big
challenge will be how to migrate easily and cost effectively from a variety of
legacy telephony communications and messaging technologies to the multimodal,
“mobile first” future of business interactions between people and business
process applications in the “clouds.” Technology providers who have long
specialized in supporting telephony integrations and interoperability, such as <a href="http://www.avst.com/atom/">AVST</a>, will be best equipped to combine the
new demands of mobile UC with existing telephony functions such as
auto-attendants and voice mail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Copyright © 2014 The
Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></i></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-91571490264036549982014-04-19T12:43:00.000-04:002014-04-19T16:33:04.006-04:00Business Conversations Need Voice, But Visual Information Too! <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<h5 align="center" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span></h5>
<div align="center" class="WW-NormalWeb" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; punctuation-wrap: hanging; tab-stops: .5in 3.75in; text-align: center;">
By Art Rosenberg, <a href="http://unified-view.blogspot.com/"><i><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">The Unified-View</span></i></a>/ <a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-professionals/art-rosenberg.aspx"><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">UC Strategies
Expert</span></i></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">With all the
new forms of access to text information and messaging, including email, SMS,
social, IM, unified messaging, voice-to-text messaging, etc., one wonders what
will happen to traditional voice-only conversations over the telephone. Don’t
worry too much, because such voice communication contacts are still efficient
and important for person-to-person interactions. Whether done over the legacy
PSTN, over VoIP connections, or with mobile devices, voice conversations will
always be important and necessary. The only thing is that sometimes voice
conversation alone is just not enough to do the job! </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Let’s face it,
trying to describe a situation or an event is not always easy or accurate and
is often more time consuming or confusing to the person trying to understand
what is being described. So, talk alone is just not enough for faster and
better understanding, and therefore traditional voice calls are also not
adequate for better and efficient information exchange between people.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“A picture is worth a 1000 Words” – Is video worth a 1000
pictures?</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Without trying
to quantfy the benefits of sharing pictures or videos vs. just written or
spoken words, we know that both can be much more informative in describing
something. But, what has not been considered seriously before, is the value of
also having the power of voice conversation dynamically combined with the
visual information of pictures and videos.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sure, we have
always sent such information before or after a voice conversation, but with the
power of unified communications (UC) and the use of multimodal devices, it
really is time to close the information exchange gap for dynamic interactions
between people who are not sitting together in the same room.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Verbal
discussions are very useful for exchanging opinions and highlighting the
importance of issues that are being discussed, but not that efficient for
describing a specific problem. That is where showing a document, a graph, a
picture, or a video clip will be much more effective and more time efficient
than just spoken or texted words. In scheduled conference calls, such visual
information is usually sent ahead of time to participants, so that they are
better prepared to discuss things. However, with the ability to quickly include
mobile participants wherever they are, the reference information to be
discussed may well have to be exchanged in real time during the conversation.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What people really need to see during a business voice
conversation</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Zeus
Kerravala, in a <a href="http://www.nojitter.com/post/240167084/smart-boards-should-now-be-a-core-uc-component">recent
post</a> on No Jitter about collaborative teamwork, decsribed the way people
exchanged information as “Audio conferencing allows users to talk to one
another. Video conferencing enables us to see each other, and Web conferencing
allows workers to share information such as slides and Word documents.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The only thing
I would disagree with in his description, is that video is primarily to “see
each other.” Seeing other participants in a conference call is nice but not
always critical to the discussion. What is more important is to see a
“problem,” not just hear it described, and video may be the best way see what
happened or is still happening. So, video conferencing really needs to be seen
as an important option in business communications that delivers information
about the problem, not just for watching people talk. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Video
information can now be delivered over the Web along with voice (WebRTC), not
just for “collaboration” by business users, but also as needed by consumers
with their smartphones and tablets, as well as by customer assistance staff
responding to a customer need. Amazon’s “Mayday” button approach is somewhat
limited because it uses video “one-way” to show only the customer service agent
on camera, along with shared access to the customer’s tablet screen. The more
general case for customer assistance or any business discussion would allow
every participant to show pictures or videos of what they are talking about. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">With IP
network technology and multimodal personal endpoint devices now available to
all types of end users, we can now support the combination of visual
information and voice. We just need to package things up properly for users to
dynamically exploit the combination of visual media with voice conversation
more easily an effectively when required. UC flexibility will certainly be key
to this flexibility for exchanging any form of information while talking about
a problem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Copyright
© 2014 The Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-70356772233452895742014-04-07T12:05:00.001-04:002014-04-07T12:05:21.446-04:00Is “Unified Communications” Really “Unified Interactions?” <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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By Art Rosenberg, <a href="http://unified-view.blogspot.com/"><i><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">The Unified-View</span></i></a>/ <a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-professionals/art-rosenberg.aspx"><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">UC Strategies
Expert</span></i></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">At Micrsoft’s
recent Lync conference, Gurdeep Singh Pall, Microsoft’s new head of Lync
and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Skype, came up with yet another
term for what those two product offerings will do for business communications,
i.e., “Universal Communications.” It doesn’t seem to be much of an improvement
over what we at<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>UC Strategies have been
calling “Unified Communications” (UC). After all, what is the big difference
between “unified” and “universal?” My feeling is that either term is acceptable,
but the real problem is that people think “communications” means it is only
about person-to-person contacts.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If you look up
the definition of “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication">communications</a>”
in Wikipedia, you will find that “communications” is limited to contacts
between people.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b>Communication</b>
(from Latin <i>commūnicāre</i>, meaning "to share" <sup><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication#cite_note-1">[1]</a></sup>) is
the activity of conveying <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information" title="Information">information</a> through the exchange of thoughts, messages,
or information, as by speech, visuals, signals, written, or behavior. It is the
meaningful exchange of information between <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">two or more living creatures</i></b>.<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">True, it used
to be that, before interactive computing, the only way a business transaction
could be performed or business information could be accessed remotely was
through a live person (telephone, mail), but that has really changed with
direct consumer access to online applications through multi-modal smartphones
and tablets. Rather than just person-to-person contacts, users can now get or
give information by interacting with online applications, and, vice versa,
people can receive alerts, reminders, and timely notifications from automated
applications (CEBP). So, “communications,” as commonly defined being just
between people, is really not adequate for what is actually happening in
computer-based business activities.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Time To Upgrade “Communications” To “Interactions”</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Don’t get me
wrong! We still need person-to-person contacts, but now we need to include
contacts between a person and an automated application. The way I see it, both
types of contacts may be considered as interactions – interactions between
people or between a person and an automated application. In addition, either
type of interaction can be two-way, i.e., a person or application contacts you
or you contact a person or an application. Since there are many efficiency
benefits to be gained by minimizing the need for involving another person in
accessing/delivering information, or performing a routine transaction, that
choice should now become a flexible option of any self-service application. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If we now look
at what we are “unifying,” “optimizing,” or “universalizing,” it’s not the old
definition of “communications,” but rather any interaction with people or with
automated online applications. What is also most important, is that the
flexibility to dynamically choose the mode of interaction is now practical with
increasing end user adoption of BYOD multimodal mobile devices that can support
all the mobile user’s situational needs. Further, when one user wants to talk
but the the user can’t hear, or one user want to type text but the othe user
can’t look (e.g., driving a car) speech–to-text and text-to speech conversions
can be brought into play for contact exchanges.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Unified Interactions” (UI) Hits The User Interfaces On The
Head</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As BYOD takes
hold with multinodal mobile device use by all kinds of end users, the
flexibility for more efficiently exchanging information and conversation in
different modes becomes more practical. Now we are hearing a lot more about the
“User Experience,” which really depends on the User Interface (UI) with both
person-to-person contacts and interactions with online applications that are
rapidly becoming more mobile than just restricted to desktops devices.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What “Unified”
means is that the different modes can be dynamically used by people involved
with any form of interaction with other people or with an automated application
process (inbound or outbound). In a real-time videoconference session, some
people can be “on camera” with video, while others can only see the “video,”
but still participate in the voice conversation; all participants may also be
able to see any form of information that is exchanged (document, messages,
video clips, etc.) If you want to call that “Universal,” fine, but I think the
real focus should be on whether interactions will be just between people or
between both people and online applications.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Copyright
© 2014 The Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-20966746644291945822014-03-26T03:28:00.000-04:002014-04-07T12:03:34.815-04:00Video-enabled UC Easier Said Than Done!<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span><br />
<div align="center" class="WW-NormalWeb" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; punctuation-wrap: hanging; tab-stops: .5in 3.75in; text-align: center;">
By Art Rosenberg, <a href="http://unified-view.blogspot.com/"><i><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">The Unified-View</span></i></a>/ <a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-professionals/art-rosenberg.aspx"><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">UC Strategies
Expert</span></i></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If “<b><i>a picture
is worth a thousand words</i></b>"(spoken or written), what’s a video worth? </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">That’s a
good question now, because desktop PCs and smartphones can add video exchanges
and videoconferencing to other unified communication (UC) options. The answer,
of couse, depends on the individual end user’s information needs of the moment,
but making such communications capability a simple “click” to switch to video
conferencing is a bit more complicated than voice conferencing.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Business
communications are moving beyond wired messaging and voice calls to wireless
Internet connections with mobile devices that support visual, audio, and video
user interfaces. The rapid consumer adoption of mobile smartphones and tablets
is dramatically expanding legacy forms of business communications to multimodal
unified communications (UC). With more personalized choices in mobile devices,
often described as “BYOD” (Bring Your Own Device), the power of desktop
computers and telephones has been extended to mobile consumers for accessing
information, performing self-service transactions, and being able to flexibly
communicate with people and interact with online applications on a personalized
basis.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What this
really means is that such flexible business communications have to be available
easily, selectively, and consistently, to all types of end users, whether
within an organization (employees), or outside an organization (business
partners, customers). As both communications and business process applications
move from premise-based hardware and software to Internet-based public,
private, and hybrid clouds, UC-enabled interactions can now be offered more
easily and cost-efficiently as hosted/managed services, also known as Unified
Communicaitons as a Service (UCaaS). While telephony system providers are
trying to migrate their legacy voice technologies to cloud services and
integrate with IM platforms such as Microsoft Lync, they are also trying to add
video options as well. By its very nature, video is more complex than just voice,
and making it simple for end users as part of a UCaaS offering is a challenge
for legacy telephony service providers.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Different video strokes for different folks!</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">At the
individual end user level, business communication needs will vary with the roles
that an end user plays in a business process. Such use case requirements will
be different for vertical markets, as well as the BYOD choices of individual
users. Providing such flexibility, especially for users outside of an
organization, can best be done in a hosted/managed service environment, where
the service provider has the tools and expertise to manage and change the
spectrum of communication options that are required by different classes of end
users.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Such
flexibility has been extended to include video conferencing interactions, where
people may be “on” or “off” camera, but can still be connected in real time for
voice conversation, while exchanging any form of visual information related to
the discussion. The big breakthrough, then, is that people can now dynamically
and flexibly communicate and exchange information with others any time, from
anywhere, and in any mode that is appropriate to the involved end users.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So,
when it comes to implementing the power of both video and UC to existing business
communications, a UCaaS provider with solid video experience is a </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">practical resource available to any size
organization. One of these vendors is Yorktel, which notes, “Once called the
video industry’s best kept secret, Yorktel is best known for making complicated
simple.” As a vendor agnostic video provider, Yorktel works with industry
leaders including Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft, and Vidyo. While not as well known
as some of the larger video vendors, Yorktel’s customers include Fortune 500m
and federal agencies. The</span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> importance of having a UCaaS provider with a solid
foundation in video was reinforced in Yorktel’s <a href="http://www.telepresenceoptions.com/2014/03/yorktel_to_showcase_new_produc/">announcement</a>
at Enterprise Connect 2014 regarding their <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">VideoCloud</i></b> service. VideoCloud
integrates with enterprise platforms like Microsoft Lync for specific vertical
market use cases that need video, such as the booming telehealth industry, and
integrates with specialized video endpoint devices like <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">iRobot </i></b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>for manufacturing, and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">VideoKiosk</i></b> for a variety
of government, retail, and banking vertical markets.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Video conferencing for meeting rooms, desktops, and, now,
mobile devices</span></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">While UC has
been talked about for a long time in conjunction with real-time voice telephony
for voice conferencing, video conferencing capabilities have been extended from
traditional room based systems, to desktop PCs, but, most importantly, to
individual end users with mobile smartphones and tablets. This opens the door
to satisfying the need for traditional face-to-face meetings with more
cost-effective, conferencing options that go beyond just voice, thus minimizing
the time delays and costs of traveling to a meeting. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Adding video
conferencing to the list of UC-enabled capabilities of any multimodal device
means that users can simply “click-to-video conference” contextually in their
preferred mode of being “on” or “off” camera. Connecting via the Internet,
e.g., using WebRTC, increases ease of use as well as lowered connectivity costs.
However, things are not that easy to implement, and the complexity of
communications technology to selectively integrate and exploit video as a
service when needed, has to be simplified for real world use. That’s where
Yoktel’s experience comes into play to help customers extend existing
communications to include flexible use of video.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">UC-enabling
video conferencing capabilities allows end users to start from simple messaging
contacts to IM to voice connections to video connections from a common user interface.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Video conferencing at the infrastructure level</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">While making
things simple for end users is most important when it comes to increasing
adoption, there is unfortunately a need to ensure that infrastructure
integrations are taken care of.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There are
various factors affecting the use of video that add to integration requrements,
including:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l5 level1 lfo8; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Video conferencing requires both voice and selective use of
video to show visual information, i.e., “on camera” options for conferencing
participants, and particpant connectivity with different endpoint devices</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l5 level1 lfo8; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Video connections have no standard codecs access</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l5 level1 lfo8; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Integration of video conferencing with online business
process applications requires APIs for “click-to-videoconference” option to be
embedded within the applications</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l5 level1 lfo8; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Video output will have to accommodate different user
endpoint devices that hav different size screens and different operating
systems</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l5 level1 lfo8; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Video content display may require authorization at the
individual participation level </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l5 level1 lfo8; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Video conferences require management controls scheduling,
invitations, notifications, who is on or off camera, who can speak and when,
etc. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l5 level1 lfo8; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Video content that will be dynamically presented during the
video discussion must be easily generated and accessible as an option to
authorized participants</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Yorktel prides
itself on its years of experience in handling such requirements and simplifying
customized usage for different types of end user applications. As the business
communications market increasingly moves towards a combination of BYOD devices,
unified communications, and cloud based business applications, Yorktel is
prepared to assist different vertical market customers of any size through this
evolution.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-46171855790703911272014-03-24T12:32:00.002-04:002014-03-24T12:32:57.791-04:00Visual "Mobile Apps" Replacing Legacy IVR Applications Copyright (C) Unified-View, All Rights Reserved.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">UC is starting to move quickly from internal business communications to end users outside of an organization, i.e., business partners and consumers (customers). UC has also always been more important for mobile users who need the flexibility of UC to support their dynamically changing environment with the choice of using voice vs. text messaging vs. video.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This shift towards UC-enabled mobile customer services is also being reinforced by the increased use of self-service online "mobile apps" that provide flexible "click-for-asistance" options when a customer needs it. A good example of this is Amazon's use of a "Mayday Button" option on their Kindle HDX device that connects them with video agent to help them use their device.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To sit in a very interesting discussion of the value of "visual" self-service, rather than a legacy voice IVR application, please check out this webinar hosted by Jacada. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://www.jacada.com/webseminar/webinar-visual-ivr-roundtable-discussion </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span> Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-5276989023454904182014-03-24T11:40:00.003-04:002014-03-24T11:40:54.940-04:00"UC Video" - Easier said than done!<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<h5>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal;"></span></h5>
<div align="center" class="WW-NormalWeb" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; punctuation-wrap: hanging; tab-stops: .5in 3.75in; text-align: center;">
By Art Rosenberg, <a href="http://unified-view.blogspot.com/"><i><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">The Unified-View</span></i></a>/ <a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-professionals/art-rosenberg.aspx"><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">UC Strategies
Expert</span></i></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If “a picture
is worth a thousand words (spoken or written),” what’s a video worth? That’s a
good question now, because desktop PCs and smartphones can add video exchanges
and videoconferencing to other unified communication (UC) options. The answer,
of couse, depends on the individual end user’s communication needs of the
moment, but making such capability a simple “click” to switch to video is a bit
more complicated than voice conferencing.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Business
communications are moving beyond wired messaging and voice calls to wireless
Internet connections with mobile devices that support visual, audio, and video
user interfaces. The rapid consumer adoption of mobile smartphones and tablets
is dramatically expanding legacy forms of business communications to multimodal
unified communications (UC). With more personalized choices in mobile devices,
often described as “BYOD” (Bring Your Own Device), the power of desktop
computers and telephones has been extended to mobile consumers for accessing
information, performing self-service transactions, and being able to flexibly
communicate with people and interact with online applications on a personalized
basis.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What this
really means is that such flexible business communications have to be available
selectively, but consistently, to all types of end users, whether within an
organization (employees), or outside an organization (business partners,
customers). As both communications and business process applications move from
premise-based hardware and software to Internet-based public, private, and
hybrid clouds, UC-enabled interactions can now be offered more easily and
cost-efficiently as hosted/managed services, also known as Unified
Communicaitons as a Service (UCaaS). While telephony system providers are
trying to migrate their legacy voice technologies to cloud services and
integrate with IM platforms such as Microsoft Lync, they are also trying to add
video options as well. By its very nature, video is more complex than just
voice, and making it simple for end users as part of a UCaaS offering is a
challenge for legacy telephony service providers.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Different video strokes for different folks!</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">At the
individual end user level, business communication needs will vary with the
roles that an end user plays in a business process. Such use case requirements
will be different for vertical markets, as well as the BYOD choices of
individual users. Providing such flexibility, especially for users outside of
an organization, can best be done in a hosted/managed service environment,
where the service provider has the tools and expertise to manage and change the
spectrum of communication options that are required by different classes of end
users.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Such
flexibility has been extended to include video conferencing interactions, where
people may be “on” or “off” camera, but can still be connected in real time for
voice conversation, while exchanging any form of visual information related to
the discussion. The big breakthrough, then, is that people can now dynamically
and flexibly communicate and exchange information with others any time, from
anywhere, and in any mode that is appropriate to the involved end users.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So,
when it comes to implementing the power of both video and UC to existing
business communications, a UCaaS provider with solid video experience is a </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">practical resource available to any size
organization. One of these vendors is Yorktel, which notes, “Once called the
video industry’s best kept secret, Yorktel is best known for making complicated
simple.” As a vendor agnostic video provider, Yorktel works with industry
leaders including Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft, and Vidyo. While not as well known
as some of the larger video vendors, Yorktel’s customers include Fortune 500m
and federal agencies. The</span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> importance of having a UCaaS provider with a solid
foundation in video was reinforced in Yorktel’s <a href="http://www.telepresenceoptions.com/2014/03/yorktel_to_showcase_new_produc/">announcement</a>
at Enterprise Connect 2014 regarding their <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">VideoCloud</i></b> service. VideoCloud integrates
with enterprise platforms like Microsoft Lync for specific vertical market use
cases that need video, such as the booming telehealth industry, and integrates
with specialized video endpoint devices like <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">iRobot </i></b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>for manufacturing, and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">VideoKiosk</i></b> for a variety
of government, retail, and banking vertical markets.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Video conferencing for meeting rooms, desktops, and, now,
mobile devices</span></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">While UC has
been talked about for a long time in conjunction with real-time voice telephony
for voice conferencing, video conferencing capabilities have been extended from
traditional room based systems, to desktop PCs, but, most importantly, to
individual end users with mobile smartphones and tablets. This opens the door
to satisfying the need for traditional face-to-face meetings with more
cost-effective, conferencing options that go beyond just voice, thus minimizing
the time delays and costs of traveling to a meeting. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Adding video
conferencing to the list of UC-enabled capabilities of any multimodal device
means that users can simply “click-to-video conference” contextually in their
preferred mode of being “on” or “off” camera. Connecting via the Internet,
e.g., using WebRTC, increases ease of use as well as lowered connectivity
costs. However, things are not that easy to implement, and the complexity of
communications technology to selectively integrate and exploit video as a
service when needed, has to be simplified for real world use. That’s where
Yoktel’s experience comes into play to help customers extend existing
communications to include flexible use of video.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">UC-enabling
video conferencing capabilities allows end users to start from simple messaging
contacts to IM to voice connections to video connections from a common user
interface.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Video conferencing at the infrastructure level</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">While making
things simple for end users is most important when it comes to increasing
adoption, there is unfortunately a need to ensure that infrastructure
integrations are taken care of.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There are
various factors affecting the use of video that add to integration requrements,
including:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l5 level1 lfo8; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Video conferencing requires both voice and selective use of
video to show visual information, i.e., “on camera” options for conferencing
participants, and particpant connectivity with different endpoint devices</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l5 level1 lfo8; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Video connections have no standard codecs access</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l5 level1 lfo8; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Integration of video conferencing with online business
process applications requires APIs for “click-to-videoconference” option to be
embedded within the applications</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l5 level1 lfo8; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Video output will have to accommodate different user
endpoint devices that hav different size screens and different operating
systems</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l5 level1 lfo8; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Video content display may require authorization at the
individual participation level </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l5 level1 lfo8; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Video conferences require management controls scheduling,
invitations, notifications, who is on or off camera, who can speak and when,
etc. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l5 level1 lfo8; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Video content that will be dynamically presented during the
video discussion must be easily generated and accessible as an option to
authorized participants</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Yorktel prides
itself on its years of experience in handling such requirements and simplifying
customized usage for different types of end user applications. As the business
communications market increasingly moves towards a combination of BYOD devices,
unified communications, and cloud based business applications, Yorktel is
prepared to assist different vertical market customers of any size through this
evolution.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-14040023467694845212014-02-28T13:15:00.003-05:002014-02-28T13:15:41.173-05:00With SDN, Communication Service Providers Can Deliver UCaaS To All Kinds Of End Users <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<h5>
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></h5>
<div align="center" class="WW-NormalWeb" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; punctuation-wrap: hanging; tab-stops: .5in 3.75in; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">By Art
Rosenberg, <i><a href="http://unified-view.blogspot.com/">The Unified-View</a>/
</i></span><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-professionals/art-rosenberg.aspx">UC
Strategies Expert</a></span></i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Since there is
so much news about Lync, WebRTC, and mobile communications in general that has
come out lately, I will make this post short, and hopefully sweet.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Because both
business and personal communications are migrating towards multimodal mobile
devices, online mobile apps, and “cloud” based software infrastructure,
communication service providers (CSPs) and wireless carriers are becoming the
focal point for BYOD application offerings. Legacy hardware-based network
connectivity has always been difficult and expensive to develop and integrate,
but they are now becoming “virtualized” software functions to join business
process applications and data storage by moving into “cloud” services.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My UC
Strategies colleague, Michael Finneran, just posted an <a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-expert-views/uc-and-sdn-applications-controlling-networks.aspx">article</a>
describing how networking is becoming more flexible and controllable by
applications. By becoming more software-based (Software Defined Networking),
networking functions can now be more flexible and support a variety of end user
needs, including multimodal person-to-person communication applications and
integrations with business process applications (CEBP). This will also
facilitate the service offerings of CSPs to business organizations to
accommodate different vertical market needs of businesses and their
customers/consumers.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This trend was
reflected in a recent announcement by <a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-strategies-views/now-service-providers-can-really-offer-ucaas-to-everyone.aspx">Genband</a>,
but just reinforced by HP’s announcement at the Mobile World Congress in
Barcelona of their Open Networks Functions Virtualization (NFV) offering which
provides all the tools needed by communication service providers to develop,
integrate, test, and support operational network services in a Software Defined
Network (SDN) environment. This will simplify and speed up the network
connectivity required for all modes of contextual communications between people
and online applications. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Since BYOD and
CEBP will increasingly shift business communications to personalized multimodal
devices and services, wireless CSPs are becoming the starting point for end
users who want their latest smartphones and tablets to connect with both legacy
PSTN contacts and IP services. Business communications now include consumers
who interact with many different organizations and online applications, using a
single, multimodal mobile device. That will become the key driver for network
flexibility that Michael discusses in his <a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-expert-views/uc-and-sdn-applications-controlling-networks.aspx">post</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Whether you
want “UC” to mean “unified communications,” or as Microsoft has proposed at
their Lync 2014 conference, “universal communications,” makes no difference.
Users are just looking for the service that will be flexibly multimodal, can be
used with any device anywhere, and can be used to interact with online mobile
apps in the “clouds.” </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For business
applications, including customer services, communications will be flexibly
embedded within online apps (‘click-for-assistance” options) and thereby become
more efficient and “contextual” for both the contact initiator and the
recipient. That is what “UC” is really all about!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Copyright © 2014 The
Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></i></b></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-39936179670808686892014-01-31T11:59:00.001-05:002014-01-31T11:59:41.930-05:00A UC Solution That Service Providers Can Offer To Any Size Business<div align="center" class="WW-NormalWeb" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; punctuation-wrap: hanging; tab-stops: .5in 3.75in; text-align: center;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">By Art
Rosenberg, <i><a href="http://unified-view.blogspot.com/">The Unified-View</a>/
</i></span><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-professionals/art-rosenberg.aspx">UC
Strategies Expert</a></span></i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Although
multimodal communications (UC) software first began to appear, we all were
excited by its ability to make us more productive; keeping us more efficiently
and flexibly connected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, in
some respects, it has also made business communications more complex. While
legacy telephony was simply device-to-device calling, UC is more than
person-to-person contacts at desktops or with mobile devices, it’s also about
interactions with online applications and timely, proactive notification
messages from business process applications. And, as my colleague at UC
Strategies, <a href="http://www.nojitter.com/post/240165709/positioning-for-the-cloud#disqus_thread">Blair
Pleasant describes</a>, UC-enabled software is moving quickly to the “clouds.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The big
challenge facing any size organization is how to migrate from their legacy
telephony systems to new “cloud” based UC software services that exploit
multimodal Internet connectivity, rather than just the legacy voice PSTN. After
all, why buy something new and get the same functional services? To date, most
of the traditional service providers have not really offered a differentiated
approach, making UC implementation and adoption slower than it could be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, GENBAND, a major vendor for service
providers (they acquired Nortel’s carrier business in 2010) as well as large
enterprises requiring carrier grade technology, has come up with a UC solution
that might just increase adoption in both those big enterprises and SMBs.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">GENBAND’s SMART OFFICE 2.0</span></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">GENBAND has
just announced one of the first WebRTC-compatible UC solutions, SMART OFFICE
2.0. By focusing on browser-based clients they are opening up a new way to
connect more than just people to people. The browser is already where we go for
so many of our business self-service apps, along with all that e-mail and
social media.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You start to see how
organizations can leverage HTML5 and REST APIs to embed multimodal
communications into the heart of business process workflow. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>GENBAND says they are still working with
partners on their approach to supporting multimodal customer service
“Interaction Centers,” which will be highly dependent on WebRTC capabilities
for flexible, “click-for-live assistance” options directly and contextually
from online and mobile customer service apps. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In discussing
GENBAND’s announcement of SMART OFFICE 2.0 and their Generation Enterprise
framework, they indicated that they are using different channel partner
strategies for different market segments. So, although not a familiar
enterprise vendor name, they have come up with two channel partner approaches
to support SMART OFFICE 2.0 implementations:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 75.0pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 75.0pt; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Enterprises and SMBs primarily interested in hosted UC can
turn to their 700 service providers/carriers </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 75.0pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 75.0pt; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Large multisite enterprises that want premises equipment or
a tailored hosted solution can connect with their enterprise reseller
channel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That channel is already
working with GENBAND to supports about 300 very large legacy Nortel customers
that had carrier-class solutions deployed</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 57.0pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Service Providers</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">GENBAND has a
long history of supplying carriers with new networking technologies, including
SIP Session Control and SBC’s for SIP Trucking/PSTN connectivity. What we see
with SMART OFFICE 2.0 is a stronger move into communication application
software, including Intelligent Messaging applications on their EXPERIUS
application server. It supports multi-tenant requirements for cost efficient
hosted/managed unified-messaging services in “public clouds.” So, GENBAND is
ready to support their service providers to move gracefully from PSTN telephony
services to multimodal UC offerings for any size business. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Installed Base Customers</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Because
GENBAND supports a significant number (300+) of very large Nortel enterprise
customers, they had to create a solution that will avoid requiring massive
replacement of existing desktop phones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They had to complement those desktops with new mobile device
interoperability and “mobile apps.” In addition, they can now offer WebRTC connectivity
via the WAN and Internet, rather than just give users PSTN connections.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So, for their
installed base of large customers in higher education, government, financial
markets, and health care, GENBAND has come up with a cost efficient migration
plan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are giving their channel
partners a way to replace core communications hardware without having to
replace all existing end user desktop telephones. Once that core hardware is in
place, it is now open to exploit new software in private, public, or hybrid
“clouds” for very cost efficient UC interoperability benefits. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Convergence of Enterprise and SMB UC With Consumer
Services</span></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It will be
interesting to see how these two channel partner strategies will work out,
especially in extending GENBAND’s role of interoperability between
enterprise-run technology and technology supported by the carriers for smaller
businesses and, of course, consumers. I see the future “Interaction Center” for
mobile customer services as a big bridge between the two domains, and I expect
GENBAND to partner with leading, innovative contact center technology providers
like Interactive Intelligence, to make such things happen in the new world of
cloud-based, mobile, IP-based communications, that will exploit WebRTC.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Copyright © 2014 The
Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></i></b></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-63409516208576817042014-01-21T13:50:00.002-05:002014-01-21T13:50:38.986-05:00Multimodal Business Conversations In The "Cloud" <h5 align="center" style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal;"> </span></h5>
<div align="center" class="WW-NormalWeb" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; punctuation-wrap: hanging; tab-stops: .5in 3.75in; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">By Art
Rosenberg, <i><a href="http://unified-view.blogspot.com/">The Unified-View</a>/
</i></span><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-professionals/art-rosenberg.aspx">UC
Strategies Expert</a></span></i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It is becoming
very obvious that sharing and exchanging information, not just conversation, is what business
communication is really all about. That means that people need to have access
to relevant information in real time, while actively involved in a real time
voice or video discussion. Telephony never could do that in the past, but
moving communications to a "cloud” service is enabling that need to be
fulfilled.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Regardless of
who the end users are, whether internal employees, business partners, or even
consumers/customers, but there will always be a need to dynamically reference
and share common information by the parties involved in any kind of real-time
conversation. Now that mobile smartphones and tablets have bridged the gap
between person-to-person communication contacts and access to online apps, the
path to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">information-enabled voice
conversations</i> between people has been opened.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Today’s
announcement from <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">PanTerra Networks</i></b> about their <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Smartbox</i></b> cloud service
offering confirms the benefits of UC implementation as a “cloud” service, since
they have carried the concept to a logical, higher level of interoperability in
what they describe as “<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Unified Cloud Services</i></b>.”
PanTerra’s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“SmartBox” service combines
UC applications with information content storage and file sharing services that
lets users manage, search, and contextually initiate UC-enabled contacts from a
single user interface in a single cloud.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Raising The Bar For UCaaS</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Everyone is
rushing to putting applications, data, and communications into public, private,
and hybrid cloud environments, because they are really all becoming software
based and serving a variety of multimodal mobile and desktop endpoint devices.
So, just as UC is subsuming telephony communications, we are now seeing the
next step as “cloud” applications subsume both information storage and UC.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">With both
information and communications all under one “cloud” roof, it will now be
possible for end users to more fully manage all their business interactions and
more easily correlate all their information exchanges with other people. So, it
won’ be just “person-to-person” contacts that can be tracked, but also managing
contact activities based on information exchanges as well.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">While we at UC
Strategies have always seen business communications increasingly involved with
automated business processes (CEBP), the growing role of “cloud" data
storage and file sharing, especially for mobile users, makes it practical to
exploit UC options for exchanging such information. This kind of capability
will be particularly useful when end users are “collaborating” by looking at
common information and discussing it in their choice of communications (text,
voice, video). </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">How Many “Clouds” Are Involved?</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One of the
objectives PanTerra had for developing their SmartBox offering was to minimize
any unnecessary friction between communication applications and file sharing
activities because of inconsistencies from different “cloud” services. By
UC-enabling file sharing in a common “cloud” service, interoperability is
simplified and less costly. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We are just
entering the “cloud” era of online and mobile access to interactions with both
people<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and online information, and the
standards for interoperability across “clouds” remain to be better defined for
maximum efficiency and minimum costs. As service providers begin to offer more
access to applications, information, and communications with people, we should
see more interoperability develop, as was the case with the legacy PSTN for telephony.
In the meantime, <span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Arthur%20Rosenberg" datetime="2014-01-20T16:25"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nVeBkRMe5Y">PanTerra’s
SmartBox offering</a></ins></span> is a step forward in bringing real-time
communications and information access closer together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Copyright © 2014 The
Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></i></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<h5 align="center" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span></h5>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-25021321018585058372014-01-21T12:41:00.002-05:002014-01-21T12:41:37.658-05:00“Cloud” Services Open the Door to Multimodal Business Conversations <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<h5>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal;">January 21, 2014</span></span><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></h5>
<h5>
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">By Art
Rosenberg, <i><a href="http://unified-view.blogspot.com/">The Unified-View</a>/
</i></span><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-professionals/art-rosenberg.aspx">UC
Strategies Expert</a></span></i></span>
</h5>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It is becoming
very obvious that information exchange, not just conversation, is what business
communication is really all about. That means that people need to have access
to relevant information in real time, while actively involved in a real time
voice or video discussion. Telephony never could do that in the past, but
moving communications to a "cloud” service is enabling that need to be
fulfilled.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Regardless of
who the end users are, whether internal employees, business partners, or even
consumers/customers, but there will always be a need to dynamically reference
and share common information by the parties involved in any kind of real-time
conversation. Now that mobile smartphones and tablets have bridged the gap
between person-to-person communication contacts and access to online apps, the
path to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">information-enabled voice
conversations</i> between people has been opened.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Today’s
announcement from <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">PanTerra Networks</i></b> about their <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Smartbox</i></b> cloud service
offering confirms the benefits of UC implementation as a “cloud” service, since
they have carried the concept to a logical, higher level of interoperability in
what they describe as “<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Unified Cloud Services</i></b>.”
PanTerra’s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“SmartBox” service combines
UC applications with information content storage and file sharing services that
lets users manage, search, and contextually initiate UC-enabled contacts from a
single user interface in a single cloud.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Raising The Bar For UCaaS</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Everyone is
rushing to putting applications, data, and communications into public, private,
and hybrid cloud environments, because they are really all becoming software
based and serving a variety of multimodal mobile and desktop endpoint devices.
So, just as UC is subsuming telephony communications, we are now seeing the
next step as “cloud” applications subsume both information storage and UC.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">With both
information and communications all under one “cloud” roof, it will now be
possible for end users to more fully manage all their business interactions and
more easily correlate all their information exchanges with other people. So, it
won’ be just “person-to-person” contacts that can be tracked, but also managing
contact activities based on information exchanges as well.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">While we at UC
Strategies have always seen business communications increasingly involved with
automated business processes (CEBP), the growing role of “cloud" data
storage and file sharing, especially for mobile users, makes it practical to
exploit UC options for exchanging such information. This kind of capability
will be particularly useful when end users are “collaborating” by looking at
common information and discussing it in their choice of communications (text,
voice, video). </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">How Many “Clouds” Are Involved?</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One of the
objectives PanTerra had for developing their SmartBox offering was to minimize
any unnecessary friction between communication applications and file sharing
activities because of inconsistencies from different “cloud” services. By
UC-enabling file sharing in a common “cloud” service, interoperability is
simplified and less costly. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We are just
entering the “cloud” era of online and mobile access to interactions with both
people<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and online information, and the
standards for interoperability across “clouds” remain to be better defined for
maximum efficiency and minimum costs. As service providers begin to offer more
access to applications, information, and communications with people, we should
see more interoperability develop, as was the case with the legacy PSTN for telephony.
In the meantime, <span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:Arthur%20Rosenberg" datetime="2014-01-20T16:25"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nVeBkRMe5Y">PanTerra’s
SmartBox offering</a></ins></span> is a step forward in bringing real-time
communications and information access closer together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Copyright © 2014 The
Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-58887181020947389312013-12-31T13:52:00.000-05:002013-12-31T13:52:16.028-05:00<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<h5>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal;">December 31, 2013</span></h5>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h5 align="center" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Happy UC Migrations In 2014</span></span><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span> </span></span></h5>
<div align="center" class="WW-NormalWeb" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; punctuation-wrap: hanging; tab-stops: .5in 3.75in; text-align: center;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">By Art
Rosenberg, <i><a href="http://unified-view.blogspot.com/">The Unified-View</a>/
</i></span><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-professionals/art-rosenberg.aspx">UC
Strategies Expert</a></span></i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It’s the end
of 2013, and even though there has been much talk about “unified
communications (UC),” there really hasn’t been much action! Part of the reason
is that there is still a lot of confusion about what “UC” really means and it’s
not just about IP-based, person-to-person voice call connections or (VoIP).</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The future of
business communications is rapidly being accepted as becoming more mobile,
multimodal, IP based, and integrated with business process applications, but
what does that really mean for legacy PSTN-based<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>telephony systems?. The major challenges for every organization,
large or small, for moving forward towards that future are twofold. First,
understanding how and where the benefits of using the new communications
technology will apply to the various operational needs and priorities of the
individual business operation. Secondly, planning a minimally disruptive and
cost effective migration from their current communication technologies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The UC change
will basically impact how the legacy wired, premised-based, PSTN-connected
telephony system will be subsumed by wired and wireless cloud-based Internet
connectivity services, and how Communications Enabled Business Process
applications will replace person-to-person contact activities. Such change will
obviously be an evolutionary one, so most organizations will face the old
syndrome of “one foot on land (CPE, PSTN) and the other in the canoe (cloud
services, WebRTC).” So, it will be important to use technology that is flexible
enough to connect the old with new.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I usually like to focus on what the end users
will need and want from communication user interfaces, but there is no question
that infrastructure and connectivity that end users don’t see, are equally
important for implementation planning. <a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-expert-views/what-vars-need-to-migrate-customers-to-uc-telephony.aspx">Patton
Electronics</a> is a well-established technology provider in Europe, but less
well known in the U.S., that is focused on providing the connectivity
technology to connect all the old endpoints with all the new business
communications endpoints required by both organizations and service providers
that must migrate to the UC future. As every organization starts their migration
planning<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>towards IP Telephony as part
of UC enablement, they will need the connectivity flexibility that Patton’s
SmartNode and integration services with Microsoft and IBM UC platforms can
offer.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Smartphones
and tablets are changing<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the landscape
of most business applications, expanding end user multimodal access to
information and people for both consumers and enterprise employees. BYOD
concerns have required organizations to find a way to keep job-related
activities separate from personal use of a user’s mobile device. This was done
with technology described as “dual persona” container sandboxing on the mobile
device, where the business container is controlled by the organization, and the
user controls the personal container. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Since
consumers and BYOD employees get their mobile devices and services from the
wireless carriers that also provide network access connectivity, it is no
surprise that wireless service provider AT&T, came up with a cloud-based
“dual persona” capability for online business applications under the label of
AT&T <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Toggle</i></b> (SM). To complement Toggle, AT&T just announced a
trial of a mobile app (<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Toggle Voice</i></b>, based on AT&T's
RingCentral offering) that provides an old mobile phone capability for using
two phone numbers for separately initiating, receiving, and billing business
and personal phone calls. Such a personal/business dual-reach capability has
been demonstrated in the past by companies like Broadsoft, Movius, and Divide,
but AT&T might be unique among US carriers in offering this combination of
a secondary business number within a business container.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The service
convergence of real-time voice calls with online mobile apps will have a
significant impact on how end users will interact with companies, especially as
customers who need live assistance within the context of online self-service
applications. Because mobile consumers can now directly access such online
applications for information and transactions through business websites, they
will use such access as a first level of engagement, rather than with
traditional PSTN phone calls or other modes of contact. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Similarly,
because mobile consumers can now be contacted anytime and anywhere, business
process applications can be authorized by customers to initiate automated
notifications for important, time-sensitive situations (airline flight canceled
or delayed, bank account status changes, health monitoring alerts, etc). Such
notifications can also provide for convenient, “contextual” responses as well
as flexible access to available live assistance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Dual Persona” Mobile Devices Are Not Enough</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Many industry
observers, including myself, have long talked about the need for mobile devices
to accommodate secure use of both business and personal communications and
applications. That is being accommodated by various mobile clients and APIs
that control different “containerized” online interaction functions on a mobile
device.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, there may be several
“personas” that an end user can require, not just a single job-related one, or
a single “personal” one. For this reason, BYOD must include the ability for end
point devices to use separate and secure “interaction personas” that are
personalized for each individual end user. (“BYOP?”)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As a starting
point for business communications, job-related personas will typically be
implemented by organizations to support their mobile employees and business
partners. However, since every business user is a also a consumer and therefore
a customer of a variety of public service and product providers, mobile
customer services will also have to be accommodated for personalized
information access via “mobile apps” and proactive customer notifications. This
will be particularly important for health care and financial services.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Customer
services are moving away from legacy telephone call centers and IVR
applications to support multimodal mobile consumers. This is particularly
critical for “BYOD” mobile users who will be using a variety of smartphones and
tablets, with different form factors and mobile operating systems, for all
their mobile interactions with people and online applications.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mobile devices
must therefore be able to securely and efficiently support different modes of
IP communications between people (messaging, phone/video calls, social posts)
as well as personalized interactions with a variety of business process
applications designed for consumers/customers. In particular, every
self-service “mobile app” will need to provide “click-for-assistance” options
that will be UC-enabled for the user’s choice of multimodal communication.
(This covers a lot of different activities that must be managed by a single
mobile device, but the basic mobile device technology that has already been
developed for both network connectivity and application access security, needs
to be expanded and customized to cover all the real world use cases.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It’s still
early in the service development game, but multimodal mobile devices
(smartphones, tablets) are rapidly being adopted by all types of end users
(BYOD). This is driving the need for mobile communication service providers to
securely support separate controls for organizational employees, business
partners, customers, and consumers with what I call personalized <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Interaction
Management Spaces</i></b>” on their individual mobile devices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Copyright © 2013 The
Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></i></b></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-47456315363076674432013-11-16T19:10:00.000-05:002013-11-16T19:10:36.986-05:00Multimodal Interfaces For User Self-Service Input/OutputCopyright (C) Unified-View, All Rights Reserved.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For years you have seen me refer to multimodal mobile devices as the mainstay for unified communications. You hav have also seen me stress the fact that UC is not just for person-to-person contacts, but also for interactions with automated, online applications. Now that consumers have rapidly adopted the use of smartphones and tablets, the all are able to access information and people without necessarily making a tradtional phone call over the PSTN.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This transition is not only affecting the use of telephones and the legacy Telephone User Intefcae (TUI), but is also causing a ripple affect in how online mobile self-service apps must support the flexibility of multimodal endpoint devices. In the Winter issue of Speech Technology, the challenge of integrating voice and visual interfaces is discussed, highlighting the need for end users to use both forms of interaction as their personal needs dictate. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(Go to http://www.speechtechmag.com/Articles/Editorial/Cover-Story/Can-VUI-and-GUI-Survive-an-Interface-Marriage-93149.aspx)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As I have frequently stressed in the past, people will usually find it faster and easier to talk than to type input, and faster and easier to read (or look) than listen to informational output. On top of that, there will be times when a user has to be hands-free and/or eyes-free, in which case, the user choice will need that flexibility option at the input or output level of any self-service application.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Device Independence For Mobile Apps</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because "Consumer BYOD" will require mobile apps to support a variety of form factors and mobile OSs, there will be a new need to separate mobile apps from the control of any input and output content. That approach seems to be on the agenda of the World Wide Consortium's Multimodal Interaction Working Group to develop standards for inter-operating between "modality components." This means that an application process will be completely independent from the different input/output format controls, which can be selectively used for individual end user situations.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Think of it in terms of person-to-person UC-enabled messaging, where the message sender creates a message in text or speech, the recipient gets notified about the message, then can choose to retrieve that message as voice or text. So, an application interaction controller can be directed to dynamically convert and deliver input or output to a particular device screen interface or voice channel. Since we are talking about a Web-based interaction with an application, not a person, a real-time voice (or video) connection is not directly involved except when invoked through a "click-for-assistance" option in the application (like the Amazon "Mayday button").</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Here is a recent post I did on the role of multi-modal live
assistance as part of mobile customer self-services.<br />
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-strategies-views/mobile-multi-modal-customer-self-services-less-talk-and-more-action.aspx">http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-strategies-views/mobile-multi-modal-customer-self-services-less-talk-and-more-action.aspx</a><br />
</span></span><br />
<br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-52736580732969600242013-08-15T12:50:00.000-04:002013-08-15T14:55:34.219-04:00Customer Satisfaction? UC Interaction Flexibility! <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">By Art
Rosenberg, <i><a href="http://unified-view.blogspot.com/">The Unified-View</a>/
</i></span><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-professionals/art-rosenberg.aspx">UC
Strategies Expert</a></span></i></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span></h3>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">UC flexibility has always been more
important for mobile users than for desktop workers, because they need dynamic
flexibility for both initiating contacts and responding to contacts while “on
the go.” This is particularly true for customer business interactions where
consumers increasingly use <a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-strategies-views/mobile-multi-modal-customer-self-services-less-talk-and-more-action.aspx">mobile
self-service applications</a>, but then run into a complex problem that
requires expert live assistance. “Click-for-assistance” with new browser
technologies like Web RTC, will help streamline direct access to such customer
service staff, but the question still remains as to exactly what kind of
assistance is really needed by the individual customer. </span></span></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">One solution is to stop guessing about
what such customers want and give them the choice of selecting the expertise
they think they need, including the flexibility of how and when they want to
interact with such support, </span><i>without
first talking to an agent and then getting transferred</i></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">. An innovative approach has been developed by
OrgSpan, that has integrated their solution with a leading interaction
(contact) center provider, Interactive Intelligence, to provide such a
practical capability. So we interviewed the founder and CEO of OrgSpan, Jeff
Swartz.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span> </span></span></span></h3>
<h1 style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">What is changing
the most about customer service today?</span></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We believe the biggest change in
customer service today is what customers are expecting, especially when they
increasingly use personalized, multi-modal smartphones or tablets. They don’t
want to be limited to searching a FAQ, emailing support, or sitting in a
call-waiting queue after dialing into a support center. Customers are drawn to
solutions that put them in control and that are more flexible in nature. They
therefore want companies to offer dynamically flexible solutions that allow
them to choose how and when they want to get the live support they need. There
is a rapidly increasing movement towards non-voice (telephone) based
interactions such as chat, email, social media channels, etc.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">They also expect to be able to change
their mode of communication without losing any context of what they have
already done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example if I’m on a
company’s support site, searching FAQs, performing self-service transactions,
asking questions in the forums, or chatting with an agent, when I decide to
elevate my interaction to a voice or video conversational, I want the context
of what I’ve been doing to go with my contact so I don’t have to start all over
with the contact center agent.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Finally, many customer service
organizations struggle to find an available “expert” to help if the initial
agent cannot handle the issue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ve
seen large, multi-thousand agent call centers, with little or no ability to
search for either other agents or experts inside and outside the call center to
assist when help is suddenly needed. With the adoption of mobile consumer
self-services, the “expert” problem will only increase. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What are the
challenges that customer services will still face with new contact center
technologies?</span></span></b></div>
<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span></b><br />
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span></b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The biggest challenge we see is support organizations
accepting the changing customer expectations and paradigms, and accepting the
need to meet the customer on his/her terms and in a format that supports the
device the customer may be using. Customers want access to all support channels
that work well on their smartphones and tablets. They also want to be able to
escalate the mode of that interaction. So I may start out by browsing a support
website’s self-service applications, but then want to easily be able to turn
that into a chat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if the chat isn’t
proving efficient, I want to easily be able to switch to an audio or video
call.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Customer service organizations often struggle to meet the
customer’s expectations because it means utilizing new online self-service
technologies and accepting that they will have less control over their
customer. These new self-service technologies also present a new problem – it
becomes more complicated when the customer does require live assistance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How do you capture the context of the
self-service activity, especially when they are “mobile apps,” to pass along to
the right kind of person in the contact center?</span></div>
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;">What
Does OrgSpan technology offer that is better than existing approaches for
assisted customer services?</span></b></span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">OrgSpan offers two cloud-based
solutions that help customer service organizations deliver an improved
experience for their customers. Our first product, called <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">OrgSpan Connect,</i></b> allows
customer service agents and anyone in the organization to have rich profiles
defined with their experience, skills, certifications, etc. that can be
searched to find an appropriate expert when needed. This helps increase
first-contact resolution, reduces overall interaction time, and improves
customer satisfaction.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Our second product is called <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">OrgSpan
Select</i></b>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This product is focused
squarely on those organizations that want to offer a radically different and
more personalized customer service experience. OrgSpan Connect makes rich
employee profiles available internally, so employees can find and connect with
other employees. OrgSpan Select, however, integrates into a “Click for Live
Assistance” support flow and makes rich agent/expert profiles available to your
customers, so that they get to browse, search, and ultimately <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">choose
</i></b>the agent/expert they want to handle their interaction. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The customer gets to view and search a
variety of information about each agent/expert including skills, product
knowledge, authority role, and REVIEWS from other customers, as well an
estimated wait time for each agent/expert. This experience is available on
smartphones and tablets, as well as from any web browser. This customer-focused
experience allows customers to personalize their live assistance experience and
can help differentiate a company’s customer service from its competitors.</span></span></div>
<h4>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;">W<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">hat
Kind Of Companies Can Benefit Most From OrgSpan Select? </span></span></b></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">OrgSpan Select has received lots of
interest from several types of customers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>First, there are technology provider and services companies that want to
gain a competitive advantage through better support channels. I can buy a Canon
lens from dozens of online companies at virtually the same price point.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Superior customer service can sway a
customer’s decision from which vendor to make the purchase, as well as help
retain the customer when they have problems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The second type of customer company is
one that wants to encourage an ongoing relationship between their customers and
their customer service agents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
example, credit unions, would love to have their members develop a personal
relationship with their customer service personnel. This encourages loyalty and
additional business from their members.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Finally, we’re seeing a lot of interest
from companies that have to support a large number of very different products
or services. A good example is a health care company that is supporting
multiple products and multiple versions of the same product, where support for
each product requires very specific knowledge and expertise on the part of the
customer service representative. With OrgSpan Select, the customer would be
able to select a customer service representative who has the specific needed knowledge/expertise
to help.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">How Does <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">OrgSpan
Select</i> Work With Contact Center Communications and Online Portals?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">OrgSpan Select currently supports
routing of email and callbacks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
integrate with Interactive Intelligence’s Customer Interaction Center product
on the telephony side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Companies can
easily customize the look and feel of OrgSpan Select to match their website
design and marketing efforts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Implementation of OrgSpan Select is also extremely easy and requires
very little effort to integrate into their support website.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">OrgSpan products are cloud-based and
extremely easy to set up and configure. Both OrgSpan Connect and Select work
with premise-based and CaaS modes of Interactive Intelligence's Customer
Interaction Center. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We’ve had some interesting reactions
from customer service organizations ranging from “We could NEVER do that” to
“We love this”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We also get concerns
about exposing agent information including photos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We support pseudonyms and alternate-photos so you don’t have to
make public the agent’s real name or photo.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Futures?</b></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We believe our Connect and Select
products can really help an organization improve their customers’ live
assistance experiences when they really need it and help meet the rapidly
changing expectations of their customers. Org Span Select is just the first
product in a suite of service technologies we will be releasing that will
enable companies to build private social portals for their customers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ll be announcing further developments
later this year.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For general information or to learn
more about OrgSpan products and services, please visit <a href="http://www.orgspan.com/">www.orgspan.com</a> or email <a href="mailto:info@orgspan.com">info@orgspan.com</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can also view demos of OrgSpan Connect and Select at Customer
Service Experience, ITExpo West, and Call Center Demo trade shows in the
Interactive Intelligence booth. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Copyright
© 2013 The Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide</span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-37609461961763964602013-07-26T05:16:00.001-04:002013-07-26T05:20:38.783-04:00Customer Mobility And Accounts Receivable Management <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div align="center" class="WW-NormalWeb" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; punctuation-wrap: hanging; tab-stops: .5in 3.75in; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">By Art Rosenberg, <a href="http://unified-view.blogspot.com/"><i><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">The Unified-View</span></i></a>/ <a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-professionals/art-rosenberg.aspx"><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">UC Strategies
Expert</span></i></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Servicing
customers includes some functions that have always been most difficult for all
types of businesses, i.e., managing the timely payments for goods and services.
Though most customer services involve satisfying various consumer needs,
collecting payments – especially those that are in arrears – must also be done
in an effective way that does not violate any of the regulations or state and
federal laws that currently exist. With new business communications
technologies, there are new benefits that can be gained, if – and
when – regulations allow.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There
are now new opportunities for supporting ongoing and late payment management
through direct, more timely and efficient interactions with customers who
increasingly carry smartphone. Most importantly, mobile customer contacts and
interactions can be flexibly controlled by the individual customers to suit
their personalized needs. However, because there are many different laws and
reglations, originally designed to protect legacy cellular users, that make it
both difficult and expensive to do the job of performing collections from
customers through accounts receivable management or by independent collections
companies. (For more information on this issue, read the white paper on “<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.inin.com/resources/Pages/Whitepapers-Accounts-Receivable-Management.aspx">Payment
Compliance – Same Rules, Different Game</a></i></b>.”) </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<h3>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Payment
Management Benefits Through Personalized, Mobile Interactions </span></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The
benefits of providing mobile self-service interactions are significant; not
only will they reduce the costs of supporting customer needs, but they will
also create greater customer cooperation and satisfaction in fulfilling their
financial obligations. In addition, self-services will not only generate
greater contextual information about a customer’s current status, but will also
enable customers to quickly and flexibly access appropriate forms of live
assistance to discuss their financial situation constructively. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The
basis for any customer business interaction and relationship can now be
reinforced through both mobile self-service applications, as well as timely
access to live assistance for all of a customer’s business activities. That
relationship can now include payment situations where a customer must be
notified in a timely and efficient way of any problem that has developed, along
with convenient options for quickly resolving those issues.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It
is important to differentiate enterprise Accounts Receivable Management (ARM),
which should be viewed as a logical extension of customer services for business
organizations, from commercial collection activities from organizations that
specialize in dealing with debtors, not their own customers. (See <a href="http://investors.inin.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=763014">latest
capabilities for Latitude Software<span style="font-size: 11pt;">®</span></a> collections
technology.) It is, however, ARM that will provide the most benefit to most
business organizations, because it can help retain existing customers, while
also facilitating customer payment management activity. It is also here that
innovative contact center technology providers, like <a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-strategies-views/mobile-multi-modal-customer-self-services-less-talk-and-more-action.aspx">Interactive
Intelligence</a>, are supporting new personalized interactions for mobile
customers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The
bottom line is that more convenient and easy access to up-to-date customer
data, coupled with efficient and flexible communications with customers, can
improve the nature and costs of collecting on customer accounts that are in
arrears. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Automating
Payment Management With Mobile Customers</span></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There
have always been several basic problems in interacting with customers for
business purposes, especially if they are mobile. These include:</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">·<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Automating timely customer contact </i></span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Not knowing where a consumer is at the moment or
what real-time communication constraints they have, makes it difficult to
notify them of a time-sensitive situation. Calling a voice-only cell phone is
very limited for informational access, and is also disruptive, and therefore
usually restricted by various regulatory constraints. </span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">·<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Personalizing the contact for the customer’’s current
situation</i></span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It is important that any outbound notification be
accurate about the current status of the customer payment situation. Utilizing
a personalized mobile device dramatically increases the chance of a “right
party” contact.</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">·<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Simplifying a customer’s response to any important
automated notification</i></span></b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A customer response can range from simple
acknowledgement to wanting more information to wanting to perform a transaction
to wanting to discuss the issue with a live person. Those kinds of choices need
to be available to the customer in order to bring faster closure and greater
satisfaction in the customer experience.</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>·<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>Provide easy and flexible access to appropriate live
assistance, as required</b> </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">At any point in a customer self-service interaction,
there must always be the option for live assistance, if needed. Ideally, that
will include capturing all contextual information about the customer’s activity
up to that point, so that assistance personnel will not have to question the
customer unnecessarily.</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b> </b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>“Click-for-Assistance” Options in Mobile Self-service Applications</b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One of the benefits that
mobile customers now have with new smartphones is that the users can change
communication modalities easily. In particular, switching from online, visual
self-services to live assistance can be simple and seamless, since a
multi-modal endpoint device can handle all types of voice, video, or text
interactions. This makes for a very cost-effective way of interacting with
consumers for any business process, including payment management and
collections. </span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Assistance options include
any form of communications, such as:</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 1.25in; mso-list: l17 level1 lfo31; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">·<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span><i>Email</i></span></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></i><br />
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 1.25in; mso-list: l17 level1 lfo31; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">·<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span>Text chat (IM)</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></i><br />
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 1.25in; mso-list: l17 level1 lfo31; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">·<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span>Voice connection</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></i><br />
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 1.25in; mso-list: l17 level1 lfo31; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">·<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span>Video connection</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></i><br />
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 1.25in; mso-list: l17 level1 lfo31; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">·<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span>Voice message</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></i><br />
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 1.25in; mso-list: l17 level1 lfo31; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">·<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span>Social post</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 1.25in; mso-list: l17 level1 lfo31; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">For mobile users who will
find it easier to speak than to type text, e.g., while walking or driving a
car, the technology for voice-to-text options will allow a message to be
created in voice, but delivered to the recipient in text for more efficient
retrieval.</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One of the biggest
frustrations that customers find in dealing with call centers is that they have
to wait in queue for the right person to talk to. This situation can be averted
easily by providing a callback or “virtual queue” option, whereby mobile
customers can be called back ASAP or at a preferred time. Having a mobile
smartphone increases the user’s accessibility significantly, and makes access
to live assistance more flexible, efficient and convenient. </span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Security and Compliance Issues</b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Customer access to secure
web portals, where identity authentication is required, ensures that any online
self-service access to information or transaction will be secure. This will
require the user to have appropriate “mobile app” links for such services in
general, but will also be most useful in payment services.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">An alternative security
measure may be to switch from online access via a web portal, to a
“click-for-assistance” voice connection with a live agent for making secure
payment. That capability will be facilitated with new WebRTC capabilities in
browsers.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<h3>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Contact
Center Payment Management Assistance</span></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">All
self-service applications will need simple and direct access to knowledgeable
agents who can offer assistance with the payment function or can negotiate a
payment schedule. Mobile smartphones can support such capabilities more easily
because they are multi-modal. With the new prospect of WebRTC technology that
enables simpler voice and video connections through Web-based applications, the
opportunities to provide such “click-for-assistance” options to smartphone
users of “mobile apps” will increase significantly. What will also be needed,
however, is integration of such connections with contact center inbound and
outbound contact management routing.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Of
particular importance for any business or service organization, however, is the
ability to enable authorized and personalized automated outbound notifications
from a business process application to specific customer recipients. Under the
label of “Communications Enabled Business Processing” (CEBP), such capabilities
are only now becoming practical because of increased flexible accessibility to
recipients through their mobile smartphones. This will not only be more
efficient and effective for making timely contact with customers, but will also
significantly reduce traditional notification costs through mail or live
outbound call attempts.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">While
mobile notifications can most effectively utilize various modes of asynchronous
messaging (email, SMS texting), they can also exploit UC-enabled real-time
connections, when authorized, including text chat and voice/video connections.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Any
responses to outbound notifications that need to go to live assistance can also
be directed to the same type of integrated live assistance access used for
self-service applications discussed above. There may also be different
“contextual” routing and priority queuing controls, since the contact was
initiated by an automated business process, not the customer.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It
will also be important to move any new contact center functionality for mobile
customers to a <a href="http://www.inin.com/solutions/Pages/Cloud-based-Solutions.aspx">cloud-based
platform</a>, rather than to a legacy, premise-based system. This trend is
already rapidly being adopted for traditional contact center functions in order
to facilitate rapid, cost-efficient implementations, third-party management and
support, and, most importantly, implementation and integration of new mobile
customer service apps.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<h3>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Summary</span></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">While
existing laws and regulations governing collections are very stringent and
tightly constrain accessing consumers via their mobile devices, the rapid and
broad-based adoption of these devices will eventually force those regulations
to change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your contact center must,
therefore, start supporting mobile, multi-modal customers differently and more
flexibly. The increased use of automated, self-services, and controls for
mobile customers provides the required functionality for interacting more
efficiently with customers, while minimizing any activity that would be viewed
as harassment. On the other hand, such automated facilities significantly reduce
operational costs while expanding productivity and customer satisfaction. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">For
debt collection organizations, new contact center technologies are also
available, although their relationship with debtors are not tradtional
“customer” relationships. See more information about what Interactive
Intelligence’s <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/latitude-software-interactive-intelligence-company-130000475.html">Latitude
Debt Collection</a> software offers.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Because
vast adoption of mobile communications technologies is inevitable, now is the
time to start changing the old telephony ground rules that were initially
designed to protect consumers from telemarketers. It’s time to start
envisioning the benefits to both the customer and the product/service provider
when customers and business organizations are both more accessible via mobile
contacts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For this reason, business
management in the ARM industry should continue supporting and educating
lobbyists on the long list of reasons to remove unnecessary obstacles for
supporting mobile customer services. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Copyright © 2013 The
Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></i></b></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-19696681944606924152013-07-22T14:30:00.001-04:002013-07-22T14:30:57.697-04:00<br />
<h5 align="center" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Ready For Personalized "Business Interactions" With
Mobile UC?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></h5>
<div align="center" class="WW-NormalWeb" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; punctuation-wrap: hanging; tab-stops: .5in 3.75in; text-align: center;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">By Art
Rosenberg, <i><a href="http://unified-view.blogspot.com/">The Unified-View</a>/
</i></span><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-professionals/art-rosenberg.aspx">UC
Strategies Expert</a></span></i></div>
<div class="WW-NormalWeb" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; punctuation-wrap: hanging; tab-stops: .5in 3.75in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="WW-NormalWeb" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; punctuation-wrap: hanging; tab-stops: .5in 3.75in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">As all forms of person-to-person and process-to person contacts
converge under BYOD for multi-modal, mobile devices to accommodate the
different needs of individual end users, it is getting more difficult to quantify
business communications infrastructure requirements for any organization. That
is why there is such a big interest in migrating to “cloud”-based, hosted and
managed services, rather than investing in new premise-based telephony systems
that is based on the wired PSTN. This is, however, an evolutionary transition
for most organizations that have existing legacy PBX and desktop technologies
that still work.</span></div>
<div class="WW-NormalWeb" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; punctuation-wrap: hanging; tab-stops: .5in 3.75in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">The UC Strategies Experts were headed in the right direction when they
defined “unified communications” (UC) as “</span>communications integrated to
optimize business processes.” That is a fundamental perspective way of the
technology for making both person-to-person and process-to-person communication
applications more inter-operable and integrated. However, “UC” doesn’t describe
what has become even more important to the adoption of technology, i.e., the
different user interfaces and modalities for flexibly and seamlessly exploiting
all forms of contact and interaction between both people and with automated
applications.</div>
<div class="WW-NormalWeb" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; punctuation-wrap: hanging; tab-stops: .5in 3.75in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“Use Cases” Correlate Business Processes
With Specific Types of Involved End Users</b></div>
<div class="WW-NormalWeb" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; punctuation-wrap: hanging; tab-stops: .5in 3.75in;">
Most
importantly, it has now become more difficult for organizations to quantify
their operational interaction/communication needs (functionality, network capacities,
etc.) for their many different end users, both inside and outside the
organization. That includes business partners and consumers/customers, as well
as different types of employees in an organization. However, the flexibility of
private or public network (“cloud”) solutions can help the selective transition
of an organization’s existing business communications to the next generation of
what I have started to call “<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">business interactions</i></b>.”
Communications flexibility is not just for a particular business process, e.g.,
often referred to as Communications Enabled Business Processes (CEBP), but must
also include the personalized contact and interaction needs between different
individual end users involved with that specific process.</div>
<div class="WW-NormalWeb" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; punctuation-wrap: hanging; tab-stops: .5in 3.75in;">
One way
to plan for that perspective of more flexible and interoperable “business
interactions,” is to recognize that most business organizations in major
vertical industries have similar business processes that need to integrate with
communication applications on a personalized end user basis. That is where BYOD
and interaction flexibility comes into play, i.e., each type of end user
involved in a key business process needs to be identified in terms of their job
responsibilities or “roles”, as well as for the communication facilities that
they will utilize. That will also include “customer” roles of consumers, who
are part of a business process. This will be the new way that business
interaction requirements will have to be defined in order to implement
communication flexibility efficiencies for “<a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-strategies-views/introducing-optimized-communications.aspx">optimized</a>”
business processes.</div>
<div class="WW-NormalWeb" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; punctuation-wrap: hanging; tab-stops: .5in 3.75in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Start With A “Use Case” Business Process
For Its Interaction Needs</b></div>
<div class="WW-NormalWeb" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; punctuation-wrap: hanging; tab-stops: .5in 3.75in;">
While the
technology is still developing the new tools for business interactions and
marketing is looking for the right term to describe how both end users and
automated business process applications will dynamically interact, business
organizations of all sizes should start reviewing “who does what” in their high
priority business activities. This perspective must now include mobile end
users, who will also be more multi-modal and flexible, when it comes to
business interactions. </div>
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In
addition to making and responding to contacts, end users involved in a business
process will also need access to contextual information that is always part of
a business interaction with both people and automated applications. Finally,
start planning on IP-based “click-to-contact” people for all involved end
users, using federated presence information for calls or IM to gradually
replace legacy phone calls over the PSTN. That’s where telephony is going and
the migration is starting now in the "clouds!"</div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Copyright © 2013 The
Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></i></b></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-11531934715730384122013-07-01T12:18:00.002-04:002013-07-01T12:18:24.212-04:00Enterprise Mobility Management For Shared, Personal Devices <br />
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By Art Rosenberg, <a href="http://unified-view.blogspot.com/"><i><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">The Unified-View</span></i></a>/ <a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-professionals/art-rosenberg.aspx"><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">UC Strategies
Expert</span></i></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Mobility”
includes the different multi-modal mobile endpoint devices and the “mobile
apps” that are having a huge impact on both consumers and business users who
only want to carry a single, personalized device to do all of the following:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 39.35pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l12 level1 lfo32; tab-stops: list 39.35pt; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Communicate dynamically with people in a variety of
ways for either business or personal contacts</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 39.35pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l12 level1 lfo32; tab-stops: list 39.35pt; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Access information and self-service applications as
consumers or employees in various modes</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 39.35pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l12 level1 lfo32; tab-stops: list 39.35pt; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Control personalized automated notifications</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 39.35pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l12 level1 lfo32; tab-stops: list 39.35pt; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Because mobility requires dynamic flexibility of
interaction, UC enablement will be very important for both contact initiators
and contact recipients</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The
technology is still evolving to support all of the above, but the biggest
hang-up seems to be keeping the “separation of church and state” for supporting
the device, the public network access, and the mobile application middleware
that must reside within the different endpoint devices. The big argument is
concerned with <a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-strategies-views/balancing-byod-and-security.aspx">security</a>
of any information that can be accessed by the mobile device and most IT folks
think they need to control the whole device to protect their business data.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Several
years ago, when Apple came out with the first “smartphone,” I remember posting
an article that suggested that access security to enterprise data should be
controlled at the application levels, not at the device or network levels. I
still believe this is a viable approach. Obviously, it will be a combination of
authentication and encryption that will enable maximum end-to end security in
the mobile Web environment that smartphones and tablets will exploit.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The
BYOD game is forcing organizations to accommodate user choice of mobile device
for both person-to-person communications and business applications access.
Mobile devices should have thin clients to primarily provide wireless access to
applications that control data access, and not store either applications and data
that will be in ‘private” or “public” clouds. That will minimize enterprise
responsibilities for supporting end user mobile devices for employees, business
partners, and customers to different levels of control on the device for what
my colleague, <a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-strategies-views/balancing-byod-and-security.aspx">Michael
Finneran</a>, describes as <b>"Secure Containers" </b><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">and all the MDM (Mobile Device Management)
platforms have</span> them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I
used to employ the term “Dual Persona” for describing the above mobile device
management requirement, but if you think about it, every mobile user is not
just an employee of a particular organization, but, as a consumer, in addition
to personal/social contacts, they have business relationships all over the
place, each of which require the same kind of security protection of
authentication and encryption. I suggest that the personal mobile device must
be controlled primarily by the individual end users (especially when it comes
to privacy issues), and supported by the network service provider end users
subscribe to, while specific business application access should be controlled
by the organization that provides such mobile applications for authorized
access by their employees, partners, and customers through their business “app
stores.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">So,
we really can have “separation of church and state” within a mobile device,
except that there really will be many “states,” i.e., online applications from
different service providers that will be personalized for individual mobile
users, employees, partners, or consumers. Enterprise organizations have to
accept the fact that BYOD means they are “sharing” the use of a user’s mobile
device, and therefore should only control the access to business information
that is primarily stored on web portals, not on the mobile device itself. That
means if a mobile device is lost or stolen, every provider of information
access applications to a specific user has to be notified and be able to take
protective action. Mobile services are not a “one-stop shop!” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">What
do you think?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">C</span><span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">opyright
© 2013 The Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide</span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></i></b></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-28384010882881125342013-05-30T18:32:00.002-04:002013-05-30T18:51:22.823-04:00Mobile Self-service Apps Need Assistance <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<h1>
</h1>
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<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">By Art Rosenberg,</span></span> <i><a href="http://unified-view.blogspot.com/">The Unified-View</a>/ </i></span><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-professionals/art-rosenberg.aspx">UC
Strategies Expert</a></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I
recently attended Interactive Intelligence’s annual global conference, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Interactions
2013</i></b>, where a highlight was their “cloud” based platform offering for
mobile customer self-services, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.inin.com/solutions/Pages/Mobile-Customer-Service.aspx">Interaction
Mobilizer</a></b>. ININ has recognized that the solution to supporting mobile
customers with smartphones and tablets is to not only maximize the use of
customized, multi-modal, self-service business applications (“mobile apps”)
offered selectively to customers, but to also simplify integration of such
applications with flexible choices for accessing live assistance. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Mobile
self-service applications provide to major benefits to contact center
operational performance:</span></div>
<ol start="1" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo16; tab-stops: list .5in;"><i><b><span style="font-family: Arial;">They minimize the
need and expense for live assistance</span></b></i></li>
<i><b>
</b></i>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo16; tab-stops: list .5in;"><i><b><span style="font-family: Arial;">They provide greater
“contextual” information to agents for more efficient and effective
customer experiences, if and when assistance is needed</span></b></i></li>
</ol>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">What
has to happen with mobile self-service applications is that they must update
traditional online applications designs for mobile device use, as well as
facilitate direct access to live assistance to mobile users with their choice
of contact mode from within the mobile application. That would eliminate the need
to have a customer leave the app to always dial a toll-free number and go to a
waiting queue. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Many
online apps already offer customers the option to use IM and “text chat” for
customer assistance. They can also send emails with questions and problems. What
integration with contact center telephony technology brings to the table is the
that when customer runs into an issue with the self-service application, they
can immediately speak to a qualified representative or request a callback when
such a person is available and get immediate confirmation of that request. No
mobile self-service application will ever always be 100% adequate to satisfy
every customer need, so the option for flexible live assistance must be always
be offered to fill the gaps in the dynamic needs of every mobile consumer.</span></div>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
future of mobile self-services</span></span></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Visual
self-services will effectively, slowly, but surely, displace the limitations of
legacy IVR applications by enabling more information to be efficiently
delivered to smartphone and tablet screens. That doesn’t, however, preclude
using the efficiencies and convenience of voice user interfaces (VUIs) for user
inputs, as has already been well demonstrated by Apple’s Siri, and other
“virtual assistants.” Such options will be particularly necessary when mobile
users are walking or driving a car and must be “hands-free” or “eyes-free.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">One
of the other major benefits of increased consumer communications mobility is
that it opens the door to greater accessibility for pro-active, time-sensitive
“notifications” and reminder messages, which, in turn, can be linked
contextually to “self-service” applications or to “click-for assistance.” This
not only reduces the need for expensive and unnecessary live customer
assistance, but will also simplify flexible customer choice to access to such
assistance whenever necessary. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">At
the recent </span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/ucsummit/2013/">2013 <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">UC Summit</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">,</span> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">our
survey of invited VARs, SIs, and Consultants showed very high interest in
supporting Mobile UC for customer services for business clients. However, in a
quick audience poll after my presentation, only a very small percentage of the
attendees were involved in helping customers with current IVR applications. So,
the multi-modal, mobile self-service future looks promising, and the
comprehensive tools that Interactive Intelligence has developed will be very
critical to fulfilling that promise!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">For more insights about the big shift of customer services to mobile customers, read my post on UC Strategies.com.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-strategies-views/mobile-multi-modal-customer-self-services-less-talk-and-more-action.aspx">http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-strategies-views/mobile-multi-modal-customer-self-services-less-talk-and-more-action.aspx</a>.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Copyright © 2013 The
Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-71068324613081699532013-05-06T17:20:00.002-04:002013-05-06T17:25:28.996-04:00ShoreTel Joins Mobile UC At The Desktop<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></div>
<h1>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></h1>
<div class="WW-NormalWeb" style="margin: 0in 0in 6pt;">
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">By Art
Rosenberg, <a href="http://unified-view.blogspot.com/">The Unified-View</a>/ <a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-professionals/art-rosenberg.aspx">UC Strategies Expert</a></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Whether
you like it or not, all your employees are consumers too, and they are all
going to be carrying around their own personal smartphones at work. They may
also be carrying tablets in place of bulky laptops to access “cloud”- based
applications when on the go. The issue now is, - how can that fact of life be
accepted to improve multi-modal business communications while also minimizing
communication costs.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The
need for flexibility in business communications has always been driven
primarily by end user mobility. Legacy desktop communications handled such
flexibility needs with separate and expensive voice and visual endpoints,
connections, and software applications. Multi-modal wireless smartphones and
tablets have made UC enablement both necessary and practical. Now that such
ubiquitous mobile devices can do almost everything that the desktop endpoints
do and more, the BYOD question arises about the need for having different
endpoints for an end user who may need both wired and wireless connections.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Following
in the footsteps of the many consumers who have already abandoned their
residence wired phones and home PCs in favor of more flexible mobile
smartphones, we can now expect a similar trend to take place for business
users, whether working in an office or from home. However, the problem with
using those just mobile devices in place of wired desktop phones and PCs is
that:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo18; tab-stops: list 1.5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Battery life
won’t support prolonged usage for either long phone calls or extended online
application access.</span></i></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo18; tab-stops: list 1.5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Voice
quality is not always good</span></i></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo18; tab-stops: list 1.5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Handset
control of “hard phones” is ergonomically better than screen-based control</span></i></b></div>
<b>
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo18; tab-stops: list 1.5in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">BYOD
considerations require “dual persona” controls over call/message management</span></i></b></div>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">ShoreTel’s
New Desktop Hard Phone For Mobile, Post-PC Employees</span></span></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Recognizing
this need for business end users, ShoreTel has just announced it’s new desktop
offering, the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.shoretel.com/products/ip_phones/ShoreTel_Dock.html">ShoreTel
Dock</a></i></b>, coupled with <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ShoreTel Mobility</i></b>, to allow BYOD
employees to use their mobile smartphones and tablets as “portable PCs” that
can also work with “smart” hard desk phones in an office or at home. Because
they are multi-modal devices, the smartphones and tablets take over the roles
of the desktop PC in terms of access to “cloud” based applications, “softphone”
screen-based telephony options, and multi-modal messaging functions.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Those
mobile devices can now also benefit from using a very low-cost desktop hard
phone add-on that takes care of the inherent limitations of the mobile devices
mentioned above. It also retains the familiar and simple options for initiating
and receiving phone calls that legacy<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“hard” desk phones have long offered. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">While
the multi-modal mobile devices handle all forms of communications, ranging from
text messaging to Instant Messaging to voice and video connections, ShoreTel’s
Dock and ShoreTel Mobility enable easy visual access to those new communication
functions. The Dock still has the familiar Message Waiting Indicator light,
which is controlled by their voicemail application, but therefore doesn’t
reflect any other forms of messaging activity. Given that the multimodal
smartphones and tablets are really handling all kinds of incoming calls and
messages, it would be nice to see that MWI light tie in with a more comprehensive
display of all the different kinds of messages that are “waiting,” not
just<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Visual Voicemail.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Voicemail messages are no longer necessarily
more important than other modes of messages and notifications!</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><b>They Didn't Forget "Dual Persona" Call Management!</b> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ShoreTel has also incorporated “dual persona”
capabilities in its call management functions for both incoming and outbound
calls. This allows job-related calls to be managed separately and differently
from personal calls on the same device. Although traditional phone calling by
keying in a phone number will not disappear overnight, it is also obvious that
“contextual” contacts from a directory display, a text or voice message, or
from a document that is linked to a particular individual or group of
individuals, is the way of the presence-based UC future. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ShoreTel seems to be moving quickly to
a UC-enabled desktop with its integration with Microsoft Lync, while also
preserving familiar telephony procedures and user interfaces for desktop
business users.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Copyright © 2013 The Unified-View,
All Rights Reserved Worldwide</span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-78910801543110823242013-04-11T19:17:00.002-04:002013-04-11T19:17:27.066-04:00UC Opportunities For VARs, SIs, Consultants at UC Summit<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">April 11 2013</span></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">By Art Rosenberg, <i><a href="http://unified-view.blogspot.com/">The Unified-View</a>/ </i></span><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-professionals/art-rosenberg.aspx">UC
Strategies Expert</a></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">As
I highlighted in my recent post, UC is becoming a key factor in next generation
contact centers that must now support mobile consumers. This direction was
reinforced at the very successful Enterprise Connect show, where <a href="http://www.nojitter.com/post/240152640/a-closer-look-at-ec13-best-of-show">Voxeo</a>,
an innovative provider of self-service application development technology, was
judged “Best of Show.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While
person-to-person business communications are still important, there are huge
benefits to be realized from the fact that consumers are rapidly becoming both
mobile and multi-modal, and will want well-designed mobile self-service
applications rather than always trying to get or enter information through a
person. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Of
course, what makes self-service applications work better, is the flexibility in
mobile user interfaces that are is supported by smartphones and tablets, as
well as practical options for seamless access to live assistance when needed.
The technology tools for implementing such capabilities are still evolving.
Business organizations will require assistance in planning and integrating the
new communication technologies that are complex and require experience that is
not readily available within most IT organizations. This is, of course,
particularly true for smaller SMB organizations that never had large IT staffs
in the first place. However, ALL organizations, large and small, have to
support the new demands of their mobile consumers/customers, using multi-modal
smartphones and tablets.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Finally,
the “clouds” are rapidly becoming the universal framework for all
communications and business process applications. For my perspective of
customer interactions in the “clouds,” see my recent <a href="http://info.echopass.com/rs/echopassaccount/images/CustomerandtheCloud_WP.pdf">white
paper</a> for Echopass, a leading provider of managed contact center services. </span></div>
<h3>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Big
Opportunities For VARs, Consultants, SIs as Channel Partners</span></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">While
communication vendors are rapidly moving into the “cloud”-based services space,
they are also frantically looking for channel partners who can support user
organizations on an ongoing service basis. This opportunity will be highlighted
at the upcoming annual “UC Summit” taking place on an invitation basis for
VARs, Consultants, and SIs in La Jolla April 28<sup>th</sup> – May 1<sup>st</sup>.
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">This
will be a unique opportunity for channel partners to extend their relationships
with both vendors and other channel partners in order to benefit from the
changes that UC and mobile communications are bringing to business
communications. In particular, I will be presenting the case for helping
business organizations implement mobile, self-service applications that will be
dominating the next generation of contact center activities.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">For
more information and an application to be invited as a guest to this unique
conference, please check out this link.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">http://www.ucstrategies.com/ucsummit/2013/</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Copyright © 2013 The
Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-81039579062261243462013-04-04T11:54:00.002-04:002013-04-04T11:54:29.662-04:00“Unified Customer Services” For Digital And Mobile Consumers<br />
<h1>
</h1>
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<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">By Art Rosenberg, <i><a href="http://unified-view.blogspot.com/">The Unified-View</a>/ </i></span><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-professionals/art-rosenberg.aspx">UC
Strategies Expert</a></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">We
are finally seeing unified communications (UC) finally taking over customer
interactions. This means that every size organization, in every type of market
segment, must be prepared to support consumers/customers with the flexibility
of UC for all types of interactions. What is bringing new impetus to this shift
in business communications are three key factors:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Mobile
consumer devices - </span></i></b><span style="font-family: Arial;">Multi-modal
mobile devices, like smartphones and tablets, have expanded convenient and fast
direct consumer access to online, self-services, including various modes of
person-to-person contacts, online information access and transactions, and
pro-active notifications by automated business processes. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Interoperability
and integration between various forms of person-to-person communications and
business process applications – </span></i></b><span style="font-family: Arial;">Because
there is increased flexibility required for contacts with mobile people, the
various forms of communication must now dynamically be controlled by the end
users, depending upon their individual needs and circumstances as contact
initiators or recipients/respondents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">“Cloud” –
based applications –</span></i></b><span style="font-family: Arial;"> As both
communication and business process software applications become location
independent, developing and integrating them in “cloud” environments becomes
critical to faster and lower-cost implementations and ongoing change
management.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Customer
services are rapidly moving from legacy call and contact centers to “Unified
Interaction Centers,” where online self-service applications are not only
minimizing the need for live assistance to consumers to get information or
perform simple transactions, but also facilitating more flexible access to
specialized assistance whenever needed. The result of such changes to customer
assistance is greater personalization, experience customization, and,
ultimately, customer satisfaction.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">This
year’s Enterprise Connect brought increased focus on the important role of the
contact center in business communications, in this <a href="http://www.nojitter.com/post/240151204/enterprise-connect-2013-contact-center-news">report
from the show</a>. Customer services are now becoming recognized as high-value
applications and “use cases,” that are benefiting from integration with
“consumer BYOD,” UC-enablement, and “cloud” services.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Customer
services used to be locked in together in different technology platforms that
were difficult to integrate. As a result, only big organizations could afford
to invest and support implementing all the pieces involved with legacy
telephony call centers. One of the leading innovators in contact center
technologies was Interactive Intelligence (ININ), decided to build their
software infrastructure fully integrated from the ground up, calling it an
“all-in-one” software product. However, because, of contact center application
complexity and costs, many SMB organizations could not afford to implement such
contact center technologies by themselves.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The
challenge of supporting customer services has been greatly increased by the
advent of “Mobile UC” and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">multi-moda</i></b>l live assistance and
self-service applications, not just phone calls. So, while UC-enabled business
communications focused initially on internal organizations and collaborative
contacts, the big Customer Service markets were pretty much stuck on old
CPE-based call center telephony. Now, however, with increased consumer mobile
flexibility, “cloud” based applications are making big waves in all kinds of
customer service applications.</span></div>
<h3>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Really Big SMB Market For Unified Customer Services</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">I
have always felt that customer services will really be the same for small or
large organizations. The main differences showed up in things like:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">How big your market is</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">How much live
assistance and expertise will be needed by different customers</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Software tools for
running operations smoothly, training customer-facing staff,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Management tools and
metrics to insure customer responsiveness satisfaction (“Experience!”)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Customization of
self-service applications for different types of applications, especially
“mobile apps.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Interactive
Intelligence (ININ), among other leading customer service software technology
vendors, emphasized it’s strategic move of going <a href="http://investors.inin.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=749114">after the
SMB market</a>, since small businesses really need to use most of the same
technologies as larger organizations. There have always been more SMBs out
there than larger enterprise organizations, so with the advent of “consumer
BYOD,” there is suddenly a huge need for third-party expertise of Channel
Partners and Consultants to help develop, support, and manage the complex
technology of multi-modal customer services in “public,” private,” and hybrid
cloud environments. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The “cloud’ environment will
be particularly useful for implementing and managing integrations and
self-service customizations. That always used to an expensive and
time-consuming effort. Now, with all application technologies moving into
interoperable “clouds,” it should no longer be any big problem for any size
organization to move forward selectively with individual customer groups,
customer-facing staffs, and specific customized online applications, associated
with different forms of live assistance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<h3>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Bringing
The Right Experiences To The Customer Service Table</span></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">As
confirmed in many recent <a href="http://www.callcentertimes.com/Home/tabid/37/ctl/NewsArticle/mid/395/CategoryID/1/NewsID/338/Default.aspx">market
studies</a>, mobile customers are now expecting:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">More access to mobile online
self-services </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l11 level1 lfo13; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Pro-active mobile
notifications and alerts, rather than calling in or checking online</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l11 level1 lfo13; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Greater flexibility in
choice of user interfaces (voice, visual)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Options for multiple
forms of “smart” access to live assistance when needed</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Watch
for the growth of cloud-based “Unified Interaction Centers!”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Copyright © 2013 The
Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-10109546621274022252013-02-27T15:27:00.002-05:002013-04-04T11:55:26.643-04:00Moving To Mobile Customer Service<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">By Art Rosenberg, <i><a href="http://unified-view.blogspot.com/">The Unified-View</a>/ </i></span><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-professionals/art-rosenberg.aspx">UC
Strategies Expert</a></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Customer
service is changing dramatically as consumers become more mobile and have
greater direct access to online information and services. Organizations, both
large enterprises and small businesses, will all be affected by the impact of
multi-modal smartphones and tablets on traditional telephone-based
interactions.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">As
confirmed in many recent <a href="http://www.callcentertimes.com/Home/tabid/37/ctl/NewsArticle/mid/395/CategoryID/1/NewsID/338/Default.aspx">market
studies</a>, mobile customers are now expecting:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l9 level1 lfo13; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">More access to mobile
online self-services </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l9 level1 lfo13; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Pro-active mobile
notifications and alerts, rather than calling in or checking online</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l9 level1 lfo13; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Greater flexibility in
choice of user interfaces (voice, visual)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l9 level1 lfo13; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Options for multiple
forms of “smart” access to live assistance when needed</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The
contact center of yesterday must start planning now to accommodate the new
technologies that support such interactions for both mobile customers and
customer assistance staff, wherever they may be located. Migrating contact
center applications for mobile customers will be most cost-efficiently
facilitated by moving to “cloud” based hosted and managed services, but
“Customer BYOD” needs will also require self-service applications to be
designed for device-independence and offer more flexible choices for user
interaction interfaces.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Telephone
calls are not going to disappear, but voice conversations are being subsumed by
other forms of inbound and outbound contacts, including social network
postings, text chat, and video calls. As reflected in a recent market study,
customers prefer interacting with online applications first, before requiring
access to live assistance. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Providing
good customer experiences will be key to customer satisfaction and operational
support efficiencies, so providing a unified analytics view of all customer
contact activities will be critical in designing both personalized self-
service applications and live assistance on demand.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Stay
tuned as your call center of yesterday evolves into a “<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mobile Interaction Center.” </i></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Copyright © 2013 The
Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-36267177078322307172013-02-25T20:28:00.001-05:002013-02-25T20:28:39.041-05:00Telework Dumped By New Yahoo CEOCopyright (C) Unified-View, All Rights Reserved.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I admit I was very surprised to read about Yahoo's new CEO, Marisssa Mayer, stopping employee's from working away from the office because it doesn't support good "collaboration." Like around the water cooler or at lunch, etc.?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Read comments about this at:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/25/richard-branson-yahoo-marissa-mayer_n_2759243.html </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This story reminds me of a similar experience that I had in the early days of developing online time-sharing services for the ARPAnet, a precursor of the Internet and the World Wide Web. One of the application developer's (Clark Weisman) wife was experiencing a difficult pregnancy, which required her to be completely bedridden for the remaining weeks of her pregnancy. That meant that he had to be at home to take care of her, and therefore might not finish his project as scheduled.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Since the basic SDC Time-sharing System (TSS) was already working for remote access by teletype phone lines, I suggested to the project management that it would be practical to simply put in a new phone line at his home and he could then complete his project online, while taking care of his wife. Management's first reaction was that this was a project that required time sheets to be filled out, attesting to the employee's doing the required work in the office. They were concerned that there would be no way to insure that the employee would be working for the time required.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I pointed out that not only would the normal work hours be put in, but, because the work was being from home, there would probably be more hours expended. Further, there would also be evidence of actual activity recorded by the time-sharing system while online work was being done. Grudgingly, management acceded to my recommendation, and, as I predicted, online work started very early each day and ended late at night. The wife had a successful delivery of a daughter and the online project was also successfully completed.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Of course, there will be "different strokes for different folks" when it comes to what kind of work needs to be done in an "office" environment, so it will be a mixed bag for individual workers as to when they can and cannot work while physically away from a group. So, it's not so much whether it is in an office, but what kind of work is involved and with whom. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The means of accessing information, interacting with people and online applications has become more flexible with mobile UC, and it is therefore very surprising that Yahoo has taken such a Draconian step. I just heard a news program that suggested that this action was taken as a way to get some employees to quit their jobs and thus reduce the payroll without actually firing anyone directly. Oh, well! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<br />
<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-81156767733163096992013-02-18T18:08:00.001-05:002013-02-18T19:18:23.164-05:00Mobile Consumers Want UC-Based Customer Services, Not “Collaboration!”<br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">By Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View – <a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-professionals/art-rosenberg.aspx">UC
Strategies Expert</a></span></i><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Organizations
interested in unified communications (UC) have focused on how their employees
communicated, because such communications could be easily controlled. That is,
until multi-modal mobile devices provided greater communication flexibility to
end users and brought “BYOD” (Bring Your Own Device) considerations into the
picture. However, “Consumer BYOD” is also changing how businesses interact with
their mobile customers, but in different ways.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">While
major communication providers have expanded their “UC” role to include
“collaboration” (“UC&C”), that label should not apply to customer
interactions and services. For more perspectives on this subject, please check
out <a href="http://blog.ucstrategies.com/index.php/2013/02/17/lets-not-confuse-collaboration-with-customer-service/">my
post</a> on the UC Strategies website.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-62118250143292676652013-02-17T14:30:00.002-05:002013-02-18T19:33:41.310-05:00Two Views of Mobile Customer Services <br />
<h1>
</h1>
<div class="WW-NormalWeb" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; punctuation-wrap: hanging; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">By Art Rosenberg,</span> <i><a href="http://unified-view.blogspot.com/">The Unified-View</a>/</i></span><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-professionals/art-rosenberg.aspx">UC
Strategies Expert</a></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If you have been reading technology reports lately, what you will notice is that many UC industry experts are now focusing more on UC for customer services as better source of business ROI rather
than just the productivity benefits of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">employee
</span>“collaboration.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">All business communications have been impacted by user mobility, with organizations trying to adjust to the realities of employee BYOD who want to use a single
smartphone (or tablet) for all their multi-modal communication contacts. The same view is starting to be recognized by the contact
center industry about what I have been calling “Customer BYOD.” UC enablement there is an even bigger
challenge for supporting customer services, because it affects not only mobile
customers, but also customer-facing support staff.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Call centers used to be pretty simple
because both callers and agents used a single common form of interaction with
voice, the telephone. It got a little more complex for the agents when
customers initiated contacts with email and chat. However, contact centers
“siloed” these activities, so that while agents had only one modality to deal
with, they still shared the same customer information to handle the
interactions. With mobile, multi-modal smartphones and tablets, customers can
now interact in a variety of communication modes and even easily change modes
dynamically, as their mobile circumstances dictate. The question is, can the customer
support agent be able to keep up with what a customer can do with a mobile
smartphone or tablet?</span></div>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Start With What The Customer Can Do With a Mobile Smartphone</span></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
any business operation, the customer typically comes first!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So, it is necessary to look at the
impact of Mobile UC from a customer’s perspective as the starting point for
what the customer-facing organization will face to meet new mobile customer
needs. Those needs range from online self-service applications to mobile
notifications and alerts that are personalized and authorized by customer
recipients to selective contacts with live assistance.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One reason to list the different things
a mobile consumer/customer can do when interacting with a business
organizations, is to identify the primary means of contact interfaces and
options for dynamically switching seamlessly to other connections on demand.
That is essentially the key benefit for UC enablement that can be applied to
business process applications.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 114.0pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 6.0pt; mso-list: l14 level1 lfo14; tab-stops: list 114.0pt; text-indent: -.25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Contact initiation</span></i></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">– Unlike traditional telephone calling,
where the caller needs to know a specific telephone number, mobile users can
benefit from starting with access to an online website, using browser search
facilities. Depending upon the user’s current situation, e.g., driving a car,
sitting in a meeting, etc., the user can dynamically choose the medium of input
and output most appropriate at the moment, i.e., speech or other input and
output. </i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 114.0pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 6.0pt; mso-list: l14 level1 lfo14; tab-stops: list 114.0pt; text-indent: -.25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">More
self-service applications </span></i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">– Once online
to a desired website, the mobile user can explore appropriate options to access
various types of information and to perform various self-service transactions.</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;">3.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> <i> </i></span></span></b><i><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;">More
selective live assistance</span></b></i></span><i><span style="font-style: normal;"><i> </i>– </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Most
customers will only need live assistance on an exception basis, so whenever
they reach such a point, that is when they can initiate a contact for live
assistance. Most importantly, such assistance can be much more selective and
contextual; that is, the customer can choose the mode of contact that is
needed, and the context of whatever has been done with self-services, will
better determine the skill level required for such live assistance.</span> </span></i><br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> The fact that a mobile
customer is now more accessible and flexible with a<span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></b></span>smartphone means that the
response can include a choice of different options for any real-time
connections with live assistance.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 120.0pt; mso-list: l14 level3 lfo14; tab-stops: list 120.0pt; text-indent: -.25in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;">4.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;">More
proactive notifications </span></b>– With more automated business process
applications in play, there is now an opportunity to increase operational
efficiencies and improve customer satisfaction, by proactively notifying
customers of personalized situations that are important and time-sensitive.
This will not only reduce problems caused by awareness delays, but can also
increase operational efficiencies and people productivity. (Health care,
financial, legal, government, and travel vertical markets are good examples.)</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The bottom line is that customer services will not necessarily start
off with a traditional phone call, but can involve a voice or video
conversation when deemed necessary. Needless to say, the real-time connection
may be made through new WebRTC protocols, rather than legacy PSTN connections.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;">How Will Customer-facing Agents Be
Affected?</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">There will also be several things that will change the way that live
customer assistance for multimodal, mobile customers will occur because of
Mobile UC. These will affect both inbound and outbound contacts with mobile
consumers.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 120.0pt; mso-list: l13 level1 lfo16; tab-stops: list 120.0pt; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;">1.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Inbound
contact mode </span></b>– First line agents or experts will have to be prepared
to interact with a customer in the customer’s mode of contact, voice, IM,
text/voice message, chat, video, social network post,<span style="font-style: normal;"> </span>etc. Their desktop must provide multi-modal <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;">communication</span></b>
capabilities, just like a customer’s smartphone.</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 120.0pt; mso-list: l13 level1 lfo16; tab-stops: list 120.0pt; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;">2.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></b><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Agents won’t have to respond in the same mode </span></b>–
Unless it is a real-time conversation with voice or chat, agents will be able
to use different forms of response to a customer contact. Incoming video calls
can be responded to with just voice, voice messages can be retrieved and
responded to with text, chat can be escalated to voice or video, social network
postings can be responded to personally, etc.</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 120.0pt; mso-list: l13 level1 lfo16; tab-stops: list 120.0pt; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;">3.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Real-time
outbound contacts to mobile customers will contextually exploit recipient
availability (presence) </span></b>– Traditional phone call notifications will
increasingly be replaced by automated notifications, as noted earlier. Live
contacts will be enabled once an automated contact is made and the recipient
then wishes to interact with a live person in their choice of mode (Voice,
Video, Chat). Therefore, agents must be prepared to communicate dynamically
with what the recipient wants, including change modes from chat to voice to
video.</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 120.0pt; mso-list: l13 level1 lfo16; tab-stops: list 120.0pt; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;">4.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;">When video
is involved, agents won’t necessarily have to be “on camera” </span></b>–
Traditional call center agents and “home agents” benefit by not having to be
seen, just heard. So, even though video can be exploited, it can be optionally
and selectively used in conjunction with a voice conversation. In particular,
it will be most frequently used to exchange information, e.g., demonstrate how
to do something, show the status of something, etc.</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent" style="margin-left: 120.0pt; mso-list: l13 level1 lfo16; tab-stops: list 120.0pt; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;">5.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Any
real-time connection with a customer can be escalated to an “expert” or
authorizing manager </span></b>– UC enablement will facilitate escalating the
customer connection (inbound or outbound) from the agent to an<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“expert” or a manager to satisfy the
customer needs. As with any access to live assistance by a mobile consumer that
can mean responding when such resources are available in a choice of response
modes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyTextIndent">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What I described is the future of
next-generation interaction centers that will support live assistance, as it
will impact customers and the agents that must provide assistance in a mobile,
multi-modal world. I haven’t discussed the role of “cloud” based customer
services and self-service applications, which will also facilitate management
of mobile customers and home agents. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Copyright © 2013 The
Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17816209027675294033noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29789450.post-76040214875085930732013-02-14T13:35:00.002-05:002013-02-14T13:35:36.906-05:00Social Media Needs Mobile UC For Notifications<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br /></div>
<div class="WW-NormalWeb" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; punctuation-wrap: hanging; tab-stops: .5in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">By Art Rosenberg, <i><a href="http://unified-view.blogspot.com/">The Unified-View</a>/</i></span><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-professionals/art-rosenberg.aspx">UC
Strategies Expert</a></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">As
defined by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media">Wikipedia</a>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Social media</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
refers to the means of interactions among people in which they create, share,
and exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks.” </span></i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This
definition applies primarily to any form of business interactions, rather than
for personal socializing. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">However, as people increasingly exploit
mobile smartphones and tablets for accessing the Web and for multi-modal
communications flexibility, we need to expand that definition to include
Communications Enabled Business Process (CEBP) applications that will initiate
contacts with end users through social networks. This is something that IBM is
pushing strongly as “Social Business.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Social networking is primarily a means
of posting user-generated information and comments to a virtual community of
interest. Members of the community have an option to be notified when a new
posting occurs, as well as an option to post a response to the new posting. So,
it’s not quite like person-to-person(s) email. However, as is already starting
to happen with new capabilities from social networking services, end users are
being given options to switch modalities to respond to the person of a
particular post, by email, IM, or a real-time voice or video connection.
(WebRTC should prove very useful for this!)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So, what we now have is a growing open
communication arena based on community content interest relationships, where
unified communication (UC) integrations can provide flexible interactions with
people in the community, not through a traditional personal address book or
organizational directory for person-to-person contacts. </span></div>
<h3>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Mobile Social</span></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">According to the </span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media">Wikipedia</a>
</span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">write-up,
mobility is playing an increasingly stronger role in allowing community members
to participate while mobile, i.e., by being proactively notified when a new
posting of interest has occurred. In effect, mobile communications reinforces
the speed of social messaging activities across a common interest of any size
community. However, once an individual user is mobile, they will need the
flexibility of UC to be notified and respond in the medium that is most
appropriate, i.e., speech, text, or even video.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As I have frequently discussed in the
past, UC enablement facilitates greater flexibility in initiating and
responding to communication contacts with mobile people, and mobile social
networking is no exception. Tablet usage increased from 3% to 16% in 2012 and
mobile users spend 30% of their time with social networking. Once a user
becomes actively engaged in a particularly interesting topic and opts to be
notified of new posts, the capabilities of smartphones will allow multi-modal real-time
notifications of new post or replies to significantly increase. That’s where
the challenge of BYOD comes into play.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The result of such increased social
networking activities can be applied to both personal social networking
communities or to organizational business groups, and seamless “dual persona”
capabilities of smartphones and tablets (e.g., the new BlackBerry “Balance”
smartphone software) will be able to keep mobile social networking activities
properly separated. However, there will always be the challenge for individual
end users to manage their mobile time efficiently. So, as with any form of
real-time contacts, social networking notifications must be manageable by the
many mobile recipients in a community.</span></div>
<h3>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">IBM’s Push For "Social Business"</span></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Aside from mobile access to social
network posts, there is a bigger role for social networking for business
contacts. As note in this very interesting <a href="http://www.ucstrategies.com/industry-buzz/john-del-pizzo-on-social-business-at-ibm.aspx">discussion</a>
with IBM’s John Del Pizzo, Program Director, Social Communications, and Head of
Product Management, IBM Sametime & Sametime Unified Telephony, IBM is using
social networking to interact more easily and efficiently with anyone in a
community group, inside or outside of an organization. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In a way, it is like “skills-based
routing” used in traditional customer call centers, except now it is not a
voice phone call connection that has to be made first, and it will be usable by
anyone in the community group. As John describes it, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“W</i></b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">e
call it ‘The shift from reach to relevance.’ It’s not about the one-on-one
interaction with the people you know that you can reach. It is about the
relevant people who can help you regardless of where they are in the organization.”</i></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So, add social networking to the UC
enablement list that will impact business communications.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 8.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Copyright © 2013 The
Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span></div>
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