Intelligence to Beat the Downturn

With so much talk about recession and cutting costs, it’s no wonder there are so many fears surrounding capital spending. According to a study conducted by Forrester Research, 43% of large US and European businesses have cut their overall spending on technology products and services this year.

Many companies feel that reducing their capital spending is the best way to beat the economic downturn. This means that plans to update or replace legacy systems could be shelved with the attitude that companies will weather the storm before making any major financial investments.

However, with outdated equipment firms will struggle to deliver results and with a recession forecast and the threat of job cuts ever-present, can they really afford to make do with a second-rate solution?

Although updating and replacing outdated systems can be costly in some cases, when managed correctly it can result in cost savings and increased profit margins in the long run. When considering an upgrade or replacement of technology, the important thing to remember is that it is not about the initial expense, but more about the long-term investment.

Look at the big picture

Before selecting a solution, take a look at your firm’s communication strategy as a whole, and where you hope to take it in the future. Does the solution match these goals? More than this, can the solution meet the existing needs that your company has, and will it grow as your company expands?

Avoid stop gap solutions

Ensure that the solution you select can solve any problems that your firm is currently experiencing but also that it will not create new issues in the future. By purchasing ‘platform’ solutions that have the ability to grow, both in scale and functionality, along with your business you can ensure that the solution you select will see you through more than just the credit crunch.

Invest in software-based solutions

When choosing a system, avoid hardware-based solutions as they are costly and add complexity. Instead, select a software-based solution. This will give you a solution that is easy to manage with a great deal more flexibility and scalability.

Invest in open-standards solutions

Selecting an open-standards solution will allow your company to unify every aspect of business communications, simplifying the communication process. Working using a standard such as Session Initiated Protocol (SIP), a signalling protocol used for setting up multimedia communication systems, will allow your business to use any SIP-compliant device or gateway as part of the communications system and will also allow your system to interoperate with any other telephone or messaging system efficiently.

Consider also whether vendors use proprietary parts in their system, if so you could end up tied to their range of devices and software which could end up costing you dearly in the long run. If you select a system based on SIP protocols then you will be able to use devices from any vendor that complies with this standard, giving you flexibility and the potential to work cost effectively.

Consider Business Process Automation

One of the key factors that can assist in containing costs is Business Process Automation (BPA). Processes are what make an organisation tick and if you think about it, what is an organisation but a set of processes and the people who implement them?

In a similar way to routing a call or an email, enterprises can route their workload in an assembly line fashion, applying queuing methods, alerts and tracking mechanisms to offer the same levels of service previously only guaranteed by the contact centre. BPA can be applied to any process in any industry and can have a huge impact on its overall success.

Various process automation tools have been around for years. However, they all had a number of flaws. First, they are complex and generally require extensive training and third-party implementation services. They can also inundate people with email as they have no effective way of physically involving people as they are not connected to the organisation’s communications system. Even those systems which are communications-enabled often do little more than allow applications to use communications systems to kick-off notifications generating a glut of phone calls and emails.

New systems go one step further than this and use well established communications systems as the basis for process automation. Skills management and skills-based routing figure prominently in a communications-based process automation system. This allows processes to be queued and intelligently routed to the right person. As the system also takes presence management into account, work is routed to the next person who is able to deliver the work rather than those already busy or out of the office.

Most systems will also offer a high level of visibility with the ability to record each step of the process, even to the level of screen activity. This allows companies to take the guess work out of quantifying the human effort required to complete processes.

Final Thoughts

Whether you make the decision to upgrade your technology during a time of economic uncertainty or in the midst of a booming economy, software-based solutions offer companies the flexibility and scale to customise their business communications system to meet the ever changing needs of the business world.

By improving the process that your staff use to enhance the customer experience you will be adding value to your organisation in a time when delivering a faultless customer experience is more important than ever. Although short-term savings may not be immediately apparent, the long-term savings will be substantial.