• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Addicted To Data? Today's Real-Time Electronic Display Technologies Feed Your Need

Posted on: Wednesday, 7 September 2005, 03:00 CDT

Understanding your business performance is paramount to profitability and success. Today's next-generation enterprise performance and productivity tools make electronic display technology as vital now for dynamically displaying the pulse of your operation as it was 25 years ago.

As business professionals, how do we communicate the important bits of information that are crucial to our business? Telephones and e-mail are still mainstream technologies for getting information out, but voice mail and e-mail often are deferred activities. By the time I get around to my e-mail and voice mail, the urgency may have already passed, turning into a lost opportunity. Let's explore real- time communications to large groups of employees or other individuals.

I like to say access to data is addictive. Once you or your agents and staff are exposed to real-time data, the need to know what is currently happening actually increases. Imagine everyone in the call center viewing the same real-time statistics about calls in queue, hold times, service level, etc., and being able to turn that performance information into actions that have a dramatic and positive impact on customer service. When agents and other staff are informed, employee morale increases as their contributions to the organization can be reflected in a real-time visual communication regarding all or specific metrics sent to select individuals.

There are three display technologies that accomplish this "need to know": 1) wallboards; 2) televisions, LCD (liquid crystal display) and plasmas; and 3) the computer desktop. The type of information you wish to communicate, your audience and location play important roles in deciding which is the best single use or combination of technologies to implement for your business needs. Of course, all three can be used for crisis communication and other employee and corporate communication.

One of the oldest, most efficient and venerable devices to display meaningful data is the wallboard (other names include reader board, LED display and LED panel). There is a large need for wallboards in the contact center, but they are also found across vertical markets that rely on up-to-the-minute information, including financial, transportation, hospitality and many others. Companies can deploy the display anywhere there is a need to convey mission-critical information.

Wallboards have morphed into sophisticated "intelligent" tools with multiple-color, sound, IP, wireless and Web capabilities. Connectivity of choice is typically TCP/IP taking advantage of modern cable plants. They are light in weight and available in standard or custom sizes to fit any need. Newer models even include a wireless option for positioning a wallboard when CAT-5 cable is not available or desired. A browser-based interface is often available for configuration tasks, eliminating yet another desktop application, simplifying maintenance activities for IT departments and reducing costs as well as resource investments.

One of the advantages of wallboards is that the LEDs are easy to read from long distances and different viewing angles, making them ideal for outsized areas with a large viewing audience such as a contact center. Used mainly for real-time data delivery, today's wallboards can also display live content, such as stock, news and weather feeds as well as contact center and other business information. This is done by splitting the screen area into customer- defined sectors that allow the end user the flexibility of communicating simple metrics or substantial amounts of business data to large audiences. Although capable of displaying some graphic content, there are other media that do a more robust job.

Televisions, LCD (liquid crystal display) and plasmas are quickly gaining in popularity, essentially as the price continues to drop. All three are used in contact centers, but the viewing area and clarity are substantially reduced when displaying more than one full screen of data. Primary uses of plasmas are for general employee communication, and they are often found within many organizations' lobbies greeting visitors and/or in the break room informing employees of the latest company business news or local current events.

The benefit of this technology is the use of real-time information combined with dynamic and colorful graphic content from live TV feeds (CNN, weather, etc.), custom message content or company announcements. Constantly updated content typically appeals to our need-to-know instinct. By strategically placing plasmas in vital areas of the organization, all employees are kept informed.

Technology that brings data to the desktop is enjoying a revival with the advent of an exciting new business application, the Web- based executive dashboard and agent-or-employee scorecard views of data. Contact centers and the enterprise benefit through Web-based, real-time reporting and monitoring that aligns business activity with strategic goals. Now there is access to all correct data and a standard presentation platform for all users. Executives can now track and manage their business in realtime. Enterprisewide data, including financial data, human resources, help desks and contact centers, can capture, consolidate and report in real time.

Other desktop applications offer pop-to-top features, displaying data only after a threshold has been met. Also, these applications can display specific data in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen to minimize viewing real estate. How does the information get to the display source? There is software known as middleware that "collects" real-time and historical enterprise information. This software is capable of combining, manipulating and transforming data into meaningful, user-definable reporting on visual displays. Not only can it present information to wallboards, plasmas and the desktop, it is further used to schedule when and where the data are to be displayed. All three display venues can easily be used for crisis communication, dangerous weather and traffic conditions and internal posting of other ad hoc messages in conjunction with their automated message display functionality.

Employees want to do the right thing, but they need to receive information to be part of the team. With the continued growth and development of enterprise performance and productivity tools as well as electronic display technology, pushing information out to key audiences is easier than ever. Corporate objectives can be displayed anywhere there is an end point. Relevant daily news, important messages and stock prices can be viewed where everyone can see the information that is important to them, improving profitability and success every day.

Group 1 Software President Christopher Baker Teaches Us A New Acronym: CCM

By Glenn J. Kalinoski, Executive Editor, Customer Inter@ction Solutions

Christopher Baker

Group 1 Software President Christopher Baker had been on the job for only a few days when he was asked about how he would spur growth at the wholly owned subsidiary of $5.1 billion giant Pitney Bowes Inc. His answer: partners. Baker discussed both Group 1's partnership with Siebel and the fact that Group 1 has recently entered the Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Program with the integration between its Data Quality Adapter and Microsoft CRM.

"I heard from a Siebel representative that, on average, their customers spend 52 percent of their communication dollars through physical mail, so that's both marketing and selling and interaction with customers," he said. "And with the Siebel-deployed solution, you get very interactive data response, you look at the response rates on campaigns, you get to see when customers are responding and how they're responding on the electronic side of this. But on the physical side they have zero data ... to find out what's going on with their customers.

"In the call center ... we're able to provide a connector for a Siebel call center which will allow the customer service agent to not only know the disposition of all of the physical communications, but also to provide opportunities to see 'as-built renderings' of documents, so you don't have a customer service agent who is looking at a green screen while the customer is saying, 'At the bottom of page two, that's what I have a question about,' and the agent responds, 'Um, excuse me sir, I don't have a bottom of a page two.'"

And while the call center and customer care sector represents what Baker described as a small component of his firm's business, he added that the expectation is for it to be a quickly growing part of the business.

"Our product offering is around data quality connectors and connectors for, specifically, call centers to bring data around the movement of their communications," he said. "[The] call center [market] is certainly a sweet spot for us as we integrate both the electronic delivery and the physical delivery of communications to customers.

"When you think about the call center, to date, there has been zero data available after that physical mail piece has left a customer's facility. One of the little niche areas that we expect to dominate in is through our connections with our partners, such as Siebel, Microsoft and others, to make sure that customers, particularly those who have an interest in the call center and the contact center, understand that having data from all of th\eir communications, and being able to leverage that data to more successfully communicate with their customers, is going to be an important aspect [of what they do]."

The company's solutions are used by more than 3,500 organizations worldwide in the utilities, financial services/banking, CIS/ mapping, retail, telecommunications, insurance and other industries, including firms such as Entergy, L.L. Bean, MapQuest, QVC, Siemens, Wal-Mart and Wells Fargo.

Baker added that he has no plans to be a catalyst for change, but to continue the strategy that Group 1 and Pitney Bowes defined a year ago, which he described as "customer communication management."

"[CCM] is the umbrella idea around integrating all the disparate pieces that are critically important for [companies] to communicate with their customers more effectively and more efficiently," he said. "CCM is finally a term we can use to describe all of the different components of communicating with customers." He went on to call CCM "a new space with no competition."

"There are a ton of small, spot solution providers that might have something around data quality - they might have a specific connector to a specific area. But nobody has put all the pieces together. We've been able to take these pieces, put them together and really have a complete, integrated solution that's interoperable, independent of platform, independent of data types back and forth.

"I don't think there are any competitors in this space. I think we're really forging new ground, although we have our traditional competitors in any one specific spot solution."

He said the company has competed with FirstLogic "on some of the data quality, some of the connectors and postal optimization" while also mentioning Trillogy.

"Our message [with] CCM is this is new ground and there really isn't anybody there," he said. "It'd be about 28 companies that it would take to put together to figure out who our competitors are and they'd all have to come together in one to compete with us in the CCM space."

Baker also offered his thoughts on CRM, saying that "we like to think of Group 1 Software as, we don't build CRM, but we make CRM better."

"When we just received the certification with Microsoft, we did that by providing a connector so third-party integrators ... can achieve all of the benefits of Group 1 tools inside of [CRM] software.

"Even if I'm a 15-seat CRM company, I have 15 sales reps out there who are working and focus on the salesforce automation piece. As leads come in, how do I know that that is a different company or the same company, how do I know and collect information, how do I ensure that when I send communications to this customer, that those communications will both be efficiently sent and achieve the best savings?"

Baker added that in its entirety, the firm's suite will be available for its partners to be used in their CRM systems, call centers and throughout their enterprises. Future strategies will ensure delivery in any model deemed preferable, including local and hosted Web services.

"Group 1's tools ... are very modular pieces of software that are scalable on all types of platforms," he added while speaking from the firm's user conference in Washington. "We have ... 500 users ... at our user conference. They have deployed our solutions in just about every way conceivably possible.

"I want to be as big as they come. We plan to aggressively pursue the space, and the market is growing rapidly."

By Bob Brittan

Symon Communications

Bob Brittan is a Senior Product and Marketing Manager for Symon Communications (www.symon.com). He has more than 20 years' of experience in best-practices consulting for data and contact centers, with a focus on workforce and enterprise performance management. As a product manager, Brittan has brought powerful combinations of Web-based products to market, such as Symon Community workforce management and Symon Vista, a performance and productivity package transforming cohesive customer views into real- time performance and productivity metrics.

If you are interested in purchasing reprints of this article (in either print or PDF format), please visit Reprint Management Services online at www.reprintbuyer.com or contact a representative via e-mail at reprints@tmcnet.com or by phone at 800-290-5460.

For information and subscriptions, visit www.TMCnet.com or call 203-852-6800.

Copyright Technology Marketing Corporation Aug 2005

Source: Customer Inter@ction Solutions

More News in this Category