Golfbreaks.com Selects a Joint Solution from the New Aspect-Dell Relationship
by Tim Dreyer on February 23rd, 2012
We are excited today to announce a new strategic relationship with Dell Services aimed at enabling customers worldwide to acquire end-to-end next-generation unified communications solutions incorporating hardware, software, services and support from a single vendor. Centered on Microsoft® collaborative technologies, the relationship also gives customers the flexibility and scalability to tailor their private branch exchange (PBX) and contact center solution to best fit their needs. 
Many large organizations are viewing contact centers as a primary customer engagement point and increasingly as a revenue generation engine. However outdated telephony infrastructures or poorly connected contact centers can result in missed or dropped calls and negatively impact customer service. This can result in missed sales opportunities and potential damage to a company’s brand.
Golfbreaks.com, Europe’s leading golf tour operator, is one of the first joint customers of the Aspect-Dell relationship. Golfbreaks.com experienced the downside of an aging telephony platform that could no longer keep up with the service demands of their customers so the company sought out a contact center solution built upon an open, capable and affordable software platform. They are implementing a Microsoft-based unified communications solution including a full multimedia contact center infrastructure to replace its older PBX platform.
Due to increasing volume, which let’s face it, is a great problem to have, Golfbreaks.com required a way to meet the increased customer demand without increasing headcount and to basically do more with less. The lack of channel integration was putting a strain on their agents and systems, increasing administration time. With new support for SMS and email, as well as tight integration with their CRM system, Golfbreaks.com’s customer should find booking with them easier and quicker than ever.
So the point of the post, aside from announcing the adorable offspring of our new relationship, is this: your platform might be good enough for you, but is it good enough for your customers?
Winning Strategies are Founded on Data and Insights, not Gut Feelings
by David Harper on January 4th, 2012
In the not-too-distant past, companies had to get by without real-time information and business intelligence. It’s not that they didn’t have the information; often critical data resided in disparate systems across multiple departments. So it was extremely difficult to aggregate, synthesize, and analyze without committing significant time and energy.
Because of this dynamic, companies came to rely on people who had a strong gut instinct. In the heat of the moment, with make-or-break decisions, these individuals could be depended on to divine the right path based on their experience, knowledge of the business, and ability to read the tea leaves. (Malcolm Gladwell wrote a whole book on this topic.)
There are obvious problems with this scenario: what about the other 99.9 percent of us who don’t happen to have this gift? Or worse yet, what happens when the “gut feeling” turns out to be dead wrong?
Thankfully, technology has progressed to the point that companies no longer need to stake their future on the resident gunslinging clairvoyant.
How is this possible? Well, I am happy you asked. The answer: with Insights.
SQL Server 2012 features a range of new capabilities, including Data Insights. This tool will allow business users to combine data in many ways that ETL (extract, transfer, and load) developers have been able to use for years. They will then be able to take their data and, using the new enhancements of PowerPivot, exploit the data on their own. Want to share your findings with the rest of the team? Look no further than Power View.
With these new tools, not only can the right data be identified and translated into business insights, but every member on the team can access the information. This is definitely an exciting time for data and business intelligence.
I personally am super excited to be venturing to Redmond to learn from some of the product team all the new features of SQL Server 2012. I will report back with my findings. Our goal at Aspect is to be “production ready” by the time SQL Server 2012 is released to manufacturing. Stay tuned for more details.
Denali isn’t reinventing the wheel―or is it?
by David Harper on September 21st, 2011
Microsoft has been able to keep our SQL Server hearts content by releasing a new feature-filled version of the product every two to three years. However, every release can leave us stuck trying to figure out how to scale the mountain of knowledge yet again.
SQL Server Denali (SQL 11) will hopefully be released in the next four to five months, bringing with it a new suite of features and functionality. There are two changes/enhancements that have the business intelligence (BI) community particularly excited about this upcoming release. Reporting Services is adding some new functionality around Crescent, a reporting platform that lives in SharePoint and was built using slick front ends with SilverLight.
The new visualizations really look like Reporting Services is poised to compete with some of the new tablet-enhanced reporting engines. Crescent will utilize semantic models that can be built with Visual Studio 10 and leverage the Excel Services engine inside of SharePoint 2010. This will require the customer to be using the Enterprise version of SharePoint, but we have found many of our customers are already there as a result of other application needs. Information is changing constantly, so I will just link directly to the CodePlex site.
The other exciting new enhancement is around PowerPivot, which debuted with SQL 2008 R2 and SharePoint 2010 but is also being enhanced for the new SQL release. For those of you that have used or looked at PowerPivot, one of the more “frustrating” aspects of the product is the lack of ability to create hierarchies inside of your data using slicers. While true hierarchies still won’t be available in the upcoming release, Microsoft has allowed you to group filtering columns together to create a “faux-hierarchy.” The functionality is slick and really adds a lot to the product.
So is change bad? Absolutely not! As the title noted, we are constantly reinventing the wheel when it comes to delivery channels and data. Heck, if the v1 of any platform was “the best,” we would still be using Windows 1.0 and SQL Server 4.3 (You should be screaming in terror).
Now, for the good news. Your BI center of excellence should be all about your organization’s data. That is so important I will type it again―your BI center of excellence should be all about your organization’s data. At Aspect, we take a data-centric approach, ensuring that your company’s data can evolve over time as technology matures and changes. Aspect has a proven multistep process that allows us to adapt and accelerate organization’s BI initiatives.
Is your organization ready?
Key Lync Observations from the 2011 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference
by Mike Butts on July 20th, 2011
Last week I and other Aspect team members attended the annual Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC). This year’s conference, which included 15,000 partners from around the world, was held in downtown Los Angeles in venues such as the Staples Center, Nokia Plaza, and the Los Angeles Convention Center. In fact, WPC is the largest conference to be hosted by Los Angeles this entire year.
WPC is a premier event that allows partners to hear Microsoft’s latest strategic vision and road map from senior leadership including Steve Ballmer, Kevin Turner, Jon Roskill, and many others. Conference benefits include the opportunity to interact and network with other Microsoft executives, product group leaders, and partner attendees.
One of the recurring themes at last week’s conference was Lync, Microsoft’s newest unified communications platform. At Aspect, we use Microsoft Lync across our enterprise and contact centers, so we fully understand the value and power that this technology platform provides our organization on a daily basis. Still, it was exciting and refreshing to feel the resounding momentum building for this technology.
Jon Roskill, Microsoft’s corporate vice president worldwide partner group, said during his keynote address that Microsoft Lync is positioned to become the company’s next billion-dollar business. Microsoft went so far as to compare Lync’s growth to SharePoint because Lync enables enterprises to collaborate and communicate as never before.
CEO Steve Ballmer said that “70 percent of the Global Fortune 500 are now on Lync” and that the recent Skype acquisition only bolsters the growth of Lync by allowing the “consumerization” of IT within the enterprise to proceed.
Kurt Delbene, president of the Microsoft Office division, also referred to Lync as the new SharePoint because it enables enterprises to reduce costs associated with licensing and training while empowering enterprises to accelerate communications and collaboration productivity.
Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Office division, then took the stage to demo several cool Lync scenarios such as the Lync conversation language translator powered by Bing, the Polycom RMX video add-on solution that showed four simultaneous HD video connections with built-in intelligence to pop a larger screen when someone began to speak, and the XBOX-Kinect-Lync integration. And last but not least, by the end of this year you will be able to use Lync on your Windows 7 phone, iPhone, and Android smartphones.
Aspect was also invited to participate at WPC. Aspect’s Wayne Lockhart led a discussion and demo of our latest Lync-based contact center solution, Aspect Contact, at the Microsoft Business Productivity Partner Theater. Wayne artfully demonstrated how Aspect Contact’s tight Lync integration allows small and midsize contact centers to increase service and resolve inquiries whether they arrive by voice, email, or instant message. One Microsoft Lync product manager told me that Aspect is well positioned for the exploding growth of Microsoft Lync because “80 percent of the unified communications opportunities need a unified contact center solution.”
In closing, Microsoft estimates that up to 60 percent of all enterprise seats lack real-time communications capabilities. If you find yourself among this group, then it’s time to consider Microsoft Lync. The momentum is growing, and this technology will help you drive productivity gains across your enterprise and contact center operations.
Til next time.
Delivering customer service at the speed of Consumer 2.0
by Mike Butts on May 9th, 2011
We’re in the midst of an exciting consumer evolution known as Consumer 2.0 that is fundamentally changing business, and Sunday night offered a prime example of just how much people rely on technology to stay connected.
At the Mets–Phillies game, 44,000 people attending broke into a “U-S-A” cheer after receiving the breaking news about Osama Bin Laden. While watching the replay on ESPN, I quickly noticed how many spectators were glued to their mobile devices to get the latest updates of this historic event. Granted, this example is not a business scenario, but it does reinforce how people have become so accustomed to receiving up-to-the-minute information. Now how does this translate to business?
The good news is that the extreme advances in communications, Web 2.0, and mobility technologies are providing consumers with more flexible ways to communicate, stay connected, and interact with the companies they do business with.
The bad news is that instantaneous information availability is decreasing already low patience levels and heightening service demands because consumers know what is possible and worse, they expect it from the companies they do business with. It’s our responsibility as business leaders to ensure that our contact centers and enterprises evolve to keep pace with these increasing service expectations.
Not sure what Consumer 2.0 is and what it takes to deliver increased service levels? Microsoft and Aspect are presenting a complimentary online symposium titled, “Customer Contact in a Consumer 2.0 World” on Thursday, May 19, 2011. Simply register and watch (learn) from the comfort of your desk.
This online symposium, many months in the making, will feature a keynote presentation from acclaimed customer experience guru Bruce Temkin, who will share the very latest research on customer experience, social consumers, and how contact centers can take the lead to help the enterprise prosper in this new consumer-driven environment.
The other keynote presentation will be led by Microsoft’s Ashima Singhal, who will discuss how unified communications technology can provide the platform to connect the contact center and the enterprise to serve Consumer 2.0.
Aspect’s Mike Sheridan, executive vice president of worldwide sales, will host a customer roundtable discussion where leading organizations will share best practices, lessons learned, and benefits earned as they migrate to this new customer-centric model. Nancy Dobrozdravic, Aspect’s vice president of solutions marketing, and Serge Hyppolite, Aspect’s director of interaction product management, will discuss the key steps that organizations can take now to deliver next-generation customer contact.
This is a rare event where you can learn from customer experience experts, technologists, and real-world companies on how to meet the service demands of Consumer 2.0. All you need to do is register to attend any or all of the planned discussions. Check out the agenda and speaker pages for more details.
This event promises to deliver a high level of educational content through live presentations, group chats, and staffed virtual exhibits. Looking forward to seeing you there.
Til next time.
How your organization can strategically tap the cloud
by Michael Ely on March 1st, 2011
The cloud has been garnering a lot of attention lately, and with good reason: hosted applications such as software as a service (SaaS) and communications as a service (CaaS) offer cost-effective ways for smaller businesses to greatly enhance their technology capabilities while avoiding substantial fixed investments. You can also add information as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS), such as Windows Azure, to the list of cloud-related offerings. Meanwhile, the array of configurations—private vs. public vs. hybrid clouds—can cause significant confusion among executives looking for answers.
In the midst of the hype and excitement, it’s crucial to understand how the cloud can create value for your organization. The cloud isn’t just about hosting; instead, its real power is that it enables companies to take advantage of infrastructure and capacity in ways that offer their organization the greatest benefit. …Read more >
Improving the way companies communicate internally and externally with their customers is an important objective for all organizations. This blog is focused on levaraging the collective knowledge withing Aspect.