Aspect Completes Microsoft Lync/CRM 2011 Executive Event Tour
by Mike Butts on January 19th, 2011
Willie Nelson wrote about his desire to get back on the road. Bob Seger shined a light on the realities of a nomadic existence. Grand Funk Railroad illuminated the hidden pleasures of America’s heartland. And now Aspect has added its own chapter to tales from the road, though without the timeless soundtrack.
Last month, our team led a highly successful Microsoft Lync/CRM 2011 Launch Event Tour that made stops in seven cities: Chicago, Des Moines, Kansas City, Louisville, Nashville, Omaha, and St. Louis. Each event included an in-depth demonstration of Lync’s capabilities as well as a Q&A session. …Read more >
Aspect Unified IP 7: An enterprise-wide approach to customer contact
by Lynne Levy on January 18th, 2011
On January 11, Aspect announced the availability of Aspect Unified IP 7, the platform that powers Aspect’s unified communications applications for customer contact. It enables a contact center to provide next-generation customer service while optimizing agent productivity.
A key part of the release is that it gives companies power and control over business workflows across the enterprise. Here are just some of the benefits of this new capability:
- Enterprises can now incorporate best practices for call routing to provide a consistent customer experience across the globe. An enterprise would be able to look for a particular skill set first, then decrease the skill requirements based on a timer. (For example, the first preference for a credit card queue is for an agent who is very proficient in credit card processes. If there is no agent available after five minutes, then the pool of agents can be opened to those who are average.) …Read more >
Stacking the deck: Enabling better business processes
by Mike Butts on January 13th, 2011
“The stack,” as it’s commonly called in Microsoft circles, is a suite of unified communications and collaboration applications that work together.
I like to think of them as pancakes.
When an enterprise uses Microsoft Outlook, Exchange, Lync, and SharePoint, these programs share common information from application to application and throughout the enterprise, updating individual users’ current status, availability, and contact information. …Read more >
Bringing social networking into your IT strategy?
by Manish Chandak on June 28th, 2010
We are beginning to see organizations trying to provide some social networking tools within the enterprise to enhance customer-company communications. With growth in collaboration platform tools, social tools don’t need to be one-off projects; they can be an integrated approach to your customer experience strategy. The concept of bringing “social within the organization” is probably a matter of when, rather than if. We have seen this evolution with email and then with instant messaging tools. They all started in the consumer space and most organizations were skeptical of their internal value. Today email is a critical business tool and most organizations have adopted presence and instant messaging. Current communication tools and collaboration platforms are already integrating these capabilities. One good example is the integration between LinkedIn and Microsoft Outlook. Another is the pervasive use of wikis or content management within SharePoint.
Within social tools, wikis and blogs have already been well accepted; we are particularly seeing a broad usage of wikis. But this is still a very structured use that is easy for most organizations to envision. The bigger change is with unstructured social tools – activity feeds, employee profiles, walls and statuses. These are being leveraged in some organizations to create a bond between formal groups and special interest groups. Informal groups are being formed based on subscriptions and interests.
I am interested in seeing how well these tools get adopted by our clients. So when do you think your organization will introduce these tools and if you have already adopted them, how have they changed the way employees interact?
How Do You Make a Strong Start with Enterprise 2.0?
by Serge Hyppolite on May 19th, 2010
Fully embracing Enterprise 2.0 capabilities may seem like it takes some extremely long arms. The potential for embedding communications into business applications and processes reaches far and wide, extending to the contact center, the back office and beyond. Customer care, mobility and websites and portals are all areas of considerable opportunity. And the real-time, collaborative power of communications-enabled business processes (CEBP) and social media to increase efficiency and productivity will only continue to evolve and profoundly influence these spaces.
So how do you decide where to begin in adopting CEBP and social software and media capabilities? What’s the best way to adapt them to your organization’s existing workflows or processes? One target for relatively easy, low-risk wins is any area where siloed operations present business challenges. Other likely, high-value opportunities are business processes stalled or complicated by human latency, or those that require different types of people with different sets of skills. Wherever business processes are bottlenecked, there exists the potential for huge gains from incorporating CEBP and social media capabilities.
What other starting points do you recommend for early success?
Tapping into the Facebook Generation
by Chris O'Brien on May 19th, 2010
“Building a relationship” Chris Hughes says, “is the most important part for businesses to remember” when speaking on social media for business communication. To fully utilize the power of social media, he noted that the most valuable opportunity to take advantage of is the ability to reach customers, and potential customers every single day.
Another interesting insight is Hughes’ view on mobility. With 75 million of Facebook’s 400 million users logging in from their mobile device, Hughes feels that that number will continue to grow. “For FB mobile users to outpace traditional web users, smart phones must become increasingly widespread and prevalent, including to people who don’t own PCs today. I think realistically we’ll reach that point in just a few years. “
How do you think this will change the way companies communicate with their customers?
Join us at 9:00 EDT May 19th — Learn About the Role of Unified Communications and Collaboration in the 2.0 Enterprise
by Chris O'Brien on May 18th, 2010
We have an excellent line-up of presenters and topics, ranging from Facebook Cofounder, Chris Hughes speaking on social media, to Aspect CEO, Jim Foy discussing the future of business communications and an array of end users and experts in between. Don’t miss the roundtable discussion where some early adopters will offer their perspective on how their companies have benefited from Microsoft communications and collaboration technologies. This offers a great opportunity for you to get your questions answered by people that are using and supporting the technology every day.
The Collaboration in the 2.0 Enterprise online symposium provides a unique occasion for everyone who is interested in learning more about communications-enabled business processes, foundational technologies to support those processes and the applications that will deliver measureable value. Bring a pen and pad and have your Twitter account open—there will be lots of valuable information to record and share!
Communications-Enabling Business Processes for Improved Customer Experiences
by Manish Chandak on May 18th, 2010
The power of communication if often underestimated. Often times in the workplace, processes are unnecessarily lengthened by the inefficiency of the individual tasks. Regardless of where the bottleneck occurs, these hiccups in the operation affect the entire company. Creating new windows of communication in the enterprise streamlines the simplest tasks and allows for better usage of the employee’s time and in turn – better serving your customers.
.jpg "Nancy Dobrozdravic (11 posts)"){kind=avatar}
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.