In terms of technology, IP convergence is the name of the game in today’s organizations. Having all business critical data like voice, email and customer information in one network, processed on a single platform, opens up opportunities for cost savings, flexibility and efficient multichannel communications.

In the contact center world, moving to the IP network provides increasing opportunities to improve what is becoming progressively more critical in this consumer-driven world: excellent customer service. IP convergence enables involving the entire organization in customer facing activities when and where needed. This, in turn, facilitates improved and more agile use of resources, increased flexibility when organizing service, and enhanced scalability for service peaks.

Cut Latency and Bring on Agility

Almost all value-adding business processes involve human communication. In many cases, this causes latency and delays, simply because it takes time to reach out to the right people with the right skills within the organization. 

Companies can overcome these limitations by pursuing communication-enabled business processes (CEBPs) -processes enabled by communication systems that are tightly integrated with business applications. With CEBP, firms can reduce latency, enhance the ability to locate people with the right skills, provide recording of and visibility into interactions, and better enable end-to-end processes involving employees, customers, suppliers, and partners.

Herein lies the true potential of IP-based communication solutions. IP based systems provide the opportunity to fully bring together business processes and communications. Done right, it enables going beyond integration – to provide ubiquitous links between the two and create communication-enabled business processes.

The Next Generation of Communication Solutions

Some systems such as SAP Business Communications Management provide an IP-based communication platform not only for contact centers but for all communication-intensive companies.  They link communications with the appropriate business context by networking with other business solutions and collaboration tools. This helps organizations to provide better service to the customers, decrease latency and increase operational performance, quality and agility.

From a customer service point of view and contact center perspective, it is easy to see the benefits that tight coupling between, say, CRM and communications bring. Now customer service staff and contact center agents can see all relevant information about the caller before picking up the phone, and by integrating the communications software with other applications they can more easily solve the customer request fast and with high quality.  This allows way better usage of personnel, existing IT-systems and data and eventually helps creating a unique customer experience.

Silos are a thing of the past; customer orientation is today. To reorganize operations to meet the needs of today’s demanding, 24/7, immediate customer service requirements, technology needs to be utilized in the best possible way. Introducing IP communication into the core of business processes enables just that. For more information, visit www.sap.com/bcm and download the whitepaper Creating Business Value with Communication-enabled CRM-Processes.