1. What will be the areas of emphasis for Siemens Enterprises’ OpenScape Contact Center solutions in the near future?

Siemens Enterprise Communications (SEN) has had a long history of innovation in the Contact Center space.  SEN was the first vendor to develop a modular multi-channel contact center; first to offer integrated Presence to enable first contact resolution via “expert advisor” solution; first to integrate Unified Communications (UC) into the Contact Center, and now, SEN will be the first solution provider to integrate social media as an emerging channel of communication between customers and the contact center.  SEN’s emphasis in the near future will be on expanding our world class contact center portfolio with an integrated outbound Campaign Management solution, a homegrown Contact Recording and Quality Monitoring solution, enhancements to our multimedia contact center offering, and the introduction of a hosted contact center platform.

2. Unified Communications (UC) encompasses several applications.  What applications are generating the highest areas of interest for Siemens?

Siemens Enterprise Communications introduced its first UC application back in 2003.  We’re now moving toward our fourth release of UC software so we’re in an excellent position to understand our customers’ pain points and to design UC applications that address these pain points in a cost effective manner.  One of the biggest pain points experienced by contact centers is “how do I improve my first contact resolution rates?”  To address this pain point, SEN integrated UC capabilities into our Agent Desktop which allows agents to see which support resources are available (via presence) and then collaborate with them in real-time to resolve the customer query on first contact.

More and more, we see our customers starting to implement multi-channel strategies into their contact centers by adding email, voice messaging, proactive outbound, and web collaboration (web chat, etc.) to their existing inbound voice centers.  Agents are being asked to handle multiple contacts simultaneously for greater productivity.  However, traditional skills based routing engines were designed to only send agents one contact at a time.  Sophisticated, multi-contact handling routing engines are required along with real-time and historical reporting to allow contact center managers to operate in this new multiple-contact handling paradigm.  SEN is meeting this challenge head-on with our multi-channel skills based routing and reporting engine.
Other applications that are generating high levels of interest for Siemens are in the area of social media integration like Twitter into the contact center.  Social media is quickly becoming a very popular means of communication that will need to be unified with other channels of communication within the contact center.

3. What are your greatest challenges in getting users to adopt your Openscape UC solutions?

Given UC is still an emerging solution category; our greatest challenge is getting past the early adopters, into the mainstream enterprise.  OpenScape UC has had a reputation for having well engineered, highly reliable yet extremely innovative communications solutions along with the professionals to solve real business problems.  Many companies are still struggling with the business case for adopting UC in general.  The SEN approach is to start with UC applications that drive the greatest ROI for the organization and then add on as needed.  It could be Unified Messaging or it could be Audio and Video Conferencing.  It might be Presence/IM, or it might be UC in the contact center.  The bottom line is that it has to either help you make money or save you money.  OpenScape UC solutions can help companies do both.

4. There are many competitors in the Unified Communications market sector.  How does Siemens differentiate their offers from their competitors, i.e. Aspect, Avaya, Cisco? 

Siemens is the only provider offering the choice of complete end-to-end, software-driven unified communications, based on open, secure interoperable standards.  We differentiate ourselves in four areas: Openness, Breadth, TCO, and Choice.  Open in the sense that we don’t lock customers into a single-vendor solution, no proprietary technology stacks, we’re driven by our customers’ goals, not our agenda, and we offer an affordable, logical migration path.  SEN offers a wide breadth of solutions including a complete voice and UC software portfolio, a complete mobility and wireless portfolio, a complete network and security portfolio, and a complete global services portfolio to make it all work seamlessly.  SEN is also focused on having the lowest TCO in the industry by driving costs down, providing “green” business value, allowing for faster decision making, and improving collaboration.  Finally, SEN gives customers more choices than other solution providers.  Our solutions run in a multi-vendor environment, integrating with Cisco, IBM, Microsoft and Open Source solutions while running synergistically with our own end-to-end solutions.

5. OpenScape Campaign Director is an outbound campaign management system.  In recent years, primarily due to the do-not-call rules, there has been a reduction in outbound usage and an increased emphasis on inbound contacts.  How has this trend affected the acceptance of OpenScape Campaign Director?

OpenScape Campaign Director has evolved with the trends such that its campaign management rules have been designed to meet the legislation requirements of each individual state/province or country.  Furthermore, SEN’s Campaign Director has been certified to integrate with a number of do-not-call database structures in order to be in compliance with the local laws.
In a recent study of 332 Contact Center decision makers in North America, conducted by Frost & Sullivan, respondents were asked to outline their plans for outbound communications in the next 12 – 18 months.  Their top-line responses were as follows:
o 51% plan to increase their use of proactive contact
o 68% plan to increase use of outbound IVR
o 55% plan to have outbound dialing capability
As a result, demand for outbound campaign management and proactive outbound customer contact solutions like the OpenScape Campaign Director has gone up in recent years and we believe this trend will continue in the coming years.  The other trend we’re seeing is that contact centers are blending their inbound traffic with outbound traffic more and more as organizations are starting to see the productivity improvements of universal queuing using agents trained to handle both inbound and outbound contact types.

6. What new products and services can we expect from Siemens in the next twelve months?

Focusing on the Siemens OpenScape Contact Center solution, in the next twelve months we plan to introduce OpenScape Contact Center Enterprise and Agile Version 8 which will include features such as Multi-Contact Handling, UC enhancements (Presence and IM), support for VMware virtual servers, an integrated, more scalable SIP-based software IVR solution, and many more features and enhancements.  We’re also planning to develop a closer integration between our inbound and outbound platforms such that the universal routing engine will route both inbound and outbound contacts to agents using intelligent blending rules and algorithms.  We’re also very excited about the introduction of a homegrown entry-level contact recording and quality monitoring solution. 

We at Siemens Enterprise Communications understand the needs of contact centers and we continue to add value to our product portfolio with innovative solutions that add measurable value to our customers. Investments we’re making in our Contact Center portfolio will bring incremental value to companies by improving productivity while optimizing the customer experience. For example, by using our Blended Inbound/Outbound capabilities, contact centers can increase agent productivity by 5-10 percent, reduce their staffing costs by 10-15 percent, and improve service levels by as much as 10 percent.

Our philosophy is to organically develop contact center solutions that meet and exceed the requirements of contact centers globally; but at the same time, we recognize that contact center managers may prefer third party applications so we ensure interoperability between our contact center applications and third party applications by providing the most open platforms available.

7. In July 2008 Siemens Enterprise combined their assets, people, and resources with the Gores Group's Enterasys, a network provider, and SER solutions, a provider of outbound and inbound solutions for contact centers.   Please explain how these organizations have been integrated into one organization from an R&D and sales standpoint?

The SEN Group has achieved solid momentum and recognized market leadership in its first year.  These positive results are part of the Gores Group’s ongoing transformation of SEN Group’s global business, re-aligning the company to become more customer-centric, delivering on its commitment to the channel and tightening integration of the SEN Group operating companies. SER’s R&D, product management and sales organizations have been completely integrated into SEN.  Enterasys Networks is member of the SEN Group of companies making the SEN Group a premier provider of end-to-end enterprise communications using open, standards-based architectures to unify communications and business applications for a seamless collaboration experience.

8. How has the economic downturn affected the decision making cycle for your products and services?  Have you noticed a change in user needs? 

The economic downturn has had an impact on our business, but we have suffered less than the industry average. Decisions are still being based on the business case, so demonstrating how contact center investments save money are more important than ever, in terms of being able to do more with less, or reduce operating or infrastructure costs.