Communication Solutions

 

I recently had the opportunity to ask Steve Kowarsky, EVP of CosmoCom Communications, about the evolution of the IP communications space, Call Center Consolidation and the direction the company is moving.

 

CosmoCom provides IP Contact Center Technology for unified customer communications, on-premises across an entire enterprise or on-demand through its service provider partners for any number of enterprises.

 

To get some more background on the company, read this TMCnet article.

 

 

SK: At the highest level, our current initiatives are unified customer communications and Call Center Consolidation 2.0. At a more detailed level, our new initiatives are the Video Call Center including Video IVR or IVVR, and the mobile call center agent, which we call “CosmoGo.” We will be demonstrating both of these initiatives in our booth at ITEXPO.

 

SK: You could almost say that the emergence of IP communications IS our company’s strategy. At least, it’s a major part of it. CosmoCom was the first company to recognize the potential benefits of an all-IP, multi-channel contact center architecture. We developed and patented the first commercial IP call center, and today we have the most mature and field-proven IP contact center product in the world.

 

SK: There is a pain that permeates the call center industry. Simply put, it’s very difficult to right-size the practice of customer care. If you make it too small, you lose business to the competition. If you make it too big, you can’t be profitable. Our technology helps a lot by reducing the total cost of ownership of the technology infrastructure behind world class customer care, and by enabling an unprecedented level of flexibility and adaptability in that infrastructure. The unified customer communication we support embodies the very best in customer care and the Consolidation 2.0 strategy is the most efficient and cost effective way to set it up.

 

SK: SIP has helped make VoIP a mainstream phenomenon by improving the quality of service and interoperability via standardization. It has contributed to the recent and widespread adoption of IP in almost all new contact centers.

 

SK: Unified communications represents a megatrend but intra-enterprise UC is only half the story. We will see UC practiced with customers too, what CosmoCom calls Unified Customer Communications (UCC). In the UCC paradigm, we will see the call center extending far beyond dedicated agents to encompass knowledge workers throughout the organization. In the future, we will say, “the company IS the call center.” We will also see a new wave of consolidation, which CosmoCom calls Consolidation 2.0 ––consolidating the many diverse contact center needs of the enterprise on a single platform that integrates quickly and easily with other VoIP network components and with the overall Information Technology environment. This approach will allow enterprises to gain the efficiency and cost reduction benefits of consolidation without compromising the unlimited deployment flexibility of an IP communications architecture.

SK: A combination of two related factors – offshoring and the rapid economic growth of the developing world – has most analysts projecting faster call center market growth outside of the US and Western Europe. CosmoCom’s growth is faster in the U.S. than in the rest of the world, but this is probably because our biggest initial successes were outside of the U.S. Now the U.S. is catching up.

 

SK: With high speed IP connectivity approaching ubiquity, the fundamental dynamics of the telecom market change. Intelligence applied at the edge of the inter-galactic IP network can make anyone a telecom service provider. Many companies will look to telecom for growth. Google and Apple are just the beginning.

 

SK: How about Microsoft! We are just at the beginning of the Microsoft UC initiative, and we expect to see much more.

 

SK: The contact center market, like most others is increasingly driven by standards such IP and XML for example. We don’t see a big presence of open source solutions, but we’re definitely seeing an increase in the use of tools like Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Service Oriented Architecture Protocol (SOAP). The primary benefit these tools bring to the market is the ability to manage the complex multi-channel IT integrations common in today’s enterprise contact center faster and easier. And once integrated, they make it faster and easier to adjust and change the operations as the company’s business needs change.

 

SK: The hosted contact center solution is a major trend that’s rapidly gaining traction in the market. New IP technologies enable hosted service providers to compete with premise-based solutions feature for feature, and to offer attractive new business models. This trend applies to enterprises of all sizes, not just SMEs. You might look at hosted solutions as a “great equalizer” because it gives medium and smaller enterprises access to world class contact center platforms that rival the largest enterprises for quality and reach. But large enterprises also benefit from using a hosted solution, since they can eliminate the burden of maintaining and managing their own hardware and software platform, and focus on their core business.

 

SK: Unified communications represents a mega trend, but intra-enterprise unified communications is only half the story. We will see enterprise unified communications practiced with customers too, what CosmoCom calls Unified Customer Communications, or UCC. In the UCC paradigm, we will see the call center extending far beyond dedicated agents to encompass knowledge workers throughout the organization. In the future, we will say, “the company IS the call center.” We will also see a new wave of consolidation, which CosmoCom calls Consolidation 2.0 -- consolidating the many diverse contact center needs of the enterprise on a single platform that integrates quickly and easily with other VoIP network components and with the overall Information Technology environment. This approach will allow enterprises to gain the efficiency and cost reduction benefits of consolidation without compromising the unlimited deployment flexibility of an IP communications architecture.

 

SK: The industry will see the most mature and field proven all-IP contact center product in the world, and the company with the vision to leverage this technology advantage to a leadership position in Unified Customer Communications and Consolidation 2.0.

 

SK: Everyone is interested in unified communications, and no one can ignore the economic advantages of consolidation. CosmoCom is a “can’t miss” exhibitor because it is the global leader in UCC and Consolidation 2.0.

 

SK: CosmoCom offers the most mature and field proven IP contact center technology available. Through its technology and its vision, it has become the global leader in unified communications and Consolidation 2.0.

 

SK: We will see a continuous evolution and migration to EON – Everything on the Network — with video becoming an increasingly popular communications channel particularly for contact centers. Fixed-Mobile convergence will help increase the accessibility of the mobile workforce to the office and to customers. The key issue is that as long as the next communication channel that develops is IP based, it will be just another element to incorporate into the all-IP architecture.