Stellar, a leading contact centre and business process outsourcing provider, today announced they have been awarded the contact centre services contract with TransLink with work commencing July 1st 2012.

Acting TranLink CEO Matt Longland said "I'm pleased to welcome Stellar to the TransLink network as we continue to enhance our customer service response for up to 1.5 million calls a year".

"Stellar are specialists in providing contact centres for major brands in Australia and globally, with extensive experience across a wide range of industries including utilities, telecommunications, finance and travel information services. I believe they will be a great information channel for TransLink customers".

Stellar will manage varying call and transaction types including journey planner enquiries, customer feedback and complaints, 'go card' enquiries and transactions, on the 13 12 30 customer contact number.

Melissa Hamilton, Stellar CEO (Asia Pacific) recently said "We're thrilled to have been awarded this opportunity with TransLink. We have a comprehensive understanding of the transport industry in Australia and we look forward to building a strong relationship based on service excellence and innovation".

Ameyo a leading contact center solution enables Itronics Info Solutions, Bangalore to easily expand their business operations by adding another service location. The solution supported the BPO with a robust technology platform while providing flexibility of business models (both SaaS as well as premise). With Ameyo as the contact center technology, Itronics has doubled the size of their business.

Talking about the association with Ameyo and its benefits, Mustaque, Director, Itronics Info Solutions, says, "Ameyo has been powering our call center operations for more than three years now. The solution delivered the ROI within a few weeks of its deployment. It performs well, without any glitches and is recommended for critical processes as it is fully capable of delivering even in high demanding international dialing scenarios. With a trusted name like Ameyo handling our outbound campaigns, we have now extended our business operations."

Adding further, Girisha R, Sales Manager at Drishti-Soft says, "Ameyo has been at the core of Itronics' BPO processes and has delivered consistently. Besides enabling more efficient dialing and better customer connect ratios, Ameyo's quality monitoring and comprehensive reporting tools significantly enhanced the end business productivity."

Ameyo supports hosted, premise-based as well as hybrid deployment flexibilities. It is built on Service Oriented (SOA) and Model Driven Architecture (MDA) that enable easy scalability and extensibility. It gives you the flexibility to choose a premise-based set up, a hosted over the cloud offering or a hybrid deployment with some components in cloud and some on-premise. It provides powerful development tools that help build complex features and innovative business applications at a fraction of time and cost as compared to legacy systems.

"Market demand was strong and we executed well during the fourth quarter, a combination that provided a strong finish to a year with record revenues," said Interactive Intelligence founder and CEO, Dr. Donald Brown. "In 2011, we firmly established Interactive Intelligence as a vendor-of-choice at the high end of the contact centre market. We continue to consistently grow faster than the overall market with our on-premise solutions and are emerging as a leader with our cloud-based offering."

"We show ever-increasing momentum among customer cloud deployments, which is the highest growth segment of our market. In 2012, we plan to capitalize on this momentum and step up investments to further enhance our brand recognition, extend our product capabilities and gain additional market share".

"Our order mix is expected to continue shifting toward the cloud, which combined with strategic investments in sales, marketing and development is expected to reduce our reported profitability from a near-term perspective. However, we're confident in the long-term viability of our business model, and our ability to generate shareholder value. We're addressing a multi-billion dollar market opportunity, and we're taking focused action to grow the business for long-term financial success driven by increasing recurring revenue," concluded Brown.

Jabra ANZ has announced a comprehensive education and sales program that will benefit up to 300 partners across the region.

The Jabra WIN Partner Program will allow access to online training modules via the new Ecademy and offer lead generation opportunities and tools through the new PartnerNet portal, as well as give details on product roadmaps, pre-launch announcements and product demonstrations.

With Jabra's leading global position in the hands-free communications industry and the projected growth in Unified Communications (UC), Jabra is looking to offer valued local partners greater support in 2012.

According to Fulvio Toniotti, Managing Director - Jabra ANZ, the WIN Partner Program is designed to focus on the customer throughout the entire buying process to give them a superior experience with Jabra partners.

"Jabra is very proud to mark the beginning of 2012 with the launch of our WIN Partner Program, demonstrating our strong and ongoing commitment to our channel partners. We’ve developed this program to ensure that we continue to deliver real business benefits to our resellers, integrators and influencers," he said.

"With this Program, we wanted to make it easy for our customers to choose the right headset partners by segmenting our partners into categories as well as proving extra support to those partners who have expertise in the rapidly growing areas of UC and Contact Centre solutions," he added.

In addition to account management support, product demonstrations and sales and marketing tools, the new e-learning portal features modules such as sales-specialist certification for UC and Contact Centers. Benefits are based on a partner’s level of commitment to Jabra, with Gold being the highest level. Gold partners receive exclusive insights into new products, gain access to partner seminars and are offered co-branding opportunities.

The WIN Partner Program is consistent with the company’s philosophy of ‘partnering for success', having been developed in close collaboration with Jabra’s global partners and based on their insight into the needs and challenges of today's headset customers.

Leading Australian ICT infrastructure solutions and services company, UXC Connect has announced that it has achieved a first in contact centre solutions for businesses in Australasia by integrating the Genesys Skills Assessor, Genesys Workforce Management and Genesys Intelligent Workload Distribution to work as one business solution.

Working with leading Australian internet provider iiNet, UXC Connect has successfully implemented the solution into a pilot team of 250 agents located at the telco’s contact centres in Perth, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand.

The pilot, which commenced last month and will continue for 6 weeks, allows tasks and knowledge tests to be automatically delivered to agents at times of low call volumes by sending an alert advising that a task needs to be completed all with minimum impact to contact centre operations.

Caitriona Hayes, Head of Human Resources iiNet says that the strategic timing and integration of the trial program, greatly assisted in delivering the updated training resources the company needed as it launched new products into the market.

“This trial has given iiNet the capability to mobilise quickly on our latest product launch to ensure our people have all the information to provide our customers the best solutions and as always, awesome customer service,” said Hayes.

By using the Genesys Skills Assessor, UXC Connect’s customised solution can determine an operator’s potential skills or knowledge gaps and it can then provide employees with the training they need in these knowledge areas. The integration of Genesys Workforce Management (WFM) can forecast how many staff require further training, which is then delivered to the employee at a time that will not inconvenience other employees or the contact centre customers.Further integration with Genesys Intelligent Workload Distribution (IWD) ensures the efficient delivery of consistent customer service by optimising the routing of calls and tasks across an integrated pool of resources, ensuring increased customer time and reducing the impact of the task times for the contact centre team.

In the UK, leading performance optimisation solutions provider, Silver Lining Solutions, with whom Genesys has a long-standing OEM relationship, has implemented the software for leading telecoms providers O2 and BT. In both cases, the contact centres have seen impressive results with 02 achieving average reductions of 50 per cent in training time and 25 per cent in transferred calls, as well as significant increases in training efficiency and first call resolution rates.

UXC Connect, CEO Ian Poole said that the pilot program with iiNet is a great example of how UXC Connect is working with its partners to deliver positive customer outcomes with measurable business results.

“This is a great result for UXC Connect and our Strategic Partner Genesys and it demonstrates our ability to deliver innovative and industry leading solutions to our customers,” said Poole. “It is yet another example of our experience in developing Australian-first solutions and working with our partners to customise existing solutions to meet our customers evolving needs – in this case the value for iiNet is the complete custom integration of the contact centre solutions to deliver a strong return on investment that reduces impact on workflow within the organisation.”

Resolve has been appointed to the Western Australian (WA) Government’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Common Use Agreement (CUA) 14008. The CUA 14008 is an agreement for all WA public authorities purchasing ICT services, and allows government buyers to procure services from suitably qualified and experienced consulting organisations.

Resolve successfully qualified under both the ICT Project Management and Business Solution Services categories which include the establishment, implementation, management, maintenance and support of corporate applications.

Chris Morison, CEO said “Resolve is pleased to be recognised and selected as a government endorsed supplier in WA. This is a major step forward for us in this region and allows government departments to work with Resolve to directly procure our services.” Mr Morison continued to say that “WA is an important market for Resolve, and we expect to see further growth as we continue to expand our product offerings in line with customer needs.”

Resolve has significant experience working with State and Federal Government, supplying highly regarded Dynamic Case Management solutions to agencies such as the Western Australian Ombudsman, Department of Communities (QLD), Department of Justice (VIC), and Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

Tyreright, the Australian-owned company specialising in tyre sales and fitment have chosen livepro®, the knowledge management solution by IMC Communications to support their knowledge management and growth plans.

With 34 Tyreright stores and fast growth expected across every state and territory, Dominic Byrne, Digital Marketing Manager needed a knowledge management system that matched the company’s brand promise of ‘right advice, right service and right choice’.

“If we want to support our stores to strive for operational excellence and superior service, they need to have the right information at hand 24 hours, 7 days a week.”

At first, Tyreright thought they needed to get a knowledge management system custom built and were several months down that path when they considered livepro®.

“With several hundred Tyreright franchisees expected to be operating in the near future, I knew our plans for a custom build wasn’t going to be enough.”

“The tyre retail industry is a very competitive and busy environment, our stores and employees need relevant, accurate and timely information. Whether the information is pushed out from head office or requested by staff, we needed a real-time platform to manage and deliver this. Therefore, I cancelled the custom build project and opted for livepro®,” said Bryne.

Via livepro®, Tyreright employees will access their operations manual, pricing, training, brand guidelines, applications, competitor websites, contacts, promotions, advertising material, documents, forms, media files, legislation and conforming processes.

After only three months of deployment, the livepro® analytics are proving that Tyreright staff are accessing livepro® continuously throughout the day. “This access is having a very positive effect on reducing administration time in all head office departments,” said Bryne.

The University of Sydney (USYD) has chosen Resolve to design and implement their new Enterprise Complaints and Disputes Handling System to overcome consistency, productivity, and compliance issues experienced with their existing system.

USYD currently utilises a number of technologies to host, manage and track complaints and disputes received from the general public, staff and students, with a number of faculties, departments and administrative units utilising their own stand-alone systems to accommodate this process. These systems are limited in their functionality, lack integration across core business systems, and are relatively unsupported. This disparity and lack of functionality presents administrative difficulties in relation to the coordinated recording, management, and tracking of complaints and disputes, as well as USYD’s compliance and reporting obligations.

The implementation of the new Resolve Enterprise Complaints and Disputes Handling System (ECDHS) will address these issues and meet the core business need to standardise the complaints and disputes management process and workflows to ensure accuracy, productivity, timely response and reporting.

Resolve will provide USYD with automated and standardised workflow management capability. The system will include web-based technology to facilitate online lodgement, and will be able to interface to complimentary USYD systems such as TRIM, Microsoft Outlook and SharePoint. Resolve’s centralised and secured data management infrastructure will ensure access to data is restricted to the applicable business unit, and will only be made available to individual users on a ‘need to know’ basis. Greater reporting functionality will allow for better management and operational decision making and compliance.

Resolve’s experience and expertise in the education sector is growing with implementations in the Department of Education and Training QLD (Ethical Standards Unit and Legal and Administrative Law Branch) and Victoria’s Merit Protection Boards (part of the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development).

Unity4, outsourced at home call centre and technology provider is expanding it’s Surry Hills office to help manage it's rapid growth.

Despite the tough economic environment the Unity4 group has continued to grow strongly with company revenue up by over 25% last year.

"As the market matures clients are more willing to accept the concept of an at- home call centre," said Dan Turner CEO of the group. “The evidence for this can be seen by both Virgin Australia and The NSW electoral commission taking on major projects with the group." "For Virgin we provide overflow during periods of disruption for the airline such as the Queensland Floods and the recent volcanic ash cloud. For the electoral commission we ran the Ivote registration campaign for the recent NSW elections."

Unity4 has also seen other clients take them on for crisis response due to the rapid scalability of the business.

Additionally the Unity4 group has made major inroads in the "cloud based" technology provision through its pay per use contact centre platform, Rapport.

"We see this area as one of major growth because of the flexibility we can provide clients", says Dan. "Because we come from an outsourcing background our technology is not only excellent in terms of moving calls around but is also expert in enabling the agent after that ultimate moment of truth, the hello moment"

The Unity4 group has signed a major product deal with Optus for the reselling of it’s technology and has also recently appointed resellers for the technology in the UK. Because of it's excellence in handling complex campaigns the Rapport platform has mad good inroads into the financial services industry and was one of Australia’s fastest growing companies based on the rankings of BRW magazine.

"I just returned from the largest call centre expo in Europe and we are very confident the Rapport technology is at least on a par with any other global provider," says Dan.

Exciting times ahead it seems…

The Innovations team in Frenchs Forest on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, one of Australia’s largest mail order shopping companies have put in the groundwork for the upcoming Christmas rush. With Australia and NZ wide catalogues mailing over September and October the busy inbound contact centre (fielding calls, emails, fax, snail mail and soon to be launched web chat) has prepared and expanded to meet the increased demand of over triple their usual call volumes in the pre-Christmas period.

Preparations began with participation in the ATA Contact Centre of the Year awards and although unsuccessful, the team learnt many valuable lessons from this national benchmarking exercise. Management participation at G-Force (including FQ presentations) has stimulated interest and progress in workforce optimisation. Inductions over the last 2 months have boosted the base-line permanent team as well as the casual team. Renovations to create 15 extra seat spaces have been completed. Redecoration of individual and team workspaces reflects best practice and latest research into workplace psychology around personalising work areas and increased productivity. The stage is set for the annual Christmas call fest … bring it on!

NZ Post-owned digital directory and networking site Localist has deployed True Cloud contact centre technology from IPscape for its new contact centre operations.  The solution is being used to handle all inbound and outbound calls from its recently established Auckland-based 45-seat contact centre, and is integrated with Localist’s salesforce.com system.  This means call centre agents have detailed information about customers at their fingertips when interacting with them over the phone. 

The business selected IPscape to establish cloud contact centre operations as it needed to set up its contact centre quickly, and wanted a system that could be configured and updated as needed in real-time.  Localist also wanted a flexible solution that could easily be expanded to cope with varying peaks of caller demand and would scale in line with business growth.

IPscape’s True Cloud offering met these requirements as the solution was deployed in a matter of days and was configured and customised without needing an in-house IT team to manage the process.  The cloud-based approach also means Localist can quickly increase the number of call centre agents by recruiting homeworkers, as all they need is a PC with an Internet connection.  Insight on how the call centre is performing is sent out to executives via iPhones, Android phones or tablets, reducing the need for managers to be on site at all times.

IPscape’s technology has played an important role in supporting business growth after Localist was established six months ago.  Since then, Localist has got over 45,000 registered businesses on board and is achieving 20 per cent month-on-month growth in online directory visits. 

Localist Head of Technology, Ken Holley said: “Building our systems from scratch meant we could first think about the needs of our customers and then consider how best to meet their requirements through IT.  IPscape’s cloud-based offering was the perfect fit as it can be deployed in a matter of days rather than months and offers long-term low total cost-of-ownership. 

Embracing the True Cloud services offered by IPscape has been critical in helping us to move quickly from start-up to established business.  Longer-term, we’re confident that the flexibility and scalability offered by IPscape will allow us to continue to grow the business at pace and ensure customers are delivered the highest possible levels of service.   

We selected IPscape because their understanding of the contact centre environment really impressed us as did their intuitive, easy-to-change software that has allowed us to establish a flexible, agile and cost efficient contact centre.”    

LeadMaster is announcing its support of the Startup America Partnership. The Startup America
Partnership was launched at the White House in response to a call to action to accelerate jobs growth
and inspire entrepreneurship throughout the nation.

Starting today, LeadMaster is pledging US$36 million in support of deploying customer relationship
management (CRM) system licences. Over the next year, LeadMaster will help 10,000 plus Startup
America Entrepreneurs accelerate their sales and marketing using LeadMaster’s cloud-based
application. LeadMaster is giving Startup America Firms the opportunity to jumpstart their business with
a fully functional enterprise level CRM system, and helping them customise it for their business. This
provides a fast start for entrepreneurs, regardless of their current stage of their business - Startup,
Rampup, or Speedup, providing them with a leading edge cloud hosted SaaS (Software as a Service)
sales & marketing automation platform that will accelerate their business. LeadMaster is eliminating the
cost for the first quarter and reducing the cost thereafter.

Since 1998, LeadMaster has been helping organisations jumpstart their sales growth with enterpriseclass
tools that would normally be afforded to only the largest organisations. LeadMaster empowers
entrepreneurs with a comprehensive online (web access) CRM solution that provides lead management,
email marketing, lead nurturing, marketing automation, sales force automation and call center
functionality. LeadMaster resellers are revving up their support teams to help facilitate the
implementation of the CRM system for the Startup America Partnership initiative.
By helping to jumpstart entrepreneurs, LeadMaster believes that Startup America Firms will need to hire
more people to support their growth, thereby supporting the initiative to create high quality jobs in
America.

The LeadMaster team has set an initial goal of 10,000 Startup America entrepreneurs using LeadMaster
in the next 12 months. LeadMaster partners stand ready to configure CRM systems for entrepreneurs
who belong to the Startup America Partnership.

Queensland’s Department of Education and Training (DET) is expanding its use of Resolve, rolling out the Australian owned Dynamic Case Management software solution to its Human Resources Branch (HRB) to manage Ethical Standards and Employee Conduct.

Following the decision to implement Resolve to manage the Right to Information process within its Legal and Administrative Law Branch (LALB), the Department has identified Resolve as the best solution to also manage the Ethical Standards and Employee Conduct processes, which include misconduct allegations and investigations; discipline referrals; secondments and suspensions; and appeals, advice and enquiries.

Currently, the Ethical Standards Unit (ESU), Workforce Relations (WREL) and Workforce Review (WREV) business units of the HRB manage complaints through three separate out-dated Microsoft Access databases and a myriad of other ad-hoc systems and processes. The management of workflow using the existing database is completely manual and time consuming, resulting in significant inefficiencies and insufficient information being recorded. The available reports are out-dated and do not support basic statistical data analysis required for high level reporting, with significant manual effort required to manipulate the data to compensate for these reporting limitations. There is no visibility across business units and limited ability to view information about previous or current cases.

The implementation of Resolve is a critical move to ensure that the Department is able to manage the increasingly large volumes of sensitive and significant issues in a more accurate, timely and effective manner. Resolve will streamline the complex business processes into automated workflows, ensuring efficiency, accuracy and consistency in the recording, investigation and resolution processes, and enable the improvement of current service delivery. The DET will achieve a homogenous approach to case management throughout the various business units of Department, and align its complaints management practices with leading industry standards.

The new system will provide a central knowledge repository for managing all matters, giving visibility across the all business units and cases. Resolve will deliver seamless and secure access to important case information across multiple areas of the organisation, provide secure remote access, and integrate with external entities more efficiently. Resolve will fulfil the Department’s legislative obligations, including the mandated reporting requirements, and give the DET a strong and flexible system that will grow with them moving forward.

Resolve’s Dynamic Case Management solution is successfully being used to manage Ethical Standards and Employee Conduct in a number of other organisations around the country, including the Ambulance Service of NSW and Fire and Rescue NSW.

ABOUT RESOLVE: Established in 1994, Resolve is an Australian owned and operated global provider of Dynamic Case Management solutions – be that case management, complaints, feedback, incidents, membership, and other similar applications. Resolve is a flexible and powerful application that has captured the attention of a wide user base including utilities, FMCG, automotive, health, telecommunications and transport industries, and is used as core business system by numerous Government Departments and Ombudsman’s Offices across Australia and abroad. Resolve has a single purpose to deliver flexible solutions that meet its customers’ requirements.

Aegis Australia and its work for Victorian public transport agency Metlink was honoured last night, being named winner in the prestigious 2011 Government Contact Centre Excellence Awards 2011 hosted by the Customer Contact Management Association.

The awards recognise the achievements of contact centres and individuals at the cutting edge of the industry.

Aegis beat off strong competition from the likes of Centrelink, Adelaide City Council, WorkCover NSW and the Queensland Government Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation.

Aegis has been Metlink’s call centre operator for the past five years thus showcasing long term customer relationship. The transport provider was looking at enhancing their end user experience in a more cost-effective manner therefore partnered with Aegis to manage their call centre function.

Aegis manages answers 1.4 million interactions annually on behalf of Metlink, between 6am and midnight, seven days a week.

David Attwood, general manager of customer service at Metlink, said: “We are delighted with this win. We chose Aegis because we believed they would successfully deliver the level of service we demand for our customers while providing great value for money.

"As well as the financial benefits of outsourcing, Aegis brings expertise, flexibility, efficiency and innovation, providing a seamless customer experience for public transport users in Victoria."

"Research tells us that customer satisfaction with our contact centre services consistently rates at over 80%. Customer complaints are low and we frequently receive compliments from our customers."

The vast majority of calls to the centre (93%) are from passengers seeking information. The First Call Resolution of these calls is a huge 99%.

Aegis Sales and Marketing Vice President, Clifton Warren, said that the success of the partnership with Metlink was trust. "The spirit of teamwork that has developed between Metlink and Aegis allows for a joint venture approach to ensure that the contact centre runs at optimum capacity" he said.

Awards that Aegis has won so far in 2011 are:

• The Contact Centre Outsourcing Services Provider of the Year for 2011 by global consulting firm Frost & Sullivan
• One of only 11 firms in Australia and New Zealand to be named in the Aon Hewitt Associates Best Employer list – and the only BPO company
• One of the top five outsourcing companies in Australia and New Zealand in the prestigious International Association of Outsourcing Professionals Global Outsourcing 100.

"The Australian operation has been performing extremely well," Mr Warren said. "With more than two decades of leadership in managing the customer lifecycle, Aegis’ contact centres focus on enhancing the end user experience and thereby improving the customer lifetime value to a brand."

WorkCover's focus on customer service as a leader and innovator has been recognised at the prestigious Asia-Pacific Government Contact Centre Excellence Awards.

The Government Contact Centre Awards acknowledge the achievement of the highest level across local, state and federal agencies and government departments in the Asia-Pacific.

WorkCover NSW CEO Lisa Hunt said the customer service centre based at Gosford won the overall award for customer contact industry achievement competing with 12 finalists that included Centrelink, Metlink, Meridian, four local Council’s, and two state government departments.

“The WorkCover Customer Contact Centre won an award for its innovative Wellness Project designed to assist our team members to develop the necessary skills to deal with difficult calls and customers who are in distress," Ms Hunt said.

“The Wellness Project aims to enhance the emotional wellbeing of our team while supporting them to continue to deliver an outstanding service experience for our customers. “The project enabled the team to learn the best communication skills for a given situation, building emotional resilience while showing empathy and compassion to our customer. “As a result the WorkCover Customer Service Centre team continues to successfully manage a high volume of calls,” she said.

WorkCover’s Customer Service Centre has a general hotline for all enquiries on work health and safety, workers compensation insurance as well as enquiries from injured workers about their compensation claims.

The Centre handles around more than 18000 calls and 1000 emails per month on a range of issues including work health and safety licensing, regulatory obligations, workplace safety breaches and workers compensation premium requirements.

Around 900 enquiries per month are in relation to workers compensation disputes such as benefit payments and injury management with a resolution rate of 84 per cent.

This is the third time the WorkCover Assistance Service has been recognised for its outstanding customer service at the Asia-Pacific Government Contact Centre Excellence

Interactive Intelligence Group Inc. (Nasdaq: ININ), a global provider of unified IP business communications solutions, has been positioned by Gartner in the leaders quadrant of its 2011 Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure, Worldwide(1) report .

The Gartner report, which can be obtained compliments of Interactive Intelligence by visiting www.inin.com/MQ , provides an analysis of vendors in the market based on their ability to execute and completeness of vision.

“We believe our leaders quadrant position in the Gartner report emphasizes our long-standing commitment to contact centres, helping them differentiate their businesses by delivering the best customer service possible,” said Interactive Intelligence founder and CEO, Dr. Donald E. Brown. “With the latest version of our IP communications software suite just announced, we continue to raise the bar with features that help contact centers further increase their visibility into customer interactions, while offering more scalable, reliable and cost-effective delivery options, whether multisite, premise, hosted, or hybrid.”

According to Gartner, leaders in its Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure report are “high-viability vendors with broad portfolios, significant market shares, broad geographic coverage, a clear vision of how contact center needs will evolve and a proven track record of delivering contact center products. They are well-positioned with their current product portfolio and likely to continue delivering leading products. Leaders do not necessarily offer a best-of-breed solution for every customer requirement. However, overall their products are strong and often have some exceptional capabilities. Additionally, these vendors provide solutions that present relatively low risk.”

In 1997 Interactive Intelligence introduced its single-platform, all-in-one IP communications software suite, Customer Interaction Center ™ (CIC ), to deliver multichannel applications minus the cost and complexity introduced by multipoint products. CIC’s SIP-based platform includes applications for contact center agents and supervisors, as well as unified communications applications for business users. It can be deployed via a premise or cloud-based model, and supports multisite contact centers and those with work-at-home agents.

“We plan to further secure our market-leading position by executing on several key initiatives this year,” Brown said. “These include our continued move up-market, additional investments in our cloud-based solution, more effective penetration in key geographies, and enhancements to our vertical offerings.”

Jabra ANZ today launched four headsets developed for the growing Unified Communications (UC) market, featuring the industry’s first corded UC headset with a behind-the-ear wearing style and discreet form factor for video conferencing and easy portability.

The Jabra UC VOICETM series is specifically designed for organisations looking to cost-effectively deploy headsets across their workforce to accommodate different working styles and environments - without compromising on quality.

Today, office communication takes place via different devices and media types – telephone land lines, mobile phones, video conferencing, email and soft phones. UC brings together all these devices and interfaces into one single integrated application, for easier and more effective communication.

Fulvio Toniotti, Managing Director - Jabra ANZ, said the new headset series is the perfect fit for the growing number of Australian businesses turning to UC, with the local market expected to increase by almost 50 per cent over the next five years, according to Frost & Sullivan.

“We are seeing a burgeoning trend towards Unified Communications as more and more Australian’s adopt conferencing services to communicate – in fact, the conferencing market alone in this country is set to increase by over 70 per cent by 2015,” said Mr Toniotti.

“At Jabra we are committed to delivering powerful and economical UC solutions – the UC Voice series is easy to use, durable, features superb audio and comes from Jabra’s extensive experience in this space,” he added.

The new Jabra UC Voice series comes in four different designs, with clear wideband sound, a noise reduction microphone and intuitive call-control unit with quick access to answer, end, mute and volume adjustment controls directly from the headset as well as Plug-and-play USB connectivity.

With so many new users coming from a traditional desk phone environment, the single most important factor for the successful deployment and adoption of UC technology is the headset, which completes the experience. Jabra’s new series of easy-to-use UC headsets pave the way for faster end-user adoption of the technology.

With its new Jabra UC VOICETM series, Jabra builds on a long tradition of user-driven innovation and development of high-performance headset solutions. As the first company to have headsets optimised for Microsoft’s Office Communicator, Jabra has a history of maximising the benefits of UC with headsets that are comfortable, easy to use and at the forefront of the development.

Key features

• Dedicated to UC voice deployments
• Easy to deploy and maintain
• Superior sound clarity
• Fast user adoption
• Four designs to accommodate different need and preferences
• Two year global warranty
• Fast return on UC investment

To learn more about the Jabra UC VOICE series or where to buy, please visit www.Jabra.com.

The Social Media and Voice of Customer Analytics solution aggregates and analyzes social media (10+ forums including Facebook and Twitter) and other textual customer feedback messages from various sources such as CRM notes, Feedback Surveys and Call Center notes. It extracts sentiments relevant to the business, prioritizes messages and allows the business to respond to social media messages in real-time. “ Our Unified Customer Experience Analytics is a very compelling solution for organizations wanting to differentiate on service and collaborate with their customers. We have extensive capabilities to extract actionable business insights from Email, Chat, Call Centre, IVR, Portal , CRM, Social Media and Surveys. Our Voice of Customer Analytics (VoC) solution with Sentiment Analytics capability helps organizations spot and respond to customer requirements and pain points very quickly” said D. Ayappane , Managing Director of Metrica Systems.

Customers continue to add more channels to the existing 16 channels of interactions such as voice, IVR, chat, email, service portal, social media, survey, SMS, video, remote support, blogs, forums, news, reviews, retail outlets and mail. It is really challenging for companies to listen to all the channels of interactions to understand the customer experience and provide timely feedback to customer care operations, sales and marketing teams for taking corrective actions. Metrica Systems cross-channel analytics solution precisely addresses this challenge by unifying the performance data from disparate sources and analyzing the same using advanced analytics and text mining techniques to deliver actionable insights.

MeriTalk (www.meritalk.com), the government IT network, today announced the results of the “Uncle Sam at Your Service: 2011 Federal Customer Experience Study,” which found that despite year-over-year improvement, just 31 percent of Americans are very satisfied with Federal customer service. Underwritten by RightNow, this new report comes out shortly after the White House released Executive Order 13571 in April 2011, calling for agencies to streamline Federal service delivery and improve customer service. The second annual study reveals that 79 percent of Americans believe the Federal government can improve customer service and that making it easier to determine where to go for an answer is the number one area Federal agencies should focus on to improve.

According to the study, Americans believe Federal agencies are making progress toward these goals. Thirty-one percent report they are very satisfied with Federal service this year, up from 24 percent in 2010. Americans say they see the biggest improvements in agency responsiveness and consistency – two attributes they consider key to the customer service experience. Leading agencies, such as the Social Security Administration and Department of Education, set the bar with more than half of customers reporting exceptional service.

While Federal agencies are moving in the right direction, Americans still indicate a significant gap between their current experiences and their customer service expectations. Four out of five Americans still believe the Federal government can improve customer service (83 percent in 2010 and 79 percent in 2011).

Private sector service also continues to outrank Federal service. Forty-four percent of Americans are very satisfied with the service they receive from private companies, compared to the 31 percent who are very satisfied with agency service. In his executive order, President Obama directs Feds to, “learn from what is working in the private sector and apply these best practices to deliver services better, faster, and at lower cost.” To do so, the report suggests agencies must close the gap in the areas Americans value most – responsiveness, courtesy and professionalism, and issue resolution.

Above all, Americans want Feds to make information more accessible and faster to find. Americans feel that Federal agencies should focus on making it easier to determine where to find an answer (45 percent) and improve response times (42 percent). In order to meet Federal customer expectations and realise the administration’s goals of improved service, the study recommends agencies:

- Simplify Federal data search

- Embrace a multi-channel approach to meet customer communication preferences

- Offer opt-in agency accounts to streamline service delivery

“The White House’s recent executive order answers America’s call and effectively raises the bar on customer service experiences,” says Kevin Paschuck, vice president, Public Sector of RightNow. “It’s time that all Federal agencies see citizens as customers, streamline processes, and improve service delivery to ensure customer satisfaction.”

The “Uncle Sam at Your Service: 2011 Federal Customer Experience Study” is based on a survey of 1,000 Americans in July 2011. The report has a margin of error of +/- 3.10 percent at a 95 percent confidence level. To download the full study, please visit www.meritalk.com/customerservice2011.

Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW) has chosen Australian software developer Resolve to implement its new Case Management solution managing the investigation of employee misconduct cases, as well as the drug and alcohol tests and monitoring processes.

Replacing an existing system of inefficient spreadsheets, Resolve will greatly improve FRNSW’s case tracking process and meet the increasing demand for complex reporting. The system has been designed to cater for the various types of cases FRNSW manages, and tailored workflows will facilitate the case assessments ensuring that the correct investigation and approval processes are met in a timely fashion.

Workplace Standards is the first department within FRNSW to roll out Resolve, and it is envisaged additional departments will follow suit in the near future. The implementation at FRNSW further extends Resolve’s footprint in Australia’s emergency services organisations. Already used within the Professional Standards and Conduct, Death and Disability, and Health and Wellness units within the Ambulance Service of NSW, Resolve has a strong understanding of the unique requirements of the emergency services industry, spanning employee misconduct, employee care and ethical standards management. Resolve is actively pursuing new business opportunities in emergency services within other states.

The FRNSW is one of the world’s largest urban fire and rescue services and is the busiest in Australia, with a network of 338 fire stations across the State, more than 6,900 firefighters, approximately 6,000 community fire unit members, and 418 administrative and trades staff. FRNSW manages fire emergencies in NSW’s major cities and towns, and responds to rescues, hazardous materials incidents and possible terrorist activities across the State.

ABOUT RESOLVE: Established in 1994, Resolve is an Australian owned and operated global provider of Dynamic Case Management Solutions – be that cases, complaints, incidents, feedback, membership, or other similar applications. Resolve is a flexible and powerful application that has captured the attention of a wide user base including utilities, FMCG, emergency services, automotive, health and transport industries, and is used as core business system by numerous Government Departments and Ombudsman’s Offices across Australia and abroad. Resolve has a single purpose to deliver flexible solutions that meet its customers’ requirements.

The KLM mobile site is now receiving more than 20,000 visits per day as travellers increasingly rely on smartphones to check-in and find answers to their questions while on the move. KLM’s mobile site allows passengers to book flights, check-in, check flight status, and, with RightNow CX Intent Guide, receive easy and quick access to answers to their queries. Using advanced natural language search technology, Intent Guide understands exactly what website visitors are looking for and immediately delivers high-value, relevant content. For example, a passenger who would like to find out about the leg space in the specific seat class they have purchased might type ‘long legs’ into the search box. This passenger will instantly get an answer about the space for all different seats, which would include the seat they purchased.

KLM has used RightNow CX Intent Guide on their corporate web site since 1997, and extending RightNow Intent Guide to their mobile web interface was the next critical step to continuing to elevate their customer experience. KLM’s passengers expect the same customer experience via their smartphones as when searching via their laptop or PC. The consistency between experiences means that customers are left feeling positive about the brand.

“We’re aiming for 10 percent of our overall online visits to occur on the mobile site. To achieve this goal, we must deliver an excellent customer experience every time customers interact with us,” says Rob Zwerink, director of e-development at KLM.

With events such as extreme snowy conditions across Europe last winter and the volcanic ash cloud from Iceland driving demand for instant support information, KLM has high expectations for the mobile site. Zwerink concludes, “Mobile is one of the most important channels for us now, and we have invested in technology to ensure our passengers receive an excellent experience on the move. It is critical that we are able to provide the same level of service via smartphones and our website to ensure consistency in brand experience, especially during peak times or events that result in a high-level of online queries.”

Via the KLM website, RightNow has answered more than 3.3 million questions in the past 12 months, delivering instant support in six languages for customers around the world. The continuity of support across both the KLM website and mobile website ensures a superb customer experience.

Aegis BPO SA, a subsidiary of the global outsourcing services company Aegis which is part of the $15 billion Essar Group, will invest in an Enterprise Development programme with SA Commercial Direct, a black-owned BPO service provider. This partnership will focus on business growth, skills transfer, and operational infrastructure enhancements.

“We understand the significant contribution that SME’s provide to the SA economy, especially in terms of job creation. SA Commercial Direct offers existing experience and expertise in the BPO industry, and we can use our infrastructure and skills to help grow the business”, says Kobus van der Westhuizen, Vice President of Aegis BPO SA.

“Aegis is the first large global BPO player to create an Enterprise Development programme with a black-owned South African BPO operator and we welcome this initiative”, says Renee Keeble, Managing Director of SA Commercial Direct. “This partnership provides the opportunity to accelerate our business growth while receiving great support towards operational enhancement and international exposure.” We are confident that this business partnership will create sustainable value for both parties.

Van der Westhuizen added, “The Enterprise Development programme will add to our company’s BEE credentials and transformation agenda. This commitment is captured with measureable performance targets that will embody hard work by all parties for tangible deliverables”.

“SA Commercial is one of the best run smaller BPO companies in South Africa and Aegis is a leading global BPO player. This is going to be a very powerful partnership and will enjoy much success. I hope it is the start of a number of such collaborations and we will see more SMEs sharing best practice with the more established operators”, commented Gareth Pritchard – CEO BPeSA Western Cape.

Cyara Solutions, a pioneer of next-generation premise and cloud solutions for simulating, testing and monitoring interactive voice response (IVRs) and contact center systems and applications, today announced that US Airways (NYSE: LCC), one the United States’ leading airline carriers, implemented the Cyara Solution Suite to ensure the successful deployment and upgrade of their customer reservation and frequent flyer automated and assisted-service systems.

US Airways is now using Cyara to test and simulate callers’ experiences with airline reservation support as customers make new reservations, confirm or change flights and access preferred member mileage support in both self- and assisted-service scenarios. Initial results post Cyara implementation include significant time and resource savings on quality assurance (QA) test efforts; testing resource requirements dropped from 3 people testing over two to three days to one person in four hours using Cyara’s automated solution.

Several solutions were reviewed, and Cyara offered the most complete, mature solution for US Airways’ testing needs-- IVR simulation and testing; agent routing; and CTI simulation, testing and monitoring -- on non-proprietary hardware, at the right price point.

The successful deployment proves Cyara capable of handling US Airways’ requirements of end-to-end testing -- simulating a caller entering the voice system and traversing the established paths, exercising the data integration and agent routing.

The Cyara Solution Suite provides a complete suite of products for testing speech-enabled IVRs and contact center applications from initial deployment through subsequent modifications, fine-tuning and ongoing operations in production to ensure exemplary system operation and customer experience.

“We are extremely pleased US Airways is successfully using Cyara for their IVR and contact center simulation and testing needs,” says Alok Kulkarni, CEO, Cyara. “Their initial results in time and resource savings are consistent with what is experienced across our entire customer base. We view our selection and successful deployment at US Airways as a another big step in our continual efforts to address Fortune 500 companies’ customers’ experiences with self and assisted service,” says Kulkarni.

Today announced the Verint Open Innovation Network™, a program that leverages Verint's market-leading Action Intelligence® solutions to create value and increase industry collaboration. Through its Open Innovation Network, Verint provides access to its intellectual property portfolio, enabling organizations that market competitive or complementary solutions to utilize Verint's patented technologies in their own offerings. "Behind our success is a long history of innovation that benefits our customers and partners" says Dan Bodner, Verint CEO. "As a market leader, we are committed to ongoing innovation and to enhancing industry collaboration."

In July 2011, TelStrat International, Ltd., a provider of contact center and business call recording solutions, signed a patent license agreement with Verint, becoming a licensee and a participant in the Verint Open Innovation Network.

According to Bob Carroll, Telstrat founder and CEO, "This mutually beneficial agreement enables us to provide our customers with industry-leading functionality and enhanced business value. By leveraging Verint's advanced technology patent portfolio, the Verint Open Innovation Network gives TelStrat a unique opportunity to continually strengthen the call recording component of our contact center solution suite."

Implemented by more than 85 percent of Fortune 100 companies, Verint technology comprises proven, advanced Actionable Intelligence solutions that are deployed across industries and around the world by customers in their contact center, branch banking, retail store, back office, public safety, critical infrastructure, service provider and government operations environments. Underlying these market leading solutions are more than 500 Verint patents and patent applications worldwide.

Representing ongoing investment, innovation and leadership across Verint's enterprise workforce optimization (WFO), video intelligence, and communications intelligence and investigative solutions, the growing Verint patent portfolio continues to reinforce the company's strength in identifying market needs and future solutions; developing technology that helps solve real business challenges; protecting company, customer and partner investments; and providing distinct competitive advantage in today's complex environments.

The Verint Open Innovation Network is an important component of Verint's long-term strategy for protecting its intellectual property rights, providing a mechanism to both safeguard Verint innovations and facilitate intellectual property sharing in order to promote invention and technology advancement industry wide.

"Our Open Innovation Network delivers greater value to Verint stakeholders by further protecting their investments in Verint technology," remarks Peter Fante, Verint Chief Legal and Compliance Officer. "Additionally, by allowing other companies use of the innovations that we introduced over nearly two decades, the program can provide significant benefits for those companies and their customers."

Growth of Verint's Open Innovation Network is expected to expand competitive licensing of Verint's protected technologies and patent rights, reduce the incidence and costs of patent infringement, and encourage collaboration and innovation on an industry scale. Additional information about the Verint Open Innovation Network can be found on the Verint website at www.verint.com/OIN.

At a glance:

• G-Force brings together 900 customers, partners and experts
• Customer service innovation takes centre stage from CTI to Social Engagement
• Genesys Conversation Manager sets next wave of customer service innovation
• Event features customer sessions, including Australia’s biggest brands: Telstra, Vodafone, Shangri-La Hotels, Jetstar Airways and News Ltd

Melbourne – August 24, 2011 -- As it kicks off its 11th annual G-Force customer event in Melbourne, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise is celebrating 20 years of innovation in customer service software and contact centres built around its Genesys business. Founded in 1990 with the first computer telephony integration (CTI) offering on the market, the Genesys applications have been at the forefront of customer service and contact centre best practices ever since.

Through customer presentations and real-world examples, G-Force Melbourne will look at the major innovations and industry milestones over the past 20 years and then take attendees into the future, showcasing the next generation of customer service solutions.

1990s: The arrival of CTI and beginning of the shift to multi-channel contact centres with Genesys Customer Interaction Management (CIM) platform

2000s: Next generation self-service and speech-enabled applications with Genesys Voice Platform and intelligent Customer Front Door(iCFD) applications

2010s: Extending customer service to the back office, mobile devices and social media with Genesys intelligent Workload Distribution (iWD), eServices, and Social Engagement

Genesys 8 Suite drives next wave of customer service innovation

Genesys 8 software addresses critical enterprise needs by enabling a single, coordinated customer conversation across channels and contact points. Conversations made over multiple channels create an improved customer experience through an integrated conversation and context manager that synchronises interactions across multiple customer touch points including in-person, contact centres, Web, mobile devices and social media.

Customer Testimonials

“Caring for customers is one of our key values at Swedbank. Working with Genesys over the past 10 years, we’ve been able to make great advances in our customer service, including delivering a multi-channel banking experience.”
Martin Kedback, Contact Centre Development Manager, Swedbank

“Over the years, we have worked closely with Genesys to bring innovation to our customer service. With Genesys solutions, we created one of the world’s first virtualised contact centers, joining 36 sites across the UK and India and allowing us to effectively manage all of our customer service resources.”
Kim Robertson, Head of Propositions Delivery, BT

“Alcatel-Lucent has always been a strong player in the enterprise market and we applaud their development innovation in their strategic solutions. Alcatel-Lucent has moved ahead with new products in all three parts of their business. Genesys released their G8 suite of software Communications unveiled the OpenTouch architecture, a move in the right direction; and the Network business announced their Data Center vision anchored by the OmniSwitch 10K and 6900 products.”
Chris Barnard, Telecoms & Networking, IDC

“For over 20 years, Genesys software has changed the customer conversation for companies across the globe. As we’ve rolled out new Genesys solutions with the continued release of our G8 suite this year, now more than ever we are driving highly individualised consumer conversations - across new media and new devices, including Facebook and Twitter, as well as iPhones and Android smart phones.”
Paul Segre, President, Applications Group, Alcatel-Lucent

Genesys hosted solutions, based on open standards, offer service providers and their customers a secure, scalable, cost-effective environment Melbourne, August 24, 2011 -- Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced that its suite of hosted contact centre solutions passed a significant milestone, reaching more than 1000 customers worldwide who have deployed Genesys applications in hosted or software as a service (SaaS) environments. Enterprise customers are driving a growing popularity in hosted or SaaS models for customer service, benefiting from reduced deployment risks and greater flexibility for ensuring service level objectives are met.

Alcatel-Lucent’s Genesys suite of contact centre solutions, available globally, can be deployed as a fully hosted or SaaS solution via a network of service provider partners. Service providers who offer Genesys hosted solutions to their customers benefit from a modular, scalable framework and open platform that allows them to customise and deliver value added services via a secure multi-tenant architecture. Today, more than 20 partners deliver Genesys solutions in cloud-based models, including: Deutsche Telecom, Echopass, Orange Business Services, Qwest, Teleperformance, Telstra, West, Working Solutions, and Verizon.

Enterprises benefit from a hosted solution by minimising or even eliminating capital expenditures by paying only for what is needed on a per port, per seat or per minute usage basis to suit their specific needs. Since enterprises pay only for actual use, they no longer have to purchase extra capacity to meet peak periods, eliminating the cost associated with in-house solutions where resources may sit idle in slower periods.

“The hosted and SaaS market is seeing a tremendous amount of growth. Hosted provides a way to extend the enterprise and enable employees outside the contact centre to play a role in customer service,” says Ian Jacobs, Senior Analyst, Customer Interaction with Ovum. “Hitting such a milestone is a clear indication of the value to enterprises and more importantly to their customers, of a well integrated on-demand solution.”

By using hosted services, businesses have rapid and affordable access to new technologies as soon as they become available. Current customer investments are protected since the platform can be integrated with existing environments and third-party applications because Genesys hosted solutions are based on open standards.

“We’re thrilled that our Genesys suite has gone beyond the 1000th hosted customer milestone and our hosted service provider partners continue to add to that number every day as their customers realise the financial and operational benefits this model offers them,” said Eric Tamblyn, Vice President Product Marketing, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise. “With such a large acceptance of our SaaS and hosted approach, we now are able to address a wide range of vertical markets and customer service needs.”

Alcatel-Lucent has announced that market research firm Gartner, Inc. placed Alcatel-Lucent’s Genesys business in the Leaders Quadrant of its report, "Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure, Worldwide" published June 27, 2011 and authored by Drew Kraus, Steve Blood and Geoff Johnson.

According to the report, “leaders are high-viability vendors with broad portfolios, significant market shares, broad geographic coverage, a clear vision of how contact centre needs will evolve and a proven track record of delivering contact centre products. They are well-positioned with their current product portfolio and likely to continue delivering leading products. Leaders do not necessarily offer a best-of-breed solution for every customer requirement. However, overall their products are strong and often have some exceptional capabilities. Additionally, these vendors provide solutions that present relatively low risk.”

The Genesys G8 software suite from Alcatel-Lucent manages customer interactions over the phone, Web, social media and mobile devices. The G8 software suite addresses critical enterprise needs by enabling a single, coordinated customer conversation across channels and contact points, including the back office and field operations. Genesys software directs more than 100 million customer interactions every day for 4,000 companies and government agencies in 80 countries.

“It is a great honour to be recognised by Gartner as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure worldwide,” said Nicolas de Kouchkovsky, chief marketing officer for Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise. “As consumer innovation continues to change the conversation between customers and companies, we remain committed to delivering open solutions that enable companies to dynamically engage their customers, including social media, workforce optimization and mobility applications.”

Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant for Contact Centre Infrastructure, Worldwide” report is available
compliments of Alcatel-Lucent at the following link: http://www.genesyslab.com/news/analysts-coverage 

Genesys solutions a three-time winner of Asia Pacific strategic award

Melbourne, August 24, 2011 -- Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced it received the 2011 Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific ICT Award for Contact Center Applications Vendor of the Year. This award was presented earlier this month for outstanding performance in the Asia Pacific ICT industry.

According to Frost & Sullivan, Alcatel-Lucent was recognized for its robust and comprehensive Genesys solutions portfolio, which includes new solutions for social media engagement, workforce optimization and digital task management. Frost & Sullivan also noted the closer integration of Genesys and Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise solutions, combined with exceptional customer mind-share and a strong customer engagement model, all which facilitated its business to grow faster than the overall industry in Asia Pacific over the past year.

“Demonstrating strong leadership, the Genesys business achieved the highest growth in market share while delivering on its Dynamic Customer Engagement vision, setting itself apart from the competition,” said Krishna Baidya, Industry Manager, Asia Pacific ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan. “The local Genesys team has earned an enviable position as a trusted advisor to its customers across diverse verticals, equally for both small to medium sized business and large enterprises and its strength in hosted contact centers, adds a key differentiator in clinching this award.”

“The Genesys solutions, combined with the passion and commitment our people have with our customers in APAC, helps us innovate and deliver breakthrough results in customer engagement and enables us to be recognized as the APAC leader in customer service applications and contact centers,” said Michael McBrien, Senior Vice President, APAC, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise. “It’s this level of focus that meets the rising demand for customer care and focus businesses in APAC have on improving the quality of the customer experience.”

The 2011 Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific ICT Awards, held in Singapore, recognizes companies in the information and communications industry that have risen above the competition and demonstrated outstanding performance across the Asia Pacific region.

The Genesys software suite from Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise manages customer interactions over phone, Web, social media and mobile devices. It handles customer conversations across multiple channels and resources -- self-service, assisted-service and proactive outreach -- fulfilling customer requests and optimizing customer care goals while efficiently using resources. Genesys software directs more than 100 million customer interactions every day for 4,000 companies and government agencies in 80 countries. These companies and agencies leverage their entire organization, from the contact center to the back office, while dynamically engaging their customers.

The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) will expand its customer service delivery to include more social media and online technology as it works to widen its tourism message to new markets.

The TAT says its Amazing Thailand Facebook page has attracted 201,392 followers to date. "We will also apply customer relationship management on many channels such as websites, social networks, mobile applications and games," TAT's Thapanee Kiatphaibool said. "Good CRM will help us collect data to create more targeted marketing campaigns in future."

Thapanee said TAT would launch country-specific marketing campaigns. A recent campaign saw the TAT collaborate with local travel agents in China to promote Thailand destinations on well-known blogs. "More online campaigns should be launched as international tourists look up information from the internet," she said.

Interactive Intelligence, a global provider of unified IP business communications solutions, is releasing the next major version of its all-in-one IP communications software suite, Customer Interaction Center.

"We designed our upcoming CIC 4.0 release to give contact centres and enterprises significantly increased scalability and reliability, an enhanced user experience, and improved management insight," said Interactive Intelligence ANZ Managing Director, Brendan Maree. "We're particularly excited about our innovative speech analytics application, which gives customers an easier-to-deploy and more cost-effective alternative to what’s currently on the market."

CIC 4.0's new real-time speech analytics application, Interaction Analyzer™, provides real-time keyword-and phrase-spotting on either the customer side, agent side, or both sides of a voice conversation. This real-time capability enables contact centre managers to be alerted to problem interactions, then monitor, coach, or intervene to better satisfy customers and improve agent performance.

Architectural improvements in CIC 4.0 provide significant scalability increases. Metrics associated with these improvements include a more than double increase in the number of automatic call distribution (ACD) enabled agents supported on a single server; a five-time increase in the number of simultaneous interactive voice response (IVR) sessions supported; and a seven-time increase in the number of calls that can be recorded per hour. The company's increase in product scalability is part of its continued move up-market to make CIC a competitive offering for the largest global contact centres.

Another architectural improvement is the elimination of third-party call processing software from CIC and moving all media processing to the company's Interaction Media Server™. With these enhancements, CIC 4.0 becomes a pure application server that can be located at a central data centre with media servers at branch offices, thus creating a private cloud deployment model. This change increases scalability and enables customers to process media locally for improved business continuity and survivability.

CIC 4.0 also includes the addition of Interaction Web Portal™, a new application that enables contact centre outsourcers to provide their clients with secure, branded access and real-time visibility. Outsourcer clients can monitor live calls, listen to call recordings, and view performance reports. Corporate contact centre managers can also use it to give visibility to C-level staff, and agents can access it to monitor their own productivity and proactively help improve customer service.

Additional enhancements in CIC 4.0 include a new Web client, upgraded email handling, more efficient queries of call recordings, and expanded and improved reporting.

CIC 4.0 is planned for general availability in English-speaking countries in Q3 2011.

CIC 4.0 is targeted at mid-size to large contact centres and enterprises, and will be offered through the Interactive Intelligence channel of more than 300 resellers worldwide, and through the company’s direct sales force.

Verint® Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: VRNT) today announced that partner TwoPro will resell, service and support its workforce optimization (WFO) software, including the Impact 360® for Back-Office Operations™ solution.

Adding the proven software from Verint Witness Actionable Solutions® to its strategic portfolio of offerings, TwoPro will make the back-office WFO technology—comprised of volume and data capture, capacity modeling, forecasting and scheduling, strategic planning, application analysis, desktop and process analytics, eLearning, performance management and scorecard capabilities—even more widely available in the Spanish market. In doing so, it can help organizations gain greater visibility into back-office functions that help shape the customer experience, while also providing deep insight into systems use, business processes effectiveness, and other efficiencies like the schedule adherence of staff and other customer service operations employees.

This agreement, which commenced in January 2011, follows continued momentum in the local market to transform back-office operations into a strategic business asset. For companies around the globe, optimizing the performance of back-office functions is an important, yet complex objective that can have a significant impact on customer loyalty and business profitability. Back-office processing issues, such as data entry errors, billing mistakes and workflow delays, can often have a negative impact on operating costs and serve as the underlying cause of call volume spikes in the contact center, commentary on social media channels and ultimately customer dissatisfaction.

These challenges are further complicated by data privacy regulations. The need to manage liability, costs and efficiency is making it necessary for many organizations to retrieve specific customer interactions quickly—while also gaining insight into non-phone activities, such as file management, correspondence, and order processing. With the desktop and process analytics capabilities from Verint, TwoPro can provide organizations in Spain with the ability to capture employee desktop activity across different systems, applications and processes. The end result is often seen in improved efficiency, reduced costs and an enhanced customer experience. The solution also can provide them with the ability to respond to critical compliance and data security requirements, such as those with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

"Back-office workforce optimization helps organizations better maximize their resources, while engaging in effective planning to help ensure positive customer experiences, and ultimately build stronger, longer-lasting relationships," says David Parcell, managing director EMEA, Verint Systems. “The TwoPro mission is to help companies streamline their business processes. Its commitment to delivering advanced consulting services and solutions that help companies achieve measurable return on investment in Spain make it a well-suited partner for helping customers improve performance and efficiency in a challenging market."

"TwoPro will provide critical back-office consulting expertise, making sure the solution is well suited to customers’ requirements and service targetswhile improving operational efficiencies", adds David Sánchez de Miguel, managing partner, TwoPro. "We are very pleased to become a reseller of Impact 360 from Verint. The company has a thorough understanding of the challenges and opportunities faced by organizations in both the front and back office. Our objective is to help customers improve the effectiveness to help maximize their success."

Today, as part of the relaunching of callcentres.net Pty Ltd as Fifth Quadrant Pty Ltd, an announcement was made as to a strategic partnership developed between Fifth Quadrant and the leading global provider of call and contact centre training, The Call Centre School, based in the US. The Call Centre School is recognised globally as the premier provider of contact centre related training programmes from strategy and planning, supervisory skills, workforce planning and quality to front line operation, call handling and sales training.

Dr Wallace, Director of Fifth Quadrant, stated, "We have noted a particular lack of training and investment in the skills of supervisors, workforce planners and quality monitoring staff in Australian and Asia Pacific based contact centres. Additionally, there needs to be a greater level of skill developed in strategy and leadership of contact centres if this region is to retain its leading position in the global contact centre market."

Dr Wallace went on to say, "We have developed our own Service Leaders' Executive Development programmes which focus on service strategy, multi-channel strategy, planning and leadership, however we needed to find an organisation with unmatched credentials in delivering frontline, supervisory and specialist role training for contact centres. We searched globally for a suitable partner and The Call Centre School was unrivalled in its quality, value and success in this area. It is a great privilege for us to bring The Call Centre School programmes to Asia Pacific."

Penny Reynolds, co-Founder of The Call Centre School, stated, "callcentres.net has been recognized as a thought leader and definitive source regarding the state of the call centre industry in the Australian, New Zealand and ASEAN markets. The Call Center School is pleased to be a part of their evolution as they relaunch their brand as Fifth Quadrant. We share their commitment to the development of call centre professionals and the industry overall and look forward to working together for years to come."

The programmes on offer for the Australian, New Zealand and Asian markets can be delivered face to face, via webinar or as online modules. The modules available are targeted toward Executives, Specialists and Frontline staff.

Our Service Leaders’ Executive Development Programme include:

1. Developing an Enterprise Wide Service Strategy
2. Service Leadership Development

Our Service Leaders’ Specialist Development Programme include:

1. Contact Centre Supervision
2. Workforce Management
3. Quality Monitoring and Assurance
Operations and Business Management

Our Service Leaders' Front-line Development Programme include:

1. Frontline Fundamentals
2. Sales Training

Ernst & Young have announced Matt Barrie, Founder and CEO of Freelancer.com, as the Technology Category winner of the 2011 Entrepreneur of the Year for the Eastern Region.

The award marks the second time this year that Mr Barrie has taken this title, having been announced inaugural BRW Entrepreneur of the Year back in March.

The six criteria for selection were entrepreneurial spirit, innovation, personal integrity and influence, financial performance, strategic direction and national and global impact. Mr Barrie was selected as the winner by the Eastern Region panel of esteemed judges, which included Doug Flynn, Non Executive Director of Seven West Media Limited.

Freelancer.com is the world’s largest online outsourcing marketplace that Mr. Barrie founded 2 years ago. To date, Freelancer.com has provided work to over 2.6 million people who have earned $US95m working on over 1.1 million projects.

The award follows a string of successes including winning the Employment Category of the Webby Awards last month. The Webby Awards are based out of the United States, where Mr Barrie is at present, having traveled to accept the award.

 AuraPortal (www.auraportal.com), a global provider of Business Process Management (BPM), has announced today that the consulting firm PFS Grupo has implemented new core business procurement processes for hospital supplies and services at GISPASA (Health Infrastructure Management of Principado de Asturias).

The project's goal was to increase productivity, data quality and operational economy in the working procedures as well as the use and deployment of document management. The solution provides electronic signatures and digital filing for improved document organization and standardization instead of using traditional paper records.

Corporate profits obtained using AuraPortal can be summarized in the reduction of human error, automatic documentation generation with electronic signature, elimination of paper, date and alarm monitoring of critical tasks, integration with other systems and the rapid return on investment. In addition, it allows an easy development of continuous improvement thanks to the versatility of the AuraPortal solution to manage and change processes in real time by users with no need of IT programming.

"The use of AuraPortal has allowed us to manage multiple procurements in parallel with total assurance that everything is going well and on time. We have also achieved 90% of the documentation associated with processes to be automatically generated by the system, providing an advantage to our workload, in addition to being able to leverage digital signatures and reduce paper use. And it has allowed us to keep track of incoming and outgoing digital documents, that allows us to significantly reduce our paper records. In summary, the project has been a great success". Alfonso de Carlos Muñoz, GISPASA General Manager.

The Interactive Intelligence (Nasdaq: ININ) all-in-one IP communications software suite, Customer Interaction Center http://www.inin.com/ProductSolutions/Pages/Customer-Interaction-Center.aspx ™ (CIC) version 3.0, has passed the Joint Interoperability Test Command certification.

CIC's JITC certification makes it compliant with information assurance and interoperability requirements for the Department of Defense Private Branch Exchange 2 classification.

CIC http://www.inin.com/ProductSolutions/Pages/Customer-Interaction-Center.aspx offers open, single-platform architecture, IP PBX switching, and inherent multichannel processing to deliver comprehensive applications -- skills-based routing, interactive voice response, call recording, unified messaging, and more -- without the cost and complexity introduced by multipoint products.

"CIC’s unique architecture, particularly its deep integration to Microsoft components, means reduced integration and simplified management for federal government customers," said Joe Brookman, CEO of BROOKMAN LLC, a government technology services provider that led the Interactive Intelligence certification effort.

DoD customers http://www.inin.com/ProductSolutions/Pages/Solutions-for-Federal-Government.aspx using the JITC-certified CIC software suite benefit from pre-integration with Active Directory, and PKI and Common Access Cards (CAC) for single sign-on to the desktop and telephony services.

Interactive Intelligence offers a proven solution for government agencies http://www.inin.com/ProductSolutions/Pages/Solutions-for-Federal-Government.aspx, having deployed its software suite for more than 4,000 organisations worldwide, including the Department of Defense, Department of Commerce, Department of Labor, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Energy.

"This certification demonstrates our continued commitment to meet and exceed DoD information assurance and interoperability requirements, which began in 2008 with our first JITC certification," said Interactive Intelligence founder and CEO, Dr. Donald E. Brown. "Combined with our dedicated government sales team and long track record of successful government deployments, we offer agencies a deep understanding of their unique technology needs and issues."

StayinFront, Inc., a leading global provider of customer relationship management systems and mobile sales force effectiveness tools, has announced StayinFront TouchCG™, a revolutionary field force system with consumer goods-specific functionality available on Android, iPhone and iPad mobile digital device platforms.

StayinFront TouchCG is the company’s second product to be built on its ground-breaking mobile platform, StayinFront Touch™, which was released earlier this year. The platform provides remote access to StayinFront on-demand CRM solutions across iPhone and iPad mobile digital devices, as well as Android-based phones and tablets, from a single application.

Kerrie-Anne Turner, Vice-President of Asia Pacific and Managing Director Australia of StayinFront, said, “StayinFront has long history of providing the consumer goods industry with innovative tools to increase productivity and efficiency in the field, and StayinFront TouchCG is no exception. Consumer goods companies have had very few options when seeking a field force system that operates on these mobile smartphones and tablets from a company with strong credentials in the industry. They need to look no further.

"StayinFront TouchCG is a consumer goods-specific field force platform that provides access to data and critical functionally on the world's most popular devices. It lowers the cost of entry to the mobile arena. The system is quick and easy-to-use, and teams can be up and running in a matter of weeks," Turner said.

Silah Gulf (Silah), the GCC's most customer-focused contact centre and business process outsourcing (BPO) company, had won the award for 'Best New Outsource Service Provider'(OSP) at the annual Middle East Call Centre 2011 show (MECC) in Dubai, UAE. Underscoring Silah's commitment to delivering an exceptional customer service experience, this is the second award for Silah this year. The company has earlier won the 'Best Contact Centre' at the Customer Service Excellence Summit in Doha in May.

Silah is a joint venture between Bahrain's eGovernment Authority and UK-based Merchants. The company offers consulting, outsourced services and technology solutions for contact centres across the GCC region. Merchants, a Dimension Data Group company, are a leading provider of bespoke outsource contact centre solutions with a proven track record for the past 30 years.

A delightedJoe Tawfik, Chief Executive Officer, Silah commented, "As a new player in the GCC market, we appreciate any accolade that comes our way. It is an honour to stand recognised amongst our industry colleagues from the region and thank the jury from everyone at Silah who’ve worked hard for the past year in establishing this company."

"Working under an ethos that effective customer experience management can lead to growth and market differentiation Silah uses its own unique blend of best practices, powered by UK based BPO Merchants, to help our call centre agents deliver an exceptional customer experience," added Tawfik.

"With expansion plans on the horizon, this is only the beginning for Silah. The best is yet to come," concluded Tawfik.

Dominick Keenaghan, CEO of Insights Middle East and chairman of the awards committee said, "Although it was established just recently, Silah has been very instrumental in putting the e-government of Bahrain in place and turning it into one of the fastest growing new e-government initiatives in the GCC region."

"In addition, our jury believes Silah has provided a quality level of outsourcing services to the local business community that made it a natural step to vote it as the MECC Best New OSP," Keenaghan added.

The annual Middle East Call Centre 2011 show took place from May 31 till June 1. Held in Dubai it offered the region's top call centre professionals a unique, expert-led forum to get up-to-date with the industry's latest trends and developments, discuss common issues, test-drive new technology and re-invigorate their current development plans. Recognised as the premier regional call centre award for the region, the annual MECC Awards Dinner honours outstanding performance and results by the region's top performers.

Melbourne, Australia (May 25, 2011) – Experienced management executive Christopher Luxford has been appointed as the President and Country Head of Aegis Australia following the decision by long-serving chief Denice Pitt to pursue other opportunities.

Mr Luxford will take over the job on June 16. Ms Pitt will continue to be involved with the company, providing ongoing consultation services.

Rajiv Ahuja, President ASEAN and ANZ of Aegis in Australia, said "Ms Pitt has been instrumental in enhancing the enterprise value and developing various verticals of the Aegis business".

Earlier this month, Aegis was named one of the top five outsourcing companies in Australia and New Zealand in the prestigious International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP®) Global Outsourcing 100®.

"The award is testament to the dedication and hard work of Denice, her management team and staff who continue to provide outstanding results for our customers and in turn for our customer’s end users," Mr Ahuja said.

When Aegis acquired UCMS nearly two years ago, Ms Pitt agreed to stay onboard during the transition period. This transition period is now completed and Denice has decided to pursue a new business opportunity.

"She leaves the company in great shape and with our best wishes. The company is a proven leader and a rising star in the region. We are a preferred partner for many blue-chip companies that are looking for improved outsourcing outcomes and have created the platform to take the business to the next level of excellence."

Aegis Australia employs more than 2,000 people in Australia and New Zealand.

Mr Luxford is an experienced senior executive with more than 20 years experience in management innovation, business process consulting and contact centres. He is currently consulting to global giant Cisco as well as Dimension Data and The Aspire Group.

"Christopher has a wealth of experience in our industry and he comes to us at a time when we are growing at a considerable rate," said Mr. Ahuja.

Mr Luxford said: "I am really looking forward to managing Aegis in ANZ. Outsourcing is a growing industry whether it is through call centres or human resource functions. I look forward to continuing Denice’s work in growing the business and creating a great culture."

Consilium Software (“Consilium”), a leading Unified Communications solutions company, today announced the appointment of Niraj Saran, to the position of Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and to lead “Consilium Innovation Technology Labs” (CITL) to build next generation Unified Communication products and enhance the existing portfolio of UniTools. Niraj Saran was previously CTO at UnitedLex, running the Product teams, Operations and IT.

Commenting on Niraj’s appointment, Consilium Chairman & CEO Pramod Ratwani said, “We have made significant progress in our pursuit to be leading Unified communication player with focus on Analytics, Mobility and Virtualization. Niraj’s appointment to lead our product innovation initiatives and launch of CITL is an important milestone in the company’s ambitious product development plans”.

Niraj brings over 20 years of experience in building products and solutions in the UC space for both service provider and enterprise customers. At Microsoft in the United States and India, he was responsible for a number of products and solutions to improve monetization for Microsoft Bing’s group. As Group Manager, Niraj also had responsibility for two significant products in the Unified Communications product-line. Niraj developed the mobile client for Office Communicator on Windows Mobile and also developed v1 of the presence-enabled IP Phone. Prior to that at Openwave, Niraj managed the web and mobile mail teams and built the highly scalable, carrier grade Voice and Video Mail platform. Niraj was also responsible for a very innovative 3G video mail and video portal solution deployed for a European carrier during the Euro 2004. Niraj has held key roles at leading technology companies in Silicon Valley like Lucent and Octel and at start-ups building enterprise voice applications. Niraj was the 2009 winner of the Innovation Award at Microsoft’s India Development Centre. Niraj holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree from BITS, Pilani.

Commenting on his appointment, Niraj said ”Consilium has already established its leadership position as the Unified Communications market leader known for its solutions approach, applications focus and proven track record globally. I’m looking forward to contributing to our ongoing success in delivering high-performance solutions and products that represent leading-edge value to our customers.

Sage, a leading global supplier of business management software solutions to 6.2 million small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) worldwide, has announced that Azzurri Communications Pty Ltd, a leading provider of IP telephony, managed data services and converged networks, has commenced deployment of its integrated Sage ERP and CRM solution.

The decision by Azzurri Communications Pty Ltd to choose Sage to support the company’s fast growing customer base follows an extensive tender evaluation process during which time the company decided to deploy Sage on premise.

Sage replaces Azzurri’s previously deployed Microsoft Dynamics solution which was unable to scale with the growth of the business and would have required considerable customisation to handle the functionality required to handle a fast increasing customer base.

Jon Evans, Managing Director, Azzurri Communications, said, "Sage is highly scalable and will provide an integral role in supporting and providing operational efficiency gains across our sales, support, training and project management business groups."

The combination of Sage ERP Accpac and Sage CRM will help Azzurri Communications to integrate front and back office business processes and workflow enhancing collaboration between departments and boosting customer service by providing employees from across the business with one complete and consistent view of the customer.

Integration of customer data with the company’s new Sage business solution will allow service staff to access critical customer information and buying history usually held within the sales department, enabling the company to resolve customer issues and queries promptly.

Once fully deployed later this year, Sage will ensure that all customer information can be held in one repository enabling the company to easily update each customer interaction, critical for a company which operates a round the clock help desk.

Sage CRM also provides managers and colleagues with visibility on key customer information across the organisation. This removes over-reliance on individual members of staff for key customer information.

In addition, a key feature of the Sage solution are its analytical dashboards which provide easily accessible snapshots of business performance which in turn will help to better analyse, predict, and troubleshoot across the business.

Earlier this month, Azzurri Communications was ranked number 52 on the BRW 2011 Fast Starter List, the latest milestone in 2011 for an annual listing of the 100 fastest-growing small and medium-size businesses by annual revenue growth over three years in Australia.

"One of the real advantages of the Sage system is that we'll be able to keep latching on additional functionality and scale as our business requirements change. This flexibility is important to us. However, part of the success of this deployment to date is due to the efforts of Sage and its business partner, ERP Business Solutions, who have worked effectively to ensure a smooth transition. They are good vendors who really wanted to make this work and we have a really good project team. We look forward to the positive impact that this deployment will have on our business growth in the years ahead," says Evans.

Stellar’s Business Intelligence Administrator was awarded the Support Manager of The Year Award at the Gala Awards Dinner Held at the Palace Hotel in Manchester on Thursday 12th May 2011.

After being nominated for his work in developing Stellar’s business intelligence system Duncan was then short listed and a member of the selection panel visited Stellar on the 4th May 2011 to assess him in the following categories;

• Current role and personal progression
• Performance of the work area Duncan is responsible for
• Recruitment, training and development
• People and communication
• Policies and legislation
• Planning and technology
• Culture

Mary Graham, Stellar's CEO for the UK said; "We at Stellar are very proud of Duncan’s achievements and the work he has done in the past two years has truly changed the way in which our organization works, and this was reflected in the judge's comments.

From real-time dashboards measuring KPI's in every section of the business which update every ten seconds, to script page analytics and data management reports, Stellar's business intelligence tool truly is an award winning system for which Duncan deserves recognition."

Xceed ranks in the annual Global Outsourcing 100® list by the International Association for Outsourcing Professionals® (IAOP®) for the third consecutive year. This list identifies the best outsourcing service providers across the globe, that have demonstrated their expertise to, deliver notable business solutions and made significant contributions to the industry through thought leadership.

The 2011 Global Outsourcing 100® ranks the world's best outsourcing service providers through an evaluation process designed to replicate the process that customers use when selecting providers. The evaluation is conducted by an independent panel of judges led by IAOP Chairman Michael F. Corbett and included key independent outsourcing gurus performing the assessment with the required due diligence. The final ranking is based on a weighted average of size and growth rate, customer references, demonstrated competencies and management capabilities of each company and for the first year all companies were judged together regardless of their size.

IAOP Chairman Michael Corbett and Chair of the judges' panel remarked that "The companies on The Global Outsourcing 100 and The World's Best Outsourcing Advisors lists are proven leaders and rising stars. They are the companies you want to partner with to achieve success and better outsourcing outcomes." The ranking is published in the special feature of the Fortune 500 issue of FORTUNE® magazine.

Despite the fierce competition this year, Xceed managed to be included in the Global Outsourcing 100® ranking for the 3rd consecutive year due to the successful leadership of its executives as well as the efforts of its employees. Dr. Adel Danish, Xceed Chairman & CEO, commented "This is a big achievment for us and it should be attributed to our employees who are the cornerstone of Xceed and the reason for its success as they strive at every step to mantain our quality centric organization with a focus on client satisfaction. "

ShoreTel® (NASDAQ: SHOR), the leading provider of brilliantly simple IP phone systems with fully integrated unified communications (UC), today announced the availability of ShoreTel Contact Center 7. ShoreTel Contact Center 7 introduces Personal Agent Queues, a highly sophisticated yet simple way for customers to queue and route calls to specific agents based on completely customized criteria's. Along with ShoreTel 11.1, ShoreTel Contact Center 7 now puts a high-availability contact center within reach of every customer, big or small.

ShoreTel Enterprise Contact Center 7 further strengthens the ease of use and powerful administration capabilities with redesigned Web-based management, enhanced reporting and new diagnostic tools. These features allow enterprises to dramatically improve customer service, while reducing the cost of deploying and maintaining a high-performance and highly available inbound or outbound multimedia call center.

"In this era of the social media where news spreads fast enterprises strive to enhance their company's brand perception through stellar customer service," said Kevin Gavin, chief marketing officer at ShoreTel. "The call center, with personal agent queues, is one of the first points of contact where enterprises can give their customers direct access to agents."

"At QMACS we provide support services to hospitals and physicians to help them manage their practice better. One of the keys to our success is our call center and the ShoreTel multimedia Enterprise Contact Center has enabled us to provide excellent customer service to our clients," said Todd P. Stone, chief technology officer at QMACS Health Care Solutions. "We decided to do a field trial on Shoretel Enterprise Contact Center 7 and have had a great experience with this latest release. The slick management interface and diagnostic tools make the contact center one of the easiest to manage. The personal agent queue, which is a really unique feature, will help us in routing calls within our call center allowing us to fully utilize our resources and give callers a dedicated experience."

Philippines based BPO - NCAS chooses Drishti's Ameyo as their call center technology. Instigating operations, the BPO was looking for a reliable solution that had complete features to power their outbound calling processes. Ameyo's capability to map to business processes enabled NCAS to harness productivity right from inception. The value delivered to their client resulted in nearly double the business within 70 days of starting operations.

For any new BPO, extracting efficiency from every resource (be it the operations or technology) is of utmost importance. The challenge areas include management of SLAs, customer experience and agent productivity besides the incurring costs. Automation with process mapping along with added capabilities for better service delivery can make significant impact on overall operations. Finally right online and offline MIS and data control does it all to ensure the BPO is able to match their KPIs from the first day of operations. Ameyo is a customer-oriented innovation and is aimed at providing a solution to these business challenges of today’s call center industry.

Appreciating the solution, Mr. Norman Lacsamana, President & CEO, NCAS Inc says - "Starting afresh, we had various challenges to be handled. The technology management was completely waived off as we got Ameyo on-board. Intuitive user-interfaces and detailed reports helped us manage productivity from day one. We especially appreciate the 24x7 support. Ameyo’s reliable tech support can prove to be a boon for Philippines call center market and is duly welcome."

Cyara, a pioneer of next-generation solutions for simulating, testing and monitoring interactive voice response (IVRs) and contact center systems, today announced further expansion into Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) with the opening of with the opening of a dedicated EMEA office headquartered in London. The company also announced the opening of a United Kingdom-based data center and and the appointedment of Nick Duggan as director of sales EMEA to develop and support its rapidly expanding customer base in the region which includes Vodafone, Sky and Nationwide Building Society.

The Cyara Solution Suite, an automated, software based simulation, testing and monitoring platform, coupled with Cyara’s comprehensive contact center transformation quality methodology, is transforming enterprises’ contact centers with better customer experiences and dramatically reduced risk and project timelines.

The Cyara Solution Suite enables customers to transform their contact center by dramatically reducing risk and project timelines by use of its automated software based simulation, testing and montests IVRs and contact centers through initial deployment, subsequent modifications, fine-tuning and ongoing production to ensure exemplary system operation and customer experienceitoring platform. Enterprises can create a better customer experience through their contact center by applying Cyara's overarching contact center transformation quality methodology (offered as a business consulting engagement) coupled with its next-generation platform.

"Common among our customer base is a reduction in risk and time to market and an improvement in customer experience when Cyara's next-generation platform and its proven business consulting methodology are used in conjunction with our clients' Cyara comprehensive suite of simulation, testing and monitoring solutions helps enterprises's comprehensive suite of simulation, testing and monitoring solutions helps enterprisesto deploy ddisruptive and transformational technology and process deploymentsies or processes," for a better contact center experience by drastically reducing risk and time to market. redefine their customer service through a better contact center experience,” says Alok Kulkarni, CEO, Cyara Solutions Alok Kulkarni, CEO, Cyara Solutions.

"Our further expansion into EMEA signifies another milestone in the growth of the company and our ongoing commitment to help customers improve their customer service," says Kulkarni. "Our further expansion into EMEA signifies another milestone in the growth of the company and our ongoing commitment to help customers improve their customer service," says Kulkarni.

"Nick Duggan with his past experience and success in bringing Telstra's SaaS contact center offerings to market in Australia will be a great asset to a European team already in place,” says Kulkarni. “We will now have a more significant presence with the leadership, experience and dedication to enable us to deliver exceptional regional sales and support services to our EMEA customers."

Sybase 365, a subsidiary of Sybase, Inc., the global leader in mobile messaging and mobile commerce services, today announced its agreement with Taxi 131 008, Australia’s national taxi number, to launch a new SMS taxi booking service augmenting the existing telephone booking service and providing taxi users with a simple and efficient alternate booking method.

Taxi 131 008 selected Sybase 365 multi-channel contact centre solution to manage the expected high volume of inbound SMS. 131 008 handles around 30 million telephone calls a year, about half of which originate from mobile phones. Sybase 365’s mCRM channel now allows passengers to book a taxi by simply texting a three character code indicating their city/town location, for example, ‘per’ for Perth, followed by their pickup address and sending it to 1999 0008.With the SMS 1999-0008 service, taxi users can avoid long wait times, and mobile charges sometimes incurred when calling 131 008 for a taxi; effectively jumping to the front of the queue. The SMS service is expected to direct a significant share of bookings away from voice calls to the SMS platform, allowing better management of incoming taxi bookings.

"We are proud to offer all our taxi services, large or small, access to this innovative service with absolutely no software, hardware, licensing or messaging costs whatsoever, and we will provide them with significant marketing assistance in the form of instruction cards and other collateral to promote the service to their passengers," said Paul Mifsud, executive officer, Taxi 131-008 Limited. "The SMS 1999-0008 service has been trialled in Perth, and is being launched in Rockhampton and Mandurah today. We are in the process of bringing other 131008 taxi services on board."

The SMS service will be of particular benefit to Australians without fixed line access, who cannot take advantage of the capped 25c fee for 13 numbers. The proportion of Australians going 'mobile-only' for voice communications has reached 14 per cent last year, according to ACMA.

"In most cases, booking via SMS will be cheaper than a mobile phone call," said Adam Brito, sales director ANZ at Sybase 365. "Besides potential cost savings, the service is convenient for consumers and saves them time, particularly during peak periods when it’s hard to get through to taxi companies over the phone."

SMS 1999-0008 taxi bookings work on all mobile devices and do not require users to pre-register their pickup addresses or download and install any application on their mobile phone.

Established in 1992, 131 008 is Australia’s first, and only nationally recognised taxi booking phone number. 131 008 connects people from anywhere in Australia directly to their local taxi service. The organisation has about 300 member taxi services, covering every city and major town in Australia, plus many smaller towns.

Staff members at the Shore School, based on Sydney’s lower North Shore, are enjoying the benefits of a Cisco IP Telephony system which was rolled out to 70 teacher desks.

The school needed to expand its phone system; adding on a Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express system to the school's local network was deemed the best way of doing this cost effectively, whilst ensuring an easy migration path to a larger system in the future.

Charlie Thomlinson, Account Manager, IMC Communications oversaw the roll out in close consultation with the school's ICT Manager, Richard Jones.

"Our Head of Network Services, Daniel Szmandiuk, designed a system for Shore School that involved integration with its current PABX system, whilst considering future growth and developments of the school and budgets. Nick Rettenbeck, Lead Cisco Engineer, then worked with the school's IT team to ensure that the system was implemented during the Easter Break and up and running for when the teachers returned," said Thomlinson.

Richard Jones was extremely pleased with the implementation of the system.

"The Project Manager did everything right to make my role in this a lot easier. The IMC Communications team anticipated our needs, worked well with other suppliers and made the project as smooth as possible".

Queensland's Bond University has unveiled its latest online student recruitment tool, a mobile-enabled course prospectus developed by Blink Mobile Interactive, an Australian Platform-as-a-Service provider enabling the rapid development and deployment of mobile business services.

The mobile prospectus contains full information about Bond University courses and admissions requirements, and is being used by students and advisers, as well as regional and international managers that engage prospective students in discussions at schools, career days and educational exhibitions.

Previously, Bond University's recruitment activities required a PC and access to an Internet link or for staff to travel with multiple physical volumes of graduate and postgraduate prospectuses. Now, the information is accessible to anyone using an Internet mobile device such as a 3G smartphone, Blackberry, iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch, Windows 7 or Android device. University recruitment staff expect the mobile facility will be particularly useful for potential students seeking to research and share course information with friends and family.

Using the Blink Mobile platform, the university's mobile capability was developed within a two-week timeframe in time for the beginning of the 2011 academic year. The Blink Mobile service automatically draws data from the University's website - stripping out unnecessary information and re-formatting it 'on-the-fly' to suit each requesting mobile device. It has enabled the University to provide mobile access to all courses on offer without requiring the University to build and maintain multiple websites and risk delivering out of date information.

The new service allows staff to demonstrate course information to prospects, and capture new lead information even while off-line. The next time an Internet connection is made, each device automatically uploads new leads into the University's CRM system.

Valerie Runyan, Director of Marketing and Admissions at Bond University says, "The mobile course prospectus is an important part of our strategy to deliver more digital marketing content. We needed a system to allow us to automatically deliver the latest information and to provide our recruitment team with tools to deliver this information at exhibitions."

"With Blink Mobile’s help, we've been able to create a more personalised approach; one that allows us to better demonstrate and guide prospective students through the course information. Prospective students are able to more intuitively browse the course content, save their selection and email themselves that list for follow-up when they get home. It's a far more interactive engagement."

The mobile service is also expected to reduce University printing costs and its carbon footprint due to a reduction in the number of physical prospectuses that need to be printed and shipped locally and internationally.

Interactive Intelligence (Nasdaq: ININ), a global provider of unified IP business communications solutions, has appointed Communications Australia as a new channel partner in the Australian market. The strategic appointment will enable Interactive Intelligence to satisfy demand and support deployment of the company's premise as well as cloud-based communications solutions while opening up major new business opportunities for Communications Australia.

Brendan Maree, Managing Director – Australia, New Zealand and Pacific, Interactive Intelligence, said, "Communications Australia is a tier one integrator and has multiple resources with nearly 30 years' experience in the call centre and telephony industries. The combination of its optimised business processes coupled with the company’s skills and national footprint in industry sectors ranging from resources and mining to financial services, healthcare, education and logistics, will provide Interactive Intelligence with the ability to effectively scale our national footprint."

Interactive Intelligence offers Australian organisations an enterprise-grade premise, as well as cloud-based contact centre solution marketed as Communications-as-a-Service. This provides mid-size to large contact centres and enterprise organisations with all the advantages of a hosted solution, while providing the functionality, reliability, security and control of a premise-based solution.

It includes a comprehensive set of on-demand services for contact centre automation, such as IVR, multichannel routing and recording, screen-pop, outbound/blended dialing offering all other dialing modes, quality monitoring, workforce management, desktop call control, desktop faxing, unified messaging, Web chat, post-call surveys, reporting and presence management.

Communications Australia partners with leading Unified Communications vendors enabling it to customise solutions for multi-media contact centres and provide hosted and managed services regardless of end user size or existing infrastructure.

"The contact centre is a strategic asset for any customer-focused company," says Mario Vecchio, CEO of Communications Australia. "However, until now, our business had been restricted to supporting Avaya and Siemens which don't offer cloud-based solutions. Interactive Intelligence is a great product with a superb feature set which fits perfectly with the needs of the Australian contact centre market."

"At the same time, we believe that there will be a 30 per cent growth in demand for cloud-based contact centre solution services in Australia over the next three years and Interactive Intelligence will help us to offer an independent contact centre solution to support a range of platforms. We'll be able to pitch Interactive Intelligence to our existing customer base and to prospect organisations not currently using traditional contact centre solutions. We are relishing the opportunity to take this advanced technology to market," says Vecchio.

Interactive Intelligence supports its partners in Australia with dedicated channel management, pre-sales, marketing, professional services and post-sales customer support. Communications Australia has already passed through authorised Interactive Intelligence certification training.

"We're experiencing tremendous success and momentum in the Australian market right now as the demand for communications as service is increasing significantly. We see our partnership with Communications Australia as a mutually rewarding opportunity from day one and we look forward to further developing this relationship," says Maree.

WatchGuard® Technologies, a global leader of business security solutions, has announced that it will provide next-generation firewall appliances for businesses using Mitel (NASDAQ: MITL) unified communications (UC) solutions. By doing so, businesses gain superior Voice over IP (VoIP) protection for their award-winning Mitel UC solutions, as well as their corporate networks, applications and data.

"WatchGuard is pleased to be working with Mitel by offering its extensible threat management (XTM) solutions to the market," said Tim Helming, Director of Product Management at WatchGuard Technologies. "As the first vendor to offer comprehensive SIP and H.323 proxies, WatchGuard is in a unique position to best protect today’s unified communications environments."

All WatchGuard XTM security appliances provide unparalleled VoIP protection, which is critical in securing business UC environments. Specifically by having SIP and H.323 proxy protection, WatchGuard XTM appliances protect against a multitude of VoIP threats, including denial of service attacks, spam over Internet telephony (SPIT), voice service theft, registration hijacking, eavesdropping, directory harvesting, voice phishing (vishing) and more.

"Providing best in class security for business communications is important," said Paul Blide, vice-president Mitel DataNet CommSource. "Working with firewall appliance vendors like WatchGuard is a logical choice because their systems offer our customers the highest degree of performance, flexibility, reliability and most importantly protection for their business."

AuraPortal (www.auraportal.com), a global provider of Business Process Management (BPM), has announced today the introduction of the following modules in its Business Process Management Suite: Content Management (CMS/ECM), a complete Online Commerce platform (eCommerce) and new CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Process Patterns, which will join and fully integrate with the existing AuraPortal applications set. Common to all of these applications is that no programming is required in their deployment.

AuraPortal is a real Business Process Platform, with 100% web-based technology and complete coverage of all essential areas of a company's business management structure.

"Of course." says Pablo Trilles, AuraPortal Vice President. "This synergy could be achieved by integrating different applications from different vendors (which is the only possibility that has existed until now) but Is that really a solution? Time and cost to undertake intertwined integration -each with their own approaches, structures and criteria- as well as dependence on multiple vendors, are limiting factors. Those who have dealt with this approach already understand this problem".

Content Management Module

The Content Management Module complements the powerful Corporate Document Management of AuraPortal, including all stages of the content's life cycle: Creation and/or capture, storage, security, flow, access, publishing, version control, retrieval, distribution, preservation and contents destruction.

The goal is to allow each entity to maintain its Web site on the Internet in an easy and automated way. Using BPM Processes, organizations can establish creation flows and approval processes for any content that the organization desires to publish (press releases, news, articles, reviews, documents, videos and type of digital content). Once content has been approved, it will be automatically published on the Web site without extra work.

Online Commerce Module

Online Commerce, is a complete e-commerce platform which includes a Shopping Cart and a Payment Gateway. Companies are able to create their own Internet sales channel. With AuraPortal, there is no need to subcontract with technical experts, since company employees can completely design their system quickly and easily, with all transaction activity monitored by the AuraPortal BPM module.

Full integration of Online Commerce with business processes and supply chain provides an extraordinary advantage, allowing unprecedented sales and order fulfillment automation.

CRM Process Patterns Module

AuraPortal provides an innovation which will define the future of CRM, that is, the complete integration of CRM functionalities with BPMS processes using Process Patterns.

Process Patterns are classes of general application process which are already prepared by AuraPortal or its partners for immediate use, containing the necessary knowledge and structure needed to ensure effective operations on a particular issue in a specific predefined environment. It's like a pre-tailored suit: once all minor adjustments have been solved to fully adapt the suit to the measurements, the customer will buy the suit.

Outsourcer OCIS recently celebrated its 5th birthday in Fiji. The celebration coincided with the opening of a new 350 seat facility in Suva. Established in 2004 the privately owned OCIS has created a successful Oceanic-based model offering its clients a range of services including inbound, outbound, back of house, lead generation, market research and web-site support services from its Australian, New Zealand and/or Fijian based contact centres.

Our model is very flexible, clients have distinct choices and often split service requirements across multiple sites to take advantage of OCIS' unique offering said CEO, Heath Lee.

RightNow customer, Telecom New Zealand has been honoured by the US-based publication, CRM Magazine, with a prestigious 2011 CRM Service Elite Award in recognition of its deployment of RightNow CX and multi-channel customer support for enhancing customer experience.

The 2011 CRM Magazine Service Awards highlight industry leaders based on the best measurable results and return on investment from their contact centre and customer service initiatives using technologies and/or services.

Telecom New Zealand has used RightNow Web Experience http://www.rightnow.com/cx-suite-web-experience.php http://www.rightnow.com/cx-suite-web-experience.php since 2005 to provide customers with a rich, easy to use web self-service solution.

Last year, Telecom New Zealand embarked on a program to deploy RightNow Chat on its website further enabling the carrier to offer consumers their own interaction channel of choice from telephone and email to web and chat. It was a move intended to introduce greater responsiveness and more flexibility into the sales process, enabling customers to seek immediate assistance while engaged in online sales activity. However, today, Chat has been embraced as much more than a simple sales mechanism and is now one of the company's most important tools for meeting the constant connection needs of today's consumers.

Telecom New Zealand has over 10 million interactions with customers every month. By using Chat, customers can engage in real-time, two-way communications with Telecom New Zealand agents without having to pick up the phone or walk into a store.

Since implementing RightNow Chat, Telecom New Zealand has achieved remarkable success, including:

1. 5 percent sales conversion rate
2. 80 percent customer satisfaction score (for sales chat)
3. More than 100,000 answers viewed per month with a 95 percent self-service rate
4. Less than 5 percent of RightNow knowledge base Web enquiries have resulted in a request for one-to-one contact
5. Less than 4 per cent of all customer interactions with the RightNow knowledge base now generate an email requiring further information

"The standard of entries for 2011 provides a welcome opportunity for organisations committed to business and product excellence to receive the recognition they deserve. We congratulate Telecom New Zealand on achieving an exceptional result through its deployment of RightNow CX and promoting innovative business practices as well as product and service excellence. By working closely together, Telecom New Zealand and RightNow have developed services with real business and customer benefit. As a result, Telecom New Zealand is an example of an organisation that is future-focused and has identified and solved problems that help change the way organisations do business," said David Myron, Editorial Director, CRM and Speech Technology magazines.

"For Telecom New Zealand, one of the big benefits of the new communications channel has been the ability to offer a more proactive service to customers," explains Jonathan Morris, Lead Manager – Digital Channels, Telecom New Zealand.

"Chat has also been enthusiastically greeted by the New Zealand deaf community. We didn't anticipate this when going down the chat path, but we've had numerous deaf customers tell us that the service is fantastic. One surprising aspect of chat is that it has not just replaced other methods of communication but it has increased the number of interactions between customers and Telecom NZ staff. Currently, we are experiencing around 10 million customer interactions per month. Our Telecom.co.nz online chat and Help Centre solutions and our email management capability CRM – all delivered using the RightNow platform – play a vital role in effectively supporting this demand today and will become increasingly important as we seek to provide customers with more self service and assisted service opportunities."

"We are both honoured and thrilled to win this Service Elite Award. It is testament to the success of our underlying technology platform and the combined ability of Telecom New Zealand and RightNow to drive a successful engagement in delighting customers."

Brett Waters, Vice President Asia Pacific – South, RightNow Technologies, said, "We are delighted that Telecom New Zealand has been recognised with this successful milestone and that it has emerged as a category leader through the deployment of a best-in-class customer experience solution and a results-driven working relationship with RightNow. We look forward to an ongoing robust relationship with Telecom New Zealand in 2011 and beyond."

Today announced the availability of the latest version of Audiolog™ for Contact Centers—its advanced, digital multimedia recording, evaluation, archiving and quality assurance solution. Expressly designed for today’s small and mid-sized (SMB) contact centers, the software supports and facilitates multichannel customer interaction service delivery and introduces new security and risk management capabilities, enabling businesses to excel in serving customers across communications channels, while adhering to compliance requirements and evolving industry standards.

Supporting the Multimedia Customer Across Sales/Service Channels

Traditional audio, call-based service—while still a popular channel, particularly in certain demographics—is starting to give way to multichannel sales and support, driven largely by consumer demand to do business with organizations at the time, place and channel of their choosing. To equip today's SMB contact centers to respond to the rise in multimedia communications channels and devices, Verint® Witness Actionable Solutions® has added a host of enhancements to its Audiolog for Contact Centers software which became generally available in December 2010.

The solution, backed by Verint's industry-leading workforce optimization (WFO) and recording patent portfolio, operates on a single platform and features robust, new, advanced multimedia recording, storage, retrieval and playback capabilities. For businesses, this translates into the ability to more effectively capture, analyze and respond to audio interactions, screen data and now other popular multichannel systems and channels—ranging from digital, analog and IP phones; to PBXs, ACDs and dialer systems; to SMS/text, email, web chat and even pictures and videos.

Contact center managers can use Audiolog’s new multimedia replay interface to select and playback—in a timeline—multiple communications from a customer or group of customers across media types, such as calls in addition to emails and chat sessions. These multiple communications, as related to a specific issue of concern, can then be saved as a single case, for example, to facilitate more effective investigation and service/complaint follow up.

"Whether small or large in size, today's contact centers require forward-thinking and sound strategies backed by solutions that provide a singular view of customers’ experiences, enable multichannel sales and service, and support companies as they redefine their customer experience-shaping metrics to focus on such measures as first contact resolution," notes Ken Landoline, principal analyst, Unified Communications and Contact Centers, Current Analysis. "Verint is well equipped to help today's small- and mid-sized centers achieve just that with the latest enhancements to its advanced SMB recording and quality assurance solution."

Together the software's functionality supplements the industry's most robust workforce optimization solution for SMB contact centers. Part of Verint’s market-leading workforce optimization solution set, Audiolog's core multimedia recording and quality management capabilities can be supplemented with robust functionality for workload forecasting, staff scheduling, employee coaching and training, and customer feedback surveys to enhance sales and service delivery, quality and compliance requirements, internal business processes and the customer experience.

By leveraging Audiolog's proven recording, quality assurance and training capabilities, managers can help ensure consistent and appropriate customer service response and delivery by channel, as well as provide coaching and training to their agents as they work to master sales and service in today’s Web 2.0 world. They also can capitalize on core Audiolog functionality that enables users to place alerts on interactions, attach comments, and share them with appropriate departments, groups and individuals company-wide to collaborate on product/service issues, process fixes, rising business trends and more.

Advancing Security and Compliance; Supporting Evolving Industry Standards

In addition, Audiolog for Contact Centers features enhancements designed to help smaller and mid-sized centers meet their compliance, risk management and quality management requirements with such newly available functionality as encryption management.

Protecting customer data and sensitive information is a complex process for which privacy is a top concern. In most centers, calls are recorded for quality, compliance, third-party verification, and training and development. As a result, requirements exist for organizations to broaden and enhance their data security strategies, processes and technologies with privacy measures designed to protect sensitive consumer information. A driving force behind these mission-critical security efforts is the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)—a worldwide information security standard assembled by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC), a global forum for the ongoing development, enhancement, storage, dissemination and implementation of security standards for account data protection.

With Audiolog, users can now benefit from the ability to add AES-256 encryption to protect audio, screen and related data when recorded, in transit and archived. The addition of encryption management further enhances the options Audiolog users have in complying with the PCI DSS for their call recordings. Via Verint patent-protected Advanced Desktop Analytics, Audiolog users have had the ability to pause and resume recording via user-defined triggers activated based on activities on the agent’s screen, enabling seamless real-time avoidance of the capture of sensitive information, such as the entire payment transaction or just the CVV2 code. Further, with Advanced Desktop Analytics, recordings can be automatically appended with important, transaction-related data pulled from the agent’s screen, such as transaction value, customer identifier or account type, for easy search and replay. Now that Audiolog customers also have the option of strong, end-to-end encryption in addition to recording pause and resume that can be desktop event-, application- or manually-triggered, the compliance options offered with Audiolog are among the strongest available anywhere in the call center recording market.

"Today's contact centers, regardless of their size, need robust, advanced tools to help them use customer service as a core differentiator, respond to consumer demand for sales/service across multiple channels, and protect themselves and their customers with advanced security and risk management capabilities," says Gary Trudo, vice president, public safety and mid-market solutions, Verint Systems. "Capturing, analyzing and responding to the multichannel ‘voice of the customer' is vital in today’s business environment, as is the need for a multi-dimensional view into customer service operations, further reinforcing the benefits Audiolog for Contact Centers brings to the market."

Integ Group, a UXC company, has today announced a 144 per cent growth in revenue generated by its Contact Centre Solutions Group (CCSG) in the 2011 financial year, compared with the same period last year.

The rapid growth of the Contact Centre Solutions Group is attributed to strong customer demand for additional technology solutions to enable them to enhance customer service and expand retention and acquisition strategies. In addition to demand for new technologies customers require increasing support to better utilise existing technology more effectively.

Key areas of demand include enhancement of intelligent call management to include automated email routing; softphone; workforce optimisation; call recording; and the distribution of workflow.

According to Ian Poole, Integ Group CEO the company has added significant resources to CCSG to ensure it is in the right position to provide customers with the skills and experience to take full advantage of the benefits provided by the application of these new technologies.

"The contact centre area is rapidly expanding as companies look to find new efficiencies as well as engage with customers in different ways. The companies that we work with are very aware that their own customers are changing the ways in which they want to be contacted. This opens up new customer service opportunities for the contact centre, using social media and other online channels. We have committed to adding new skills and resources to assist our customers with their new challenges. Commercially it is paying off, and we believe it will continue to do so," says Poole.

Better integration and reporting between the contact centre and the rest of the organisation is also an increasing priority and new intelligent workflow technologies are helping companies’ streamline information from their customer interactions.

Paul Goode, Practice Manager of the Contact Centre Solutions Group (CCSG) says the focus on assisting customers to enhance their current contact centre systems, tools and processes has been rewarding.

"In many instances our customers have already acquired software, but are not using it as effectively as they could. For us it's been about understanding their business model and customer strategies and then designing a solution or service pack to help them gain greater advantage."

This growth comes six months after the expansion of CCSG and the appointment of Paul Goode as Practice Manager who has focussed on adding value to the services that are already delivered to Integ customers.

An area of further innovation for Integ Group is the continued development and enhancement of its iTaaS offering. This cloud offer includes a robust contact centre solution as an optional module designed to be flexible for companies who may need to upgrade their communications infrastructure but lack the capital expenditure budget or resources to do so.

According to the callcentres.net 2010 Australian Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking Report, the usage of hosted solutions and cloud computing is set to grow in the Australian contact centre industry. callcentres.net Director, Dr. Catriona Wallace, recently commented that "usage of cloud computing services in the Australian contact centre industry is expected to almost double, growing from 22% in 2010 to 39% by the end of 2012".

Integ Group currently provides contact centre solutions and services to a range of industries including Local, State and Federal Government, Telecommunications, Banking and Finance and Services sectors.

Dallas, Montreal, London, Manila and Melbourne, Australia – 30th March 2011 - Stellar, a leading call centre and business process outsourcing provider today announced that Michael Lumsden has been appointed Chief Strategy Officer of Stellar’s global business.

"Michael is the ideal candidate to lead Stellar's global strategy and further enhance our offerings in the market place." said John Hollingsworth, Stellar's global CEO. "Stellar is currently undergoing major growth and Michael will work closely with each operating company CEO, together with their respective Heads of Sales and Strategy to support new initiatives and customer focussed outcomes," continued Mr Hollingsworth.

Michael Lumsden takes the helm as Chief Strategy Officer at a time of unprecedented growth within the Stellar business globally. Lumsden has over 25 years of experience in senior roles in sales, product management and client management. He has a successful track record in business development and client management in complex long term relationships across banking, telecommunication and FMCG. His leadership in various strategic initiatives and programmes include mergers, acquisitions and divestments.

Datacom named as Company of the Decade Finalist in NZ Hi Tech Awards

The Datacom Group has been named a finalist for the Company of the Decade award in the NZ Hi-Tech Awards. The award will be judged by an international panel including Wall Street Journal's Global Business Advisor of the Year, Gary Hamel, and Dell founder, Michael Dell and be announced in early May.

With exceptional growth over the decade, Datacom has proved it has the credentials to compete for this coveted title and was also the recipient of the NZ Hi-Tech Company of the Year in 2010.

The decade has seen the company’s turnover increase more than three-fold with offshore revenue now accounting for 50% of the total Group’s revenue. Staff numbers tripled over the same period and the number of offices increased from six to 35. The employment of around 3500 IT professionals makes the Datacom Group a significant employer in the Asia Pacific region.

Datacom crossed the Tasman in 1994 but the past ten years have seen the off shore Australian and Asian business expand phenomenally – from one client in 2000 and 120 employees to operations now in the six states in Australia and offices in Malaysia and Philippines employing 1700 staff. Its success has been recognised at the BRW Business Review Weekly - Client Choice Awards with the receipt of Best IT Services Firm in Australia ($50-$200 million) for the last two years in a row.

Another notable achievement is the creation of a significant data centre network in Australasia. Datacom’s eight data centres across Australia and New Zealand offer world class levels of performance and service that allow their customers to confidently outsource their IT Management to Datacom. The design and build of the world-class Auckland data centre in 2009 was a notable large investment into New Zealand’s infrastructure and growth and after only 18 months of operation is catering for both local and international customers with three of the four data centre floors commissioned.

Datacom’s newest data centre is based in Christchurch and opened one week before the 7.1 magnitude earthquake in September last year. The data centre survived the earthquake without any damage and continued operating during the power outage through the use of dedicated generators. The data centre was also undamaged in the recent devastating earthquake in February 2011 and remains in operation which is testament to the dedication of the staff and the quality of the facility itself.

Datacom made a significant investment in the commission of this new data centre which includes redundant power and air conditioning systems, fire suppression, monitoring systems, security systems, and seismic restraint. Through this new data centre, Datacom has been able to help many South Island businesses quickly recover from the earthquake devastation as many were having to move premises and were unable to access vital IT systems and equipment.

Jonathan Ladd, Datacom Group CEO, is obviously proud of the company’s achievements saying the past performance demonstrates its exceptional ability to deliver to its customers’ requirements; it also illustrates its agility to evolve and grow, two qualities that are prerequisites for IT industry market leaders.

“Our continued success is a reflection of the quality of relationships with our customers and the calibre of our staff. As a services company we strive to meet our customers’ needs, grow their businesses and build enduring relationships,” says Mr Ladd.

“Datacom enters the next decade in a very strong position. With the continuing maturity of the Australian and Asian business, Datacom will become even more competitive in the trans-Tasman market. Our scale and scope means we are competitive not only from an offering point-of-view but also in infrastructure investment.”

Along with the traditional IT markets of IT management services and software development and integration, Datacom also operates in the business process outsourcing market. Datacom solutions range from core support services such as payroll through to customer care and brand enhancement for top global companies such as Netgear and Canon. This is another area that has grown over the decade with more customers seeking regional servicing and in particular trans-Tasman coverage.

Entries for the NZ Hi Tech Awards hit record numbers this year. The awards are run by the Hi-Tech Trust and began in 1993. The entries for the various categories will be judged by a panel of over 40 local judges and a dozen international judges.

RightNow has announced the appointment of Ted Bray as Vice President, Indirect Sales Asia Pacific for RightNow Technologies. Based in Singapore, Bray will be responsible for the managing the company's channel sales across the region, driving revenue growth and enabling partners to sell and support RightNow solutions across Asia Pacific.

Bray has over 20 years of experience in contact centre and CRM leadership with a focus on delivering customer care solutions. He originally joined RightNow in 2009 and was previously Vice President for the organisation’s global Contact Centre Business. Within this role, he achieved significant progress in building, delivering, and supporting contact centre solutions for RightNow’s customers worldwide.

Before joining RightNow, Bray served as the Asia Pacific Director of Voice Solutions for Genesys Telecommunications, based in Singapore. He has also served in executive leadership roles with Avaya, Edify, and AT&T. Bray holds a Masters in Business Administration degree from Kansas State University, and a Bachelor of Science degree, with a double major in marketing and business management, from McPherson College.

RightNow's customers in Australia and New Zealand include a variety of private and public sector organisations, including The Buzz (part of the Insurance Australia Group), SmartSpeak Solutions, Virgin Mobile, University of New England, Telecom New Zealand, vividwireless and the University of Western Australia.

Choosing, buying and renewing insurance could become a lot simpler, more customised and even provide pay-as-you-use policies through the adoption of mobile phone technology by insurers.

The latest report by Telstra, Mobile Innovation – The Next Frontier for Growth and Productivity for Insurers, launched in conjunction with the Financial Services Council, has identified new opportunities for the insurance industry to better use mobile phone technology in delivering services.

John Brogden, Chief Executive Officer of the Financial Services Council, welcomed the opportunity for insurers to better connect with their customers. "The success and continued growth of the Australian life insurance industry is critical to the Australian economy, and it is critical to Australians and their families who rely on insurance to ensure the financial stability and wellbeing for their family," Mr Brogden said.

As the Telstra report notes, mobile applications provide insurers with a new opportunity to create a more interactive and ongoing relationship with their customers. The use of mobile technology can also assist in the underwriting and claims processes and thereby make the process of arranging life insurance cover and claiming on a policy easier, simpler and less time consuming.

"Australia has a chronic underinsurance problem and anything that makes it easier for Australians to access life insurance is a benefit," Mr Brogden said. The report’s author, Telstra Enterprise and Government National General Manager Industry Development, Rocky Scopelliti, said that the report illustrates how mobile technology can assist insurers.

"Australia is one of the world's most mature mobile markets. Today, 17 per cent of Australians are using their mobile-connected devices to search for and make decisions about insurance, yet most Australian insurers are yet to offer any mobile applications for its employees, customers, agents or brokers," Mr Scopelliti said.

The report has identified three technology experience concepts to help insurers better support customers and improve their business growth and productivity: The Mobile Insurer – mobile phones and the mobile network can provide location based information that connects with existing ICT infrastructure and enterprise systems inside the insurer to deliver streamlined customer service. The Mobile Consumer – using the knowledge and data insurers collect on many products and services, insures can provide advice to their customers through a mobile application to provide relevant and timely information to assist consumers in their purchasing decisions. The Connected Insurer – evolving Machine-to-Machine technology such as telemetry that enables insurers to provide new classes of value added services such as pay-as-you-use policies.

"Mobile enabled technology has the potential to deliver growth for insures through greater customer loyalty and category growth. It can provide greater convenience, personalisation and pay-as-you-use premiums as well as provide the opportunity to better connect with customers," Mr Scopelliti said.