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Aspect Delivers Next-Generation Customer Contact with Launch of Aspect Unified IP 7 Platform
Aspect Delivers Next-Generation Customer Contact with Launch of Aspect Unified IP 7 Platform Latest Platform Release Leverages Unified Communications and Collaboration and Provides Features and Flexibility to Meet Rising Consumer Expectations 11 Jan 2011 CHELMSFORD, Mass., 11 January 2011 — Aspect, a leading provider of customer contact and Microsoft platform solutions, today announced the immediate availability of Aspect® Unified IP® 7, the platform that powers Aspect’s unified communications applications for customer contact. The release provides significant new functionality that gives contact centers power and control over business workflows, efficient and flexible enterprise-wide administration across multiple locations, high scalability, an intuitive user experience and simplified IT management. It serves as a foundation to deliver next-generation communications for customer service, collections, and sales and telemarketing organizations, while providing for collaboration between the contact center and the rest of the enterprise to improve the overall customer experience.Aspect Unified IP unites a comprehensive set of customer contact capabilities including inbound routing, outbound dialing, voice self-service, recording, quality monitoring, short message service (SMS), instant messaging (IM), chat, email and real-time and historical reporting.“With Unified IP 7, Aspect has achieved its vision for a state-of-the-art customer contact solution which truly addresses the needs of next-generation contact centers,” said Joe Outlaw, Principal Analyst, Frost & Sullivan. “Aspect Unified IP 7 leverages unified communications and collaboration technologies and delivers a highly functional, scalable solution with the reliability and richness required by leading enterprises and their mission critical contact centers.”“Aspect Unified IP 7 addresses both the changing landscape of customer contact—driven by rapid advances in communications and mobility technologies—and the shift in technology necessary for customer-centric organizations to create rich, multichannel customer contact experiences,” said Gary Barnett, chief technology officer, Aspect. “And it is designed to help organizations easily transition to a next-generation, multichannel platform at their own pace while benefiting from cost containment and greater efficiency through collaboration within the contact center and between the contact center and the rest of the enterprise.”Critical New Features Delivered in Aspect Unified IP 7Contextual Enterprise Routing and ManageabilityContextual enterprise routing of calls between multiple locations and enterprise administration of agents and services allows contact centers to connect their customer to the best skilled resource no matter where they are located across the enterprise. Contextual Enterprise Routing provides customers the ability to centralize their enterprise contact distribution strategies to create a virtual queue across their network of Aspect Unified IP systems and to define dynamic routing rules that increase flexibility and control over inbound contact handling.Centralized administration across multiple systems and platforms through Unified Command and Control® - Administration provides manageability, improved visibility across the enterprise and facilitates efficient disaster recovery capabilities.High Availability, Ease of Deployment and Improved PerformanceAspect Unified IP 7 is designed to meet the high demands of mission critical contact centers that require optimum performance for call handling reliability and data integrity and is designed for high availability and redundancy to deliver 99.999 percent reliability. IT administrators will appreciate the simplified footprint, security, and deployment enhancements.Dynamic Inbound RoutingDynamic Inbound Routing (Advanced Skills) allows customers to increase flexibility and dynamic control over inbound routing capabilities by providing the ability to use skill requirements for specific business processes combined with real time system performance to automatically select the best skilled resource to handle a customer inquiry. Benefits of this feature include better resource utilization with greater flexibility and the ability to respond to business opportunities with greater agility.Enhanced Agent Desktop to Support Microsoft Unified Communications and CollaborationA completely redesigned agent user interface built to enhance agent productivity helps to maximize key strokes, enrich information presentation, minimize footprint, improve workflow, streamline screen pops, and allow for agent personal greetings. The unified agent desktop also allows for unified communications enablement through Microsoft® Lync™, whereby agents can access IM, presence and collaboration capabilities in addition to contact center functions, such as handling non-contact center calls within the same Unified Agent Desktop. Aspect has also further enhanced its “Ask an Expert” functionality, available within the agent desktop, to utilize Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 for additional search capabilities across the enterprise. This enhanced agent desktop supports complete workflow scripting that allows for preferred agent routing and multi-case handling and incorporates new multi-line telephony features.The innovations within the Unified Agent Desktop empower agents to handle the traditional contact center interaction tasks with ease while augmenting the agent workflow experience with fully integrated UC capabilities for true next-generation capabilities.Improved Notification and Outbound Campaign ManagementCustomers can deliver consistent proactive contact across multiple channels by utilizing outbound SMS and email strategies, as well as enhance dialing flexibility and improve high availability, footprint and performance. Another key benefit with the latest functionality is callback management which allows administrators to manage their outbound callbacks.Enterprise Recording and Monitoring via the Quality Management CapabilitiesThe general availability of Aspect® Quality Management 3.5 meets the recording and quality management needs of contact centers, back-office employees, and knowledge workers. Tightly integrated as part of Aspect Unified IP 7, it eliminates the need for expensive telephony hardware, and enables encrypted software-based recordings resulting in a significantly smaller footprint and lower total cost of ownership (TCO).Through the tight integration with Aspect Unified IP, Aspect Quality Management provides rich search capabilities for fast retrieval of recordings and is fully integrated as part of the supervisor’s dashboard within Unified Command and Control® - Real-Time Reporting. As a fundamental element of a workforce optimization strategy, Aspect Quality Management allows for automated workflows that send quality scores through workforce management functionality to schedule agent coaching or evaluate agent requests.Platform Delivers Innovations to Improve and Differentiate Service“The unified architecture of Aspect Unified IP 7 not only leverages the most advanced unified communications and collaboration capabilities, but drives powerful customer contact applications that will fundamentally improve the customer experience,” said Gary Barnett, chief technology officer, Aspect. “This offering will enable our customers to differentiate their services and engage key functional areas of their enterprises in the customer-company contact continuum.”Barnett added, “Aspect Unified IP 7 has several important capabilities that our competitors simply don’t have today, including Contextual Enterprise Routing for improved technology and agent resource utilization to enhance customer experience; and Unified Command and Control for improved administrative efficiency across sites and components and enhanced, real-time decision making.”Aspect’s unique, tight integration with Microsoft Lync, and the use of Lync presence for the “Ask an Expert” feature improves productivity within contact center, across the enterprise, and with federated partners by unifying presence with contact center applications.About AspectAspect is a leading provider of customer contact and Microsoft platform solutions. For more information, visit www.aspect.com. Follow Aspect on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/AspectUC. # # #Aspect, Unified IP, Unified Command and Control, and Aspect Software are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Aspect Software, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries. The names of other companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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Aspect to Deliver Small- to Mid-Size Turnkey Contact Center Product Built for Microsoft Lync
Aspect to Deliver Small- to Mid-Size Turnkey Contact Center Product Built for Microsoft Lync Supporting up to 100 seats, the New Product Will Provide Essential Contact Center Capabilities 21 Dec 2010 CHELMSFORD, Mass., 21 December 2010 — Aspect, a global provider of unified communications and collaboration services and software, today announced it will be delivering a software-based product for small- to mid-size contact center applications using Microsoft Lync as its media server. The new product will be a value-priced, turnkey option for IT Help Desks, virtual sales teams, corporate departments, branch offices and small- to mid-size contact centers looking to leverage their unified communications strategies. The product will include core contact center capabilities, as well as key unified communication functionality, including delivering voice over IP. “This announcement reinforces the value the Aspect/Microsoft relationship, in place since March 2008, brings to existing and potential Lync users,” said Sheila McGee-Smith, president and principal analyst at McGee-Smith Analytics. “The Aspect product will not just ‘work’ or ‘integrate’ with Lync, but actually uses Lync as its media server. It also offers SMB customers a product built on Aspect’s long-standing expertise in the contact center space.”The product, scheduled to be delivered in Q1 2011, will support from 20 to 100 agents and supervisors. Among the contact center capabilities it will provide include inbound voice, email and instant messaging (IM) routing, real-time and historical reporting, a unified agent desktop, dialing and voice self service capabilities on a single server. The product will also include out-of-the-box workflows. Lync will deliver the media server and PBX functionality. The solution can be installed by Microsoft-savvy IT professionals, with minimal remote support from Aspect® Professional Services.“We believe there are significant opportunities to bring contact center functionality to deliver key business benefits. Aspect is helping to address this target market by bringing its expertise with both contact center and unified communication capabilities to bear,” said Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Lync and Speech Group at Microsoft Corp. “Our customers have been asking for an easy-to-implement and manage solution for smaller contact centers and help desks that will enable them to use the same telephony infrastructure that is being used in the enterprise.” “Aspect is focused on providing innovative solutions for Lync that leverage our core strengths,” said Jim Foy, president and CEO of Aspect. “Working closely with Microsoft, we’ve identified a market need for a simple, all-in-one solution for small contact center applications. By providing essential contact center capabilities on Lync, we will offer organizations a flexible and value-based solution to help them address key business objectives.”“We believe this product will deliver significant benefits to organizations by providing proven technology that is derived from Aspect’s best-of-breed solutions and years of customer contact leadership, delivered as a turnkey offering,” said Gary Barnett, chief technology officer at Aspect. “The product will provide an optimal blend of unified communications capabilities and key contact center features for low cost, in a small footprint. Importantly, it provides a natural first step for integrating either the internal or external contact center to the organization’s unified communications infrastructure, allowing the business to capitalize on the enterprise-wide benefits that UC can bring to the customer and the company.” The product will also provide a seamless integration to Aspect® Workforce Management to enable forecasting, scheduling, and tracking capabilities and Aspect Performance Management for scorecards and analysis that can automatically initiate alerts and actions. About AspectAspect is a global software and IT services firm specializing in applying Microsoft unified communications and collaboration to help customers achieve optimal results through enhanced business processes across the enterprise and in the contact center. Aspect provides IT consulting, integration services and business applications. For more information, visit www.aspect.com.Follow Aspect on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/AspectUC. # # #Aspect and Aspect Software are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Aspect Software, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries. The names of other companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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Aspect Expands European Operations into Ireland
Aspect Expands European Operations into Ireland New Presence Will Provide Customer Support, Distribution and Shared Services Centre for Administrative Functions 3 Dec 2010 CHELMSFORD, Mass., 03 December 2010 — Aspect, a global provider of unified communications and collaboration services and software, today announced it is opening two new facilities in Galway, Ireland in December. The new Aspect facilities will provide customer technical support, software production and distribution, and serve as a shared services centre for select administrative functions. “These new facilities enable Aspect to continue to manage its growth while providing the outstanding levels of service and quality our customers deserve,” said Jim Foy, chief executive officer and president at Aspect. “We are making a substantial long-term commitment to Ireland because it offers considerable advantages for doing business, including its attractive corporate tax rate and access to a highly-skilled, multilingual workforce, which is particularly important for our technical support activities for the region.”IDA Ireland CEO, Barry O’Leary said, “We are delighted to welcome Aspect, a leading global provider of software and services, to Galway. This is a significant addition to the growing cluster of unified communications software companies in Ireland. The announcement today endorses Ireland’s position as a leading location for international software and IT services attracted by our talent, technology capability, track record, corporation tax and ease of doing business. We look forward to supporting Aspect in its international growth in Ireland.”The new Galway, Ireland facilities will provide support to customers in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and some parts of the Asia Pacific region using Aspect’s market leading software, including unified communications applications for the contact center, its unified contact center platform, Aspect® Unified IP® and its workforce optimization suite.About AspectAspect is a global software and IT services firm specializing in applying Microsoft unified communications and collaboration to help customers achieve optimal results through enhanced business processes across the enterprise and in the contact center. Aspect provides IT consulting, integration services and business applications. For more information, visit www.aspect.com.Follow Aspect on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/AspectUC. # # #Aspect, Unified IP and Aspect Software are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Aspect Software, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries. The names of other companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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Aspect Rolls Out Large-Scale, Global Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Deployment
Aspect Rolls Out Large-Scale, Global Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Deployment More than Sixteen Hundred Employees Across the Americas and EMEA Now Using Microsoft Lync Server 2010 for Enhanced Communications and Collaboration within One Week of Market Availability 18 Nov 2010 CHELMSFORD, Mass., 18 November 2010 — Aspect, a global provider of unified communications and collaboration services and software, today announced it has completed the deployment of Microsoft Lync Server 2010 to more than 1,600 of its approximately 1,900 global employees within one week of the software being made publicly available for trial. All Aspect office-based and work-from-home employees in the Americas and Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) are now using Microsoft Lync 2010 for all voice and voicemail services, audio and Web conferencing, instant messaging (IM) and presence. Roll-out to the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region is planned for December, to complete a 100 percent company-wide deployment by the close of 2010. The enriched collaboration capabilities of Lync enable Aspect employees to better connect, share and engage with colleagues, partners and customers both inside and outside of the enterprise to deliver more effective real-time interactions in their daily communications.The company’s decision to rapidly migrate to Lync Server 2010 from its predecessor, Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, clearly demonstrates Aspect’s commitment to advancing the deployment and use of unified communications and collaboration (UCC). It is a natural progression for Aspect, which made a strategic move to implement a company-wide unified communications infrastructure nearly two years ago, replacing its traditional telephony and PBX infrastructure across all 20 countries in its global enterprise. As part of the strategy, Aspect equipped its own global technical support organization—or contact center—with a full complement of UC capabilities to enhance customer contact. Aspect’s enterprise-wide adoption has resulted in staggering cost-savings in traditional telephony and conferencing expenses totaling $2 million in the first 12months, while driving greater efficiency and collaboration.“By taking the initiative in deploying Lync Server 2010 within its own enterprise, Aspect not only demonstrates its expertise in executing successful business-critical next-generation enterprise communications strategies,” said Kirk Gregersen, senior director of product management, Microsoft Lync, “but also serves as a model to other organizations looking to capitalize on the business and productivity gains like those Aspect can realize with help from Lync.”Aspect’s depth of experience in using and deploying UCC technologies, combined with strength drawn from its roots in the mission-critical contact center solutions arena, make it a highly-experienced partner for companies wanting to adopt a Microsoft unified communications strategy to address their own business requirements.“Aspect is walking the walk when it comes to unified communications,” said Jamie Ryan, senior vice president, Information Technology and chief information officer, Aspect. “In the span of just a few days, more than 1,600 Aspect employees are already using Lync 2010’s extended collaboration capabilities for a truly enhanced connected experience. With our initial deployment of Office Communications Server 2007, we witnessed brisk user adoption and explosive increases in efficiency and productivity. Now, with an established culture of collaboration and the new Lync enhancements, Aspect expects employees will quickly and eagerly embrace new opportunities for working together.”Several of the Lync 2010 enhanced sharing and collaboration features have already been widely adopted by Aspect employees allowing them to collaborate and communicate like never before, including:• Extended sharing capabilities, including sharing at the application level• Full integration of sharing and multi-participant collaboration into the Lync 2010 application environment, providing greater ease of use and a more streamlined experience• Enhanced security and access controls for meetings• Enhanced presence and contact information, including status, organization and reporting structures and picturesArchitectural improvements including a smaller footprint and support for virtualization help Aspect better leverage IT resources and reduce its carbon footprint. About AspectAspect is a global software and IT services firm specializing in applying Microsoft unified communications and collaboration to help customers achieve optimal results through enhanced business processes across the enterprise and in the contact center. Aspect provides IT consulting, integration services and business applications. For more information, visit www.aspect.com.Follow Aspect on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/AspectUC. # # #Aspect and Aspect Software are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Aspect Software, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries. The names of other companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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Aspect Contact Center Solutions Will Help Companies Take Full Advantage of Microsoft Lync Capabilities
Aspect Contact Center Solutions Will Help Companies Take Full Advantage of Microsoft Lync Capabilities Aspect Unified IP Will Empower Organizations to Use Microsoft Enterprise Investments within their Contact Centers and Streamlines IT Efforts 17 Nov 2010 CHELMSFORD, Mass., 17 November 2010 — Aspect, a global provider of unified communications and collaboration services and software, today announced it is integrating its market leading Aspect® Unified IP® contact center platform with Microsoft Lync Server 2010 capabilities. Aspect Unified IP, with Microsoft Lync will offer key unified communications (UC) capabilities, including enhanced expert search functionality and increased collaboration for agents within the contact center and knowledge workers across the enterprise. “For companies that have implemented Microsoft unified communications technologies, deploying Aspect solutions within the contact center will offer almost the equivalent of out-of-the-box UC capabilities for customer contact,” said Gary Barnett, chief technology officer and executive vice president at Aspect. “The integration will also help support IT strategies to allow organizations to standardize on Microsoft core technologies, streamlining IT management and allowing for straightforward, uncomplicated support of the customer contact solutions within those enterprises.”Working with the Microsoft Lync Release Candidate—an early version of the software, Aspect drew on its extensive insight and experience with Microsoft UC not only to integrate Lync with its upcoming release of Aspect Unified IP, but to put the integration through its paces in Aspect’s own contact center. As part of its own beta test, Aspect’s contact center will be using Lync with Aspect Unified IP for its Ask an Expert functionality, which leverages knowledge workers throughout the enterprise to increase first call resolution for customers. Aspect expects the implementation to continue to drive meaningful results across its enterprise and customer interactions. The enhanced enterprise and contact center features that will be available through the Lync and Aspect Unified IP integration will create new opportunities for organizations to advance customer contact through better communication and information sharing.“Microsoft is pleased to be working with Aspect on delivering next-generation solutions for the contact center that leverage unified communications capabilities to better engage customers and companies and deliver greater communication and collaboration,” said Kirk Gregersen, Senior Director, Lync Product Management, Microsoft Corp.“The enterprise-grade voice capabilities within Lync validate the tenet that software is poised to replace legacy PBX-based telephony systems. Enterprises that migrate to Lync will get a unified and intuitive set of voice, video, instant message, presence, and conferencing tools and increased savings on costs normally incurred from hardware purchases and maintenance, telephony circuit costs and conferencing services,” added Barnett. “In the two years that the entire Aspect organization has been PBX-free, we have reduced costs by two million dollars annually. We feel it is only a matter of time before more organizations make this transition to take advantage of the compelling productivity, collaboration, mobility and cost benefits.”Features Supporting Lync Server 2010 ReleaseThe upcoming release of Aspect Unified IP will use specific functionality within Lync that will provide increased capabilities to contact center users including: • Unified Communications Powered Agent Desktop: Will eliminate the need for two separate desktop applications for contact center agents that want to take advantage of Lync’s IM, presence and federation capabilities.• UC collaboration for contact center agents: Collaboration capabilities from Lync can be used to initiate desktop sharing between agents in the contact center, supervisors and experts.• Security: Aspect Unified IP will work with Lync to provide advanced security of customer information, including encryption, access controls and authentication through Active Directory.• Distributed Architecture: Aspect Unified IP, in conjunction with Lync, will support distributed architecture models to enable data center consolidation, virtualization, as well as distributed and work at home agents and information workers.About AspectAspect is a global software and IT services firm specializing in applying Microsoft unified communications and collaboration to help customers achieve optimal results through enhanced business processes across the enterprise and in the contact center. Aspect provides IT consulting, integration services and business applications. For more information, visit www.aspect.com.Follow Aspect on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/AspectUC. # # #Aspect, Unified IP and Aspect Software are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Aspect Software, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries. The names of other companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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Aspect Enhances Workforce Optimization Offering with Latest Performance Management Release
Aspect Enhances Workforce Optimization Offering with Latest Performance Management Release New Capabilities to Align the Workforce with Strategic Initiatives, and Manage Continuous Process Improvement to Help Shape the Next Generation of Customer-Company Communications 21 Oct 2010 CHELMSFORD, Mass., 21 October 2010 — Aspect, a global provider of unified communications and collaboration services and software, today announced the general availability of Aspect® Performance Management 7, comprising new capabilities that build on Aspect’s comprehensive suite of Workforce Optimization (WFO) solutions. The new release enables organizations to more effectively leverage information from the contact center to gain a holistic, 360 degree view of their business operations and workforce to improve efficiency and performance.Aspect Performance Management 7 helps businesses align their frontline personnel with the contact center, while providing a structure for continuous process improvements. This release is integral to Aspect’s application approach to contact center optimization, and enhances the capabilities of its applications by providing analytics, tools and performance scorecards that can initiate automatic alerts to ensure employees are focused on strategic key performance indicators (KPIs). The product is also designed to help organizations participate in social media activity by providing a framework that supports the monitoring and analysis of consumer and other influencer discussions in the social domain.New features include:Improved Dashboard Usability Contact center performance dashboards are progressive business tools that help direct strategic decisions with timely information. With this new feature, agents can now better manage their own performance, giving them more control over their ability to meet their own personal performance goals, as well as overall corporate goals. Supervisors also have the ability to track and detect causes of performance shortfalls and manage the actions in order to make improvements.Enhanced Workforce ManagementPerformance Management 7 easily plugs into Aspect’s existing industry-leading workforce management product. The tightly coupled capabilities allow greater insight into key metrics that can be addressed to more effectively support corporate goals for improved customer contact. With this release, security is synchronized between the two components to reduce administrative time, while providing a 100 metric KPI library to allow organizations to quickly start the performance management process. Current Aspect Workforce Management customers will notice that the performance management user interface fits nicely into their existing user interface with complimentary workflows to promote better usability. Ultimately, the tight integration improves productivity and reduces long term cost of ownership for organizations currently using Aspect’s workforce management solution.Automatic CoachingThe application contains a coaching module that automatically initiates coaching sessions when specific metrics fall below threshold. The automation of the coaching process ensures consistency in coaching, while improving productivity and adherence to company policy, while reducing liability. Aspect Performance Management is built into Aspect’s unified communications applications for the contact center, which sit on the PerformanceEdge® platform, a framework that integrates performance management, workforce management, quality management, campaign optimization and coaching.“Today's contact centers must continue to transform, integrating new technologies and capabilities that meet new demands of socially-networked consumers,” said Keith Dawson, principal analyst, Frost & Sullivan. “There is a distinct need within organizations to implement practical and innovative solutions that address the evolving consumer and related customer-company communications landscape, but also to improve contact center ROI and operational performance. Aspect has addressed these needs with enhanced workforce optimization capabilities, including alert notifications and automated coaching, to directly address challenges and position organizations to achieve measureable results.”“Performance management has become a critical function within the contact center, moving well beyond simple score carding and reporting to create a successful methodology for improving customer satisfaction, service delivery, agent retention, and increasingly, sales outreach,” said Brett Williams, director of product management, Aspect. “The impact of this release is magnified when its key elements are coupled with other capabilities in Aspect’s workforce optimization applications. Together, they seamlessly deliver a powerful product that delivers actionable data that ultimately enables companies to improve the quality of customer-company communications.” About AspectAspect is a global software and IT services firm specializing in applying Microsoft® unified communications and collaboration to help customers achieve optimal results through enhanced business processes across the enterprise and in the contact center. Aspect provides IT consulting, integration services and business applications. For more information, visit www.aspect.com.Follow Aspect on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/AspectUC. # # #Aspect, PerformanceEdge and Aspect Software are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Aspect Software, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries. The names of other companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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MedcoEnergi Selects Aspect to Deploy Microsoft Unified Communications Solution to Streamline Costs and Enhance Productivity
MedcoEnergi Selects Aspect to Deploy Microsoft Unified Communications Solution to Streamline Costs and Enhance Productivity Leading Private National Oil and Gas Company in Indonesia to Leverage Microsoft Lync to enhance communications 14 Oct 2010 SINGAPORE, 14 October 2010 — Aspect, a global provider of unified communications and collaboration services and software, today announced its customer MedcoEnergi, a leading global energy company headquartered in Indonesia, has deployed a company-wide unified communications solution architected and implemented by Aspect Professional Services. The deployment, leveraging the Microsoft Lync Server 2010 platform, delivers instant messaging, telephony, conferencing, voice mail, and presence capabilities to more than 3,700 MedcoEnergi employees in offices across Indonesia.To ensure that MedcoEnergi is able to maximize the benefits of its unified communications deployment, Aspect helped the company define how unified communications capabilities fit into its existing environment, develop the architecture topology, and design a voice and data network architecture to support business and technical strategies and requirements. In addition, Aspect helped install, configure test, and deploy the solution.The solution provides synchronous communications capabilities and presence management with enhanced support and service capabilities, and consolidates the communications needs of multiple offices in one centralized location, reducing travel, telecommunications, and IT operating costs. The UC platform also allows better collaboration and communication among employees driving greater productivity, efficiency, and overall employee satisfaction.“With a large and geographically dispersed workforce, MedcoEnergi required a scalable, easy to use solution that would empower our employees with a full range of communications and presence capabilities to maximize productivity and improve employee collaboration – all the while reducing telephony and infrastructure costs. Implementing this solution is a crucial first step for us to embark on integrating UC into our communications infrastructure,” said M. Ageng Wiryawan, Business Relation Manager of Information Services, PT Medco E&P Indonesia.“In today’s economic environment, cost–cutting is essential for many companies, but cannot come at the expense of reducing employee productivity or hindering communication. Customers like MedcoEnergi are taking advantage of Aspect’s extensive Microsoft expertise to help them break down communications silos and redefine the way employees interact within and outside the company to improve collaboration, employee engagement and the bottom-line,” said Lui Sim Hua, Senior Vice President, Asia Pacific & Middle East for Aspect Software.“We are excited to work closely with Aspect to enable MedcoEnergi to fully leverage the communication and collaboration capabilities of Microsoft Lync to connect people in new ways and drive tangible business outcomes. This clearly demonstrates the value of Microsoft’s software-based UC solution, coupled with Aspect’s expertise in delivering the capabilities to bring this vision to life for customers,” said Alexander Oddoz-Mazet, director of business productivity solutions at Microsoft Asia Pacific.About AspectAspect is a global software and IT services firm specializing in applying Microsoft unified communications and collaboration to help customers achieve optimal results through enhanced business processes across the enterprise and in the contact center. Aspect provides IT consulting, integration services and business applications. For more information, visit www.aspect.com.Follow Aspect on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/AspectUC.###Aspect and Aspect Software are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Aspect Software, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries. The names of other companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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Aspect Ranked Among World's 100 Largest Software Companies for Fifth Consecutive Year on Software Magazine's Software 500 List
Aspect Ranked Among World's 100 Largest Software Companies for Fifth Consecutive Year on Software Magazine's Software 500 List Aspect also Places within Top 10 of World's Largest Privately-Held Software Companies 30 Sept 2010 CHELMSFORD, Mass., 30 September 2010 — Aspect, a global provider of unified communications and collaboration services and software, today announced it has been ranked as the 98th largest company by revenue on Software Magazine’s annual list of the top 500 software and services companies in the world. The 2010 Software 500 ranking represents Aspect’s sixth consecutive year on the list with five uninterrupted years in the top 100. The ranking, now in its 28th year, also positions Aspect as the 9th largest privately-held software company in the world.“This designation reflects both our strong financial performance, even in challenging economic times, and the deep-rooted confidence among Aspect customers that we will continue to deliver the right solutions and services to meet their business needs,” said Jim Foy, president and chief executive officer, Aspect. “Being named to the Software 500 underscores Aspect’s passionate, company-wide focus on accelerating the success of our customers by providing unified communications solutions for the contact center and enterprise that are equipped for the next generation of customer contact.”John P. Desmond, editor of Software Magazine and Softwaremag.com states, “The 2010 Software 500 results show that revenue growth in the software and services industry was healthy, with total Software 500 revenue of $491.7B billion worldwide for 2009, representing virtually flat growth from the previous year.” Roughly 47 percent of the 2010 Software 500 companies are privately held.The Software 500 is a revenue-based ranking of the world’s largest software and services suppliers targeting medium to large enterprises, their IT professionals, software developers and business managers involved in software and services purchasing. “The Software 500 helps CIOs, senior IT managers and IT staff research and create the short list of business partners,” Desmond says.The ranking is based on total worldwide software and services revenue for 2009. This includes revenues from software licenses, maintenance and support, training and software-related services and consulting. Suppliers are not ranked on their total corporate revenue, since many have other lines of business, such as hardware. The financial information was gathered by a survey prepared by King Content Co. and posted at www.Softwaremag.com, as well as from public documents.About Digital Software Magazine, the Software Decision Journal, and Softwaremag.comDigital Software Magazine, the Software Decision Journal, has been a brand name in the high-tech industry for 30 years. Softwaremag.com, its Web counterpart, is the online catalog to enterprise software and the home of the Software 500 ranking of the world’s largest software and services companies. Software Magazine and Softwaremag.com are owned and operated by King Content Co.About AspectAspect is a global software and IT services firm specializing in applying Microsoft® unified communications and collaboration to help customers achieve optimal results through enhanced business processes across the enterprise and in the contact center. Aspect provides IT consulting, integration services and business applications. For more information, visit www.aspect.com.Follow Aspect on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/AspectUC. # # #Aspect and Aspect Software are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Aspect Software, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries. The names of other companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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Aspect Wins 2010 PilotHouse Award as Top IP Contact Center Solutions Provider among Market Leaders
Aspect Wins 2010 PilotHouse Award as Top IP Contact Center Solutions Provider among Market Leaders Customer Survey of Leading IP Contact Center Solution Vendors Ranks Aspect as Top Strategic Partner 21 Sept 2010 CHELMSFORD, Mass., 21 September 2010 — Aspect, a global provider of unified communications and collaboration services and software, today announced that, for the second consecutive year, it has been named top IP contact center solutions provider among market leaders in an industry analyst survey of customers deploying IP contact center technology, and has been conferred a corresponding 2010 PilotHouse Top Provider award from Nemertes Research.The award is based 100 percent on the views and experiences of more than 2,000 IT professionals who work with IP contact center vendors to implement their applications, such as automatic call distribution (ACD), and interactive voice response (IVR); it ranks how well vendors perform in the eyes of their business users.Aspect received the highest composite rating across the three categories measured in the 2010 survey – technology, customer service and value – from among such competitors as Cisco, Avaya/Nortel, Genesys, NEC, Siemens and Mitel. Positive customer opinions and the successive wins in 2009 and 2010 as the Market Leader in IP Contact Center Solutions reflect the quality and success of Aspect’s solutions in real-world IP contact center deployments.“Aspect’s total overall score was one of the highest in the PilotHouse Award program this year among all technology vendors,” said Robin Gareiss, executive vice president and senior founding partner, Nemertes Research. “Aspect’s customers rate the vendor highest in value, an important rating that demonstrates customers believe they get their money’s worth when they implement Aspect in the contact center. Aspect also received high ratings from its customers for its technology, specifically pointing to its integration capabilities.”Many IT executives referenced Aspect’s numerous features for contact centers as a basis for its superiority. Excerpts from Nemertes’ surveys and interviews with Aspect IT end-users include: “The feature-rich nature allows our technical team to create custom applications, which would need additional hardware, software, and licensing with other solution vendors,” says the telecom manager for a large publisher.“’Every year they get closer to the optimal solution,” says the director of IT for a professional-services firm. “They are really good at listening and adding functions to the next release.”“The products are state of the art,” says the director of telecom for a large energy company. “Its intelligent routing is high-end.”Some customers said that ultimately they end up paying less in time, software, and hardware because of Aspect’s excellent integration and vendor interoperability. Others point to Aspect’s alignment with Microsoft and extensive professional services capabilities in the unified communications arena as a distinct advantage.“Delivering innovative IP contact center solutions that address our customer’s most stringent requirements, drive greater efficiency and provide consistency and quality across the customer experience is an unrelenting pursuit at Aspect,” said Jim Foy, president and chief executive officer, Aspect. “We enthusiastically receive this PilotHouse award, as it is a direct reflection of customer opinion and an affirmation of Aspect’s success in driving compelling business results for our customers.”Results are based exclusively on the unbiased ratings of technology end users. Nemertes determines the methodology, conducts the research and analyzes the findings, but has no influence over vendor performance. The opinions rest with real buyers. No vendors sponsor this research.About Nemertes ResearchNemertes Research is a research-advisory firm that specializes in analyzing and quantifying the business value of emerging technologies. You can learn more about Nemertes Research at the Website www.nemertes.com or contact directly at research@nemertes.com.About AspectAspect is a global software and IT services firm specializing in applying Microsoft® unified communications and collaboration to help customers achieve optimal results through enhanced business processes across the enterprise and in the contact center. Aspect provides IT consulting, integration services and business applications. For more information, visit www.aspect.com.Follow Aspect on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/AspectUC. # # #Aspect and Aspect Software are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Aspect Software, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries. The names of other companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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Pinnacle Security Wins Speech Technology 2010 Implementation Award with Aspect Solution
Pinnacle Security Wins Speech Technology 2010 Implementation Award with Aspect Solution Contact Center Applications from Aspect Help Pinnacle Achieve $750,000 in Cost Savings 14 Sept 2010 CHELMSFORD, Mass., 14 September 2010 — Aspect, a global provider of unified communications and collaboration services and software, today announced its customer, Pinnacle Security, a leading provider of residential and commercial security systems, has won Speech Technology magazine’s 2010 Implementation Award for impressive results attained through the deployment of new speech technology in their contact center during the past year. Pinnacle’s award-winning results stem directly from their implementation of Aspect’s Productive Workforce™ and Seamless Customer Service™ contact center applications integrated with Microsoft Tellme hosted speech solutions. The comprehensive solution comprises an automated system Pinnacle has named “Voice Qualification (V-Qual) System Sales Solution.”V-Qual was sought out by Pinnacle to streamline their sales and call center process. A large majority of Pinnacle’s sales are made directly to consumers in their homes by salespersons in the field working to qualify customers and finalize sales. This door-to-door model typically required two call center contacts to secure an appointment with interested customers. The first was a credit screening. Upon satisfactory completion, and further interest from the customer, a second call to an agent to discuss packaging and pricing terms was made. With a goal to automate at least one-third of the overall sales call volume, Pinnacle began searching for an automated speech solution that would reduce headcount at the call center and minimize the duration of each call, while bringing more predictability to their door-to-door selling model.Solution SelectionAfter evaluating several speech solutions, Pinnacle chose Aspect. “We were looking for a large player that worked with companies of our size and beyond. We wanted an enterprise solution—not just best-of-breed components, but one-stop shopping and full integration. That’s what we found with Aspect,” said Bill Pratt, Pinnacle’s senior director of customer care. “They dealt with 10,000-plus agents at one particular company and that appealed to us, as did their integration with a lot of other Microsoft components. That was a big plus for our IT team.”Whether utilized in a call center that services only telephony-based calls or in a more complex contact center that may include email, fax, web chat and other communication modes, Aspect’s Seamless Customer Service application offers contact center managers comprehensive control and visibility over the customer experience. Customers seamlessly traverse from self-service to live agent assistance which has helped Pinnacle reduce call duration, and live agent requirements while expediting service. The application’s Ask an Expert capability powered by Microsoft unified communications capabilities provides presence information and one-click contact capabilities, and further, it enables scheduling of knowledge experts outside the contact center in the enterprise to address customer inquiries and issues.Aspect customers deploying Seamless Customer Service have seen significant customer satisfaction improvements, increases in first call resolution, productivity improvements, and reduction in overall maintenance costs that have had meaningful bottom-line impact. It is powered by the Aspect® Unified IP® product that unites core contact center capabilities in a software-based platform.Productive Workforce enables companies to optimize contact center resources while promoting continuous improvement. The Aspect application unites workforce management, quality management and performance management within a centralized platform to reduce the cost per customer interaction and improve the customer experience. Productive Workforce leverages workforce optimization capabilities from the Aspect PerformanceEdge® platform product and provides organizations the insight to apply the right number of agents with the right skills, at the right time to satisfy customer needs. It delivers essential workforce management forecasting and what-if scenarios to determine optimal staff and resource requirements for inbound and blended operations. It can help reduce hiring and administrative costs, maximize agent productivity and retention, and increase customer satisfaction and revenues.Post-Implementation ResultsBefore the Aspect implementation, Pinnacle relied on live agents to field new account processing calls from sales reps, and a service level that required no less than 90 percent of calls answered within 10 seconds. The agent headcount needed to meet that standard was extremely high and costly. After a three-month implementation and training phase, the company saw quickly escalating benefits, including a 35 percent reduction in both the use of live agents and headcount.Based on conservative projections of the current data, Pinnacle is well poised to achieve an estimated 70 percent adoption rate of the V-Qual System by salespeople for its peak selling period of April through September. This level of buy-in and the corresponding 35 percent reduction in both live agent call volume and headcount equates to a projected one-year cost savings of $700,000 – $800,000.Further benefits of the V-Qual System include the reduction of manual data entry error and the ability of Pinnacle’s salespeople to close deals more quickly because of the automated system’s streamlined data processing. In fact, Pinnacle has shaved total call time by an average of 4.5 minutes to deliver a more satisfying customer experience.“Pinnacle clearly understands the customer relationship, cost and competitive benefits that result from employing advanced contact center solutions designed specifically to meet their unique requirements. The Seamless Customer Service and Productive Workforce solutions from Aspect eliminate IT complexity, providing ease of integration and reduced implementation and maintenance costs while delivering business-critical functionality,” said Serge Hyppolite, director of Interaction product management, Aspect. “Pinnacle’s long-term vision and adoption of Aspect and Microsoft technology solutions position them favorably to deliver exceptional customer experiences within a highly effective operational model.”An expanded version of the results has been published in the July/August 2010 issue of Speech Technology magazine.About PinnaclePinnacle Security is an industry leader in providing quality residential and commercial security solutions to help individuals realize the peace-of-mind that comes from protecting the things that matter most. Pinnacle is headquartered in Orem, Utah, and has sales offices throughout North America. For more information, please visit www.pinnaclesecurity.com.About AspectAspect is a global software and IT services firm specializing in applying Microsoft® unified communications and collaboration to help customers achieve optimal results through enhanced business processes across the enterprise and in the contact center. Aspect provides IT consulting, integration services and business applications. For more information, visit www.aspect.com.Follow Aspect on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/AspectUC. # # #Aspect, Unified IP, PerformanceEdge, Productive Workforce, Seamless Customer Service, and Aspect Software are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Aspect Software, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries. The names of other companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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