Q: What are the specific things I should be aware, and what's the best strategy for migrating into a multi-channel environment?

A: As you look at the challenge of moving your call center into the future, it's critical to keep in mind that there are layers of functionality - both in the infrastructure and in the organization.
In most contact centers, there are three layers of functionality: At the bottom is a networking layer - which are your telephone infrastructure and your Internet infrastructure. In the middle layer are the contact servers - like PBX, ACD, a CTI server, Internet and contact servers, and the IVR server. Finally, at the top, is the application - one, for instance, that could implement the CRM strategy. Next, you need a migration plan.
For large call centers, this might mean migrating from a CTI server. The CTI server really is in the middle and helps to direct calls. And the CTI server is moving toward a universal queue structure. What you can do is look at replacing your CTI server or augmenting it with universal queuing functionality.
By doing this, you'll move some of your ACD routing functions out of the telephone-oriented switch, into a software switch that can handle multiple channels. At that point, you'll have more options for migrating your infrastructure forward into multiple channels. Also, your agents will be able to receive different types of calls.

Q: What mistakes are companies making when they try to move their call centers forward?

A: Probably the largest mistake companies make is getting caught up in the vendor and industry hype that surrounds a particular technology. Right now, there's a lot of hype around voice over IP, or VoIP.
When you investigate VoIP, however, you find out that once you put it in place - you're still going to be talking to people over a digital protocol. You have to ask yourself, Are my customers going to care if I have VoIP? If the answer is no, then you'd better be careful about whether you want to be an early adopter of VoIP.
A second problem is that many companies underestimate the importance of a system integrator in the project. And this is at the bottom of a lot of customer issues later on.
Contact centers are big integration projects: There's equipment from many different vendors. In some cases, the contact centers are distributed. You have to bring in the applications, and then you have to integrate the applications and the desktops.
It's critical that you put an experienced person in place as a system integrator, a person who can assure you that they'll deliver the kind of solution you need.

Q: What are the key things I need to remember as I take my company's call center into the future?

A: The critical thing to remember is that a contact center represents both a technical, as well as a business, challenge. There is a tendency to focus only on the technology. But the business goals that define overall priorities and direction - the ones that are the result of your CRM strategy - are critical.
Once you have these issues resolved, it is much easier to decide which technical priorities you need to address, in which order.

Q: Where are e-markets heading?

A: Business-to-business (B2B) e-markets will mature beyond the limited functions and numbers of customers they have today. However, as their importance to enterprises increases, e-markets' responsibilities will also increase while their scope narrows.

On 6 November 2000, Gartner issued projections about enterprises' participation in B2B e-markets. Gartner believes that by 2005, more than 500,000 enterprises will participate in e-markets as buyers or sellers.

The developers and managers of B2B markets, or e-market makers, have begun to attract large numbers of buyers and have begun to use the buyers' market power to attract sellers. The long-term effects of these new entrants in markets remain unclear, but benefits from their presence will likely far outweigh the costs. Independent e-market makers will help sellers increase the size of their markets by investing heavily in branding. In addition, by attracting large numbers of sellers, e-market makers will help buyers meet their needs. Most importantly, independent e-market makers will manage massive quantities of supply and demand data and will help in the distribution of near-perfect information to buyers and sellers.

Today, e-markets are generally limited to spot buys, excess product sales and indirect procurement. As e-markets mature, they will begin to mediate larger sets of buyer/supplier relationships. They will also have to focus more narrowly so that three unique varieties of e-markets will likely populate the landscape:

• Commodity e-markets will support high-volume trade of products and services with commodity or near-commodity status as well as financial instruments (e.g., futures contracts).
• Business service e-markets will focus on supporting specific interenterprise processes, such as those related to logistics, financial services, and maintenance, repair and operations procurement.
• Integration service e-markets will emerge with a focus on linkages and process definitions between trading partners to facilitate process-to-process integration.

Individual e-markets will find it increasingly difficult to support broad sets of commerce capabilities required to sustain relationships of differing intensity and duration. E-markets will have to align themselves strategically with business services partners as well as technology partners.

Finally, e-markets will find themselves taking on the role of the traditional distributor as well as application service provider. With business process efficiency comes added value and traditional responsibility for customers. Therefore, e-markets must take on the customer relationship management initiatives that traditional brick-and-mortar enterprises struggle with today - and they must also use channels outside of their Internet initiatives.

Analyst: Barbara Reilly