ABTECH

Abtech was asked to design a solution for a customer that wanted a call center with outbound dialing capabilities.

The design was a hybrid approach using a combination of hosted and premise solutions.  The Contact Center and Recording functionality were premise based and the predictive dialing was in the cloud.  We used a ShoreTel platform for the Contact Center and a CSI for Call Recording and Quality Management.  ShoreTel is absolutely the best Contact Center platform out there for SMB.   

The primary reason for going with Premise was investment protection and support.  The investment was not necessarily financial but the investment in time.  As you well may know a Contact Center evolves over time.  This is significant asset that should be protected.  Most people in the industry agree there will be consolidation and defragmentation of Call Center Hosted providers.  At which point you will not have any ownership of your contact center and it could go away at anytime in the future.  To rebuild would be a significant cost and risk to the business.  Additionally with a Premise solution there are hundreds of potential service providers for the ShoreTel platform.  If you are not happy with one there is another right behind them.  Support happens to be the biggest complaint in the Hosted Communications industry.

Moodlerooms was looking for a telephony solution that would allow them to scale their organizations communication needs quickly and dynamically supporting significant future growth without a major hit on the capital budget. Abtech was able to provide a solution through Panterra that meet this criteria. The solution leverages SIP, an open standard, that allows them to retain investments in equipment for platform migration in the future if so desired. The solution also gives them the ability to offer their sales organization "Single Number Reach" providing superior communications with clients and potential clients. Moodlerooms and their leadership team offers a great example of executing a vision while controlling costs.

Enterprise “Communications as a Service” (ECaas)

New strategy. Leverage your existing IP infrastructure with SIP and become a service provider to your Enterprise for Telephony and Unified Communications services. Enterprise’s are shifting their strategies from building a voice over IP network with a single manufacturer to building an open standards network, capable of leveraging many devices, many networks, and integrating with many applications, agnostic of manufacturer.

What brings this strategy to light are Hosted VoIP providers. A single SIP based system hosting thousands of small businesses leveraging the Internet providing superior service at a lower cost.
Some change in thinking must take place:

I met with an leading international Art Museum / Gallery / School this week.  They are truly leadinging the way in their space by leveraging Voice over IP and Unified Communications to reduce their operating costs while integrating Emergency Response into their security operations.  While still in the early stages of evaluating the solution it looks as if we can off-set most of the investment in technology with cost savings generated through more efficient use of their telco facilities.  This a very good example of how good leadership leads to significant overall improvements at little or no costs to the operation.