Integration technology has been on a journey that has radically improved agility and reduced TCO. It has moved from a manual craft to something more modular, reusable and business focused:
• Hiding complexity behind well defined and open interfaces that encourage reuse and sharing
• Replacing point to point with many to many
• Minimising the custom coding required for any particular solution
• Abstracting away complexity, becoming more model driven and “business technology” focused
• Adding management capabilities to monitor and improve usage

As a result, integration at the data and process levels have been transformed, and the enabling integration technologies have become widely adopted. This explains the popularity of approaches such as BPM.

However, these approaches still leave users stranded with too many applications on their desktops, including major enterprise applications that are complex and difficult to use because they are not dedicated to the task at hand. This is primarily because they do not extend to delivering the simple, intuitive, flexible UI required to make people more efficient and to reduce the cost of building and maintaining applications for people. If I want to create an integrated (composite) application for users in my business that spans several functional domains (such as billing, CRM and order management) then:
• I have to custom code the UI for all the functional domains and how they are to be combined, or i have to take a packaged application like CRM and begin to develop new screens that lock functionality from other domains into its code
• I have to do this each time I need a new solution
• There is no equivalent of a “process model” that lets me involve the business and make changes rapidly, and there’s no reuse or sharing at the UI level
• I’m on my own when it comes to measuring and monitoring usage

In other words integration for people has missed out on the principles above. Applications for users are still crafted individually, rather than being assembled. It’s only been economical to build / buy applications for the largest user groups or to deliver specific functional applications which the user must “swivel” between. Users and processes become inefficient, and as more and more point solutions build up on the desktop, developing and integration solution becomes harder, as functionality is baked into these applications. The success of SAAS applications actually re-inforce the proliferation of applications on the desktop with yet a new generation of applications.

The answer though is simple enough: extend the same principle applied to data and process integration all the way to the user interface and the building of user facing applications:
• Service enable ui : create UI services, well defined and open interfaces that encourage reuse and sharing rather than point to point integration
• Develop business friendly mode to orchestrate the UI services
• Provide management capabilities to monitor and improve usage

This is what enterprise mashups really ought to focus on: addressing the last mile of integration to make people more efficient.

Labels: application development, architecture, business alignment, contact centre, CRM application, customer experience, Lean Software, mashup, SOA, user experience, Web services

Interesting comments from Jay Rosen on the iPad and what it says about where Apple think the Internet is going: "In a way it is taking us back in web time to the read only web. We had advanced from web 1.0 to web 2.0 where users are producers. That is what YouTube is about, and blogging and social media. The users are producers of some of the most popular content...it seems to be restoring people to the days when they were just the audience, when they were just the consumers of content. It is very hard to produce content on the iPad. Now that is interesting for something in 2010".

The 'consumption experience' of the Internet does need major improvement. Laptops and desktops of today are not the most effective, the most pleasing way to absorb content, be it a web page, a video or a film. The mobile experience of the web, despite major progress with smartphones, is still very limited and not entirely satisfactory. Driving a much better consumption experience seems to me to be essential going forward. However, does this mean a return to web 1.0? Of course not! People will continue to create content. What it means though is a trend towards delivering fit for purpose applications and devices, a move away from "do it all, jack of all trade" devices and applications, so full of features it becomes almost impossible to use for all but a few specialists.




What does this mean for the Enterprise? Web 2.0 also had a major impact on enterprises by allowing users, employees to generate and share their own content. The growth of wikis, collaboration and micro-blogging is a testament to that. Some thought this would go as far as allowing users to 'generate' their own applications. A significant part of the early focus of enterprise mashups was to provide simple enough tools to allow end users to do just this. Did this make sense? Of course, allowing users to personalise their desktops, to develop dashboards, to manipulate and create knowledge from data would add value. However, I never thought end users would want, or should, generate their own enterprise applications beyond dashboards. Would you want call centre agents to have the freedom to develop their own desktops? How would a process be enforced to deliver a consistent customer experience (without even starting to deal with scalability, data integrity and security)?

A major improvement to the "consumption" of applications was what was really needed. A better way to deliver fit for purpose desktops to users, dedicated to the task at hand, tailored to the need of each user. This could not be achieved without major changes to the approach of developing applications for people. It required analysts, process specialists and business owners - i.e. the ones who understand best how people need to do their job every day - to be involved in developing these applications. They needed to be allowed to participate fully and take control of the specifications and delivery of the application in a collaborative way with IT. It also required "stripped-down" applications dedicated to specific use cases and user groups, with intuitive and simple user interface to guide the user through the task at hand and to make the application easy to use and learn. This is what web 2.0 for the enterprise can bring: a new, cost effective way to develop applications for people where the "consumption experience" is significantly improved.

Labels: business alignment, CIO, customer experience, customization, enterprise 2.0, Enterprise applications, Enterprise Mashups, ERP application, Lean Software

I attended an excellent event delivered by Sabio, one of our strategic partners, last week. Focused around the Sabio Best in Class benchmarking framework called Insight, the agenda covered individual areas of focus for Contact Centres each illustrated perfectly by a case study. Targeted at Operations Directors, IT and Senior Contact Centre Management, the event covered Demand Management, Automation, Accessibility, Optimisation and Efficiency in the Contact Centre from a strategic and underlying technology perspective. The balance between prescriptive advice, practical reality and input from the attendees was refreshing. As were the case study presentations, for once not all about how great things are but illustrating real examples of the progress and real performance improvements that each company had made, with the recognition that there were still many things that need to be addressed and that much of the time they were fire fighting.

HomeServe talked enthusiastically about how they had improved resource optimisation through forecasting and identifying the key factors that influence call volumes. However they accepted that their forecasts would never be 100% accurate because of factors that they couldn’t predict such as the more recent freak weather conditions. They talked about the progress they had made in multi-skilling through simplifying the desktop, making it easier to train agents and to broaden their remits. The result of this was their ability to successfully blend work between teams to address forecast anomalies better but recognised that there was still progress to be made here to make it seamless.

Egg spoke about managing demand and driving greater automation, their desire to move customers to self service wherever possible whilst admitting that in some cases automation was not possible and that the customer would have to call and speak to someone. Egg uses extensive measurement and monitoring processes to identify contact trends that can be addressed by the business. On the whole their move to self service continues to be successful for the majority of transactions but they explained that it was important that if the customer did have to resort to calling that the integration between the channels was seamless and the customer service levels were consistent.

In a very energetic presentation from Lego, the senior customer services director described in detail how Lego were working towards achieving better customer accessibility. Lego were unique in their desire to increase direct customer engagement to ensure that they continue to grow and meet customer needs. The recognition that their customers were multi-lingual, spanned generations and that the majority of Lego is sold during what they called Main Season or to the rest of us – Christmas has massively impacted their contact centre strategy. They needed to achieve improved customer contact across multiple segments whilst recognising and developing Lego as an emotional brand that their customers felt part of and involved with. Something that they realised they lost sight of in the early part of last decade, but had since 2007 been striving to put right with some excellent success rates.

Finally a presentation from Telefonica O2 Ireland that talked about delivering operational efficiency through measuring in call performance, aligning the agent with the customer needs and the work that they have been doing to segment the customers and align service requirements to those segments but doing this within the unique challenges of the local market.

These sessions in addition to some interesting conversations with many attendees led me to believe that the priorities of senior contact centre directors both in operations and IT are many and varied but that the underlying principle they are looking to achieve is the right level of customer service.

There are many areas on which they can focus their attentions in order to achieve their business strategy, technology being one of them. This led me to think that the key defining factor in any technology implementation within the contact centre has to be its impact on the customer. There are so many technology options that will deliver clear business benefits but where should they focus to improve performance – it was made clear that they should begin with the customer journey looking at the major pain points. Ultimately much of that customer journey is controlled by what is going on at the agents desktop. There are some technologies that will have a more wide reaching impact than others, Enterprise Mashups being one where quick wins can be made and strategic value delivered. One thing that was clear is that companies with extensive sector and technology expertise as demonstrated by Sabio can clearly help to bring together the strategy and technology elements to address these pain points, reduce the fire fighting and help contact centres to meet their ambitions to perform.

Labels: agent desktops, contact centre, customer experience, Enterprise Mashups, operations, Sabio