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Slowly, but steadily, contact centers’ infrastructures are getting IP-based. Take for example, Phoenix Global Interactions (a division of Phoenix Global Solutions). It deployed an IPCC (IP-based contact center) solution from Cisco Systems in Bangalore. It implemented the entire suite of Cisco’s IPCC solutions and replaced its traditional PBX with a Cisco IP telephony system. The move is part of its plans to scale up its contact center to 5,000 seats in the next five years.

Why IP?
Radhakrishna Sreenivas Rao, director operations (tech services), PGS, says, "Our business plan shows a growth of up to 5,000 seats, distributed across five different locations in India. In addition, complimentary centers in Ghana, Southeast Asia and Latin America are also being planned. These locations will together account for more than 8,000 seats. The needs for such geographical distribution are multiple. Sufficient manpower base, need for varied skill sets, languages support, and most importantly, disaster recovery/ business continuity needs are some of them."

"Technologically, it is required that each of these call centers are able to handle multi-channel customer services for a wide variety of our clients. The widespread distribution of the centers and cost factors involved in acquiring bandwidth for interconnectivity made us go for IP. In fact, most of our data connectivity was already happening on IP," Rao elucidates.

Single-vendor Solution
PGS first explored the possibility of sourcing solutions from its existing vendor. "However, our existing vendor did not have a working site to suit our comfort levels. Though they showed us a plan for moving their ACD into the IP platform, the solution was limited in its approach," Rao points out.

Cisco, on the other hand, despite being new to the ACD environment, was already a well-established player in the voice over IP/ATM/FR networks. "Moreover, it had already deployed the same in a variety of financial/insurance/customer service centers. For over two years, we had tied two remote TDM ACDs over VoFR and had gained sufficient exposure," Rao concludes.

PGS was already using Cisco IGX WAN switches to tie in TDM at the far end to TDM PBX at the remote end. So it just had to take full advantage of the IP network locally to meet its business needs.

"We can now support multiple channels such as Web, e-mail, voice, video and fax, on the same network. Further, the multi-site flexibility and support to location-independent agents fits perfectly into our global network of delivery centers," Satish Bangalore, managing director, Phoenix Global Solutions India, says.

Tangible Cost Benefits
According to Radhakrishna, it is the cost of management, which is challenging. He explains, "The new campus environment has already been designed to take in SIP/RTP-based voice environment. From a practical angle, the tech services staff has been able to deploy and manage the IP voice environment in a very easy and effective manner. Remote deployment of phones has also been very successful. Simplicity of voice deployment has been most critical, which has enabled people not familiar with PBX persons to be able to effectively use it. We really do not have to worry about patching a real wire all the way from PBX to the phone. Any data network would do. As both data and voice/IPCC environment (client connectivity, servers, databases, etc.) reside on the same network, integration is smooth."

"Overall, the infrastructure is now geared up to meet the dynamics of business goals and situations. No significant critical shortfalls have been noticed, for us to comment on limitations. For now, we are happy with our decision," an optimistic-sounding Radhakrishna says.

Moreover, SLAs would be easier to implement. Says Radhakrishna, "We have acquired these from both Cisco and other vendors with 24/7 parts and service agreements in place. As a worldwide customer of Cisco, Phoenix also has priority account status."

PGS feels the introduction of new applications will enable Phoenix Global Interactions to offer its customers superior service on a simple and manageable infrastructure for its operations. New-world applications such as IP telephony as well as enhanced supervising software will help Phoenix enhance the customer experience.

Companies are choosing hybrid systems to only-IP systems. Ravi Venkatesam, AVP, operations, (technical support practice), 24/7 Customer, 24/7 Customer, a leading contact center player in the country, says, "There is no argument about IP being the way." Other contact centers are also aware of the benefits of IP. The nature of the solutions may be different, but everyone is sure that IP will have an increasingly important role to play.

Ch. Srinivas Rao