Zeacom CEO Discusses the Art of Business Process Automation

I have been following Zeacom for many years and have been impressed by the Company's growth and evolution. While many people think of Zeacom as a contact center vendor, the company is in fact much more than that. In addition to its contact center capabilities, its core strength is in voice communications, mobility, unified messaging, IVR, outdialing and presence, leveraging partners to provide best-of-breed solutions, and Business Process Automation (BPA). While several companies have jumped into the BPA arena in the last couple years as unified communications and communication enabled business processes (CEBP) became all the rage, Zeacom has quietly been providing these capabilities for years, but without using the term Business Process Automation.

I recently spoke with Zeacom's CEO, Miles Valentine, who is keynoting Zeacommunity 2011, Zeacom's global forum for users, resellers, partners and other colleagues. I asked about his keynote, and quickly understood why other folks at Zeacom are so passionate about Business Process Automation - it is because Miles is.

Whether I am speaking with Zeacom's head of sales, president of the Americas, Zeacom, or marketing folks, the passion that Zeacom executives have for Business Process Automation resonates throughout the organization.

Zeacom has been doing Business Process Automation, or what the UCStrategies team calls Unified Communication - Business Process (UC-B) for about 14 years, with many customer examples across a variety of vertical markets. Miles notes, "You can call it by a different name - we used to call it system integration - but Zeacom has been doing Business Process Automation for many years, delivering hundred of projects over the years across industries and applications. It goes beyond just simple screen pop and building an integrated IVR - there are some very specific applications for various verticals."

When discussing process automation, Brady Cox, VP of Sales, notes, "Process Automation is mainstream for Zeacom - it's not something new. We've sold deals based on this for many years and have lots of customer examples. In fact, 22% of Zeacom's base has some kind of communications between the Zeacom system and a third-party database. We can do this in a quick, cost effective way without it being a big grand endeavor."

Similar to UC-Business Process, Business Process Automation as Zeacom defines it looks at where communications or a transaction process can be streamlined. It can involve multiple types of functions, such as rich presence, desktop telephony, mobility, unified contact center, and in Zeacom's case, integration to third-party databases. Zeacom looks at automating and streamlining both transactional processes and operational processes.

Here is a simple example. In a typical communication process, someone calls a company's contact center and is sent to a queue so their call can get answered. Routing, such as skills-based routing, makes the process more efficient and streamlined. When the contact center agent takes the call and acts on it to place a customer order, follow up on a complaint, etc., this communication process becomes a transaction or business process.

In order to streamline the transactional and operational processes, companies need to be creative and look outside of the UC server and PBX to other databases and other environments to decide how best to handle the process, such as looking at CRM data, call recording, help desk, etc. He notes, "Business Process Automation is anything having to do with a process or a third-party database where we have to go outside of our system and look at another database, resulting in interaction between our core routing engine and other databases to impact on a process. This is where UC-B becomes unlimited - when we can consider things outside our box we can do more things with the phone call, a fax, an interaction, etc. This is where the customer gets the sense that anything's possible."

Business Process Automation involves a range of applications - from the contact center to unified communications - including outbound and inbound calling, self service, and connections with the various media inputs and outputs, such as voice, email, texting, fax, etc. While typical contact center fundamentals include screen pop, click to call, IVR, interacting with third-party databases, and other typical contact center and UC tools, Zeacom's Business Process Automation goes beyond that, adding capabilities such as Dynamic IVR, Enhanced Routing, Critical Data Screen Pop, Post-Call Survey, appointment reminders, and more, to help streamline the process or interaction.

With Enhanced Routing, calls are routed based not just on the agent skills, but also on specific information about who the caller is, such as their calling line ID, account or policy number. Using this information, the system is able to check the company's database and see that the customer may have a pending cancellation for their insurance policy, for example, and send the call to a "save queue" with a top sales person who can then try to prevent the customer from cancelling. Even though the customer may have entered an option in the IVR system to be routed to a different queue, the system is able to route the call, which is determined by how it wants to handle the interaction (based on data in the customer database and information about the customer).

Calls can be routed based on the priority of the caller, the value of the customer, specific information in their customer profile, such as a previous complaint or if they were abusive on a previous call, for example, then route the call to the most appropriate agent. An example of when this process would be used is for a customer that has called several times about a product but has not yet purchased the product. The next time the customer calls, they can be routed to an agent with the strongest sales history and who is best suited to close the sale, thus driving organizational performance and maximizing revenue.

Another element of Zeacom's Business Process Automation is Critical Data Screen Pop. While a standard screen pop brings up the customer's account information in the CRM screen, a Critical Data Screen Pop will not only display the screen, but will also look to see what else is interesting about the customer, and subsequently check other databases other pertinent information. When a service call comes in and is sent to the service agent, the agent can see that this customer has a pending policy cancellation, as in the previous example, and after solving the customer's issue, is able to convince the caller to keep their policy, thus turning a service/complaint call into a sale.

Yet another Business Process Automation foundation is Dynamic IVR, which presents different IVR options depending on who is calling. Where traditional/basic IVR presents the same menu options to every caller, essentially asking the customer what they want, Dynamic IVR also inquires about more specific background information about who they are, after which the options presented in the IVR menu are adapted to that specific caller.

For example, when a customer calls to inquire about their account balance, the system can provide that information, but also looks into the customer database to see if they meets other criteria prequalifying them for a loan or other special offer, and advise them to press 1 to talk to an agent for additional information. It is a "win win", where the customer is presented option for an offer of which they were previously not aware, and the company can potentially increase sales and revenues.

What gets the Zeacom team so excited about Business Process Automation is the opportunity for huge return on investment (ROI) for customers. Miles notes that the ROI for the many projects in which Zeacom has engaged delivered ROI in less than one year - actually averaging 3-6 months.

"Business Process Automation provides the most significant ROI that you'll find anywhere," according to Miles.

One example of this ROI potential is a state-run environmental organization in Australia where Zeacom's system is used to alert and notify farmers along specific rivers when there is heavy rainfall in a particular area. As the water level rises, Zeacom notifies the farmers by phone, text, or email, to let them know that the river is rising and that they should move their cattle. Prior to using Zeacom's Business Process Automation, this process was manual, where the environmental organization would get on the phone and call several farmers individually, who would then call other farmers. The results were very hit or miss, with no reporting or tracking, and no way of knowing or guaranteeing that the farmers were contacted. Automating this process saved the farmers thousands of dollars in potentially lost revenue.

Another example is a medical company that offers a portfolio of cost management services and products to the managed care industry. A division of this company provides a mail order home-delivery pharmacy that services the clients of a parent company, providing direct shipping of medications to patients. Its website provides 24x7 access to customers to order prescription refills. However, some customers do not have readily available Internet access or simply prefer to use the telephone to order prescription refills. Often times, patients do not realize that they are low on medications until it is too late, and they have run out. It can take a few days for the home-delivery pharmacy to get a refill order delivered to the patient. Since patients do not want to go without their prescriptions, they instead drive to their local pharmacy. After one refill at the local pharmacy, patients may switch to using them rather than the home-delivery pharmacy. This decreases home-delivery pharmacy revenue, both one time and reoccurring. To address this issue, Zeacom implemented an automated outbound prescription refill reminder that integrates into the home-delivery pharmacy database and automatically identify patients with reoccurring prescription refills 5 days prior to their running out. If the patient is reached live, then they have the ability to immediately place an order refill. If not, a message is left reminding the patient which number to call to order the refill. When the patient calls, the phone system automatically recognizes that the patient was given a reminder notification and immediately takes the patient to an automated order reminder system. Automating this business process has resulted in significantly improved order refill retention and by extension, increased revenues.

Another example of strong ROI delivered by Business Process Automation is a US-based power company, which is mandated by federal law to only be allowed to charge $35 to reconnect a customer after they have been disconnected for nonpayment of their bill. It costs the power company $200 to disconnect a customer for nonpayment and later reconnect them. Being able to recover only $35 translates into a significant loss for the power company. If the company can improve its collections capabilities before they disconnect a customer, it could save a tremendous amount of money.

Zeacom developed a debt recovery application based on its outdialer application, which captures customers' phone numbers, identifies delinquent accounts, and dials out to customers to collect past due bills. Zeacom was able to apply its outdialer notification application to the power company's delinquent accounts, resulting in improved collection rates of more than 20%.

In many cases, the technology is the easy part; uncovering the customers' business and transaction processes for automation is the hard part. Miles explained that this component is often very difficult for many companies, and especially for channel partners and resellers, as more complex applications require a fair bit of investigative work. Miles also notes that this is one of the more difficult aspects because, "you have to be a bit of a business analyst and/or auditor to understand the intricacies of various customers' situations and scenarios, and must have the technological understanding to know what can and can not be done."

Zeacom has a team of specialists with extensive consulting backgrounds that work with customers to understand their specific issues and identify where automation can - and should - play a role. These specialists meet with various departments in an organization, generally starting in the contact center or a specific area such as collections. The specialists ask the right questions to identify repetitive or time-consuming processes, and then "connect the dots" to figuring out how to replace the manual processes with BPA.

When looking at where customers should start, Miles recommends:

• Look for repetitive and high volume type transactions. It is generally easier to start at the contact center, which is comprised of a number of business processes. Look at the top five types of transactions your contact center handles to identify the repetitive volume transactions. Review wrap-up codes to identify what types of calls you receive and the repetitive volume transactions.
• Work in phases and don't bite off too much initially. Do this in pieces, and after completing one piece successfully, expand to other areas. As Miles succinctly phrased it, "You can't eat the elephant all in one go."
• Expect some hiccups. In some cases, this may be a substantial cutover, and you will want to do a lot of testing to ensure that it works properly. You will want to cutover gently and in a controlled release fashion, testing and tweaking along the way.
• Note - there may be a lot of coordination required since these applications touch different many different parts of the organization, such as customer service, call center, finance, IT, etc. Coordinating the various elements of the organization itself requires a lot of work and project management. As such, it is also important to manage expectations from the various departments.

Zeacom may be a relatively small company compared with its cohorts, but it has many happy customers who have implemented Business Process Automation and have reaped the tangible, quantitative benefits. I would like to see more Business Process Automation examples that go beyond the contact center to the enterprise. And as the company enhances its UC capabilities such as presence and potential integration with Microsoft Lync, I hope to see more advanced Business Process Automation applications that leverage these capabilities.