Innovate in Place

A recent article, The Strategy & Business Decisions Necessary to Deliver Modern Customer Experience, captures the significance of the current state, “Over the last half decade however, customer demands, market forces, globalization, the evolution of cloud technologies, a global Pandemic, and now supply chain chaos have caused Contact Center executives and leaders to reconsider just about everything.” 

The visionaries at Swampfox Technologies have been working toward a new realm of systems flexibility, agility, compatibility and harmony for close to a decade.  While the Swampfox team did not have access to a customized DeLorean time-machine, like in Back to the Future, they foresaw a time where business leaders and technology executives would be faced with a very real question:

How to move from a business running on legacy Contact Center technologies (on-prem, physical server based) to one leveraging the technologies of modern times (cloud, artificial intelligence and automation)?

The Swampfox team focused their efforts on creating a pathway for organizations to cross the chasm from legacy technologies to modern technologies. They were driven to deliver a solution with a few very clear requirements:

1. The new solution must leverage the capabilities of legacy systems.
2. The new solution must conserve and build upon the investment made into legacy systems, as well as the existing operational processes and organizational knowledge base.
3. The new solution must be a bridge between legacy systems and modern systems.

To stay viable, Contact Centers are feeling tremendous pressure to move to the Cloud. Unfortunately, many industry pundits and respected industry consultants have said that the benefits of the Cloud for Contact Centers are so great that the right path forward is to scrap legacy systems and replace them with cloud-based systems (AKA, Rip & Replace).

For those who live in the Contact Center, we know that we have real value built into our systems and the people and processes that use them. To throw away all of our knowledge, insights and experience is simply bad for business and would be significantly detrimental to the customers who rely on the Contact Center.

So, let’s go back to our question…

How to move from a business running on legacy Contact Center technologies (on-prem, physical server based) to one leveraging the technologies of modern times (cloud, artificial intelligence and automation)?

We’ve established that the Rip & Replace approach is simply not realistic for the Contact Center, and that a more pragmatic approach is preferable. Which leads us to Innovate in Place. Remember, Innovate in Place is a Business Transformation and Performance Improvement Strategy where an organization’s older, legacy technologies are transmuted into integrated building blocks and synchronously platformed to create a more scalable, adaptable and powerful business solution. In other words, with Innovate in Place we use our legacy tech as a springboard to the future tech.

Yes, choosing to Innovate in Place will empower your organization to reach new heights in efficiency, productivity, customer satisfaction and financial optimization. But every transformation should begin with a clear understanding of the key plan components, their definition and the sequence of your operational workflow.

Take a minute to review Diagram 1, Components & Evolution. As you consider this diagram, keep in mind that this is about technology, and how we view technology as a tool to create operational processes, workflows as well as desired customer outcomes. This graphic provides a simplified, topline explanation. From a high-level perspective, Innovate in Place has three essential structural elements:

1. Approach & Strategy
2. Contact Center Technologies
   
3. Core Infrastructure
   

Technology dictates and directs our reality. For more than a decade, leading organizations have customized and integrated best in class technologies to achieve established goals. While a great step forward from siloed systems, integrations were heavy and unforgiving. From a day-to-day perspective, operational personnel, agents and their managers are heavily reliant on the expansive IT teams that maintain and support the technical infrastructure. Change is difficult, time-consuming and expensive.

Through Innovate in Place, our recomposition of legacy systems opens the door to a time where “legacy systems integrations” are put to pasture in favor of composable modules which are inherently interoperable. As such, we can now think and design our solutions differently, to be inherently flexible, scalable and adaptable to deliver the nuanced customer experiences of the future.

Contact Centers have an extremely large number of unique technology applications and solutions which are only getting more complex as customers change their desires and expectations of service excellence. It is a continual challenge to meet the customer where they are, when they are available. For years, we have seen the number of applications grow, and our teams have had their hands completely full trying to keep up. Each time we update an existing application / system, or implement new technologies the impact goes far and wide.

One of the ways organizations have attempted to optimize their technology strategy and create a more elastic, structured and controlled unified system is by taking a platform approach. The Platform was heralded as the answer for improved efficiencies, cost management and rapid application integration / deployment. And, the Platform has delivered on many of its promises…much of the time.

The Platform is essential. But sometimes the Platform creates rigidity and barriers. Even the most modern Platforms can be inflexible. As we come back to Innovate in Place, we see that the Platform should provide a framework and structure, and it should support the utilization of composable models, regardless of where those modules live (cloud, hybrid cloud, on-premises). The Platform should provide freedom and a path forward. In fact, the open, extensible platform serves as the principal structural element of Innovate in Place.

Your on-premises Core Infrastructure is, and should continue to be a valuable asset. Most Contact Center organizations have invested significant time and considerable resources in their technical infrastructure. Beyond the hardware and software components, infrastructure includes operational processes, organizational expertise and more. Innovate in Place invites you to continuously leverage your legacy core infrastructure while you plot your future technology state.

Innovate in Place will buy you time to move beyond your premise-based infrastructure, whatever that may mean for your organization. Remember, in your Future State, the Platform is open and extensible. It connects and serves recomposed modules regardless of where they are located, creating an environment where you can create a fully customized infrastructure strategy for your unique business requirements.

Imagine the value of an infrastructure which has been architected, tuned to best support the needs of the business.

Technology Recomposition is a revolutionary approach for enterprise-class organizations to squeeze more life from their legacy technology investment, and Swampfox Technologies have taken the lead.

Technology Recomposition is the effect of repurposing the capability of an older technology asset (systems, solutions, and applications) into a reusable module that can be easily applied or leveraged within an extensible platform.

Let’s review the four (4) phases in the Technology Recomposition model:

Many platforms and applications can be broken down for reuse by analyzing the goals of each component. This has to be done with a detailed analysis of what is reusable and what should be replaced. Overall, the decomposition focuses on reuse of depreciated but valued assets that have a sunk investment around operational familiarity and training.

Reusable Assets may include:

• Network and Telecom Assets: SIP and Telco Networks, Soft and Hard Phones, Call Recording Platforms, IVR Platforms, PBX and Centrex Platforms, Reporting Platforms
• Contact Center Configurations: Contact Center Menus, Identification and Verification VRU/IVR Integrations, Self-Service Applications for IVRs, Self-Service Applications for Digital (Chat and Mobile), Outbound Applications, Agent Desktop Applications, Reporting Applications

Componentization requires a practice and platform that is focused on managing components towards a goal of optimizing user experiences and operational goals.

Each component should be focused on reuse and “wrapping” or abstracting the component for both reuse and extensibility. Common components might include:

• Routing Strategies
• Self-service Voice and Digital
• Agent Desktop
• Reporting

Consider an example of a more complex process like collecting a payment for a bill for a good or service that can be broken down into components:

• Collecting and authenticating the Identity of the customer
• Finding the associated bill
• Presenting the bill and dates due
• Collecting the amount the customer wishes to pay
• Collecting the method of payment
• Processing the payment transaction
• Updating the account status

Once this monolithic application is broken down into components, each can be extended and reused in other contexts while still preserving the inherent value of being already tested and proven (and paid for).

The magic happens with Recomposition, when individual components that had a life in a previously deployed solution are re-combined and extended with new software. The result is a boost to the underlying value and capability of the solution.

This is a complex concept, so let’s review a customer engagement scenario:

• Here we take a traditional “touch-tone” menu that customers would have to select from to be queued to a skill or an IVR application and componentizing the actual value: routing to a skilled agent.
• The front end-end “touch-tone” menu can then be flattened into a natural language “How may I help you” speech or Chatbot menu that interprets the intention and needs of the customer but then uses the underlying routing to optimize routing to an agent group or self-service application.
• Further, the under-used IVR application that would have its own touch-tone menu to select various options is now componentized. Thus the customer asking to “‘Pay their bill” immediately delivers them to the existing components that can handle bill payments – but without making customers jump through menus.

This same example of recomposition can happen across the platform and applications with a broad range of functions including:

• Routing
• Queueing
• Digital Interaction
• Voice Interaction
• Load-balancing
• Cost-balancing
• Agent Desktop and Process Automation

Synchronization happens when the recomposed user experiences and operational goals are reconciled against a holistic set of balanced goals.

Traditional Contact Centers, with different groups focused on different goals, could not coordinate their needs for the benefit of the customer. For example, a Call Center operations group would typically focus on optimization of agent costs and staffing without being able to reach into self-service, callback, or sometimes even outsourcer visibility. Similarly, an “IVR” group was focused on containment over shared customer resolution.

With synchronization, the orchestration platform adds the ability to synchronize omni-channel interactions, blended assisted and automated engagement, and optimized business processes with a unified approach that delivers innovation, many times faster and at much lower costs than a replacement strategy.

With an extensible platform and recomposed modules, we have the power to create superior, holistic customer experiences which leverage state-of-the-art natural language interfaces and AI to predict customer needs and to respond in kind. Effectively, we can take assets and capabilities that are proven, depreciated, and understood and modernize them to make them even more valuable

Once you have made the strategic decision to move forward with Innovate in Place, quickly pat yourself on the back, and then buckle in. The first key step is to determine how to attack the reconstitution of your legacy technologies into reusable components, or Technology Recomposition. You may decide to enlist the services of a specialist technical team and begin the journey. Or, you can take a more straightforward approach, and turn towards Swampfox ICX © (Intelligent Customer Experience), which is a holistic and comprehensive platform specifically designed and architected for this purpose.

Swampfox ICX (ICX) works with your legacy Contact Center technologies,

ICX is your tool to empower Innovate in Place. With ICX, solutions, systems and applications are transmuted into building blocks and synchronously platformed for inherent flexibility and adaptability. Moreover, new technical components, solutions and endpoints are quickly integrated, wherever they reside (on-prem, hybrid cloud, cloud) creating new possibilities of service, efficiency and productivity.

Think about the human body and how fascia is the connective tissue that surrounds and holds every organ, blood vessel, bone, nerve fiber and muscle in place. ICX does that for your Contact Center infrastructure and systems.

The ICX Platform works easily with a broad range of vendor technologies without complexity or overhead. Moreover, it creates a single management and reporting Framework to deliver and orchestrate the entire customer service experience and each step within the customer journey.