Workforce Management (WFM) has been all the rage in recent years. After all, developers and programmers have no problem optimizing code and processes in the contact center, but when it comes to people — the workforce — the challenges are tremendous. But the market opportunities are wide open, too, making room for numerous vendors in this space: Aspect, Calabrio, Genesys, Interactive Intelligence, NICE, Pipkins, Verint, etc.

Initially workforce software started with just the management aspect, but with the advances of contact center applications, vendors find it necessary to further the integration into their overall contact center suite offerings. Part of it comes from customer demands — the need to improve adherence, simplify scheduling, and analyze effectiveness. Then WFM evolved as WFO. Optimization is now the key in order to compete.

Genesys’ WFM offering was never that impressive, and that’s from hearing and seeing it in action in the field. As I’d written before, it must’ve been frustrating for Genesys to be the top CTI vendor but always missing the WFM piece. Most of the time losing to a more established competitor such as Verint.

Realizing this deficiency, Genesys even developed adapters to hook into third-party WFM systems.

Things are about to change dramatically as Genesys announced a new Workforce Optimization suite, part of the overall Genesys 8 release. Genesys WFO actually includes several components: Workforce Management, Quality Management, Customer Surveys, Skills Assessor, and Training Manager.

So with WFO, Genesys has reached deeper into the organization and pulled traditionally independent departments or processes closer together. Now there’s one suite of software to tackle altogether employee scheduling, auditing, performance evaluation, skills assessment, and training. Couple all that with Genesys Intelligent Routing and, well, you may very well boost the intelligence level to brainiac.

Genesys WFO press release (via parent company, Alcatel-Lucent):

Paris, January 24, 2011 - Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced a breakthrough solution for managing customer service resources across the enterprise, including optimizing employee skills and training in both the front and back offices.

The Genesys Workforce Optimization suite (WFO), which is part of Alcatel-Lucent’s Genesys 8 solution, analyzes employee performance across all channels including social media, SMS and Web chat in real-time. The solution includes significant new capabilities to centrally measure and manage employee skills and work allocation against performance objectives. The resulting training plans and schedules create a more engaged, efficient and effective organization while reducing service costs and administration.

“As our workforce grows over time, we see value in driving up employee productivity and performance through better workforce optimization, including workforce management and real-time training,” said Mr. Han San Lim, Customer Contact Centre Director, Shangri-La Hotels. “By accurately understanding skill gaps, targeting training and quickly assessing the business impact, we can improve employee effectiveness and personalize customer engagement based on the right skills and right staff. This eventually leads to higher customer satisfaction.”

“Today’s customers require support from a broader employee segment in the enterprise who are trained on multiple channels used to interact with a business,” said Jim Davies of Gartner. “The effective integration of traditionally siloed contact center functions such as training, scheduling and performance management, with centralized skills management of both front and back office resources, is an essential requirement for workforce optimization.”

The Genesys WFO solution is based upon a unique, five-step employee effectiveness model that helps companies contain costs and achieve growth objectives while improving employee satisfaction. Genesys WFO includes workforce management, recording and quality management, and skills and performance management. These features enable: 1) Planning and scheduling of staff enterprise wide; 2) Delivery of work using the intelligent routing capabilities of the Genesys platform 3) Control and adjustments in real time 4) Analysis of data and correlation of performance gaps 5) Development of talent pools based on exact training needs and accurate schedules.

Genesys WFO is part of the Genesys 8 suite of customer service solutions, the leading software used by enterprises for customer service across all communication channels which includes traditional voice lines and social media sources. Genesys 8 software addresses critical enterprise needs in the contact center and beyond by enabling a single, coordinated customer conversation across channels and contact points, by optimizing customer service processes across the extended enterprise and by providing visibility into business performance. Genesys 8 software helps enterprises integrate every interaction and touch point, so they can engage customers with the ideal service experience at the right time across any channel. This dynamic customer engagement leverages native SIP and multi-channel routing capabilities of Genesys 8 along with unique analytical capabilities tied to customer service requirements and business outcomes.

The new Genesys WFO solution is available today. For more information please go to: www.genesyslab.com

About Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) is the trusted transformation partner of service providers, enterprises, strategic industries such as defense, energy, healthcare, transportation, and governments worldwide, providing solutions to deliver voice, data and video communication services to end-users. A leader in fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking, IP and optics technologies, applications and services, Alcatel-Lucent leverages the unrivalled technical and scientific expertise of Bell Labs, one of the largest innovation powerhouses in the communications industry. With operations in more than 130 countries and the most experienced global services organization in the industry, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with a global reach. Alcatel-Lucent achieved revenues of Euro 15.2 billion in 2009 and is incorporated in France, with executive offices located in Paris. For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on the Internet:http://www.alcatel-lucent.com, read the latest posts on the Alcatel-Lucent blog http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/blog and follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Alcatel_Lucent.

Contact the Alcatel-Lucent Press Office: press@alcatel-lucent.com

NICE is throwing one big party at the Gaylord Texan for its customers right now — the NICE Interactions ’10 Annual Customer Conference. With it comes two noteworthy press releases: being recognized as the leading vendor for WFM by DMG Consulting and the availability of IEX Release 4.

But unfortunately, in the latter press release a link was provided to the Interactions ’10 site which takes the clicker to a malformed site:

“Optimizing Customer Dynamics cannot be accomplished without managing the contact center workforce effectively,” said Debbie May, president of the NICE IEX Workforce Management Group.” The new version of our Workforce Management solution enables our customers to run a more effective and efficient contact center, by better managing the complexities of a multi-channel, multi-skill and multi-site workforce. The expanded language support also allows companies in new geographical markets to reap the benefits of NICE IEX Workforce Management.”

For more information about Interactions ’10, go to: http://www.nice.com/summit/interactions2010/index.php/.

Remove the last slash after index.php and you should be fine. But whatever happened to double-checking not just the spelling but also all links within a press release?

Calabrio has long been a Cisco partner, but now its new Calabrio One workforce optimization software will soon work with Avaya equipment. According to its latest press release, field trials of its Call Recording and Quality Management software on Avaya are to begin this summer:

Minneapolis, Minn., – April 19, 2010 – Calabrio, Inc., a leading provider of contact center management and customer interaction software, today announced it will make its new Calabrio One™ workforce optimization suite available to Avaya customers this year.

Calabrio, a gold member of the Avaya DevConnect program, is developing integration that will provide call recording for Avaya IP telephony networks and contact centers through Avaya Communications Server. This move will allow Avaya customers to take advantage of new applications in the Calabrio One suite, including Calabrio Call Recording, Calabrio Quality Management, Calabrio Speech Analytics, and associated performance management dashboards and reports.  Calabrio Workforce Management is available today for Avaya contact centers and deployed at customer locations.

Calabrio plans to leverage existing channel partners that provide solutions for both Cisco and Avaya contact centers, allowing partners to offer a consistent product suite for customers with Cisco or Avaya environments, as well as customers with hybrid Cisco and Avaya environments. Calabrio has also begun discussions with a select group of Avaya resellers about new partnerships.

“Frustration with the complexity of workforce optimization software is a theme we hear repeatedly among customers and partners, and a primary reason they choose to partner with Calabrio,” said Tom Goodmanson, President and CEO of Calabrio. “Calabrio has set a path to redefine the standard of workforce optimization that centers on the user – making the software more functional, powerful and flexible for those who use it and support it. Extending those advantages to the Avaya customer base is a logical step for us.”

Calabrio One is designed as a Web 2.0-based software suite of applications that share a look-and-feel, leverage common underlying data, minimize cross-application administration, and are easy to implement, use and manage. Views are personalized by role, providing the ability to match the work style of different types of users, including agents, supervisors and executives. Employees log into their workspace to access the tools they need to provide excellent customer service, manage effectively and keep the contact center in line with business goals.

Availability

Calabrio plans to begin field trials of Calabrio Call Recording and Calabrio Quality Management software on Avaya this summer and begin shipping the software by the end of the year.
About Calabrio, Inc.

Calabrio, Inc. develops and markets Calabrio One™, a comprehensive suite of customer interaction and contact center management software that’s easy to implement, use and maintain. Calabrio One is flexible – providing product bundles and add-ons that make it easy for customers to begin with the right set of applications and features for their business today, then build on their success with new applications and features as their business matures and their needs evolve. Calabrio One provides a modern Web 2.0-based architecture that allows the contact center to integrate new applications easily, as well as personalize and optimize the desktop toolset for each user – agents, supervisors, managers, knowledge workers, and executives. Calabrio distributes their software through channel partnerships and an OEM relationship with Cisco, and has installed software on more than 715,000 desktops. Calabrio is a member of the Cisco Developer Network (CDN), and a gold member of the Avaya DevConnect program. Find news and information at www.calabrio.com.

Follow Calabrio on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/calabrio or our blog at http://calabrio.wordpress.com.

Calabrio, Calabrio One and the Calabrio logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Calabrio, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

Yesterday CRM Magazine announced its 2010 CRM Service Awards winners. Genesys dominated the contact center awards (Contact Center Infrastructure and Interactive Voice Response) whereas RightNow Technologies took home most of the web-related categories (Web Self-Service, Web Interaction Management, and Contact Center Search).

Genesys WFM failed to win the Workforce Optimization Suite award — Verint Systems won — which must prove to be somewhat frustrating as Genesys WFM has been around for a while, but continues to lag behind leaders like Verint and NICE. Recently, workforce optimization has been a focus among companies in hopes of getting the most out of their resources. This is also a lucrative offering: according to a report by DMG Consulting the WFO market grew about 14% from 2007 to 2008:

The firm’s “2009 Quality Management/Liability Recording Market Share Report” shows that the WFO market grew by 14 percent, from about $2.4 billion in 2007 to about $2.7 billion in 2008.

The contact center market contributed to about half of this growth, the report finds. Revenues from WFO solutions for the contact center grew about 4.3 percent during 2008. Although this is only modest growth, the WFO market outperformed many other IT software markets, the report finds.

Although growth slowed in 2009 due to the economic downturn, especially hitting the financial sector hard, which were the companies that had been the biggest WFO buyers. Genesys would be wise to kick it up a notch in terms of enhancing its WFM package to better compete with Verint’s. Some may argue that Genesys ought to concentrate on its forte, contact center infrastructure and IVR, but it’s clear that the company also wants a piece of the WFO and CRM pie.

…which brings up to social CRM darling RightNow Technologies. It may rule the web-based services now, but its relationship with Genesys may soon evolve from a partnership to being a “coopetition.” Genesys has hooked up with RNT competitors InQuira and Lithium to invade the desktop social CRM space, and it is not shy about it as evident from a recent analysts conference.

The contact center battle between titans like Avaya, Cisco, and Genesys would be epic, but I believe it’s the desktop CRM war that deserves attention this year. It’ll be tricky for Genesys as it tries to balance all of its products and partnerships in order to maintain the lead, but don’t be surprised if it just decides to do it “Microsoft style” and buyout a company or two in this space just to promptly acquire the technologies and market share.

Here is the CRM Magazine press release:

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–CRM magazine, the leading publication in the customer relationship management industry, announced the winners of its 2010 CRM Service Awards here today, in conjunction with the magazine’s March 2010 issue.

Recognizing how the economic climate helped drive service as a significant differentiator, CRM magazine’s seventh annual CRM Service Awards honor the vendors, consultants, and end-user companies focused on high-quality customer experiences through the sophisticated integration of people, processes, and technologies.

Maintaining the eight-category breadth of last year’s awards, CRM nevertheless expanded the scope of the 2010 edition to include more companies. In each category, the magazine has again named a single Service Winner, denoting the year’s highest score relative to a peer group. Each category now also identifies three Service Leaders and at least one vendor deemed “One to Watch.”

Recipients were determined through an extensive three-month process and proprietary rating formula that involves industry analysts, financial and corporate information, product and functionality assessments, and scores reflecting customer satisfaction.

• Contact Center Infrastructure — Winner: Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories
  Leaders: Avaya; Cisco Systems; Interactive Intelligence
  Ones to Watch: LiveOps; Siemens Enterprise Communications
• Interactive Voice Response — Winner: Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories
  Leaders: Avaya; Intervoice (a unit of Convergys); Voxeo
  One to Watch: Cisco Systems
• Web Self-Service — Winner: RightNow Technologies
  Leaders: Consona; InQuira; nGenera
  One to Watch: Parature
• Web Interaction Management — Winner: RightNow Technologies
  Leaders: LivePerson; nGenera; Parature
  Ones to Watch: Helpstream; Kana Software
• Enterprise Feedback Management — Winner: Allegiance
  Leaders: Confirmit; RightNow Technologies; Verint Systems
  One to Watch: Vovici
• Contact Center Search — Winner: RightNow Technologies
  Leaders: Autonomy etalk; Coveo Solutions; InQuira
  Ones to Watch: Consona; Google
• Workforce Optimization Suite — Winner: Verint Systems
  Leaders: Aspect Software; Envision Telephony; Nice Systems
  One to Watch: Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories
• Outsourcing — Winner: Convergys
  Leaders: HP Enterprise Services; Sykes; Teleperformance
  Ones to Watch: Sitel; West

The magazine also named six Service Rising Stars for the year — the most ever:

• CallCopy, an emerging midmarket player among contact center vendors providing workforce optimization suites;
• Clickability, a provider of Web content management via software-as-a-service;
• ClickFox, a specialist in customer experience analytics;
• Communispace, which provides private online communities and participant analysis;
• LiveOps, a provider of outsourcing and workforce management solutions for work-at-home contact center agents; and
• Nexidia, one of the few companies making speech analytics relevant to the contact center.

Last, but certainly not least, the magazine named five customer implementations as winners of its CRM Service Elite Award — again, a record number:

• online retailer Drugstore.com, which took a dose of RightNow Technologies to get better at making its customers look good;
• network-solutions provider Enterasys Networks, which turned to Salesforce.com to create relationships as well as efficiencies;
• Infusionsoft, a provider of email marketing software for small businesses, which used an online environment designed by Helpstream to enable customers to provide their own community-based support;
• insurance giant New York Life, which used a Verint Systems deployment to give its contact center agents something to stick around for; and
• Southwest Airlines, which, thanks to Virtual Hold Technology, now offers passengers the choice to hang on or hang up.

“CRM magazine is pleased to see the steadfast devotion to service excellence demonstrated by the companies and individuals in the 2010 CRM Service Awards,” said David Myron, the magazine’s editorial director. “These award recipients are proving that organizations can streamline business processes, maximize profitability, and improve customer service interactions.”

The 2010 CRM Service Awards will be presented at the CRM Evolution 2010 Conference (http://www.CRMevolution2010.com) at the Marriott Marquis in New York later this year. An expanded version of the results have been published in the March 2010 issue of CRM magazine—available in print and in digital NXTBook format (http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/crmmedia/crm0310/index.php). The awards package was unveiled online on March 1, 2010, at http://www.destinationCRM.com.

About CRM magazine

CRM magazine is the leading publication of the customer relationship management industry, covering sales, marketing, customer service, and strategy. The magazine also administers and hosts the annual CRM Evolution conference. Each of these properties is designed to serve customer-centric business initiatives, and leaders who recognize CRM as a key strategy for creating enhanced customer value in any industry. For more information about the magazine, its editorial calendar, or CRM in general, please visit us on the Web at http://www.destinationCRM.com; at our blog, http://www.destinationCRMblog.com; or on Twitter at @CRM (http://twitter.com/CRM) and @destinationCRM (http://twitter.com/destinationCRM). The destinationCRM Web site (which is updated daily) and the monthly magazine are properties of CRM Media, a division of Information Today, Inc.

Contact:

CRM magazine
David White, 609-654-6266
dwhite@infotoday.com