Blog

Date: 09 March 2010 Author: Bob Dalton, CEO

They do say that all things come to those who wait....

For years now I have been regarded as somewhat of a Luddite, eschewing the more advanced forms of business interaction in favour of dangerous, radical, even slightly heretical methods such as looking people squarely in the eye and talking to them.   

Desperate measures I know, but email can be so impersonal, and so dramatically open to misunderstanding and confusion. How many times has a colleague taken you into their confidence, glowering darkly, and asked you to agree that the “tone” of an email they had just received was distinctly “off”? What tone? It is a written note for goodness sake, and one created in a medium that encourages haste, the dashing off of ill thought out missives with no opportunity for real time clarification of the spirit and intent of the transmitter.

I despair, I really do. I’m not anti-technology, honest I’m not, but for years now my constant mantra and plea to the troops has been: “Firstly, go speak to people, if that is not possible, then pick up the phone and talk to each other, and only if none of these is possible, under pressure and as a last resort, email. Oh, and then put a call in to them as a follow-up just in case the tone of your email was perceived as being a bit ‘snotty’”.

But hang on a minute. The world turns, technology develops and a new way emerges. At Intact we use a social interaction tool called Yammer and - against the firm expectations of almost the entire company - I have become a huge fan. You see, Yammer’s really just an extended conversation. Someone sends a brief note to a colleague, and if the meaning isn’t clear then they can query it in real time. A brief interaction and clarity flows. Brilliant!   

Coffee machine chats and conversations now take place between Intact team members across the world from Singapore to Cincinnati, via Ascot and Berlin. Social interaction and team-building dialogue, interspersed with nuggets of communication of real value to our business, and those of our customers. I love it!

But it doesn’t end there. Thanks to the brave new world of unified communication we are moving surely - and at some pace - towards the use of voice and video as the real combined “killer apps”. Towards a working environment where we will all default to talking to each other again, seeing each other as we converse - wherever we are in the world, and only using email as a last resort. Even more brilliant!

See? Turns out I was right all along, not a Luddite, just ahead of my time.............

Date: 02 February 2010 Author: Alan Pett. VP, Operations

Joining The Dots....

As Intact IS enters the final month of our Financial Year, the thoughts of my sales colleagues turn to hitting various numbers, and of our finance guys to all the "fun" they have to look forward to in closing the books on another successful 12 months for Intact. For me, as VP of Operations my thoughts have already turned to next year and, in particular, to the challenges and delivery needs of the four operating companies Intact now has across the globe, as outlined in Bob's Blog last month.

One bonus of UK motorway roadworks is the opportunity to sit and mull over such matters and make use of the time that would otherwise be spent only on getting slowly from A to B. We have a driving (excuse the pun!) ethos in Intact and a semi-official company mantra - "Global Consistency of Execution". In other words the Intact experience we offer our customers should always be of high quality, consistent and repeatable - regardless of technology, geography, personality or delivery model. Maintaining this consistency as we expand into other regions, markets and opportunities is therefore an exciting challenge, but one which we meet head on, taking confidence from the fact that we have built Intact on some core principles and foundations that serve us well when such needs arise.

Firstly, I can take personal comfort from the people we have in the business, our investment in those individuals, and their desire to support the business model. By giving our functional owners clear direction and the authority to take local decisions, allowing them to make their own mistakes along the way and backing them with solid management support as required, we have developed subject matter experts who want to lead the charge and show the way to their newer peers across the regions.

Our Integrated Management System (IMS) approach provides the process framework that allows us to share best practice templates and documentation internationally. We work hard to ensure that all functions are using this common IMS baseline - it is the user-manual documenting how Intact as a business works. Our focus on other more common standards such as ITIL and the PPDIOO (Plan, Prepare, Deploy, Implement, Operate, Optimise) delivery model also stand us in good stead, allowing us to talk a common language across the business. This is particularly important, when local interpretation of day to day terms could cause initial confusion on what is to be achieved.

Finally, we have invested in IT systems and platforms that are geographically-agnostic and allow us to share information and communicate effectively, no matter where we happen to be in the world. Cloud-based CRM, Service Desk and Finance systems have been implemented in the last 12 months, all supporting our geographic expansion without the need for local investment or expert IT skills in country.

With all these factors in mind, I am therefore looking forward to FY 2011 in confident anticipation of another successful year. Now, however, I've got to find some other topics to ponder as I traverse the M25 each day - optimised traffic flow modelling may be a good place to start!

Happy commuting,

Alan Pett
VP, Operations

Date: 05 January 2010 Author: Bob Dalton, CEO

“Happy New Year”. “Gutes Neues Jahr”. “Sun nien fai lok”. “Feliz Año Nuevo”.

English, German, Mandarin and Spanish, just in case you were wondering.

OK, I hear you say, so it’s New Year, Bob, and you’ve learnt how to use Google to look up translations (clever lad), but your point is?

Well, the point is that despite the fact that 2009 seems to have hurtled past with even more rapidity than normal, the phrases above mark out the fact that we have found time to deliver a very significant shift in the profile of Intact Integrated Services. At the start of the year, as we moved towards being an independent business within the Datatec Group, we could justifiably lay claim to just two of the seasonal greetings above, the English and German versions, by dint of our successful operations in the UK and Germany.

Geographic expansion has always been a key part of Intact’s strategy. That's why over the last year we've focused our attention on two further key markets with a view to establishing a presence. Our plans for expansion were open to both growing and acquiring, the choice between these two being driven by one thing alone; the need to identify individuals and teams that shared Intact's creativity, inspiration and our passion for customer service.

That's why we were so pleased in early December to form Intact Integrated Services Pte in Singapore, having been able to recruit Kevin Slaughter as our business leader in the Far East. In Kevin we're confident that we've found just the person to be the core of our “grow” strategy across the Asia/Pacific region. Having recently spent a week in Singapore, I can confirm that the market opportunities for our Singapore operation are strong, and we're looking forward to the Asia/Pacific region representing a significant part of the broader Intact business going forward.

Spanish? No, not Spain. I chose Spanish as it is the second language of the US, and as we will be using our newly formed US operation as the base from which to provide services right across South America too. In this instance we adopted our “acquire” strategy, having identified a partner who shared our focus, style and approach, and a proven commitment to the highest levels of customer service. Intact acquired MTS in Ohio on the 31st of December 2009, in what was a great finish to the calendar year. Intact Integrated Services Inc. will take the great reputation forged by MTS for excellence in delivery, and grow the Intact brand in one of the world’s most exciting territories. Like Singapore, they do so with all our best wishes and support, and no little expectation for the future!

Some of the more erudite amongst you may feel that I have selected the wrong phrase in Mandarin, perhaps expecting to see “Gung hay fat choy” instead. In fact this is more usually heard at Chinese New Year, and means "May you become prosperous".

On reflection, that doesn’t sound too bad does it? So, to our new colleagues in Singapore and the US, all our UK and German colleagues, and of course to all our customers and partners:

“Gung hay fat choy”

Have a great 2010.

Bob Dalton
CEO

Date: 01 December 2009 Author: Bob Dalton, CEO

Global support - sometimes you’ve got to think outside of the box

When we set up Intact Integrated Services five years ago, we knew we had a real opportunity to develop a new kind of service approach that could help overcome some of the service delivery barriers faced by customers of the more traditional global support offerings.

As we looked into the proposition, the more it seemed to make sense. First, develop a clearly defined Cisco-focused service offering. Then back it with a comprehensive ‘QA wrapping’ process and Integrated Management Systems. Finally, identify the best Cisco partners in every region and work with them to deliver best-of-breed local support.

We knew that combining local expertise and engineering resources with the discipline and infrastructure of our global Managed Service Centre approach made sense, however we’ve been pleasantly surprised by just how quickly our INSPAN global network has grown. In just three years of investment, we’ve successfully recruited some 75 INSPAN partners, and we’re now covering over 100 countries around the world.

The sheer scale of growth suggests that there really is a strong demand for an active global Cisco services ecosystem that doesn’t approach the challenge of international support as though it was still 1985. We’ve already seen how our distinctive strategy has allowed us to deliver some very large global transformational projects on time and under budget, and we’re now working with a range of international solutions providers to deliver an essential services component to strengthen their broader capabilities.
 
An exciting benefit has been the business opportunity we’ve been able to bring to our INSPAN partners. Before we developed our support model, many of them wouldn’t have had the chance to engage with global customers in their own region. Now, however, as part of the wider INSPAN infrastructure, they’re not only gaining access to new kinds of business, but also adding valuable skills to their portfolios.

So we’re delighted to celebrate the milestone of signing up the 75th member of our INSPAN global network. The programme has already achieved considerable success, and we’re now looking forward to breaking through the 100-partner barrier as we target further growth during 2010.   Sometimes it really does pay to think outside of the box!

Date: 02 November 2009 Author: Tony Butler, Chief Technology Officer

Putting a value on the pre-sales process

As this is my first entry on the Intact blog, I thought I would highlight a topic that is a little more generic rather than focus on a specific technology issue.

Earlier this year while in Istanbul I noticed a beggar pause in his solicitations to take a call on his mobile phone. I was initially surprised, but should I have been? Based on the fact that there is now one mobile phone for every two people on the planet I guess not.

Couple this with the fact that an average smartphone now has more processing power than the entire American Air Defence Command could call on in 1965, then it’s no surprise that IT Directors get fed up of hearing they should upgrade their technology infrastructure to support their changing business needs. Now that Unified Communications is becoming more mature, do we actually need to implement better technology, or should we be getting smarter at doing better things with the technology we have?

My opinion is it’s probably a combination of the two. However, the unfortunate reality is that very few organisations really make the most of the technology they have invested in. During my career I’ve seen hundreds of organisations go through the procurement process for a new system, and frequently so much emphasis is placed on the brand, specification, features and functions of a solution that suppliers and integrators often fail to drill down to the heart of ‘what the client actually wants’.

Perhaps this is partly due to clients not really knowing what it is that they actually want from a solution in the first place. Certainly in the SMB market there’s often a strong disinclination to pay for consultancy or advice to define the scope of a project – the expectation is that this kind of engagement should be covered by ‘free pre-sales’. However, would the customer be prepared to pay for pre-sales if the value was clearer? Our experience and recent client engagements at Intact tells us that the answer is definitely ‘yes’!

Tony Butler
Chief Technology Officer

Date: 25 September 2009 Author: Bob Dalton, CEO

Awards

Awards. All sections of industry and commerce, from the arts to IT, seem to have their own flavour of awards. On a regular basis we see in our industry a raft of medals, plaques and nifty statuettes handed out to grinning business leaders, the dinner jacket enjoying a rare outing.

So why do we do it, and is there any real value?

On one, perhaps slightly cynical, level they can be seen as a simply an excuse to generate a few column inches for the lucky winners, a platform from which to launch a new marketing initiative. Another, more constructive, view is that they represent a real test of the perceived quality of a company. Perception is said to be all, but it is rare indeed for a perception of quality not to be supported by real evidence, and rarer still for industry peers and customers to endorse an organisation by voting if their experiences are in any way negative.

At Intact we are in the happy position of having received two industry awards already this year, and to be shortlisted for a third. As an organisation that holds quality and customer service at the very heart of our business, we take these very seriously. Alongside the more traditional customer satisfaction surveys, and our regular external quality audits, they represent a very real measure of our success in both achieving our own very high standards, and meeting and exceeding the aspirations of our customers and partners.

Being considered as one of the pre-eminent businesses in our field is the minimum standard we aspire to. To be confirmed as the best is always particularly pleasing.

Keep voting!

All the best,

BD

Date: 30 June 2009 Author: Bob Dalton, CEO

One of the inevitable questions that prospective customers ask us is “who are your main competitors?” A fair, and fairly straightforward, question you might think. In fact, not so easy to answer.

On the one hand, so varied is Intact’s portfolio of solutions, so wide ranging is our customer base in terms of their scale and the markets they serve, that we almost inevitably come up with an entirely different competitive shortlist depending on the particular project we are seeking to support.

Consistent development of Intact’s capabilities, skills and solution sets has made our business a very difficult target to track. Evolution through applied innovation has taken us from a simple, but high quality, technology based professional services outfit five years ago, to the broad based international operation we are now. The Intact of today has developed into a services delivery machine capable of delivering against the most complex requirements and adding value huge to our customer’s businesses.

It is by this single minded focus on adding value and solving complexity, backed by the very highest standards of technical skills and service delivery rigour, that sets Intact apart. Our focus when working with new customers is not and cannot be on showing off merely how technically superior our consultants are (although we would of course argue that they are just that!), but to help those customers to seek out new opportunities for their business and by innovating along with them, support them in maximising those opportunities.

Delivering innovation, solving complexity, adding value – a winning combination whatever the economic climate.

Date: 21 June 2009 Author: Bob Dalton, CEO

Management Objective: Making sure that your organisation can provide a more consistent customer contact approach

If you spend any length of time researching customer service in the UK, you could easily convince yourself that, as a nation of consumers, we’re always unhappy. Do a quick Google search, and the headlines tell the story: ‘UK customers are unhappy with Indian call centres’, ‘half of UK consumers are unhappy with their Internet provider’, ‘one in three are unhappy with their bank’, ‘four million broadband customers are unhappy with their service’, and apparently ‘eight million Britons are unhappy with their mobile providers’.

But are customers really this unhappy, or is it more that when they come into contact with customer service operations they’re just not consistently getting the kind of joined-up service they have come to expect? What’s increasingly clear is that – for many organisations – the IT and telephony within call centres just aren’t communicating; and secondly that companies need to invest more in the joined-up technologies that can help support a more satisfactory level of customer service.

The latest best practice standalone contact centre technology solutions can certainly help to improve elements of the customer experience. However the majority of organisations are still operating around a traditional voice telephony infrastructure, and are starting to feel its limitations - particularly when the requirement is to evolve their call centre operations into a more outward-facing customer interaction network.

That’s why an increasing number of businesses are considering how a more consistent customer contact approach based on Unified Communications (UC) can play an important role as they evolve to meet changing customer needs. Studies have shown that those businesses that have implemented a UC-based infrastructure can save over half an hour a day simply by interacting with their colleagues more effectively. The figure goes up when UC-enabled time savings for typical mobile professionals are considered.

While obviously no two contact centre operations are the same, it’s clear that the ability to streamline interactions and improve connectivity will become increasingly important. Even more so when you consider how that nature of interactions in today’s contact centres is changing. One recent research programme showed that over ten percent of daily customer relations now require assistance from further experts located outside the contact centre. Each of these then needed a further two interactions to fully resolve the customer’s issue, and were estimated to last around two-and-a-half minutes longer than if the call could have been handled solely within the contact centre. In pure productivity terms, this suggests that there are significant optimisation benefits to be realised in terms of talk time, individual agent productivity and first call resolution performance. This also opens up real potential for organisations to unlock additional bottom line value from their contact centre operations.

Enabling an improved customer service environment:
When deployed in the contact centre, the latest UC techniques can provide a powerful platform for enabling such an improved customer service environment. The idea of ‘presence’ is a key part of UC thinking, and has the potential to remodel the traditional customer contact structure. Instead of agents scanning internal contact lists to find someone they know with the technical expertise to answer a specific customer query, UC techniques will allow those same agents to assess the availability of domain experts in real time, and then find the answers and contacts they need using just a few keystrokes and mouse clicks.

UC techniques can also be used within the contact centre, with agents able to connect with either individual experts or particular skill groups using techniques such as instant messaging or conference calls. A UC approach also encourages integration with mobile or remote staff or experts who can operate a one-number strategy to make them accessible on any device they’re using – irrespective of location.

Unifying incoming communications:
Sustaining higher levels of customer satisfaction also depends on how informed agents are about previous customer interactions and transactions. Today’s consumers may interact with an organisation by phone, by e-mail, via the web or using an SMS text, and they – quite reasonably – expect that organisation to create and maintain a single view of all their different interactions. Unifying incoming communications means that advanced routing strategies can be applied to all messages, which can then be consistently handled by an agent – perhaps even the same agent that dealt with that customer last time or who they know to be expert in their own concerns. With UC in a contact centre, it’s easier for organisations to create a consolidated record of interactions, and with newer channels such as video, businesses can enhance the contact and offer even greater personalisation of the customer experience.

When Aberdeen Group surveyed the potential benefits that SMB organisations might achieve by deploying a UC approach to support their contact centre operations, the Top Three positives most regularly suggested by respondents were simplified customer interactions, the increased availability of contact centre resources, and being able to respond more effectively to customer enquiries. Other benefits listed included improved team collaboration and reduced costs through improved processes, shorter calls and improvements in first call resolution.

We recognise that some of the latest UC technologies have enormous potential, however they also bring with them considerable risks in terms of its complexity – both for the user organisation and for their implementation partner. Consider Cisco’s Unified Contact Centre Enterprise (UCCE) technology, for example. UCCE is a very powerful UC approach that allows organisations to seamlessly integrate their inbound and outbound voice communications with Internet applications such as real-time chat, Web collaboration and e-mail. Because it’s underpinned by Unified Communications, it has the potential to dramatically improve the customer experience – through agents being able to support interactions across multiple channels, sharing contacts to the most appropriate resources anywhere within the extended business, or by managing interactions based on almost any customer attribute.

UCCE has enormous potential, but it’s also an Advanced Technology and for many organisations there are considerable risks in taking on such potentially complex projects. Successful implementations of solutions such as UCCE are always about far more than just the technology, particularly with UCCE’s service oriented architecture approach encouraging the integration of previously disparate contact centre processes. That’s why it’s so important for organisations to work with specialist UC partners with all the expertise and skills needed to support all aspects of a major UC solution.

Both IT management and their contact centre counterparts need to understand the potential people, process and technology demands of major UC projects, and also need to be re-assured that all of their different UC implementation components – including all the underlying hardware architecture, networking, messaging infrastructure and directories, SOA-enabled enterprise integration, security and contact centre software – will interoperate correctly and deliver the required levels of performance.

Clearly there are considerable risks in taking on such potentially complex projects, and that’s why it’s so important for organisations to ensure that they’ve got access to the correct levels of project management and support necessary to make a success of such major projects. However, just because UC solutions such as UCCE can be challenging and complex to implement well, there’s increasing evidence that the operational business benefits and productivity savings that result from correctly configured UC programmes within the customer service environment can deliver a compelling ROI.

Successful UC implementations depend on essential IT disciplines such as making the right architecture choices, a careful assessment of your security requirements, effective enterprise applications integration, as well as effective IT support. These issues are important to get right, and will also help to ensure that organisations have a high quality communications infrastructure in place that is not just secure and reliable, but also flexible enough to support future innovations for years to come.

Next Steps:
To help organisations address these opportunities – and to support the growing number of specialist Cisco channel partners now adding such Cisco Advanced Technology based propositions to their solutions portfolios, Intact Integrated Services operates a specialist IPCC practice offering all the expertise and skills needed to support all aspects of a UCCE solution. Our services range from initial ITIL-based project and services management, through initial design and SOA application integration to the provision of a major Unified Communications solution.

All our UCCE white label services are backed by Intact’s proven ITIL-based project and services delivery model, and we’re unusual in that we bring together all the key UCCE components needed for a successful implementation, including a team with over 35 years’ of specialist IPCC expertise, the UK’s most comprehensive UCCE test lab facilities, and a proven track record in building business solutions based on Cisco’s most advanced technologies.

Intact Integrated Services is an independent provider of project, support and managed services solutions to the ICT industry. Our service capability covers LAN/WAN infrastructures, IP communications, wireless and security, as well as physical infrastructure deployment, application development and support.

Date: 22 March 2009 Author: Bob Dalton, CEO

The devil's own game

OK. It’s official.

After refusing to be dragged into the Devil’s own game for several decades, I’ve finally got golf.

Those of you similarly afflicted will already be nodding sagely in a fraternal understanding of the world of challenge, frustration and occasional exultation that I’ve become ensnared in. And it is that occasional rush of success that makes the whole thing so worth while. That makes mastering, if only fleetingly, the complexities of the game and pulling off a soaring straight drive, a precise little chip shot, or an oh so satisfying long putt an absolute joy.

One thing I have learnt is to concentrate on the moment, and the shot in front of you, safe in the knowledge that the overall result will then look after itself. Dwell too long on what the final score will or might be will only end in tears. In golf, as in our business, it is only by focusing on succeeding in every complex shot, every complex task, that we reap the rewards.

For Intact, focusing on achieving excellence in every task we have taken on has indeed brought rewards to our business, and in turn to our customers and partners. This success, and the growth that has come along with it, was underlined at the beginning of March when we were able to announce that Intact has now become a direct subsidiary of Datatec Group, establishing us as a strong independent business, and eradicating any channel conflict concerns that may have existed under our previous structure.

We in Intact look forward to continuing to work with our partners to enhance their business, delight their customers, and continue to deliver complex solutions with the quality and value that have become our hallmarks.

Who knows, we might even find some time to work on our handicaps….

Date: 06 March 2009 Author: Bob Dalton, CEO

De-Risking Unified Communications projects

Management Objective: Taking the risk out of Advanced Technology projects such as the implementation of Unified Communications within the customer contact environment

While some of the latest best practice standalone contact centre technology solutions can play a key role in helping to improve elements of the customer experience, the majority of organisations still operating around a traditional voice telephony infrastructure are starting to feel its limitations - particularly when the requirement is to evolve their call centre operations into a more outward-facing customer interaction network. That’s where a more consistent customer contact approach based on Unified Communications technologies can help in supporting organisations as they respond to changing business requirements.

According to one recent US research study, organisations using IP-based unified communications applications saved an average of 32 minutes per worker per day just by being able to connect with team members more efficiently, while for mobile professionals typical time savings of 40 minutes per day could be achieved when a UC infrastructure was in place. This significant level of improvement in connectivity is particularly important given the nature of interactions in today’s contact centres, with another recent study showing that over ten percent of daily interactions now require assistance from experts outside the contact centre. (Each of these then needed a further two interactions to fully resolve the customer’s issue, and were estimated to last around two-and-a-half minutes longer than if the call could have been handled solely within the contact centre.) In pure productivity terms, this offers a number of significant optimisation opportunities, particularly in terms of reduced overall talk time, improvements in agent productivity and first call resolution performance.

Addressing UC complexities
While some of the latest UC technology undoubtedly has enormous potential, it also brings with it considerable risks in terms of its complexity – both for the end-user organisation and for those suppliers and partners involved in its implementation. Take Cisco’s Unified Contact Centre Enterprise (UCCE) offering, for example, which enables customer contact operators to seamlessly integrate their inbound and outbound voice applications with Internet applications such as real-time chat, Web collaboration, and e-mail. This advanced capability enables a single agent to support multiple interactions simultaneously regardless of which communications channel the customer has chosen.

UCCE also supports the delivery of each contact to the most appropriate resource anywhere in the enterprise, it enables the segmentation of customers and the monitoring of resource availability, and the ability to manage customer interactions based on almost any customer contact attribute. Collectively, this represents an enormous amount of contact centre functionality, and brings with it significant challenges when it comes to successful project management and solutions integration.

Operational and IT management both need to understand the potential systems demands of such a solution, and also need to be re-assured that all of their different UC implementation components – including all the underlying hardware architecture, networking, messaging infrastructure and directories, SOA-enabled enterprise integration, security and contact centre software – will interoperate correctly and deliver the required levels of performance. Clearly there are considerable risks in taking on such potentially complex implementations, and that’s why it’s so important for organisations to ensure that they’ve got access to the correct levels of project management and support necessary to make it a success.

Requirement for specialist expertise and skills
The successful implementation of major UC environments are always about far more than just the technology, particularly with UC’s underlying service oriented architecture approach encouraging the integration of previously disparate contact centre processes. The skillsets required go beyond IP and UC expertise to include comprehensive ITIL-based project and services management expertise, project design and scoping skills, as well as in-depth SOA application integration to ensure the delivery of an effective UC-enabled customer contact environment.

Having worked across a range of different UC projects based around Cisco’s UCCE offering, we believe that there are number of key UC project issues that organisations should identify and address before starting off on their UC journey.

Don’t underestimate your company’s existing communications culture – it’s important to understand how your staff communicate with customers and each other before determining your own UC infrastructure
Get some UC project champions on board – any next generation communications project will inevitably mean change, and it will be important to have some key users in place who can accelerate employee acceptance
Prepare your environment – you’ll need to get some of the core building blocks in place, get a single authorative directory as a source of contacts, make sure it will be able to support your Corporate IM, that your PCs all have the right spec for new UC software, and that you’ve got the right bandwidth and quality of service to support your network
Make the right architecture choices – are you going to go for a distributed or a centralised architecture – many UC technology solutions rely on real time protocols and that can place serious demands on your network
Assess your security requirements – SOA is a great integration approach, but when applications are asked to integrate in ways that they never have before then it raises serious security issues that need to be addressed right from the start. You’ve got to use all of your existing security functionality, and also make sure you’ve got the same standards in place for remote users such as home-working agents or mobile experts
Find ways to maximise enterprise integration – today the enterprise is the contact centre, it’s important to explore every opportunity to connect your UC-enabled contact centre with all the other parts of the business that feature customer touch-points
Ensure that you’ve got enterprise grade project management driving your UC implementation – UC programmes are wide-ranging and can impact many different parts of the organisation. It’s essential to use a serious project management methodology such as Prince 2 to make sure that you can take advantage of all the processes, tools, templates and technologies that can help. You’ve also got to take any ISO standards or ITIL initiatives into consideration – done wrong, a Unified Communications programme can easily derail your hard-earned certifications
Don’t overlook your support infrastructure – the long term success of any Unified Communications project depends on its stability going forward. There are no short cuts here, so insist on contact centre SLAs, think about whether you need 24x7 support, make sure you’ve got third level support in place, and take advantage of some of the latest software-based remote management and reporting capabilities.

Even though UC solutions such as Cisco’s UCCE Advanced Technology can be challenging to implement well, there’s increasing evidence that the operational business benefits and productivity savings that result from correctly configured UC programmes within the customer service environment can deliver a compelling ROI. Clearly the UC issues that we’ve highlighted above are important to get right, but they will also help to ensure that organisations have a high quality communications infrastructure in place that is both secure and reliable, but also flexible enough to support future innovations for years to come.

Next Steps
To help organisations address these opportunities – and to support the growing number of specialist Cisco channel partners now adding such Cisco Advanced Technology based propositions to their solutions portfolios, Intact Integrated Services operates a specialist IPCC practice offering all the expertise and skills needed to support all aspects of a UCCE solution. Our services range from initial ITIL-based project and services management, through initial design and SOA application integration to the provision of a major Unified Communications solution.

All our UCCE white label services are backed by Intact’s proven ITIL-based project and services delivery model, and we’re unusual in that we bring together all the key UCCE components needed for a successful implementation, including a team with over 35 years’ of specialist IPCC expertise, the UK’s most comprehensive UCCE test lab facilities, and a proven track record in building business solutions based on Cisco’s most advanced technologies.

Intact Integrated Services is an independent provider of project, support and managed services solutions to the ICT industry. Our service capability covers LAN/WAN infrastructures, IP communications, wireless and security, as well as physical infrastructure deployment, application development and support.

Date: 16 January 2009 Author: Alan Pett

Leveraging standards and ITIL-based processes for increased differentiation

It used to be that attaining ISO 9001 Quality Management or ITIL IT Service Management certification was the preserve of the larger organisation, however many smaller IT solutions providers are now finding that customers are starting to demand these standards as a core requirement for doing business.

Alan Pett, Vice President of Service Operations at Intact IS (Integrated Services) Ltd – one of the UK’s leading Cisco Service Extension Partners – explains why certification is so important for business, and why he believes independent certification in key areas such as quality, information security and IT service management should no longer be confined to larger companies.

Intact IS (Integrated Services) Ltd is an unusual organisation in that we don’t actually deal directly with end-user clients or supply either hardware or software products. We provide lifecycle service offerings to the UK IT and communications channel community, and concentrate on supporting channel partners in developing and supporting those advanced technology propositions that can help them develop their businesses going forward.

Looking at our target channel market we find that our partners have two main drivers. Among our smaller integrator and distribution partners, we see the desire for these businesses to expand their portfolio, particularly into high value, advanced technology solutions. For Systems Integrator and Vendor customers, the requirement is for specialist partners to assist them in providing swift solutions delivery to very high standards of customer satisfaction. Again the emphasis here is on advanced technologies such as Unified Communications, Security, Network and Application Performance Management, Contact Centre and Datacentre Services.

It is entirely right that partners should look to differentiate their offerings through added value solutions based on more complex solutions such as Cisco Advanced Technologies. These projects tend to be more complex, margins are consequently higher and there is less fierce price competitiveness. However for channel firms the decision to add these complex solutions to the portfolio can have unexpected yet significant bottom line implications with regard to areas such as capital investments, specialist recruitment needs as well as training and sales support. It’s this area that has led to the market demand for our growing portfolio of ‘white label’ service offerings which partners have called on to supplement or broaden their own service offerings.

Adopting a Quality Management approach for business operations
In developing and supporting these services we knew we had to strengthen our own internal systems and processes in order to provide channel customers with a high quality service each and every time. Service Level Agreements of course are important, but they work so much better when they are actually backed by rigorous quality processes, and a structured service management capability.

That’s why we invested a significant amount of time and resources on securing ISO 9001 Quality Management, ITIL-based IT Service Management, and ISO 14001 Environmental Management Systems certification. We knew we needed this level of infrastructure to support our own expanding infrastructure, and we were also fully aware of the internal cost and commitment required to make sure that our Quality Management initiatives not only resulted in successful certification, but also quickly became an integral part of how we operated as a business.

We reviewed every aspect of the business using these standards as the benchmark for best practice. Based on this, we implemented a comprehensive service improvement plan. As a result we’ve now developed our own Integrated Management System combining what we believe are the best practice IT industry systems. These include BS EN ISO9001:2000 for Quality Management; ISO 27001-2:2002 for Information Security Management, and ISO 20000-1:2002 for ITIL-based IT Service Management.

This combination of advanced accreditations means we’re able to give unequivocal responses to partners seeking quality, information security and IT service management credentials, as all our key processes are now backed by independent certification from BSI, the leading UKAS accredited organisation. While we’re obviously proud to have achieved these goals for our business, we’ve found that what’s even more significant is the confidence business partners now feel in the processes, infrastructure and ability to understand and deliver on project requirements.

Supporting the channel community in certification programmes
Knowing how complex and time-consuming implementing these Quality Management processes had proved for ourselves got us thinking about how we could translate certification expertise and project management capabilities into a meaningful service for our partners. Could other channel organisations benefit from a series of service and certification programmes designed to help the partner community in the implementation of its own Quality Management initiatives?

Why do companies need help with certification?
If ISO certification is to be successful it’s essential that organisations recognise the scale of the process in front of them. It typically requires hands-on senior management involvement, and the right level of resources allocated to the task. The process demands management attention, but also appropriate buy-in and support from employees throughout the company.

The right expectations also have to be set. Quality certification can help manage a business by streamlining processes, strengthening your brand in the marketplace and also opening up new opportunities. However there are also costs involved, with operational expenses going up because of expenditure on systems and more time spent on processes and checks. Longer term though, the benefits and payback comes through in areas such as reduced staff training, improved inventory procedures and more effective service management.

That’s where specialist consultancy and process management can help, particularly for smaller organisations such as channel businesses that typically won’t have a good quality manager in place. External consultancy and services can play a key role in planning and driving forward a company’s quality management implementation, mentoring internal project champions and guiding the company in the right direction.

External professional support can also help in shortening the timeline for an ISO 9000 implementation from start-to-finish. Depending on the size of the organisation, projects can take anything from nine to 18 months with a key success factor being how closely companies are aligned to their project goals. Time to certification is obviously a variable, but expert help in ensuring that companies are on track and avoiding pitfalls can clearly be invaluable.

Turning ITIL into a services asset
Another key certification area is ITIL – a set of best practice concepts and techniques for addressing the effective management of IT infrastructure, service delivery and service support. Originally a public sector initiative, ITIL has been successfully adopted by the corporate sector but is often seen as less appropriate for smaller organisations.

For some channel organisations, however, ITIL-certification can prove a powerful differentiator and confirm their ability to deliver a structured services approach to the growing number of customers who increasingly require more formal service certification. While the process of adopting and implementing ITIL certification can be time-consuming, the benefits for a smaller organisation are that there are typically less staff and processes involved, and that the benefits can be significant in terms of more streamlined support processes and more efficient IT operations.

Developing certification and process management skills for channel partners
Having gone through these processes ourselves, we’ve seen the value in certifying aspects of our business, and are convinced it can be a powerful market differentiator. Our core service solutions are all now backed by our quadruple quality certifications covering quality management, service delivery, information security and environmental management, and we’re adding a fifth certification around business continuity.

We’re also seeing that those partners who can clearly demonstrate ISO Quality Management certification, ITIL-based processes and Environmental certification are positioning themselves to address higher value business opportunities. Effective compliance can also reduce the longer-term risk of penalties and litigation.

This new initiative is designed to provide our channel partners with access to a broad range of certification and process management skills, and is aimed particularly at helping them to address the growing volume of business where compliance with designated standards is increasingly a commercial condition of entry for channel partners.

Our aim is to provide a range of additional consultative professional services including areas such as GAP Analysis, Programme Management for Certification, internal requirements such as Health & Safety and Onward Managed Services. Having previously used these kind of services ourselves, we’ve refined the proposition and are now able to provide Cisco partners with a fast-track approach to advanced process management and adherence. Key phases within this Service Improvement programme include:

• Gap Analysis – helping channel partners and their customers to compare their current systems and processes against recognised best practice. This is the first step to achieving certification to specific ISO standards.

• Risk Assessment – a major component for achieving certification to ISO 27001 Information Security Management, for BS 25999 Business Continuity Management and for UK Government Accreditation. Consultants carry out detailed reviews of security threats and vulnerabilities within your organisation’s systems and examine their potential business impact. These will not only relate to IT but will encompass all sensitive and mission-critical information held within your business

• Certification Programme Management - featuring a full range of services for planning and managing certification with a minimum impact on partner resources. This ranges from drafting documentation to appointing UKAS-accredited certification organisations and assessors, as well as a range of audits to ensure a business is ready for the next ISO Standard stage

• Business Continuity Management – the development of business continuity plans, Business Impact Analysis documentation as well as certification for BS 25999 Business Continuity Management

• Managed IMS Services – covering a range of services including maintaining business continuity plans, support for sustainable development and environmental impact assessment, advice on changing legislation and its impact on standards

At Intact we’re committed to providing our partners with the support they need to broaden their own service offerings. Our Service Improvement programme extends this initiative, giving our partners the ability to differentiate their own business through certification, as well as significantly boosting their sales potential. For channel firms that have previously thought accreditation programmes such as ISO Quality Management and ITIL Service Management were not right for their business, our advice would be to think again – they might be missing out on a significant opportunity for growth.

Date: 20 November 2008 Author: Bob Dalton, CEO

Voice over IP with Obstacles

Why there are still problems

Voice over IP (VoIP) is the future; Companies with any sense can see the advantages a uniform infrastructure for data and voice communications can offer. Impressive cost savings with respect to equipment and administration support the convergence of IT and telecom. Sales of conventional telephone systems, for example, are declining in favor of IP-based systems. Nevertheless, many companies still have serious reservations about using VoIP. There are many reasons why: they range from difficulties with voice quality in cross-corporate IP telephony to security problems with unencrypted calls. The following will illuminate where the problems lie.

Telephony via the Internet transmits voice data in real time in IP packets based on RTP (Real-time Transport Protocol). This is based on UDP (User Datagram Protocol), which, as a wireless network protocol, is responsible for addressing, and not for the security of the system, to allow for a quick transmission of the data.

TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), which lies on the same level as UDP and is used for the transport protocols for data communication in IP networks, cannot be used for VoIP because TCP requires handshakes to resend defective or lost data. This would take up far too much time for voice communication.

In the same way as for a PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) or ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network), a signalisation protocol is required to establish or terminate an RTP session. SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) from the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) is now also becoming increasingly popular as a quasi industrial standard, although a broad range of systems that work with H.225.0 and H.245 protocols from the ITU (International Telecommunication Union)-T (Telecommunication Standardization Sector) H.323 protocol family are still in use. And there are also proprietary protocols like SCCP (Skinny Client Control Protocol) from Cisco or the Skype protocol currently on the market.

Same codes and signaling required
In any IP telephone or terminal device, the analog voice is transformed into digital data, whereby different, sometimes very complicated processes are used for voice coding. The very frequently used voice coding based on the G.729 standard requires a bandwidth of only 8 kbps per second for a relatively good-quality telephone call. Higher-quality voice communication is delivered by PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) based on the G.711 standard, but this process requires a bandwidth of 64 kbps. However, there are also a number of other codec processes, such as ADPCM (Adaptive Differential PCM) based on the G.726 and G.727 standards. Only IP telephones that use the same coding and decoding process can communicate with one another. The fact that it is also necessary to use the same signaling increases the complexity of the entire system considerably. Most telephones usually support several different concepts – but there is hardly one that can do it all.

Each voice packet carries a lot of overhead. If, for example, 20 milliseconds of voice are to be transmitted as a voice segment in 20 bytes, the entire packet is at least three times as big. The RTP header itself takes up at least 12 bytes, and then there’s a UDP header (User Data-gram Protocol) with 8 bytes and an IP data header with at least 20 bytes. That’s why it makes sense to compress the header in some applications.

Jitter and delay cause problems
In principle, voice communication within a company – even large companies with many different locations – does not pose any technical problems using an appropriately sized IP-based network as long as the required quality of service (QoS) is met. The QoS requirements primarily pertain to the bandwidth of the virtual connections between IP telephones, the end-to-end delay of the voice signal, the fluctuation of the transmission time (jitter) and the IP packet loss rate.

To ensure that voice data travels through the network at the necessary speed, it is prioritised. This means that the data streams flow according to their priority classification. There are different concepts designed to achieve this: they include differentiated services, processes for queue management with IP packets before data lines and the RSVP (Resource reSerVation Protocol) with the common goal of making voice communication via IP possible.

End-to-end delay is key
An important factor for quality in telephony is the time it takes to send the voice signal from the mouth of the speaker to the ear of the listener. The G.114 ITU-T recommendation specifies 300 milliseconds as the upper limit at which communication can be classified in real time. However, some people find a time lag of 125 milliseconds annoying. That’s why the ITU-T recommends 150 milliseconds as a value that would be acceptable for everyone.

Among other things, this delay is caused by the intermediate storage of the IP packets in the routers, because every router needs time to interpret the IP header and then forward the packet. It really can come to a time delay in calls from the company network or the administration into the public Internet or a network at another company and there are several different annoying effects that can occur. On the Internet, there is no QoS, all the packets are handled in the same way. The only thing that can reduce delay and jitter is greater bandwidth. Another problem for effective communications is the many different standards and the protocols, which are not compatible with one another: in addition to SIP and H.323, the Skinny Client Control Protocol (SCCP) from Cisco and the VoIP protocol from Skype also play a role. The translation of the protocols usually has to be done by dedicated gateways, which has a negative effect on the time factor.

The many different codecs used might also make it necessary to use separate gateways for the conversion. The infrastructure balloons, becomes more expensive and jitter and delay increase. In the end, voice quality does not meet the requirements,, productivity slumps and the users pay the price.

Security requires resources and time
Voice over IP is just as vulnerable to criminals on the Internet as any other IP traffic. If communication travels public paths, encryption is indispensable. VPN (Virtual Private Network) encryption is then used in most cases.

To connect two mobile employees or two networks, one or two gateways or concentrators is required, depending on the application. The coding and decoding of the data contributes to the end-to-end delay. As a rule of thumb: the more complex the encryption, the longer the time delay.

The structure of the VPN network can also play an important role. Voice traffic in a WAN via an IPSec-VPN with star structure usually takes longer than via an MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) VPN. In MPLS, a virtual connection is already used to find an optimal route to the destination. Then the IP packets are sent on their way, one after another. This guarantees the sequence the IP packets are sent in and they all travel the same physical pathway through the network – which results in fewer jitters.

To be equipped to handle attacks such as eavesdropping on calls or “logging in” to system components, telephone systems have to offer encrypted IP telephony and support SRTP (Secure Real-time Transport Protocol). SRTP provides greater security in transmission based on the RTP protocol. As a result, the RTP packets are encrypted before the voice traffic is sent and cannot be intercepted by third parties. In addition, the sender of RTP packets can be authenticated without a doubt and the packets can be protected against any alterations during transmission.

The bottom line: VoIP is becoming increasingly important for companies and administrations, but the ideal VoIP world is yet to come. Too many different standards and processes on the market mean that many of the systems are not compatible, which has an adverse effect on their popularity. Since there is currently no well-established “IP telephony clearinghouse”, communications from company to company are still largely dependent on bilateral agreements. That’s why it is very advisable for companies that want to set up a VoIP infrastructure to trust in the know-how of experts in this field.