Building VoIP into the enterprise

Voice over IP is slowly but surely making strides at organizations far and wide. According to Infonetics Research, 36 percent of large organizations were already using VoIP products and services in 2005. And a few are embracing the full promise of VoIP, which is the creative integration of voice and data in ways that change the way people work.

There is no killer VoIP application that spans all markets, but there are select environments in which the integration of voice and data are solving real-world problems. Here’s how four very different organizations are using VoIP to address an array of business challenges, transforming their operations in the process (see also “The full promise of VoIP edges nearer” and an interview with VoIP expert Jeff Snyder, chief analyst at Gartner).

Subway stays on track and on schedule

When Les White expanded his franchise of Subway eateries from five to more than 30, he was naturally concerned about maintaining a high level of customer service through a good working relationship with an expanding roster of employees.

“You need to be there to cultivate staff with good people skills,” White says. “But you’re dealing with 16- to 22-year-olds who have trouble staying on task and sometimes don’t show up.”

White found a way to keep up those employee relationships while cutting payroll costs by using XML-enabled Cisco 7970G IP phones with color touchscreens, together with a back-end Cisco Call Manager cluster, Unity server, and IPSession software from IPCelerate, which runs on the same servers as Call Manager. With IPCelerate software and Call Manager, White broadcasts reminders and customer service lessons to all of his stores simultaneously at prescheduled times. “Every morning a broadcast automatically goes out to all the stores saying, ‘Good morning. You should have bread in the proofer, registers should be counted, deli tables should be up, and the Subway sign should be on.’ An employee has to acknowledge that all these things have been done by entering a four digit code into the phone.”

White uses the system to broadcast a motivational “lesson of the day” to help polish customer service skills while ramping up for high-traffic hours. He also sends out congratulations to employees who win bonuses and other rewards for a job well done.

The phones link directly into IPCelerate’s time-card application, so users punch in and out using the touchscreens. The IPCelerate application implements several rules that minimize payroll costs and staffing problems. For example, the system will not allow employees to clock in early. If they don’t show up on time or stay past the end of their shift, Call Manager alerts the store manager by way of his preferred device, such as his cell phone. If he accepts the employee’s reasons for working overtime, he can enter a code into his phone to indicate authorization.

“That single time-card application saves us about $500,000 per year in payroll expense,” White says.

If an employee fails to show up, the ones that did no longer have to call store after store for a replacement. Instead they can use the broadcast feature to send an S.O.S. to all 30 stores at once, plus the store and area manager. This helps to keep customer service consistent. The system also knows to send SMS messages to the cell phones of potential employees with the right training to take over the appropriate function at the store. Those who are available can then respond by calling the store.

The whole process of installing DSL, routers, and phones in each store took about eight months, with the back-end applications taking another two months. Future plans call for IP-based video surveillance and self-service kiosks. “I really would have lost touch if I had expanded without these capabilities,” White says.

School system finds new measure of security

For the Charles County School System, located 30 miles southeast of Washington, a new level of security came in the form of converged voice and data.

Charles County was one of the first school systems to embrace Cisco’s Connected Learning for Schools Blueprint. It upgraded its wide area infrastructure to 2Gbps fiber, with the goal of providing voice, data, and video in every classroom, in addition to adding Wi-Fi. Its previous phone system was based on an aging PBX that severely limited simultaneous calls to and from any of its schools. The county also had no control over where and when employees could make phone calls, and therefore struggled with astronomical phone bills, according to CIO Bijaya Devkota.

When Charles County decided to upgrade to Cisco Call Manager Servers and IP phones, Cisco brought along partner LiteScape to demonstrate its LS ServicePoint for Education KIDS (Knowledge Information Delivery) application. Devkota was sold. Now when anyone makes a 911 call, an alert containing exact location information is immediately sent to school administration officials and the local sheriff’s office via e-mail, pager, or cell phone, depending on which preferred device the user has chosen. Many administrators have Wi-Fi-enabled IP phones so they can be reached even when they’re not at their desks. If the 911 call is a mistake, the caller can reach a central number to notify security officials.

The broadcast feature also allows the principal to send information to a select group, such as all biology teachers, via voice mail. Teachers have on-screen access to the student database via their XML-enabled Cisco 7940G or 7960G IP phones, which helps keep current students’ emergency-contact data. In the past, this information was not always up to date.

The county also uses Cisco MeetingPlace videoconferencing capabilities to provide instruction to multiple locations. And the administration holds meetings with all its principals using Web/videoconferencing. “We couldn’t do all of this without that 2Gbps bandwidth,” Devkota says.

A Cisco Unity server links into Microsoft Exchange and provides unified messaging, so that voice mails are sent to Exchange inboxes. The old limitations on simultaneous calls have disappeared, and Call Manager allows the administration to apply rules to each individual phone to limit inappropriate calls. “We can prevent certain staff from calling California,” Devkota says.

The whole project has taken about two years. The most time-consuming part was the individual wiring of new phones from classroom to classroom, and from school to school. The biggest surprise was the sudden realization that there would have to be a major power upgrade at each site. Still, officials are pleased with the results. “We’ve barely scratched the surface of what we can do with this system and bandwidth,” Devkota says.

Credit union won’t compromise convenience

Following a merger in 2003, Winnipeg-based Vantis Credit Union wound up with all six of its branches concentrated in the city’s southwest quadrant. Vantis’ two other branches, located in remote northern areas of Canada, were not staffed to provide a full array of banking services. When officials learned that Manitoba Hydro, one of Vantis’ largest membership groups, was moving its main office from the southwest quadrant to downtown Winnipeg, they wanted to move fast to provide Manitoba Hydro and the rest of its Winnipeg and remote customers with a full array of convenient banking services.

Michel Audette, president and CEO, initiated a solution that swiftly addressed the issues: distributed Web-, VoIP-, and video-enabled banking kiosks that provide full banking services and live face-to-face contact with call center reps, tellers, and customer service agents. The technology came from MTS Allstream, Manitoba’s regional communications utility, and Nortel Networks, with help from Vantis’ IT department.

Vantis currently has four pilot kiosks — two in an MTS building and two in its branches. Each sits in an enclosed room and consists of a built-in screen, hardened PC, Nortel IP phone, Web cam, scanner, printer, electronic signature pad, keyboard, and trackball. On the back end is a Nortel Communication Server 1000 IP PBX, call center servers, and a cluster of Nortel Multimedia Communication Server 5100s, the latter of which provide SIP-based Web conferencing, videoconferencing, and document sharing, along with presence and instant messaging features. The whole system is tied into Vantis’ banking Web site and links indirectly with back-end applications via an intermediary data store.

Now, when members need to talk with a bank representative, they just click a button and, using the system’s presence features, choose an available agent from the resulting screen menu. The system has the built-in intelligence to route the appropriate banking function to the reps with the right expertise. Users can even see whether a rep they have previously spoken with is available to take their call.

The Communication Server and IP PBX then launch a video/Web/document-sharing conference in which the call agent and member can see each other, speak live, and together fill out Web-based loan applications or other necessary documents on-screen. The member can sign forms using the electronic signature pad and scan in any necessary documents. Call agents may be located at Vantis’ IP-based call center, or they may log in to the call center remotely over IP from a bank branch with some downtime. “The last thing we want is a long customer queue,” Audette says.

Audette says all the planned kiosks will cost considerably less than a single new branch. Down the road, it will be possible to get all of these services from home. “In three to five years, every financial institution will be offering this type of service to its clients,” he says.

Training centers cures collaboration headache

With 16 field offices spread across the Middle East and North Africa — in addition to a branch in Washington — American Mideast Educational Training Services (AMIDEAST), a nonprofit educational testing and English-language training organization, constantly struggled with high phone bills and inadequate communications. Its globally dispersed directors, business developers, and student advisory groups needed to collaborate on several projects, but the clash of time zones, work days, and frequent staff travel, in combination with the high costs of international calling and voice and videoconferencing, made any collaboration difficult and expensive.

Ugur Usumi, AMIDEAST’s IT director, tackled the problem head-on by installing a Siemens HiPath 4000 PBX in the Washington office and connecting its international offices over an IP VPN via IP phones, which sat on the desks of a far-flung staff aside their existing phones. This made most international calls virtually free. “Communications improved immediately because people no longer hesitated to make international calls,” Usumi says.

It was the addition of Siemens’ OpenScape real-time communications software, however, that really threw the doors open. OpenScape layers phone presence, find-me/follow-me functionality and voice, Web, and videoconferencing on top of Microsoft Live Communications Server and adds its own user portal client. Each OpenScape user can designate a preferred device to which all calls to his or her desk phone will be redirected at any time, while maintaining complete control over when, where, and by whom he or she can be contacted. All voice mail goes to AMIDEAST’s HiPath Xpressions unified messaging system based on Exchange.

Presence capabilities make it clear who is available by phone or IM, and the combination of these features with built-in voice, Web, and videoconferencing makes it simple to fire up an ad hoc collaboration session for far less money and effort than when AMIDEAST was using outside conferencing services.

“I can simply drag and drop names to start a conference call with a group of four, five, or six people in Cairo, Beirut, and Kuwait,” Usumi says. “The PBX then calls all the group members on their preferred devices and calls me back when they’re all connected. If users are willing to take calls from certain people during late hours, they can tell OpenScape, and it will find them.”

Group members can also collaborate on documents and presentations in real time. If a user forgets to change find-me/follow-me information, he can call the OpenScape server and use its voice-recognition capabilities to make the change. Users at a hotel or airport with a Wi-Fi connection can log in to OpenScape with their laptops and softphones and handle international calls via the PBX at the office.

Usumi found the installation of the gateway, OpenScape, and IP phones so easy that he added IP phones ahead of schedule. “The bigger challenge was training the staff that was less comfortable with computers to actually use these features,” Usumi says.