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My name is Andreas Bopp.
I am the Vice President Sales of Central and Eastern Europe at InVision.
Today, I would like to take you to the future – to the future in the cloud.
The topic “cloud” is very current here at the 15th CallCenterWorld fair.
A lot of companies are now offering cloud solutions.
It is important that you differentiate between what is a “cloud” solution and what is a “hosted” solution.
Which solution is multi-tenant capable? Or, is it a hosted solution for one single customer?
There are very clear differences that you need to consider.
When InVision refers to “cloud”, we mean a cloud solution that is multi-tenant capable and not just a client-specific hosting solution.
We can provide a client-specific solution, however this is not the model I would like to introduce here today.
About InVision: We are a company, which since 1995, have dealt with optimising
the most valuable resource the call centre has.
The most valuable resource is the “agent”. Depending on the statistics you look at,
personnel costs make up to 75% of the total costs of a call centre.
The InVision AG is publicly listed and we have approximately 150 employees.
According to preliminary figures, the company recorded revenues of approximately 13 million Euro in the financial year of 2012.
In the past few years, the company has transformed from a pure software vendor, offering the on-premise
InVision workforce management software to a vendor offering not only software but flexible cloud services.
Cloud services are currently the dominating subject at InVision. We offer cloud services to the market under the name “injixo”.
injixo is the brand for our cloud services. I will provide further information shortly.
InVision WFM, as the on-premise software for workforce management,
continues to be a key element.
There are also two more elements – “Core Practice” and “The Call Center School” - that I would like to mention.
These are two US companies which we acquired over the last few years.
Core Practice is a consulting company in the labour strategy field.
The Call Center School is the market-leading company for call centre training in the US.
We acquired The Call Center School in order to focus specifically on e-learning,
and will offer the e-learning products in the German market very soon.
I will provide further information shortly.
The subject of my presentation is the “future”, the “cloud” and “workforce management in the cloud”.
Our future is injixo. It is the brand we consider as the future and the future is what we are offering.
So, what is injixo in detail and what stands behind it?
Firstly, injixo is cloud computing, a software as a service platform, on which we provide several different services.
There are services in the fields of workforce management and learning content,
but also in the field of a community.
I will revisit this topic shortly.
It is important to note that injixo is individually scalable.
We can have clients using the platform with only a few employees as well as clients with several hundred employees.
For example, our smallest customer has eight employees, who are managed via our cloud system.
There are no borders for higher ranges.
The injixo platform is maintained by InVision. We have our own operation centre, however we do not use our own hardware.
We are multi-skilled in services and software, but we do not want to maintain hardware.
We use the infrastructure of Amazon AWS, with a 24/7 availability and a system availability of 99.5% as a minimum.
Aside from the advantages already discussed, another advantage is that cloud computing offerings are always up to date.
You may have already experienced this in the software field, when you need to install updates for large applications,
as you need to make long-term plans.
You need to involve different departments and it is generally a question of budget,
because there are often some associated costs involved.
These are topics you do not need to worry about when you use the cloud platform.
All application offerings are kept continually up to date.
We provide updates on a regular basis that you can use efficiently and with little financial effort.
You will always be using the latest software and won’t miss any releases.
We actually have InVision WFM customers using older system versions, who have decided not to install updates,
in order to avoid time and resource consumption. This will not be an issue with injixo.
As I mentioned previously, one of the services or applications we offer with our
injixo platform is injixo WFM, the workforce management component of injixo.
Our service is not a locally installed workforce management system, but a cloud-based management system.
The main advantage of this component is that we have a preconfigured system.
Labour laws and other rules and regulations are all preconfigured, so you don’t need to build a new system.
We can configure injixo WFM with different country specific templates,
which include appropriate regulations for different regions.
With injixo WFM we define the workforce management topic in a completely new way.
I would like to provide one example of an advantage of the cloud-based solution
that is applied in the concrete functionality of the software.
This illustrates how the cloud-based solution stays ahead of a locally installed version. I will provide further information shortly.
I would like to mention the costs of injixo WFM. The fee is 9 Euro per user, per month.
So for example - you have 30 users, i.e. 30 agents; 30 multiplied by 9 Euro equals 270 Euro.
You do not have large budget deviations and you can afford the software without a high financial investment.
The ROI will be achieved quickly and does not need to be calculated on a long-term basis.
I would like to show you one of our latest innovations.
I don’t want to introduce the entire range of the software's functionality,
however I would like to focus on forecasting.
In terms of workforce management, we always deal with numbers.
Call centres are very number and data driven companies. Particularly in the field of workforce management,
numbers of third party systems are relevant, e.g. from the ACD, CTI Data Warehouses, Time Recording or HR Management Systems.
All these figures create a data jungle that is fed into the forecast system to be processed further.
I would like to present some screenshots. Above is a daily distribution curve, i.e. the historical call volume over a typical day.
A weekly distribution curve and trend calculations are also displayed.
At the bottom, there is a segment for adherence monitoring, i.e. the calculations
of how agents are behaving in comparison to their planned working time.
This information is imported via existing systems. I don’t want to mention any of the associated data exports today.
As you can see, a lot of data is handled by the system.
Traditionally, this data is processed manually in most workforce management systems.
Great effort is required to deal with such data.
To perform a forecast, there are many steps that must be completed.
The historical data must be analysed and corrected (if applicable), if there are exceptional incidents,
e.g. missing historical data because an ACD failed.
Trend analysis may also need to be corrected or events to be added.
It requires a great effort of control and possibly of manipulation to deal with imported data.
It is time consuming and labour intensive.
One of the main innovations of injixo WFM is a fully automated forecast.
What does the injixo forecast do? It processes incoming data automatically.
It recognises patterns, be it daily, weekly, monthly or seasonal patterns,
and evaluates them for use in future predictions.
Furthermore, incoming data from the running systems is permanently analysed in real-time.
For example, data about the current call volume,
which is compared to the current forecast and variations, will be highlighted.
The forecast will be updated automatically as extensive as possible. If there is an issue with the forecast, the system will notify the user.
The user must provide explanation of deviations if the system cannot provide a rational explanation.
Let’s review some injixo forecast screenshots. A forecast dashboard is available.
Conditions, e.g. forecast quality, will be displayed on the dashboard.
I can see the different lines which are all up-to-date and how the system evaluates the forecast quality.
I can access single lines and let the system provide information on deviations that are not self-explanatory.
The system highlights such deviations using red lines.
The user has the ability to provide information about such deviations, e.g. an event or incident.
The system can then process the new information. In the future, event or incident information
provided by the user will be considered for upcoming forecasts.
The system’s intelligence will continually develop as new data is provided.
In this new fully automated forecast, you will not find the ability to begin a manual forecast.
The single steps necessary to calculate a forecast are omitted.
The forecast is fully automated by the historical data and the analysis and the events information provided by the user.
The advantage is that users no longer need to worry about
time-consuming analysis of historical data and conducting forecasts.
The user can rely solely on the system.
The system will only provide remarks on deviations when a rational explanation is not known.
The permanent calculations that run in the background are very complex.
New data elements, e.g. via the ACD or other systems, are available every few minutes.
Normally, this mass of data cannot be processed on a local installation.
This is one of the main advantages that arise from the cloud-based solution.
This new fully automated forecast can be offered with the injixo platform.
This was only one aspect of injixo WFM. Let’s talk about injixo Learn.
Staff optimisation is not only a matter of workforce management and the technology involved.
It is a combination of technology, training via learning content, as well as industry expertise through a self enriching Community.
The second of the three elements is injixo Learn. injixo Learn offers interactive e-learning material
which can be accessed using the cloud platform.
On one hand, the user can complete product-specific training courses for injixo WFM.
They can develop their knowledge or research concrete functions of the software.
On the other hand, the user can complete general contact centre training
offered by The Call Center School.
As I mentioned previously, The Call Center School is one of the companies acquired by InVision.
The Call Center School has produced over 75 hours of learning material
in the past 10 years and trained more than 18,000 agents.
They offer a comprehensive curriculum that we can localise and use.
Many of these components are available in English;
however we are currently working on the localisation of the German content.
The main advantages remain the same: the e-learning material is accessible anywhere and at any time.
Users can complete training at their own pace, starting and stopping when they wish
during the time period registered for the service.
You are not dependent on a classroom setting or another service that is scheduled to a specific timeframe.
The e-learning courses are modern, clear, coherent and most importantly, interactive.
Interactivity is very important to us.
There is nothing worse than sitting in front of an e-learning programme with no opportunity to interact with the system.
Our e-learning material offers interactive elements, so the user can react to the content they are receiving.
The material provided is not boring but engaging for the user. The e-learning material does not deliver the feeling
of something the user or agent must accomplish. It delivers the feeling of something they want to accomplish.
Let’s discuss the third element of the injixo platform.
As I mentioned previously, we have the elements WFM, Learn and Community.
The injixo Community is an industry network for users that offers a number of different features.
We have a "Questions & Answers" feature with a real time search facility.
We also have a "Knowledge Base" where users can research specialist topics and product-specific information.
An archive containing context-sensitive documentation about our solutions and an "Ideas" section are also available.
Using the Ideas section, we can interact with our users via their suggestions for product development.
These suggestions can also be evaluated by other users. You can see active suggestions for product developments
and other users can rate or even extend these suggestions.
For us as a provider, it is very important to understand market requirements.
For example, if a suggestion receives 25 likes, it is a clear sign for us that there is demand for this specific functionality.
The question is: Do you want to come into the future with us?
Is it a topic for you? Then join us!
We can set up your cloud tenant in only six minutes.
If you compare these six minutes to the time required to install software locally, I guess I don’t need to bring up more arguments.
For a local installation you must order your servers, mobilise your project team and push through your budget.
Six minutes – that is simply unbeatable!
So, in six minutes you could be in the future. This is our message to you and with this message I would like to close this presentation.
If you would like to take a closer look, please feel free to visit us at stand E4/F3.
We have a whole new booth concept this year and present all aspects of the three elements discussed.
We will show you the workforce management service and e-learning material.
You can also watch the first German e-learning modules and take a look at the injixo Community.
Come, visit us and have a coffee or smoothie. You could be in the cloud in six minutes.
Thank you for your time and I wish you a very successful tradeshow!