In the Business World

Processes are what make organizations tick. Some processes are horizontal (apply to all-types of organizations) and some are vertical (industry‐specific) in nature. In most cases, how well an organization implements and executes its key business processes play a huge role in determining its overall success.

While various types of process automation and management solutions have been around for years, they’ve all had three strikes against them - they’re complex, expensive, and they don’t do a good job of involving people.

Even more than the complexity and the expense, current solutions often sidestep the integration of people into the process, as they are not connected to the organization’s communications systems. At best, they overload your people with e‐mail, instead of getting to the heart of how the entire business process, people and interactions included, could be optimized for efficiency, end to end.

A new approach to Business Process Automation

Introducing Communications‐Based Process Automation (CBPA) – solutions that focus on the automation of the process AND the communications that drive them. It proposes that we use communications technologies and practices that have been proven over decades in contact centers as the foundation for process automation:

• Intelligent queuing and routing – The technology used to queue calls for delivery to the right agent with the right skills in the contact center can also provide the orderly prioritization and delivery of work to the right people in the organization.
  
  
• Presence – A communications‐based process automation solution can make use of presence information when it decides how to deliver work based on a person’s availability.
  
  
• WFM – Demand forecasting and agent scheduling techniques that allow contact centers to make sure that they have sufficient personnel to handle the expected load.
  
  
• Recording – Capturing the communication method used between a customer and an agent (calls, chats, emails, faxes) becomes even more valuable when recording and reviewing communications between parties within a business process, especially for guideline adherence and compliance.
  
  
• Real‐time monitoring – Contact center supervisors demand real-time visibility to monitor agent performance and ensure service levels are met. These same capabilities provide managers and executives real-time visibility into every step of the work process, including statistics and alerts to errors and delays, and the ability to “coach” employees through processes as needed.
  
  
• VoIP - provides complete location-independence, enabling employees to participate in businesses processes from anywhere in the world.