Avaya Targets Business Process With New Tool

Avaya is moving further into the communications collaboration space with its latest tool, Communications Enabled Business Processes (CEBP).

The software-and-service combo offering embeds Avaya Intelligent Communications products into a business process -- such as a production line's crisis communications and decision-making process -- in order to automate as much as possible the human collaboration in the process.

More Efficiencies

"Let's say there was a problem in a factory's production line," illustrated Lawrence Byrd, Avaya's CEBP director. "The point person might send an e-mail and other messages to the team about it. But it continues to get worse. Then they decide they will have to close down the factory if it can't be resolved. They might want to engage another team but also make sure that the first team is in the loop."

CEBP is about finding new ways to leverage the voice portal and IP communications platform for additional uses beyond the contact center and corporate office, Byrd said.

Whirlpool Early Adopter

Whirlpool is an early adopter of CEBP, leveraging its deployment of Avaya IP telephony and contact center technology to better operate its network systems and improve supply chain management. The company plans to expand its use with applications that send managers alerts for infrastructure events and manufacturing performance metrics.

"At Whirlpool, we want the ability to respond fast, which means predicting issues before they arise, and escalating them with the right people quickly," said Brian Murphy, director of e-services, global development at Whirlpool.

Pieces of the Whole

CEBP uses Avaya's latest Communications Process Manager software and consulting, integration and remote monitoring support from Avaya Global Services. The software is configured to trigger communications activity within a business process -- such as when a production line goes awry -- and then coordinate the remediation process.

This process includes predicting important events, automatically engaging the right people and then managing multichannel communications among them, Avaya stated.

The Avaya Communication Process Manager manages a set of composite communication capabilities that are compliant with a service-oriented architecture (SOA). These Web services include such capabilities as "advisory," which contacts users, "notify & respond," which drives responses, and "notify & conference," which contacts users and adds them to a conference call, according to Avaya.

The Communications Process Manager also includes an optional deployment of a tool called the "Event Processor," which monitors real-time information streams to detect events and respond by initiating alerts or triggering a communications workflow.

SIP (session initiation protocol)-compliant, CEBP can support a number of Avaya and multivendor communications devices and resources, including applications built on Ubiquity's SIP Application Server, which Avaya acquired in its purchase of Ubiquity. Avaya plans to accelerate development of a scalable SIP-based foundation for integrating real-time communications into business processes with this acquisition.

"Our Ubiquity acquisition will further strengthen our work with SIP as a platform for new applications," Byrd said.

The Next Level

CEBP leverages the savings that IP telephony already deliver, Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with the Yankee Group, told CRM Buyer.

"This application is important for a number of reasons. Much of the value proposition of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) has been to make calls cheaper -- which is nice -- but I don't think the draw of saving money on long distance will accelerate the voice industry or its development much further," he noted.

Tools such as CEBP have the potential to introduce a new level of savings and efficiencies to voice communications, Kerravala added.

"What this does is influence the actual business process," he concluded.