'UC is revolutionising business processes': Aspect

Early adopters of unified communications (UC) have found the technology is helping to revolutionise business processes, according to UC solutions firm Aspect, during its regional conference, held in Kuala Lumpur recently.

"The business process advantage through UC is something we are very excited about," said Aspect Software president and chief executive officer, Jim Foy, adding that Aspect hosted the 2009 Asia Pacific Aspect Customer Experience (APAC-ACE) conference in Kuala Lumpur. "We have tied our own contact centre more closely to the rest of the Aspect enterprise."

"The influence of UC is going to be seismic on business," said Foy. "Our tie-up with Microsoft has been key in encouraging the move among our customers around the world to use UC across their business processes resulting in productivity gains as well as significant cost reductions."

"We have received an overwhelming response and support from some of the leading early adopters of unified communications in the Asia Pacific and around the world," said Aspect senior vice president of Asia Pacific and the Middle East, Lui Simhua. "These companies shared best practices and key learnings around implementing UC technologies across the enterprise and into the contact centre.

Multiple communication channels

At the conference, analyst firm Frost & Sullivan director, ICT practice, Andrew Milroy, said Asia is leading the way out of the global economic downturn, especially with positive trends in the business process outsourcing (BPO) and offshore outsourcing sectors.

"During a downturn, a company must focus more strongly on customer care and retention," said Milroy. "It is more cost-effective to retain customers than to obtain new ones. For instance, Sprint cut its spending on customer services and lost subscribers, while its competitors actually gained new customers."

"Customer communication preferences are changing rapidly," he said. "Now the channels, which used to be face, Internet, and phone, are being supplemented by new ones such as IM [instant messaging], webchat, and SMS. In addition, in the Asia Pacific, the demographics are changing with a whole generation of younger people coming into the job market who have different ways of engaging the market."