I recently read a forward looking paper by industry expert Robert Henry (link below), and I thought I’d share Enabling’s recent activity regarding Communications-Enabled Business Processes.
etcDevCorp (Enabling’s sister company focusing on UC application integration) has been working with the APIs that come with Office Communications Server R2 for some time now.
These APIs will allow developers to initiate multi-channel communications (IM, voice, conferences) when a business application (CRM, financial database, inventory system) sends a message to OCS to alert a decision maker about something relevant (i.e. big customer just cancelled an order, company stock price tanked, inventory levels are low).

What are the goals of a Comms-Enabled Biz Process?

-Reduce the time it takes for humans to respond to issues affecting business processes
-Eliminate the need for humans to have to initiate communications
-Reduce risk email getting stale in the inbox
-Reduce phone trees & communication tag
-Simplify the process of getting up to date information

What is an optimal company that would ‘get’ CEBP?

-Where every minute counts against the bottom line
-Where stakeholders are geographically distributed & mobile
-Where multiple companies tightly partner together but don’t share IT systems
Examples of real-world use cases of CEBP:

First, there are “Push” applications, where people get information without having to ask for it:

1. Escalation situations – alert everyone associated with whatever means they have active (IM, SMS, live call, etc.)

2. Customer issue
     -Sales and support team alerted

3. Disaster (manmade or natural) where many need to join together and remediate
     -Manufacturing line or other important system down

4. Gather swat team of internal/external experts

5.  IT issue
     -Alert all SMEs and management at certain time intervals about server issue

 6. Need to know situations –

 7. KPI trends are out of spec
    -.Alert execs before they go into that important update meeting

 8.  Industry event or news that impacts clients or the company itself
     -.A key competitor just announced a major deal with your best customer

     -Your company is rumored to be acquired

 9. Accounts receivable not on target
    -Sales rep, management, and collections reps are alerted and conference to address

Then, there are “Pull” applications – people ask for the information in real time but instead of asking a person, calling an IVR, or accessing a specific application, they IM a ‘bot,’ or automated system. The bot fetches the info and IMs the requestor back. These situations take some latency out of getting info from a person, and can reduce a number of additional steps that it normally takes to find info.

1. Status requests

2.Inquirer IMs a bot with specific text (“Help”)

3.Bot prompts inquirer (“what project #)”

4.Inquirer responds

5. Bot replies with the status and open issue list for that project
   - Could also respond with PM name and ask to connect directly to them, time/date of last update

6. Visual IVR for inbound contact centers

7. Customer inquires to a general bot
  - Bot replies with some prompts (1 – sales, 2 – service, 3 – individual person)
   - Based on response, they can start IM’ing an IM group that is affiliated with that choice. They click to call one of the agents that is not ‘in a call.’ Calls could cost $ since an agent would be able to handle multiple IMs.
    - Thus hiding the aliases of individual people but still allowing access to the right skill

A couple visual examples of “pull” bots are found below.

What kind of use cases will be most valuable?

1.Those that automate processes that occur frequently. If it’s a one-in-a-million chance that the communication flow will actually be needed, the ROI will be weak.

2.Those that impact the top line, not just the bottom line. If sales can result using such tools, then ROI will be easier in this day & age.

What are enterprises really doing now?

I recently consulted with the business leaders of a F1000 company for a week, uncovering opportunities where they could leverage CEBP. While none of them that we came up with were as advanced as these, the exercise was invaluable… we came up with quick fixes and short term projects where simple systems integration was feasible.

The business owners didn’t know what’s possible until they were shown some relevant use cases for their business. Many of them initially thought of IM and presence as a nuisance, but left thinking of UC as an enabler.

It will take a while for the core UC platforms to get in place, for system integration, CEBP prototypes, and adoption. But if an enterprise considers the opportunity for CEBP in the overall ROI of a UC decision, it will quickly add value to today’s standard IM, Voice, Video and conferencing.

UC is more than person-to-person communication… it’s machine-to-person communication that can serve the companies higher goals. IM’ing your buddy to see if he’s ready for coffee is just a bonus!
BTW, Robert’s paper is found below. Thanks for the provoking insight, Robert.

http://robhenry.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html

Examples of “Pull” applications (thanks to Andy Jacobs for the screenshots):
Figure 1 shows a “Bot” scheduling application:

Figure 2 shows a visual IVR bot that prompts the IM’er to enter in responses to get/give information.