What has been common practice in IT for many years is still a long way off in telecommunications: openness and standardisation. The result is very heterogeneous landscapes, inefficient call/work flows and – if they exist at all – customer interfaces on the Internet that have little in common apart from the logo.

Eine Seite für den Kunden

The idea, which has now been successfully implemented in practice, is as simple as it is innovative: a portal on the Internet that presents all services and functions to the external and internal users of a network operator or service provider in a standardised look and feel. Behind a log-in, the customer can now find his statistics, his billing, his phone numbers, his applications, his routings, his own agents, his external call centres, his database interfaces, his speed dialling, his SMS keywords, his incoming faxes, voice recordings, callback requests and emails, his etc., etc., etc. Everything!

The latest Internet technology connects systems

Underlying web technology is completely independent of individual telecommunications or IT systems. As an umbrella, so to speak, it spans the entire existing infrastructure. All elements are presented to the user in a standardised design. At the rear, the individual systems are connected via any number of interfaces. In this way, what usually does not fit together today comes together. Standard functions such as multi-client capability, rights management, resource management and skinning (customisation of the graphical display) are included as standard.

The highlight: developing applications across systems

The web portal has a graphical user interface (GUI). The individual elements of a call flow, or rather work flow, can be mapped using drag and drop. Behind each of these objects is an XML code that describes it in a standardised and universal form. An object can be a highly complex, existing ACD or just an IVR announcement. The development of applications in particular and the portal in general can therefore be carried out by the operator himself with his JAVA web developers.

Eine Seite für den Kunden

With XML-based development, cross-platform workflows can now be defined as an application independently of the systems running in the background. In the first step, for example, an announcement could be played by an Asterisk. An ACD from a call centre service provider would then be used. If no agent could be found, an IVR with speech recognition could be used, at the end of which the caller would receive an SMS and the (unavailable) agent an email. Of course, this would only work if the caller was unknown. Otherwise, the database-based routing would have put the caller directly through to the in-house VIP call centre and automatically opened the appropriate screen with the caller’s details for the agent answering the call. Whether corporate group, service provider, call centre operator, value-added service provider, service provider or telephone company: in many areas, service quality can be increased, production and development costs reduced and product innovations created.