A Jacada & Microsoft CCF Competitive Review

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1 WHITE PAPER A Jacada & Microsoft CCF Competitive Review A contrast of two call center solution providers, based on an outline of Microsoft CCF Jacada Marketing Research

2 1 Introduction Overview Components Agent Desktop Application Integration Framework (AIF) Hosted Application Toolkit (HAT) Multi Channel Engine Distributed Connectivity Services Enterprise Single Sign On (ESSO) Composite Application UI Block (CAB) CCF License Components Additional Components Key Points of Comparison Points of Differentiation Tool Versus Solution True Costs Playing Fair Conclusion P age

3 1 Introduction The power of selecting the right contact center solution is widely recognized today. Not surprisingly technology budgets for existing and new solutions are expected to increase in the next twelve months. Companies are benefiting from high quality services through enhanced customer experience management. Revenue generation and customer loyalty/retention are key objectives of customer experience management. Accomplishment of these objectives requires an enriched, personalized, and consistent customer experience across all business channels. Many organizations discover that their representatives are severely limited because systems are difficult to use and are not fully integrated. Selecting a valuable contact center solution that optimizes all customer experiences is imperative to the growth of the company. The next 12 months will be a state of flux for most enterprises. The ability to improve customer service and satisfaction levels at a minimal investment will be instrumental in determining success. There are challenges to finding the right solution. And determining the ROI of that solution is not always obvious. This paper explores how evolving with a unified desktop approach is more effective at ensuring a positive customer experience in today s dynamic contact center. In an effort to clarify and dispel some solution myths between Microsoft s Customer Care Framework (CCF) and the Jacada solution suite, we offer the following side by side outline. 2 Overview Microsoft Customer Care Framework (CCF) is an enterprise software solution for contact centers that provides a unified agent desktop. Microsoft Customer Care Framework (CCF) provides the software components and best practices used to write, develop and test customer care solutions based on Microsoft.NET technology and infrastructure. CCF provides a core set of functions which can be used for customer support avenues including voice call via call center agents and Internet portals. The framework can leverage other Microsoft server products including the BizTalk Server and SharePoint. CCF requires the use of Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft IIS for the server side, which it uses to provide a base core set of web services. CCF is based on a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). This encapsulates, manages and interoperates with core systems such as CRM, billing, order management, and other custom applications. The framework also promotes synchronization between self service solutions (Portals, Speech/Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR)) and contact centers by providing a unified architecture for all customer care channels. Earlier versions of CCF originated from successful customer engagement and asset builds. CCF is targeted at medium to large enterprises. CCF was originally developed for the large call center requirements of the telecommunication industry. 3 P age

4 CCF is different from most products from Microsoft in that it is not an 'out of the box' solution but requires development and configuration to build a working customer solution. While, as previously mentioned, it does support SOA, this is not mandatory and most CCF deployments are not SOA based. 3 Components 3.1 Agent Desktop The primary user interface for CCF is the agent desktop. This is a desktop based user interface (UI) that presents data aggregated from various Line of business (LOB) & OSS/BSS application front ends and presents them in a unified view. CCF does not include an Agent Desktop application, rather samples including source code are provided as part of the framework. 3.2 Application Integration Framework (AIF) The AIF manages the loading of the applications, integration and event brokering. It allows for UI composition via presentation logic integration and context sharing among applications. Through the use of adapters (see HAT below) applications can have custom integrations to account for both the technology of the hosted application as well as business processing. 3.3 Hosted Application Toolkit (HAT) HAT provides developers a graphical, wizard driven integration and automation tool for existing applications. HAT allows for the separation of the business rules and the method used to integrate with the application. HAT uses Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) to manage the business rules, Data Driven Adapters (DDAs) to manage the application directly, and Bindings written in XML to connect the two. CCF 2009 SP1 ships with 3 DDAs: Win32, Web, and Java (JDK 1.6). DDAs can be customized or extended for additional application types as needed. 3.4 Multi Channel Engine The Multi Channel Engine (MCE) is a MVC style UI and business processing framework. MCE's primary purpose is to allow portals and the Agent Desktop to leverage the same business processing and data while allowing the UI to be created to best take advantage of the users' resources. 3.5 Distributed Connectivity Services CCF 2009 ships with Distributed Connectivity Services (DCS) for zero configuration service enablement. DCS is leveraged to ensure services can be discovered, including fall back when services are not available, service policy and security management through the DSC configuration utility. DCS is based upon WS * standards. 3.6 Enterprise Single Sign On (ESSO) Users enter credentials only once to gain direct access to multiple LOB applications. This is not a traditional enterprise class SSO solution, but rather simply an identity management tool to use in conjunction with CCF. 4 P age

5 3.7 Composite Application UI Block (CAB) CAB can be used to build composite applications. CAB is a separate MS product, but CAB can be used within CCF. CAB does not provide telephone or call center specific integrations, but has tight integration with Visual Studio and many samples including one for call centers. CAB on its own does not offer session management and multi channel capability although the sample code does have some session features. 4 CCF License Components Microsoft is licensed under a Server/CAL licensing model, similar to Exchange Server and Office Live Communications Server. o CCF Server License Every server that runs CCF Server components requires a CCF Server License. Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or later Standard, Enterprise or Datacenter Editions and ASP.NET 2.0 IIS 6.0 and ASP.NET enabled and configured The server must be a member of a Windows Domain o Client Access License (CAL) Each internal user or device accessing the CCF server requires a CAL via the Integrated Agent Desktop. Microsoft Windows XP SP2 or later or Windows Vista NET Framework version 2.0 and any subsequent service packs Additional items or services required to use certain features: Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher o External Connector License Enables customers to affordably extend CRM to their external users, such as their customers and partners. Allows access for unlimited number of external users on a per server basis. 4.1 Additional Components CCF may require the following additional licenses from MS depending on scope of deployment: MS Communications Server Telephony / Comms Integration MS SQL Server Database / reporting / identity Window 2003 OS 5 P age

6 MS Sharepoint KM / Customer Portal 5 Key Points of Comparison Key Differentiator Jacada Solution Microsoft CCF Notes Platform Agnostic YES NO Jacada is built on J2EE standard to run seamlessly in Windows, Solaris and Linux environments. MS CCF only runs in Windows /.NET architectures. Proven Integration Tools YES NO Jacada has 15 years experience in integrating in Windows, Web and Host environments. MS CCF deployed the HAT integration tool release. Deployment Expertise YES NO Jacada has reference customers in each vertical market it serves. Microsoft CCF struggles with consistent success in each market. Contact Center Focus YES NO At Jacada, contact center solutions are the only focus. Microsoft CCF is a small part of the Microsoft.NET suite. Rich Product Roadmap YES NO Jacada has a rich product roadmap that includes social media, SaaS, real time decisioning and dynamic UI to continually improve solution ROI and reduce TCO. Microsoft CCF focuses on developers and improvement. Extensible Portfolio YES NO Jacada also offers analytics, dynamic agent assistance, agent scripting and workflow solutions. Microsoft offers DynamicsCRM a forklift from existing systems and infrastructure. 6 Points of Differentiation 6.1 Tool Versus Solution Most customers will struggle when comparing Jacada and MS CCF, because they assume a like for like comparison. Nothing could be further from the truth. MS CCF offers no out of the box configuration or native capability on the desktop. Further, because it is a technology tool, there is no development methodology, process or reference support that underpins a successful deployment. The product only includes sample code to help instruct developers on how to build their applications. This is in stark contrast to Jacada WorkSpace which includes a host of end user features and capabilities, a detailed 6 P age

7 development methodology and thousands of articles that document hundreds of thousands of hours worth of actual product deployment experience. Most of the benefits attributed to MS CCF such as; productivity savings, cost reductions, improved selling have no native capabilities within CCF today which further these objectives. Any solution built from the tool kit (and the benefits derived) will largely be accomplished by those developing the solution. This means that any organization seeking to implement a unified call center desktop with CCF must have significant expertise in call center desktop optimization prior to beginning their project. It is for this reason, according to Gartner, MS CCF has more unsuccessful implementations than any other Unified Desktop provider. It also has minimum deployed seats less than 30K as of 2009 (it is important to note that in 2009 MS began bundling MS CCF with MS Dynamics CRM which has about 1M deployed seats). With over 90% of customers based in call centers, Jacada is the only provider for true unified desktop needs with a non invasive process optimization solution for automating and virtually eliminating redundant and complex processes. Because of the significant focus on call center daily activities, Jacada solutions help call centers evolve into a dynamic customer centric operation, optimizing every call. 6.2 True Costs Many MS CCF resellers and SIs will highlight the relatively inexpensive cost of a CCF agent seats and conclude that the complete solution is relatively inexpensive. This may be true in certain circumstances, but for the vast majority of deployments, the TCO (total cost of ownership) of a MS CCF solution is far greater than most customers anticipate. Firstly, it is important to add up the total cost of the MS CCF software, not just the CCF seats, to determine the total per seat license cost. For a deployment of 100 seats, the combined cost of server / seat / connector licenses can be roughly $470 $850+ per seat. Moreover, the solution may still require additional licenses for MS Communications Server, MS SQL and MS SharePoint in order to replicate all functionality. Currently this is available in WorkSpace 5x. Jacada s pricing is very straight forward and comparable and avoids the practice of feature pricing for every functional component. Secondly, it is easy to forget that the continued development of their MS CCF based solution will come from their development partner not Microsoft. MS CCF has only issued enhancement to the CCF tools themselves, not end user functionality. This means a customer is locked into their third party SI or IT organization for continued solution training, feature development, product updates and ongoing enhancements. Essentially, organizations implementing MS CCF will bear the TCO of a completely custom solution. Conversely, Jacada has a very robust roadmap for WorkSpace and WinFuse that includes customer experience improving enhancements related to social networking, dynamic UIs, real time decisions, 7 P age

8 scripting / workflow management and much more. The costs of these enhancements are part of standard maintenance, all Jacada customers benefit from them. 6.3 Playing Fair By implementing Microsoft CCF, an organization is giving up an extraordinary degree of flexibility and control in their call center. Microsoft CCF locks the call center desktop into Windows client and server licensing and.net with little room for change. While this might align with the strategies of some, getting locked in to Microsoft in the call center may not be right for all. This became abundantly clear to MS CCF users who were forced to upgrade when they found their solutions were broken by.net 3.5 SP1 and were not compatible with IE8. Jacada Workspace can deploy as a completely thin client, browser based solution with the only requirements being a browser on the client device. Jacada Workspace requires no change to the existing desktop environment, which is an important consideration for our customers. A thin client solution also more easily accommodates the adoption of work at home agents, which is becoming a popular way to attract high quality, loyal customer service representatives. It also makes it easier to outsource call center functions. Whether an immediate imperative or a long term strategic goal customers place a value on to get to a completely thin client footprint. In some cases eliminating the need for costly hardware or software upgrades is an ROI requirement. 7 Conclusion Contact centers now generate more data than virtually any other part of the business. As a result, collecting and analyzing this data to more efficiently handle calls, retain customers and generate revenue for the company can become an overwhelming task. However, with the right solutions, call center managers can derive intelligence from this vast amount of data in order to successfully solve business problems, reduce operational costs and improve overall performance. Jacada has been providing solutions specifically to contact centers since 1991 while competitors have not been as focused on contact center solutions. Jacada implemented with Fortune 500 firms and carries impeccable references such as; Nationwide Insurance, O2 UK, Cox Communications, DirecTV and Lillian Vernon. If you are looking for a unified customer service desktop, and a non invasive process optimization solution for automating and virtually eliminating redundant and complex processes, look no further.. Because we take the time to really understand our customer's business needs and contact center operations, Jacada ensures fast and successful implementations utilizing a proven delivery methodology. Lastly, our services team can customize the delivery of Jacada solutions to reflect the customer's goals and objectives. 8 P age

9 About Jacada: Jacada is leading global provider of unified service desktop and process optimization solutions that simplify and automate customer service processes. By bridging disconnected systems into a single, intelligent workspace, Jacada solutions create greater operational efficiency and increase agent and customer satisfaction. Founded in 1990, Jacada operates globally with offices in Atlanta, Georgia; Herzliya, Israel; London, England; and Munich, Germany. Contact Information: Jacada Inc. 400 Perimeter Center Terrace, STE 100 Atlanta, GA USA US UK info@jacada.com doc P age