Merlin Systems: Supporting Customers and Their Customers with Contact Centers in the Cloud

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1 Merlin Systems: Supporting Customers and Their Customers with Contact Centers in the Cloud Companies want a lot from their contact centers. They want them to enable excellent, reliable customer service at minimal cost. They want them to be integrated with other components of their customer care solutions. And they want agent efficiency and the scalability to grow without hitting ceilings. That s where Merlin Systems Oy seized a market opportunity.

2 Company Merlin Systems Oy Headquarters Espoo, Finland Industry High tech Products and Services Contact center solutions Employees 31 Web Site The partner s top objectives Build a strong business by providing contact centers that are easy to deploy and use Keep prices down while still reaping a reasonable margin Minimize the effort entailed in providing turnkey systems Why partner with SAP Solution expressly designed for delivery from the cloud Multitenancy, for serving multiple customers concurrently from a single solution All-IP software, for minimizing effort entailed in integrating with customer applications Key benefits Became the leader in the Finnish contact-center market Attained 20% annual growth despite challenging economic times Achieved excellent record for customer satisfaction and retention Partner Offering Including SAP Solutions Multichannel Contact Center on Demand, based on the SAP Business Communications Management OnDemand solution We have found over and over that customers do not want to invest in the special skills required to support an in-house contact center system, nor do they want to pay for services over and above what they actually use. Mika Tuominen, Managing Director, Merlin Systems Oy 2

3 100% dedication to making the best in contact centers Merlin Systems Oy is a Finnish company that pioneered a new kind of contact center solution that is proving enormously popular with customers. Merlin was one of the first to seize the many advantages of cloud computing and has been providing cloud-based contact center solutions for well over a decade. Merlin was recently acquired by SAP, but it remains quite independent, reporting its own financial results and maintaining its own staff for sales, delivery, and support. The software that forms the basis for Merlin s solutions was developed by its former parent company, which was acquired by SAP at the same time. This software, now known as the SAP Business Communications Management OnDemand solution, is architected specifically to satisfy contact center needs that were going unfulfilled. Competitive systems at the time and even now were inflexible and hardware based. They required customers to install and maintain their own platforms. This involved not only substantial up-front costs but also ongoing expenses that remained constant regardless of how much or how little customers used their systems. Interfacing with other business software was an expensive ordeal, and reliability was often a concern. And when companies outgrew their existing systems, they had to endure the cost of replacing them and then face all the same problems again. 3

4 The difference makers: the cloud, multitenancy, and all-ip From the very beginning it was clear that it made business sense for Merlin to focus exclusively on the on-demand service model. Many companies were not just looking for a better contact center solution; they also wanted to buy it as a service. Merlin Systems was founded to provide exactly that. SAP Business Communications Management On- Demand is ideal as the basis for our entire business, explains Mika Tuominen, Merlin s managing director. First, it has all the basic functionality needed for running a great contact center, including support for inbound and outbound communications including telephone, , fax, data, and other channels. Many customers use their Merlin contact centers for outbound communications such as telemarketing. Second, it is an all-ip solution, which makes it easy to integrate with other business systems such as telephony systems and customer relationship management software. So it s practical for us to provide turnkey systems to customers. The all-ip solution also eliminates reliance on specific telco providers, which many customers appreciate. Third, the multitenancy feature of SAP Business Communications Management OnDemand allows a single hosted solution to serve the needs of many customers at once, Tuominen adds. That s another way it helps us keep our pricing reasonable and still make money. 4

5 Few surprises, short implementations When companies engage Merlin to create a contact center, they appreciate the firm s ability and willingness to craft a tailor-made solution regardless of their industry or the business applications they want integrated. On the surface it might appear that we have quite an undertaking to satisfy such a diversity of needs, but it s really quite manageable, says Tuominen. We have found that contact center needs are pretty much the same, industry to industry. The all-software solution makes a gigantic difference compared with hardware-based systems, where application integration is sometimes next to impossible. One of the integration requirements we see most often is with customer relationship management systems. Well, SAP Business Communications Management OnDemand has native integration with the SAP Customer Relationship Management application, which is often the one we encounter, and we ve already performed integrations with most of the others as well. Likewise, we seldom see a telephony system or human capital management application that we haven t encountered before. In fact, after providing our kind of services for as long as we have, we get very few surprises anymore. As a result, implementation times are surprisingly short. 3 months Typical implementation time for a 100-agent system 5

6 Contact centers without walls Through its own people, Merlin provides sales, deployment, maintenance, and support. The company also takes responsibility for hosting, which is provided by a partner. Every customer has a named first point of contact at Merlin, which makes for the fast, professional turnaround on issues that customers really value. With its support for mobile technology, Merlin has extended the concept of the contact center to include workers in their offices or on the go. This allows companies to fully utilize the expertise of their employees wherever they may be, radically improving the customer service they can provide. The software stores points to subject-matter experts so that calls requiring their expertise can be immediately routed to them a feature that callers appreciate tremendously. Merlin s customers like the firm s pricing policies; they pay only for services they actually use. They also enjoy complete scalability, because fortifying the hosted data centers when necessary is Merlin s responsibility, not theirs. Likewise, maintaining high availability is a Merlin concern one that it is fulfilling well. Furthermore, it is easy for customers to add agents for peak seasons and cut back during quieter times with no need to pay for extra capacity. Now that we have introduced support for mobile devices into contact centers, a user can be anywhere. That s invaluable to a company that wants to provide the best in customer service. Mika Tuominen, Managing Director, Merlin Systems Oy 6

7 Keeping customers happy with help from its own product Because of all its competitive advantages, Merlin is enjoying strong sales and has become the market leader in Finland, where its customers are interacting with their clients in 20 countries all over the world one of the benefits of the highly flexible all-ip solution. The company currently has approximately 70 cus - tom ers and 25,000 active users. These contact centers support about 6 million transactions per month. The on-demand business model has brought Merlin stable growth over the years, and the revenue stream has remained strong even in economically difficult times. Sales for the last several years have grown at a 20% annual clip. Merlin has an excellent record for retaining customers. One reason is the excellent customer service the company provides and its constant monitoring of customer usage to maximize value. In addition, contact centers are business-critical operations, and customers trust Merlin s reliability. To make sure we are continuing to provide the kind of service customers want, we measure and monitor customer satisfaction on a regular basis, Tuominen explains. The results are invariably excellent, and as a consequence we have many strong customer references. We use our own solution for managing interactions with our customers, of course, and take full advantage of all its powers in providing service excellence. 20% Year-on-year revenue growth 7

8 Merlin Systems On to Scandinavia and beyond Recently Merlin made its first expansion step beyond Finland by expanding its operations to Sweden. It plans to move on to the other Nordic countries next and eventually beyond. We are very pleased at the rate our business is growing, Tuominen concludes. I credit that to the combination of a sound business model, excellent execution, and choosing the right software as our basis. 20 countries Served by Merlin-based contact centers CMP20676 (12/10) Copyright/Trademark Privacy Impressum 8