CEO Spotlight.

For this month's Executive Spotlight, Customer Inter@ction Solutions speaks with Ed Lauing, President and CEO of Nuasis Corp. (www.nuasis.com).

Ed Lauing

President and CEO

Nuasis Corp.

CIS: What do you see as key dynamics driving the call center and CRM markets today?

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Ed Lauing (EL): Companies are in a stranglehold with their legacy systems. The infrastructure of traditional vendors and technologies are too complex. Companies can't adapt them fast enough or at reasonable cost. Deployment is too complex. A huge driver for the industry today is to simplify the old models. That's where convergence comes in.

In our case, we've been fortunate to start with a clean slate. We just took a whole different approach--something very different. It's a totally software solution that sits on your existing infrastructure. That translates to significantly different business benefits. It's not just cool technology. The result is multimedia, multisite contact center software that sits on a converged IP network, but the driver was simplicity, which means lower TCO and lower deployment cost. A very simplified model.

CIS: What are the new generation of challenges facing call centers today?

EL: I've said it before, the industry is stuck. It's difficult for companies to take their call centers to a next level because legacy infrastructure isn't flexible. I've used a phrase often that applies--"Frankenstein Infrastructure." I think the greatest need of our industry is to offer an alternative to the "Frankenstein Infrastructure" created by bolting together a bunch of disjointed stuff. There's no reason for enterprises to be spending scarce budget dollars on complicated integrations--tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars per enterprise. For many companies, they simply choose not to deploy applications that can improve call center efficiencies and service because the cost is prohibitive.

CIS: What's the importance of voice over IP in today's call center? Do you agree with some that VoIP is "the tail wagging the dog"?

EL: I don't agree with the tail-wagging thing at all. First, when we decided to create a new company, we didn't decide to create a new VoIP company, we decided to create a new contact center company. It turned out that VoIP was the best enabler to simplify systems and reduce costs. It becomes the delivery mechanism for all our business benefits, so we think it's huge for the contact center.

But many solutions providers in the industry got it all wrong. Many have focused on VoIP as transport, and transport cost reductions. That's not the exciting stuff. This technology is all about solving the customer service issues--multimedia customer contacts, routing to agents anywhere, lowering costs. It really does enable the business solutions.

CIS: What types of companies are deploying your solution?

EL: It runs the gamut from companies with single site, mission-critical call centers to large companies with multiple dispersed centers. Most are choosing Nuasis because of our simplified deployment and our switchless software model. We work seamlessly with any incumbent PBX, whether it's TDM or IP.

I'll give you a couple of examples. A recent customer in the utility industry reviewed 14 vendors and chose Nuasis to replace another vendor in six centers. We will cut over those six centers within as many weeks. One center per week. That's an example of how we've simplified the system model. Two major vendors were not invited to bid because their solution required a new PBX, which the customer didn't require.

Another customer replaced legacy ACDs in four locations. In fact, they chose not to relocate one of the TDM switches to another site because it would cost them more to re-deploy a fully depreciated ACD switch than to deploy our software on industry-standard servers.

These are leaders in their respective industries. And, I might add, they are companies in traditionally conservative industries--pharmaceuticals and utilities--not companies inclined to take risks. But they understood the benefits and return on investment that our solution provides. They understood that the traditional switches were not a good answer in the short-term and certainly not for the long-term.

CIS: Share some details on one customer and the benefits they realized.

EL: We can take any customer and run through a similar list of benefits. Let's take the utility customer I mentioned that has four sites deployed. Deployment costs were fixed. Rolling out sites beyond the first site was at a fraction of the installation costs and hardware costs of traditional TDM switch deployments, which would place a completely duplicate TDM switch at each site.

Each site deployed screen pop to every agent's desktop, reducing call handle time and improving productivity. The deployment of the screen pop was a fixed cost of $10,000 for the CRM connection: no additional cost for the screen pop application at each site. Each agent has a single multimedia desktop to answer calls, e-mail and Web chat. And they all have a feature we call Shutters that automatically opens, places and closes desktop applications required on the call--another major productivity gain. Our customers typically see 22 to 30 percent agent productivity gains as a result of these features.

The four sites are networked together at no additional cost for the networking functionality. Our system is a single, distributed system that deploys over multiple sites as a standard capability. The system routes customer contacts across a larger pool of agents over multiple locations. Therefore, fewer agents are required to handle the same volume of calls, lowering labor costs. Plus, the distributed, multisite system offers inherent disaster recovery capabilities. In the event of an outage at one site, calls are automatically routed to other sites. Every customer sees these cost savings and benefits.

Sorry for the litany of features, but we've really done something very different from the other guys! It shows in the flexibility of the system to adapt to the business and the productivity gains from the feature set. We've taken a quantum leap with this product.

CIS: What would you say is your company's greatest core competency?

EL: We know call centers. We have domain expertise in the call center application. That's the message. We've attracted top executives with years of experience at leading call center companies. Carol Snell, co-founder of Aspect; and Kevin McPartlan, former VP of Product Architecture, are examples. They know the call center's needs. They understand customer service. They know how to build a new company.

Coupled with that, we have a vision for innovations to take the call center forward. We're not "technology bigots"--we're not a company that has 16 products in a sales person's briefcase and, oh yeah, one of them is the call center. So we are differentiated by our understanding of the business process of the call center, and our customers have said that to us. With some of the big, everyday street brands, customers are shocked by their lack of expertise and are stunned at our core expertise in that area.

We "get it" and, with the luxury of designing a new solution from scratch, we have done it.

CIS: Thank you for your time.