Calabrio Announces a Performance Management Model that Allows Customers to Choose from Reporting and Analytics Tools to Fit Their Business Needs.

Also Announces Integrations with Three Key Partners

MINNEAPOLIS -- Calabrio, Inc., a leading provider of workforce optimization and unified desktop software for IP-based contact centers, announced today that they are providing integration between the software components of the Calabrio One suite and third-party products that were designed for contact center and enterprise performance management reporting and analytics. Customers will be able to incorporate relevant metrics from Calabrio Workforce Management and Calabrio Compliance Recording and Quality Management software within the performance management and analytics reports of reporting partners, including Aceyus, Cisco, and Exony.

"Performance management is a business-transforming practice embraced by strategic-minded contact centers that measure success not merely on service level, but rather how each interaction contributes to customer satisfaction, revenue and profitability of the business," said Tim Kraskey, vice president of marketing and business development for Calabrio, Inc. "Performance management data is derived not from one source but many and is often part of a broader business analytics initiative."

Kraskey adds, "Our view is that there are many available software packages that do an excellent job of consolidating and analyzing data. The magic comes from how the solution partner or integrator works with the customer-defined business objectives to build the dashboards, reports and processes that provide a clear view of performance and a path to success. The value we provide is to make it as easy as possible for our partners to leverage data within our software to achieve strategic business insight for their customers."

By nature, a comprehensive view of performance incorporates key metrics from a variety of contact center and enterprise data sources, including workforce management, quality management, ACD (automatic call distributor), CRM systems, customer satisfaction surveys and more. Calabrio software contributes key data elements that may be useful to many contact centers and enterprises, such as adherence and conformance data, and quality scores.

Combined with other data sources, enterprises can leverage performance management and business analytics tools to build real time reports and KPIs (key performance indicators) on contact center and business metrics, establish historical modeling and evaluate trends in performance, build balanced scorecards for agents and teams, and track performance and training requirements. For example, a customer might wish to define a KPI of revenue per call. To calculate that, the contact center will require data such as number of calls handled from the ACD and customer and order information from the CRM system. The contact center might also wish to incorporate quality scores to determine effective sales techniques that contribute to strong revenue calls, which would be required from a quality management system, such as Calabrio Compliance Recording and Quality Management.

Calabrio will provide hooks into three performance management solutions that address different segments of the market: Aceyus specializing in real-time insights and true cradle to grave reporting for customers in Cisco Unified Contact Center and hybrid TDM-IP contact centers with proven expertise in Cisco Unified Contact Center Express systems; Exony for enterprises and hosted (multi-tenanted) service provider environments that require provisioning, comprehensive analytics (OLAP) and performance management; and Cisco Unified Intelligence Suite, which provides a solution for those customers that choose to purchase reporting and analytics as part of a total solution based on Cisco Unified Contact Center.

Cisco Unified Intelligence Suite

The Cisco Unified Intelligence Suite is an advanced performance management platform that is as flexible as it is intuitive. Customers can report on the details of every contact across all channels from a single interface. Built on a robust and extensible Web 2.0 framework, Cisco Unified Intelligence Suite allows customers to extend the boundaries of traditional contact center reporting to an information portal where data can be easily integrated from any source and shared throughout the organization. Calabrio's workforce optimization application data can now be integrated into Cisco Unified Intelligence Suite as part of a solution which includes a Cisco Unified Intelligence Suite connector and the Archiver data repository.

The connectors and reports for Calabrio integration are available through Cisco Advanced Services.

Aceyus RealDash and CDR Vault 

Aceyus enables customers to have instant access to both real-time and historical data metrics in a single, easy-to-use interface. They also provide a wide range of consulting services that allow customers to utilize the full functionality and wealth of information that is available in today's contact center environment. Their platform is highly scalable and will support customers in all segments of the contact center industry.

According to Kraskey, "Aceyus' special expertise is in enabling users to create, modify and share customized real-time screens displaying call center statistics. They offer a complete yet very simple and straightforward web-based user interface. We feel they are an excellent choice for customers who have the need to integrate multiple data sources into one reporting portal."

Exony VIM Performance

Exony VIM Performance puts key decision support, action and evaluation capabilities into the hands of the people who can make a difference, wherever they are in an organization. VIM Performance delivers advanced reporting and analytics to business users for both agent (in-sourced, remote and/or outsourced) and self-service (IVR, email and web) resources, systems and processes. It integrates critical business information from quality management, workforce management and workforce optimization systems empowering users to make better decisions and act on them in a timely and efficient manner.

According to Kraskey, "We believe Exony is an excellent fit for customers seeking a tailored, enterprise-wide analytics and contact center performance management solution. Their product is designed from the ground up to combine low total cost of ownership with fast implementation and business adoption and, as such, strongly complements Calabrio's approach to delivering rapid and compelling business value."

Moving forward, the Web 2.0-based Calabrio One suite will enable the performance management graphs, dashboards and reports of the third-party vendors to reside as web content or widgets within the Calabrio One framework. This enables a contact center agent or supervisor to have ready access to the key metrics that drive their business with the framework that provides the collaboration and interaction tools that help them act upon that data, which is particularly useful for real-time coaching and management.

About Calabrio One

The Calabrio One suite name represents a move toward a Web 2.0-based architectural framework that integrates workforce optimization with unified desktop applications for agents and supervisors in order to improve the customer experience, grow revenue, and increase profitability. For example, Calabrio One customers will have the ability to create forecasts, generate work schedules, measure quality and efficiency, access reports and alerts, and collaborate within their teams to impact performance - all from a common desktop. The goal of Calabrio One is to streamline the business processes - providing agents with one view of the customer, and providing supervisors and managers with one view of the contact center.

About Calabrio, Inc.

Calabrio, Inc. develops and markets Calabrio One[TM], a comprehensive suite of customer interaction and workforce optimization software that's easy to implement, use and maintain in new IP-based customer interaction networks. By integrating workforce optimization within the agent and supervisor workflow, Calabrio helps customers align their contact center business processes and performance with their business objectives. Calabrio distributes their software through channel partnerships and an OEM relationship with Cisco, and has installed software on more than 640,000 desktops. Calabrio is a member of the Cisco Technology Developer Program (CTDP), the Nortel Open developer program, and a gold member of the Avaya DevConnect program. Find news and information at www.calabrio.com.

Calabrio, Calabrio One and the Calabrio logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Calabrio, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.