NuContact Center solution: breakthrough solutions often require a whole new company.

The Nuasis NuContact Center[R] is a new approach to routing and responding to customer inquiries. It combines the best capabilities of self-service applications with live agent assistance to provide companies with the greatest flexibility when responding to customers. The system intelligently routes any type of customer contacts--phone calls, e-mail, web chat, voice messages, fax--in a consistent manner on a single system. It is the system of choice for mission--critical call centers over legacy ACD, IVR, and CTI systems.

For customer service managers, the system offers a range of benefits:

* Rapidly adapt the call center to the business

* Get more out of agents and lower operating costs 

* Improve customer service and routing efficiencies

For IT professionals supporting the call center systems, benefits include:

* Simplified and low-cost deployment

* Simplified systems management

* Flexible and rapid applications development

Flexibility to Adapt to the Business

No other system provides the same level of flexibility to quickly adapt to your business needs. The NuContact Center is a single platform that consolidates a number of traditional call center systems--ACD, IVR, e-mail response, web collaboration, CTI. All customer contacts are routed to self-service or live agent assistance in a consistent manner.

A single workflow design tool for all these applications simplifies the creation of routing workflows for fast response to changes in the business.

The system is a single, distributed design that can be deployed in a single call center location or across multiple call centers. This distributed feature allows companies to manage multiple centers as a single center.

Contacts can be routed to the best agent to handle a contact wherever the agent is located--in a major center, in a branch office, or working from home. Your company has total flexibility to configure the system to its business requirements. And to quickly change system configuration at low cost as the business changes.

Double-digit, Agent Productivity Gains

The system is designed with a number of unique features to improve the productivity of live agents. Intelligent routing capabilities improve first call resolution percentages. Routing capabilities include skills-based routing to match customer needs to agents. But unlike other systems, the NuContact Center has powerful new conditional routing capabilities.

Conditional routing leverages information from enterprise databases to determine how best to route and handle a customer contact. Any number of dependencies can be used from multiple databases to automatically determine best routing decisions.

The system easily integrates with CRM databases for the purpose of delivering customer screens to agent desktops. A screen pop application can be deployed within a couple of days, versus weeks or months on other systems. In fact, this feature is so easy to deploy that 100% of Nuasis customers use screen pops versus only 25% of companies as an industry average for other systems.

Another feature unique to the NuContact Center is Shutters[R]. Shutters is a Windows management tool. It automatically opens, sizes, and places application windows as needed to handle a customer contact. This feature alone is generating agent productivity gains of 22-30% for customers.

Rapid, Lowest-Cost Deployment

The unique software-only, distributed architecture of the system dramatically lowers the cost of deployment in single site as well as multi-site operations. The NuContact Center software deploys quickly on standard IP network infrastructure. This approach is consistent with other software applications familiar to the IT department.

Because the system consolidates several applications on a single platform, it uses a single workflow design tool to developing routing instructions. This simple object-oriented tool set allows your IT staff to develop applications and configure the system to your needs. This capability lowers the cost of professional services and speeds the deployment of new applications.

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With the CTI Built-In feature, data directed routing and screen pop applications can be deployed in a few days. No additional cost for CTI hardware or software. It's native on the NuContact Center. The same workflow design tool is used to create a connection with any database and to instruct the system on what information to retrieve and how to use it as a conditional routing instruction.

As a single, distributed system, multiple sites, even agents working at home, can be configured and managed from a single point of administration.

Innovative Business Continuity Features

Unlike other systems, the NuContact Center has been designed with unique business continuity features for operation on a distributed IP network. Networked multiple centers provide inherent back up capabilities. For single site users, a low-cost disaster recovery node can be placed at a branch office or other location. The system also includes redundancy for key applications and no single point of failure. Lastly, a patented innovation only on the NuContact Center automatically detects a call interruption and re-routes the call to the next best-skilled agent along with all of the screen pop data from the first agent. This assures that every interrupted customer call will be re-connected to an agent.

Unequalled Management Reporting

Because it is a single, distributed, multi-media system, standard reporting features include consolidated data across multiple sites and across all types of customer contacts. This added reporting capability is at no additional cost. A standard library of reports is available as well as the ability to create custom reports. Real time information is also provided to agents, supervisors, and business managers.

You can learn more about Nuasis by visiting www.nuasis.com</p> <pre> "A key benefit of this software is the seamless integration of screen pop IVR. Agents can use the NuContact Center to handle voicemail and callbacks as if they were incoming calls." Trover Solutions, Inc. John Combs, Sr. Vice President of Operations Support </pre> <pre> "We knew that we wanted to switch to an IP contact center for greater efficiency, excellent customer service and to synchronize our contact center operations. Nuasis is the only vendor with a single platform system that will operate on our existing corporate data network--you can't get any more efficient than a single platform, single network solution." Kitty Hawk Cargo Frank Kaiser, Director of Kitty Hawk Call Center </pre> <p>CUSTOMER PROFILE

Trover Solutions

Trover Solutions Boosts Productivity and Profitability with the NuContact Center

Company

Trover Solutions, Inc. is the leading provider of recovery services to the insurance industry in the United States. The company's primary recovery sources are medical malpractice, automobile, worker's comp, and product and premises claims. Trover's 600+ staff assists every type of healthcare payer--from HMOs to third-party administrators to self-insured groups. Trover, doing business as Healthcare Recoveries[R], attempts to recoup accident-related health care benefits from third parties on behalf of health maintenance organizations (HMOs), health insurers, self-insured organizations, and other groups. During the past 17 years, Trover has recovered more than $2 billion for its clients.

Customers

More than 200 Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies which equates to 125,000 to 150,000 incoming contacts per month that have resulted in recoveries totaling more than $2 billion in 17 years.

Business challenge

Trover required a system that would allow them to process more customer contacts without hiring additional staff, reduce call durations, provide a better experience for clients and seamlessly integrate with Trover's proprietary recovery software.

Solution

Migrate from the existing system to the IP-based Nuasis NuContact Center with Built-in CTI and IVR to reduce call durations. Intelligently route contacts to the best agents and improve the customer experience.

The software-only architecture allowed Trover to integrate easily with its existing proprietary recovery software, Troveris.

Business results

** 30 seconds shaved off the average 3-4 minute call

** Eliminated the cost and complexity of CTI integrations

** Pre-recorded greetings and self-service IVR has streamlined the initial steps of investigations

** Realizing higher customer satisfaction levels due to NuContact Center's skills-based routing capabilities

** Up to 2,000 voice messages are tracked and routed automatically for faster call backs

"We deal with our clients' customers. Our clients are entrusting us to take care of their customers. That is a tremendous responsibility. We can not afford to have anything but the best system so we can deliver the best customer care. We're confident that the Nuasis system will allow us to deliver on that promise," said John Combs, Senior Vice President of Operations Support, Trover Solutions.

Trover purchased the Nuasis NuContact Center to replace its existing ACD phone system. When Trover began looking for a new contact center system, it was looking for a system that could process more customer contacts so that the company could avoid hiring additional agents. It also required IVR and CTI capabilities to reduce call durations and provide a better experience for its clients. An added challenge was finding a solution that seamlessly integrated with its proprietary recovery software product, Troveris[R], and did not require the company to use a vendor's proprietary equipment.

Contact Center is Core to Trover's Business Mission

Trover investigates overpayment recovery, provider bill audit, and subrogation for every type of major healthcare payers. Subrogation is the contractual right held by payers to recover paid medical claims when another party is liable for the injuries of their health plan members. During the subrogation process, it may be determined that the auto insurance company or the individual who caused the accident is responsible for paying the medical claim. The bottom line--subrogation decreases overpayments or incorrect disbursements in medical claim payments, helping to reduce payers' expenses and improve profitability.

Trover receives a list of claims from healthcare providers. The company then mails letters to individuals who have filed medical claims asking them to respond via telephone. When members respond, their calls are routed to customer support representatives (CSRs) who determine if medical claims have recovery potential. During this stage of the recovery process, 125,000 to 150,000 calls per month are received. A single missed call or an unreturned voice message can result in a loss of several thousand dollars, up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in recovery dollars.

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Nuasis Moves to the Top in Vendor Selection

To fast-track the selection process, Trover engaged an industry consultant who introduced the company to Nuasis. Nuasis offered a single vendor solution, eliminating the need for Trover to work with multiple vendors such as a software company, value-added reseller, and an installer. After reviewing final proposals from five different vendors, Trover selected the Nuasis NuContact Center.

"We had wanted to upgrade to an IVR, CTI-type of environment for six or seven years," said Combs. "What held us back was that we had an old, proprietary system which wouldn't support any new upgrades or integrations. Once we rewrote our internal software in 2001, we were ready for a partner who could enable IVR and screen pop capabilities and integrate smoothly with our new Oracle-based recovery software. Having CTI Built-in was a tremendous advantage that Nuasis brought to the table. It provided the right environment to integrate with our proprietary CRM application, Troveris."

Combs added, "During the final vendor selection process, there were a number of reasons that made Nuasis stand out. The most obvious was that Nuasis simply had a superior product. Our decision to purchase the NuContact Center system was based on the desire to improve service levels and increase the efficiency of our contact center. The CTI Built-in and native IVR capabilities give us functions such as screen pop, skills-based routing, data-directed call routing, call back, and voice mail as routed contacts."

Trover and the Nuasis implementation team worked at rapid pace to design, configure, and deploy the NuContact Center, as well as train the entire customer support organization, all within less than three months. A speedy and successful deployment became reality thanks in part to the CTI Built-in. Trover eliminated the costly and complex integration process associated with typical CTI projects. In addition, Trover's internal team became resident experts by learning on the job rather than sitting on the sidelines.

NuContact Center Transforms Customer Service From the Inside Out

The Trover customer support organization is making new productivity strides with the NuContact Center. New automation is streamlining the initial steps of the investigation call by giving callers pre-recorded greetings and client-specific introductions. It also prompts customers to enter important verification data, which is required by the CSRs to respond to customer contacts. This information is automatically sent to the CSRs' desktop so they have greater access to information within Troveris. New customer service levels are also realized through the system's skills-based call routing.

The NuContact Center further automates and enhances Trover's contact center capabilities by providing each healthcare member with an option to leave a message rather than hold for the next available representative. Once a message is left, callback requests and voice messages are promptly routed to CSRs as links in e-mail messages. When the representative clicks the link, the call is placed, or the message is played.

"We are committed to providing superior customer service to our clients' members," said Cheri Hall, Director of Customer Service for Trover Solutions. "Thousands of calls come in each day with varying degrees of complexity. This new technology allows us to match a CSR's expertise to the size and complexity of the file so that the member is connected to the best CSR to handle his or her specific case."

Hall explained that the system's automatic callback functionality is extremely beneficial during peak call periods, such as Monday mornings or after holidays, when Trover can receive up to 2,000 messages. With the NuContact Center, voice messages are tracked and routed automatically and CSRs can respond within less than 48 hours.

Just one month after deployment, Trover began reaping productivity gains from the NuContact Center. On average, a three to four-minute call has been reduced by 30 seconds. And from an agent's perspective, it has changed how these employees view and perform their jobs. "The reps have embraced the NuContact Center, and this enthusiasm is providing big rewards for us," said Combs.

Future Expansion Capabilities for Meeting New Customer Needs

Going forward, Trover has plans to expand the contact center capabilities with Web chat and Web investigation. "Our vision for the contact center is to offer members the opportunity to talk to us at the time of their choice using the vehicle of their choice," explained Combs. "While many people are comfortable calling us during business hours, we believe that there is a growing number who would prefer to use the Internet to complete a Web investigation at a time that they designate," concluded Combs.</p> <pre> "We cannot afford to have anything but the best system so we can deliver the best customer care. We're confident that the Nuasis system will allow us to deliver on that promise." --John Combs, Senior Vice President of Operations Support, Trover </pre> <p>Tuition Management Systems

Replacing Its ACD with the NuContact Center Gives TMS the Edge to Compete

Company

Tuition Management Systems partners with schools and universities in the delivery of education payment services to students and their families.

Customers

More than 250,000 families and 700 schools, colleges, and universities

Business challenge

Delivering a consistent level of service and access across phone, e-mail, and web without dramatically increasing fixed costs 

Solution

Support enhanced service initiatives by migrating from an ACD to the IP-based NuContact Center to provide a better customer experience through consistent delivery of education payment solutions across multiple channels, with phone, e-mail, and chat contacts in a single queue with a single agent interface

Business results

** Fewer agents handle more customers

** Seasonal labor requirements reduced by 10 percent

** Improved customer experience across multiple channels

** Call durations reduced by 45 seconds

** New services enabled, including consolidated reporting, web collaboration, deferred response, and IVR

** New labor options, such as at-home agents

More and more graduating college students have looming debt burdens, driven by the escalating cost of higher education and the increasing availability of student loans and grants. Managing tuition payment plans is a challenge for university administrative staffs.

Increasingly, they turn for support to Tuition Management Systems (TMS), who can serve both their interests and the interests of their students. For their part, TMS has chosen to partner with Nuasis to help it remain competitive. Nuasis has helped TMS put a new face on its customer-facing operations and offer new value to the markets it serves.

Emerging Market Needs Create Opportunity for the TMS Business Model

TMS has been in business since 1985. This year it expects to help more than 250,000 families make tuition payment decisions and manage nearly $1.5 billion for 700 schools, colleges, and universities in 50 states.

Delivering seamless education payment services requires investments in people, processes, and technology. Gone are the days when schools simply chose between outsourcing education payment services or managing them internally. Now, the best processes emerge from a blend of both on- and off-campus resources and expertise.

Working with its member schools, TMS counsels students on a "proven path" to getting the bill paid. They leverage best-in-class partners for the delivery of multiple options and integrated solutions. They work both sides of the tuition equation: they counsel students about how to minimize their debt burdens, sometimes even helping them find lenders, and they help schools with billing and payment processing. Schools, by outsourcing these services, have better collection rates, more even cash flows, and--ultimately--higher student recruitment and retention rates.

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The result of this "proven path" is improved service delivered to the student, reduced costs and workload for the school administrator, improved cash flow for the school, and better recruitment and retention.

Traditional ACD Solution Fails to Support New Initiatives

"We asked ourselves, how do we deliver a consistent level of service across multiple communication channels, such as phone, e-mail, and web, to students and their families without dramatically increasing our fixed costs?" said Keith Roberts, TMS Director of IT. "We were running our contact center with a generic Nortel ACD setup, processing 300 e-mails daily through an alias on Lotus Notes, and holding web chat sessions on an altogether different platform."--Obviously not the most productive environment.

To enable a better customer experience without dramatic increases in operating costs, an IP-based contact center system began looking very attractive. It would allow TMS to provide a consistent delivery of education payment solutions across multiple channels. As Roberts explains, "Not only would an IP-based system allow us to provide a better customer experience but, at the same time, we would gain better agent productivity, better insight from management, and better integration with our customer relationship management systems."

Nuasis Set the Standard for Vendor Selection

And that's where Nuasis came in. After a thorough competitive review of technology to support their new initiatives, TMS selected the IP-based Nuasis NuContact Center[R]. "Nuasis came in, and we were floored by how smoothly everything worked together, what you could do, and what you could configure--including screen pops. It fed our questions to other vendors: 'Can you do this, this, and this?' The answer to most of them was yes, with a professional services engagement. Everything outside basic install and setup was professional services. Then you're paying for a hybrid product that is not mature by any means. And they hadn't figured out how to provide a single interface for all these applications."

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NuContact Center Streamlines the Family Sales Channel

Families make inquiries, enroll for TMS services, and check their account status via the phone, e-mail, and the web. The NuContact Desktop provides a single, consistent interface that delivers a unified view of voice, e-mail, and web contacts to TMS agents with a set of universal tools for handling them, including a softphone on the desktop. Roberts explained, "Agents like the system because it makes their job easier, and the system tells them what kind of contact is coming up next. Managers like the flexibility and control the system gives them to monitor calls, barge in, record calls, and exchange messages with agents through the system--without putting customers on hold." Integration of the NuContact Center with an IVR further streamlines operations, today by automating payment processes and, soon, by allowing callers to change demographic information and adjust budget contracts through the system.

NuContact Center Facilitates New Service Offerings

Customer research conducted last fall was loud and clear: customers like to talk to the same agents. TMS will use the database lookup capabilities of the NuContact Center to launch a new service called My EPC (my education payment counselor) that matches account numbers with specific agents and agent groups to promote relationship building. On the school side, TMS now offers outbound calling services to help them with marketing campaigns.</p> <pre> "Built-in CTI has reduced each phone call by about 45 seconds. When you're talking about 400,000 calls, that will make a big difference in our telecommunication costs." --Keith Roberts, Director of IT, Tuition Management Systems </pre> <pre> "The ability to offer deferred response during high call volumes--and escalating them after a certain period of time--has had a huge impact on our service levels as well as on our peaks and valleys." --Keith Roberts, Director of IT, Tuition Management Systems </pre> <p>NUASIS CORPORATION

Nuasis Wins Frost & Sullivan Award for Entrepeneurial Company</p> <pre> "The innovative strength of the NuContact Center solution coupled with sound business strategies have helped Nuasis garner wide customer acceptance, and carve a place for itself in a highly competitive contact center marketplace. The on-going migration to IP, and inevitable movement towards Pure IP solutions within contact centers, places Nuasis in an ideal position for the future" </pre> <p>This award signifies the company's indentification of a unique and revolutionary product solution with significant market potential. Additionally, the award certifies that the company's marketing strategy is sound and poised for success.

Nuasis is a recent entrant to the contact center market, having launched its product in 2003. The Nuasis NuContact Center is an all IP-based, stand-alone solution that runs on commodity hardware. Nuasis has since its launch, made a name for itself based on the strength of its IP contact center solutions, built-in CTI capabilities and support for the SIP standard. Attractive price points and a strong business case built upon potential savings due to elimination of CTI application deployment charges are also contributors to its success.

The Nuasis NuContact Center product has been designed to meet the needs of multi-site, multi-media contact centers operating on a single IP platform. The Nuasis product enables multiple contact center sites to be managed as a single center, and intelligently route multiple media such as voice, web, email and fax to the best available agent. Patent pending capabilities within its voice gateways greatly enhance reliability of its systems. NuContact Center's distributed architecture can at present, scale up to a maximum of 1,000 agents across multiple locations, utilizing commodity servers that bring down the cost of deployment.

Consolidated real-time and historical management reporting across multiple sites and media types enables centralized management for complex contact center operations. A software-only solution offers additional benefits such as rapid changes to workflows, based on business needs, and performed by customer IT staff minus the need of a vendor professional services type engagement. An example of this is the changes made in-house, to the IVR system of a Nuasis customer Cellular South, dictated by the needs of hurricane Katrina victims.

The innovative strength of the NuContact Center solution coupled with sound business strategies have helped Nuasis garner wide customer acceptance, and carve a place for itself in a highly competitive contact center marketplace. The on-going migration to IP and inevitable movement towards Pure IP solutions within contact centers, places Nuasis in an ideal position for the future. Frost & Sullivan is pleased to announce Nuasis as its choice for Entrepreneurial Company within the Contact Center marketplace.

AWARD DESCRIPTION

The Frost & Sullivan Award for Entrepreneurial Company is presented each year to the small company that demonstrated superior entrepreneurial ability in its industry during the research period. This Award signifies the company's identification of a unique and revolutionary product solution with significant market potential. Additionally, the Award certifies that the company's marketing strategy is sound and poised for success.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Entrepreneurial ability is assessed using mostly primary research with top manufacturers and end-users in the industry. Frost & Sullivan's analyst teams perform extensive interviews with the company in question to evaluate its business, products, and marketing plan. In addition, primary research with leading manufacturers is performed to benchmark the Award recipient's strategy for growth against established players' strategies. Also considered are elements such as strategic alliances, expected time to market, and the senior management team. Primary research with end-users is also conducted to evaluate and compare the value of the Award recipient's product solutions.

MEASUREMENT CRITERIA

A recipient that is chosen for the Frost & Sullivan Award for Entrepreneurial Company must match the following criteria:

** The company must have fewer than 300 employees.

** The company must have identified a brand new and completely unique product solution.

** The product solution must have significant market potential--at least $200 million--and a high probability of reaching its potential in the next 2-5 years.

** Financial and employee based resources to ensure a large probability of success. Financial resources include backing from VCs, IPOs, and funding from large corporate partners.

** Protection from competitors: patents, large product development lead time, strategic alliances with key component suppliers, etc.

** Strong plans for marketing: strategic alliances for distribution, relationships with key customers, voluminous positive-press in the media, endorsements from industry experts, etc.