I have been quiet on the work front recently. Not because I don’t have things to talk about but because I have been busy. We went over the statement of work for our IPCC deployment yesterday. We need to go over a few details to make sure we know what we are doing! More news as that LONG project progress’s.
IPCC
IPCC Is a Go
After months of negotiating (and years of thinking and talking about it) my company finally decided to purchase Cisco’s IPCC software. Gus and I started looking into this stuff way back in December of 2002. It didn’t pan out. We ended up going to Cisco Call Manager 3.3.2 with our incumbent ACD Zeacom Smartconnect. Call Manager was a vast improvement over our Avaya Magix system we were using so we were sort of happy. Unfortunately Smartconnect has major problems integrating with Call Manager. We have uncovered several issues that have taken us months to overcome. Other issues are not correctable.
As we grow the need for a new contact center software became apparent. We looked at the major players, Cisco, Genisys, & Aspect. We were slightly limited with our options because we were already on Cisco’s Call Manager IP phone IP-PBX. That made us need to look at Genisys’s and Aspect’s IP based products. The problem with them was that either very few or no one was using them on Cisco’s Call Manager (CCM). To me that was one of the two killer problems for our situation. The other problem was integration. As we saw with Smartconnect the “hooks” that tied the Software to our IP-PBX was critical. Cisco was great at selling the integration between CCM and IPCC. Of course you assume there will be tight integration between the two, they are both Cisco products. The other two companies (in my opinion) had problems proving the tightness of their software to CCM. And for a major purchase such as this, I needed to be totally comfortable with the software we were buying. Because even if no one said it, if this integration fails peoples heads will be looking at me as to why.
There is allot to be said by having “one throat to choke” when dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars of phone gear. The up hill battle for IPCC was proving to our business people that the ease of use and functionality of IPCC was on par with Genisys.
So my multiple trips to Boston, Philly, Kingston, etc, and endless conversations with sales guys and pre sales engineers have finally paid off. And if you know me, dealing with sales guys a fate worse than death (sometimes).
The next step is scheduling this massive upgrade to not interfere with our other major projects going on. Such as expanding into our new Call Center space downstairs, new Fulfillment system, and upgrades to our data center infrastructure.
As part of this upgrade we will also be upgrading our voice mail from smartconnect’s voice mail system to Cisco’s unity. We will also need/want to upgrade call manager to 4.x after we are done with the IPCC upgrade. This is because Smartconnect as of now does not support CCM 4.x, so that upgrade has to come after we move to IPCC.
This will be exciting but stressful.
Cisco Executive Briefing
It sounds fancier than it was. Gus, Dave, Kai, and I went up to Cisco Systems Executive Briefing Center outside of Boston. We were getting the overview of their IPCC product from all the product managers and engineers working on the system. First off I will say I think the trip was worth it. I think there were some issues still unresolved by some of our team, that I think Cisco was able to handle.
We got up to Boston by noonish. Our account manager and his boss picked Gus and I up from the train and we drove the 40 minutes to the site. it is a nice new campus. We ate lunch, which was surprisingly good. Normally this sort of stuff is not what I consider good food. They had nice chicken dish with stuffing and potatoes. I was stuffed for hours after that. We meet a VP of sales or something who came down to make sure we were getting treated right. I am not sure what Gus said to whoever at Cisco but around August they started treating us really nice. Far better than I would expect from a company our size. Granted we do some advanced stuff for a company our size, but it is weird when the #3 guy or so at Cisco stops by your office for a meeting. I will say that Cisco is very responsive to questions or problems. Some of my / Gus’ comments have reached high levels. it showed with the presentation.
We got a really good overview of their IPCC product. I think Dave was pleased with what he saw. I was. I also got to see some nice warez from them. We checked out the color VOIP phone. Gus and I also test drove the video conference functionality of Call Manager 4.1. I even got to see the long rumored VOIP WiFi cordless phone. It was so cool. I want one for my house, but a practical deployment of it would be for the supervisors in the call center when we have 2 floors to cover. Check out the MOB for some of the really cool tech we saw. No pictures of the video conference system we used. Just trust me that it was way cool.
We had a long fact filled day. Then we rushed off to catch a late train. We made it to the station with 15 minutes to spare. I decided to upgrade to First Class. I figured I wanted good service one time, and I would pay for it out of my own pocket. I am on the train now. The seats are bigger. There are less people in the First Class car. I also got dinner and free drinks. The food is MUCH better than Biz class. I had a steak with potato’s, with chrem brule. I cannot spell it. I was not a fan of the desert anyway. I am sitting at a conference table for 4 by myself. It is roomy. I was hoping to take a nap, but I haven’t written a detailed blog entry for a while so I decided to take the time now. So was the upgrade worth the money? Probably not, but it is nice to get waited on and just relax sometimes. Amtrak for the money has the best upgrades. And that is saying allot since the Biz class on the Acela Express is nice as it is. Right now this is my favorite form of travel.