COSMOCOM STRENGTHENS CONTACT CENTER ON-DEMAND LEADERSHIP

CEO Declares 2004 "Year of CCOD"

MELVILLE, NY - January 6, 2004 - In the year 2003, CosmoCom strengthened its position as the leading provider of Contact Center On-Demand (CCOD) platforms to telephone companies and other major service providers worldwide. As 2004 begins, CosmoCom technology supports CCOD services on three continents (North America, Europe, and Asia) from 12 major telcos, including BT, France Telecom, Korea Telecom and PLDT. Many of these were either first acquired as customers in 2003 (KT, PLDT), or launched their CCOD services in 2003 (BT, FT). Other major telcos (whose names will only be announced when they launch their CCOD service) also selected CosmoCom as their platform provider in 2003.

"The CCOD business case, based on the utility computing model, is proving to be irresistible, not only as a way of enabling SMEs to offer state-of-the-art customer care, but also as a global solution for some of the largest enterprises in the world as they consider their contact center technology strategy over the next decade," explained Ari Sonesh, CosmoCom's CEO and Chairman. "With a growing roster of Global 2000 companies now subscribing to CosmoCom-based hosted contact center offerings from our telco customers, we see the model coming of age, and predict that 2004 will be the Year of Contact Center On-Demand, just as 2003 proved to be the Year of CRM On-Demand. In fact, CCOD and CRMOD are natural companions, and many of our service providers plan to offer both." Sonesh continued.

Industry analysts such as Gartner and Datamonitor seem to agree that CCOD has arrived. Gartner recently predicted that "corporations will give increasing credence to the potential for outsourcing their call center infrastructure" and that "incumbent telcos will be seen as the prime channel for outsourced call center infrastructure." Datamonitor points out that "the high end and the low end are the fastest growing segments of the mature call center market, and these are increasingly demanding networked and hosted call center solutions," and bullishly projects that by the year 2007, about 8 percent of contact center agent positions in Europe and about 13 percent in North America will be hosted by a service provider. CosmoCom is the only CCOD specialist in the contact center industry and is now firmly established as the technology leader, the market leader, and the thought leader in this emerging growth arena.

THE BIG DEAL ABOUT CCOD

Contact Center On-Demand (CCOD) is a new alternative to traditional premise-based contact center platforms. So what's the big deal? Simply put, by using a CCOD service from a telco or other service provider instead of a premise-based system, companies can eliminate capital expense, reduce system integration and ongoing operating costs, and get centers up and running faster.

Another great benefit of Contact Center On-Demand is the flexibility it provides in terms of contact center agent locations. On-shore, near-shore, or off-shore, in the office, at home, or on the road, all agents make up a single virtual contact center managed as one entity. CCOD users can change the location of one agent or hundreds of agents at any time with minimal cost and little impact on the technology infrastructure. This kind of flexibility is almost impossible to achieve with premise-based technology.

As Ari Sonesh, CosmoCom's CEO and chairman further explains, "CCOD goes far beyond just 'hosting,' or having the telco build, operate, and maintain your traditional premises platform for you. Dedicated, hosted systems are not unusual, but these do not and cannot fulfill the true promise of the On-Demand model." The requirements of a carrier class CCOD platform are different from those of a premise-based system. Telcos need high capacity, high availability, and multi-tenancy. On-Demand business requires a shared platform with tenant self-administration. It's understandable that CosmoCom's competitors have been completely absorbed in the premise-based business that makes up virtually all of their current revenue. However, CosmoCom began with the CCOD vision six years ago, and has designed its technology from the ground up to make CCOD a reality.

"The only other contact center platforms with these characteristics are not products, but rather are the home-grown internal platforms of the pioneering CCOD service providers," says Sonesh. "It's typical in the early stages of a technology for a few service providers to develop their own platforms. But eventually, when the business opportunity is proven, the large service specialists start looking for product companies who can offer them the platform they need as a true product. With the market entry of major telcos like BT, FT, NTT, and KT, Contact Center On-Demand has reached that point, and that is why I have said that 2004 will be 'the year of CCOD.'"

Click here for a list of Network Service Providers who currently offer CosmoCom-powered Contact Center On-Demand services.

A NEW YEAR AND A NEW NAME

"Friends of CosmoCom Newsletter" Becomes "The CosmoChronicle"

The new year brings a new name to our own Friends of CosmoCom Newsletter! With this premier issue of 2004, we are renaming the Friends of CosmoCom newsletter, "The CosmoChronicle." By this renaming, we wish to express and reflect our continuous commitment to you, our readers, to bring you the most interesting news regarding CosmoCom and the call center industry as a whole.

First published in 1999, the electronic Friends of CosmoCom newsletter has served as the familiar face and voice of CosmoCom. Since its debut, the newsletter has continued to bring important company and product announcements, as well as industry information, to our customers and other interested readers, while also reflecting the close-knit atmosphere of the company. We hope you continue to enjoy our newsletter and, as always, your suggestions are welcome. Happy Reading!
  

US INTERNET RETAILER DEPLOYS A COSMOCOM-BASED ON-DEMAND CONTACT CENTER SOLUTION TO ADD REAL-TIME VIDEO COMMERCE TO ITS OPERATIONS

In trying to create a unique, truly next generation shopping service for retailers that empowers consumers to view actual merchandise in real time, this company searched for a contact center solution that could seamlessly link real-time video feeds of merchandise in stores or studios with live text chat, voice, and video capabilities. In this way, customers could interact with sales associates who could show them, quite literally, every angle of every item they were interested in seeing.

The company was surprised to find that this straightforward need could not be met by most contact center applications because they relied on conventional CTI links for integration with back-end applications. The problem: no such interface was available for the company’s core application, a video camera navigation system.

Fortunately, the company was able to overcome this obstacle with an on-demand solution from a global service provider that is based on CosmoCall Universe—a contact center platform that relies on computer-to-computer integration rather that CTI for interfacing with back-end systems. This capability enabled the company to establish the required interface to the camera navigation system through XML, and empowered them to bring their service to market. The on-demand solution also enables the company to offer its services at reasonable costs to retailers because it has not had to make any capital investments in on-premise platforms.

JAPANESE TELESERVICES OUTSOURCER MEETS GROWING MARKET NEEDS WITH ON-DEMAND SOLUTION BASED ON COSMOCALL UNIVERSE

The need to meet rapidly changing call handling requirements was forcing this Japanese contact center outsourcer to over-invest in contact center infrastructure. The reason? Without excess capacity, the outsourcer’s ability to capture and quickly service new campaign business would be negatively impacted—and so too would their competitive positioning.

The company is resolving this potential capital drain by utilizing an on-demand contact center service from their telecommunications service provider. Now, instead of making investments in on-premise platforms, they can easily gear capacity up or down as business requirements change. So even as capital investments are being eliminated, responsiveness to market demands is being improved. And, at the same time, maintenance overhead is completely eliminated

The key to the success of this approach for the outsourcer was the on-demand platform itself—CosmoCall Universe—that delivered the full feature set the outsourcer already had available with their existing on-premise platforms. In addition, the on-demand platform offers a seamlessly integrated call recording capability; with their previous platforms, this capability was only available from a third-party vendor solution which added integration and maintenance complexity.

Another benefit of the CosmoCom platform is its easy support for home agents. Now, as the outsourcer’s call handling needs grow, they can service demands with agents located anywhere in the country—or the world—as long as they have access to a Web-enabled PC.

Read more CosmoCom success stories...

CONTACT CENTRAL INCREASES PANASONIC PRODUCTIVITY BY 20%

BT Contact Central has given Panasonic Computer Products (Europe) engineers access to a single database of information and, as a result, cut laptop repair times by half a day. More efficient inventory management has led to a £500k reduction in the cost of warehouse stock

Panasonic Computer Products (Europe) has introduced a multi-channel approach to customer services by implementing Contact Central from BT. The solution delivers both back-end enterprise resources planning (ERP) and front office customer relationship management (CRM) on a single platform.

Repair time reduced by half a day
Since implementing the solution, Panasonic's Cardiff-based manufacturing and repair facility has reduced the average time taken to repair a laptop from two-and-a-half days to just two days. Improved inventory management has reduced the cost of necessary spare parts in stock by £500,000. All this while enabling customers to access real time status reports on individual repairs.

Panasonic produces a range of laptops for key clients such as the AA, Hoover and British Gas. The large size of these accounts means that there are an estimated 500,000 Panasonic laptops in use throughout the UK and Europe.

Because Contact Central is on one platform it is able to monitor the entire repair cycle from when a client logs a request to when Panasonic returns the repaired laptop. This completely integrated end-to-end solution has...

Read the entire Panasonic Success Story  
  

   
VIDEO: THE COSMOCOM CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Hear What Customers Are Saying!

With nearly a dozen leading Network Service Provider customers, CosmoCom is the leading provider of Contact Center On-Demand (CCOD) platforms to telcos worldwide. Hear what CosmoCom's NSP customers and their end users have to say about CosmoCall Universe and the hosted contact center model…. CosmoCom also provides technology for OEMs and integrators to build the world’s best premise-based contact center packages. Hear from the BT Contact Central CEO how CosmoCom helped them launch their successful business... And learn how CosmoCom's teleservices outsourcer customers benefit from the latest in customer interaction management solutions. Hear all this and more, first-hand, in the CosmoCom Customer Experience video, now available online.

THE BUSINESS CASE BEHIND CONTACT CENTER ON-DEMAND

We are excited to announce that we have published a revision of our unabridged version of our most popular white paper, "Why Contact Center On-Demand? The Reasons and Business Case Behind a Changing Industry"!

Two versions of the "Why Contact Center On-Demand?" paper are available:

The newly revised, unabridged version, entitled "Why Contact Center On-Demand? The Reasons and Business Case Behind a Changing Industry," is available only under NDA to qualified CosmoCom customers, partners and prospects. This version contains detailed business cases for CCOD, presented from both end user and NSP perspectives - several of which have been updated. For more information on how to obtain a copy of the unabridged version, please contact whitepapers@cosmocom.com.

The second, abridged version is entitled "Why Contact Center On-Demand? The Reasons Behind a Changing Industry" This is the version that is generally available to all. It presents a qualitative case for contact center on-demand, without going into the intricacies of the business case. You may view or download the abridged version at www.cosmocom.com/whitepapers/whitepaper-WhyCCOD.asp

Summary of "Why Contact Center On-Demand? The Reasons Behind a Changing Industry." Many NSPs recognize that, in order to survive, they must transform their businesses from merely providing commodity transport services to providing more sophisticated telecom services that offer more value and create more differentiation. As on-demand delivery of software-based solutions gains favor, it makes sense for network service providers to offer their contact center customers on-demand solutions. After all, on-demand services are, in essence, network-based services. Who better than NSPs to offer them? And where better than contact centers to begin? NSPs already generate a major component of their revenue from contact centers, but for the most part are only providing relatively basic transport services to deliver calls to and from these centers. But with Contact Center On-Demand (CCOD), NSPs have the chance to attract profitable new streams of revenue that, for too long, have been the sole province of premise-based vendors of contact center equipment. And since CCOD is in essence a form of a grid computing service, the NSP benefits not only from the revenue generated by the CCOD application, but also from revenue generated by usage of the grid itself. This white paper explores the rationale behind CCOD and explains how it is the ideal business opportunity for Network Service Providers.

DID YOU KNOW?

Video-over-IP Services Market To Top $2.2 Billion In 2007
The worldwide market for Professional Video-over-Internet Protocol (IP) services will top $2.2 Billion during 2007, exhibiting a powerful Compound Annual Growth Rate of 45.3% between 2003 and 2007. Two key segments are expected to drive strong growth: Live Two-Way Video for Interactive Communications and Live One-Way Video for Information Distribution. During 2003, these two "live" categories, combined, only account for 17.3% of the total market. However, by 2007, they will hold a 42% share of the worldwide market for all Professional Video-over-IP network services.
-In-Stat/MDR, "Professional Video Services Over IP Networks - Ethernet & IP Creep Into The Broadcast Industry," January 2004

Migration to Web-Enabled Call Centers
Call centers who fail to plan for full integration of the Web, including video and VoIP, into call center operations are in danger of having the quickness of public take-up outpace their ability to cope. Call centers have a vested interest in moving their customer contact center from the PSTN to the Web. The migration of call processing capabilities into the core of the telecom network is being aggressively pursued by every networking and telecommunications company reviewed for the report, "Call Centres in the Millennium. Next Generation Services and Technology"
-Marcus Evans, "Call Centres in the Millennium. Next Generation Services and Technology," January 2004

TRADESHOW NEWS: COMING ATTRACTIONS

Centrex 2004 National Centrex Users Group Conference and Exhibit March 21-23, 2004 JW Marriott Houston, TX

CosmoCom, Inc.
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Melville, NY 11747
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Editor-in-Chief: Laura Fader
Graphics & Design: Kevin Simms