COSMOCOM EXPANDS GLOBAL REACH WITH SOUTH AFRICAN PARTNER INTELLECA

Voice Platform Leader to Resell Contact Center On-Demand™

On July 13th, CosmoCom announced the appointment of Intelleca as its Master Value Added Reseller (VAR) in South Africa. Headquartered in Johannesburg/South Africa, Intelleca has emerged as South Africa's leading provider of Telco-grade voice solutions by focusing on advances in telephony and Internet convergence. These advances now make it possible to drive sophisticated telephone and Contact Center solutions using standards such as VoiceXML and VoIP. Intelleca provides products and services that support innovative business solutions in healthcare, financial services, decision support, and telecom applications, and is South Africa's dominant provider of Telco-Grade Speech Platform Solutions using standards such as VoiceXML and incorporating state-of-the-art Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Text to Speech (TTS) capabilities.

"Intelleca is delighted to be representing CosmoCom in the South African market," said Mike Renzon, MD of Intelleca. "After extensive research, Intelleca identified CosmoCom as the world leader in telco-grade VoIP managed contact center technology and the partner best suited to address the call center market in South Africa. With a relatively small incremental effort on our part, their product line will allow us to cover a broad range of new opportunities with our current organization. Their support has been outstanding, and we expect to announce our first major deal very soon. CosmoCom's technology and Intelleca's market strength will fundamentally change the dynamics of the contact center provisioning industry in South Africa."

For further details, please refer to the complete press release.

THE IMPACT OF GLOBALIZATION ON THE CALL CENTER INDUSTRY

By Mark Lepko, VP of Sales, The Americas  - At a recent industry conference in the US, I was on a shootout panel with other IP Call Center vendors. Our moderator had prepared a challenging question. The question was:

VoIP is a technology that enables workers to be distributed anywhere in the world, in effect enabling offshoring. VoIP is also a technology that lowers the cost of communication, virtualization, and home-working, making it possible to keep contact centers here in the United States. So which is it? Is IP going to save the US contact center industry, or will it hasten its demise?

I was the first person to address what appeared to be a real loaded-gun question, given the overall controversy surrounding these issues. My comments went over very well, and I'd like to share them with the global audience of this newsletter:

Global competition is a reality we cannot escape and really should not try to escape.  It's true that in our industry VoIP technology is both an enabler of this global competition and a factor that in some ways helps the US compete.  But there is another way to look at this question that leads to the conclusion that offshoring can be a win-win proposition for the industry on both shores. 

There are simply not enough people to fill all the needed call center slots in North America. By rightshoring each type of customer interaction, we can have the best of both shores, with a positive overall impact on the industry both in the US and in the offshore countries providing this service.

Let's take a historical perspective on this. Many of you have implemented IVR technologies in your contact centers. Do you recall the sales pitch about off-loading routine transactions from live agents, reducing headcount, and lowering turnover? OK, now how many of you have doubled or tripled your agent positions since you implemented IVR? Looks like about everyone. Why? Because standards of service are rising, and because the world is becoming more complex, and therefore many interactions still need a live person.

I foresee the same pattern with offshoring.

The current state of the offshoring art definitely gives contact centers a cost-saving alternative for some of their current workload.  But there are still interaction needs that are better served by onshore agents of the local culture and the culture of the enterprise they serve, with years of training and experience, specialized knowledge, and the judgment these qualifications imply.  Offshoring actually frees the onshore operation to focus on its own relative strength. Onshore agents of this kind will be able to justify higher salaries by responding to the needs of the highest volume customers and supporting the most profitable products and services.  This will reduce onshore agent turnover and create higher levels of customer satisfaction.

Furthermore, the demand for IP contact centers globally will create new job opportunities in R&D, application design, and field engineering. These will be highly skilled positions fueling the growth of the new virtual call center model.  A virtual call center with both offshore and onshore agents is needed to deliver on the promise of rightshoring.  This, of course, is what the Cosmocom all-IP platform provides.

I believe that offshoring, like IVR before it, will actually create more opportunities than it eliminates for onshore agents and for new high-tech workers both onshore and offshore. Perhaps most important, it will create more satisfied customers, which is good for the US economy, for the global economy, and for every one of us.

*Editor’s Note: Just before this issue was sent out, we came across the following extract from a recent study by The McKinsey Global Institute of how both Germany and France have suffered, compared with the U.S., by trying to put up walls against outsourcing and offshoring. The McKinsey’s conclusions are remarkably similar to Mark Lepko’s: "A new competitive dynamic is emerging: early movers in offshoring improve their cost position and boost their market share, creating new jobs in the process. Companies who resist the trend will see increasingly unfavorable cost positions that erode market share and eventually end in job destruction. This is why adopting protectionist policies to stop companies from offshoring would be a mistake. Offshoring is a powerful way for companies to reduce their costs and improve the quality and kinds of products they offer consumers, allowing them to invest in the next generation of technology and create the jobs of tomorrow."

 COSMOCALL UNIVERSE FEATURED AT COMMUNICASIA 2005

Our Hong Kong and Israel offices are happy to share the news that CosmoCom's strategic partner, Fujitsu, invited us to demo CosmoCall Universe at the prestigious "CommunicAsia 2005" exhibition, held June 14th-17th in Singapore. CommunicAsia 2005, which specifically targets the telcos, outsourcers and off-shore call center operations, is the largest technology trade show in southeast Asia, attracting over 60,000 attendees, as well as the key decision makers from the IT, communication and broadcasting industries.

Approximately half of the show's attendees were from China, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand, and an estimated 1,600 delegates and speakers were at the CommunicAsia and BroadcastAsia conferences. The exhibitions at the Singapore Expo, accommodated 2,238 exhibiting companies from 55 countries covering 62,000 sq meters of exhibition space.

CosmoCall Universe's Virtual by Design™ architecture, drew particular interest, and all were impressed by CCU's innovative new features such as CosmoTracker's interaction history tracking, the browser-based enhanced web agent, multimedia recording, and IVR calling system.

VIEWS FROM THE CORNER OFFICE

Changing Times ... Curse or Opportunity?

By Ari Sonesh, CEO - Yet another quarter is over. Time is flying. Q2 resulted in another record quarter for CosmoCom. Q2 was not only profitable, but again we booked more business for coming quarters, with each coming quarter expected to be better than the previous one. These are very interesting and exciting times!

In a speech in Cape Town, South Africa, on June 7, 1966, Robert F. Kennedy said, "There is a Chinese curse which says, 'May he live in interesting times.' Like it or not, we live in interesting times...." As it turns out, that phrase is neither Chinese nor a curse. But journalists and speechmakers have spun that phrase so many different times, and in so many different contexts, that it has become a cliché.  But I think it is a cliché worth a second look in the context of our industry.

Not only are we living in interesting times, times of exciting, and even thrilling change. Change creates opportunity. At CosmoCom, we see change as the blessing, and "status quo" as the curse. As a Disruptive Technology vendor, we are agents of changes that are creating huge business advantages for early technology adopters and enormous opportunity for the leading vendors, and investors.

Change is all around us. We see globalization creating changes in business needs and models, and giving rise to new and powerful economical regions. There are profound changes in habits and methods of communication.  We see change in the ways technology is delivered, as in the shift from technology products to on-demand services. All this brings change in the technology vendor landscape. On one hand, we see consolidation of the legacy vendors, while on the other hand, we see the rise of new vendors such as CosmoCom.

A fascinating example of a change that brings opportunity is China. I've just returned from the Intel Capital CEO Summit held this year in Beijing, China, to which I was invited because Intel Capital is an investor in CosmoCom. The China market opportunity was a major topic of the conference. Probably the most visible sign of change within China is the enormous growth in construction projects. The expansion in Chinese cities is upwards; office building, hotels, universities and residential buildings are all skyscrapers. It's estimated that close to two-thirds of the world's construction cranes are being used in China. Eagerly embracing the latest technologies, China has 100 million internet connections, 30 million of which are broadband, and 358 million mobile phones growing at the remarkable rate of 17% per year. China is by far the world's fastest growing economy, now running at about 9% growth per annum, and showing no signs of slowing down. Companies that prepare now to do business in the changing China will reap enormous benefits in the near future.

Another recent example of change is last week's announcement from Concerto of their acquisition of Aspect, coming just on the heels of the acquisition of Rockwell…two dinosaurs with large installed bases and mostly maintenance income. While Concerto will make nice money from collecting maintenance fees from "end of life" installed base technology, soon the Aspect and Rockwell customers will have to make a decision, either to move to the "kludgey" Concerto technology, or move to all-IP, unified technology. Moving to CosmoCom's hosted or premises technology is the obvious choice. What an opportunity!

To summarize, companies and markets are continuously changing, never static. While some may be wary of change, we have to accept change and find ways to benefit from it.  Indeed, we need to strive toward constructive change. "Status quo" equals stagnation and is detrimental to progress, while continuous change and improvement are evolutionary and vital. Change makes for interesting times; it's not a curse, it's a blessing!

PARTNERS SPOTLIGHT: ISC CONSULTANTS

Adding Workforce Management to the Contact Center On-Demand World

By Leron Polani, VP Strategic Business & Corporate Development - ISC Consultants, Inc. was founded in 1973 to provide training development and consulting services to the contact center industry. From the beginning, ISC has been dedicated to providing measurable, sustainable improvements in the performance of people, processes, and technologies that shape the customer experience. In 1999, ISC introduced the Irene® Workforce Management system for contact centers. This award-winning software uses innovative technology developed exclusively for ISC that provides unparalleled scalability and dramatic advancements in forecasting and scheduling capabilities for contact center managers. Irene offers the benefits of sophisticated, flexible workforce management without a steep capital investment.

Irene Online is an On-Demand service delivered via the Internet and billed on a monthly per-agent-scheduled basis, so customers pay for the service only as they use it. Enhancements and upgrades are installed seamlessly via the Internet and included in the monthly fee. Irene Online integrates seamlessly with CosmoCom's Contact Center On Demand™ ("CCOD"). With Irene Online, you can build forecasts and schedules over the internet in the same way that you access and manage your CosmoCom call center. You access and manage your workforce management data maintained on Irene Servers whenever you want.

Some of the advantages of an integrated Irene and CosmoCall Universe include:

• The initial set up time of integrating the two products is virtually eliminated since Irene Online, hosted by ISC and CosmoCall Universe, offered as CCOD by one of CosmoCom's great service providers, already work together in the field.
• Many agent and ACD management tasks can be handled in a single location as opposed to having to perform the same configuration twice in both products. Database integration means that initial setup and ongoing administration of call flow configuration, agent identification, team and skill assignments are entered only once. 
• Compatible Microsoft infrastructure means that the same hardware and software platforms support both systems. Maintenance is greatly simplified. Furthermore, there is the option of using the same hardware for both products depending on the size and performance needs of the environment. 
• Real-Time Agent performance data can be configured for any sized call center. 
• Browser-based user access delivers all necessary end-user functionality to the same desktop.

Irene fully supports the flexible CosmoCom CCOD environment, delivering efficient schedules and workforce management tools for virtual multi-site, multi-skill contact centers across multiple time zones.

To learn more about ISC and Irene, please visit www.isc.com. 

ECOCOSM UPDATE

Join Our Growing Call Center Consultant Liaison Program

Multi-media has become the norm in contact center, and many contact centers themselves are becoming virtualized through on-demand delivery. To support the trend, CosmoCom recently initiated a program to reach out to contact center consultants worldwide and equip them with the tools they’ll need to make educated evaluations and recommendations of CosmoCall Universe-based solutions to their clients. The program costs nothing to join, and the benefits are numerous, including access to our exclusive EcoCosm ExtraNet for consulting professionals.

If you are a call center consultant and would like to learn more, please see our CosmoCom EcoCosm Consultants page. Or if you know a call center consultant that could benefit from this program, please pass this invitation on to them to join our program

 BITS & PIECES: SOME VOIP FACTOIDS

Marketing services specialist Ion Group asked marketers to rate locations according to call-handling quality. Some of their findings were:

• South Africa has been voted the top offshore contact center location, knocking India into second place.
• South African call centers received a score of 51.1 percent for attributes such as high-quality call-handling standards, a strong technological infrastructure and linguistic capabilities.
• India, traditionally at the forefront of call-center outsourcing, received a smaller share of the vote -- under 50 percent in each category.

BenchmarkPortal is the source for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) best practices information for call centers, and a recent study provided some shocking statistics that should serve as a wake-up call for ebusinesses. The study found that many North American businesses are missing out on revenue opportunities due to poor or non-existent email customer service. Read more at http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/050608/087673.html. 
 

Telecoms market outside U.S. to grow to USD 2 trillion
The telecommunications market outside the United States is expected to continue its double-digit growth from 2004 to reach over $2 trillion by 2008, according to TIA's 2005 Telecommunications Market Review and Forecast, an annual publication produced by the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA). Overall spending on telecommunications in the five regions covered in the report -- Canada, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia/Pacific -- will grow at an estimated 10.6 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR).
 

According to Point Topic, last year, video over IP gear generated $40 million in revenues, up 23% from 2003.

WHO'S TALKING? RECENT INK

In early June, Communications Convergence (CommWeb) editor, Joe Fleischer authored a great story called "What's Next for IP: CosmoCom's CosmoCall Universe 4.5." 

In the article Joe begins, "If deploying an IP infrastructure for your call center isn't already a priority, it will be soon." He then continues, "More IP routing tools are taking on greater responsibility beyond simply directing calls to call center agents. Among these is the latest version of CosmoCom's CosmoCall Universe, otherwise known as CCU 4.5." From there on the article digs into some of the new and exciting benefits of CosmoCom's recent release.

Please read the full article on the Communications Convergence web site. 

HQ HAPPENINGS...

Our Annual Company Picnic June 26th was a beautiful, sunny day on Long Island and CosmoCom's HQ office came out to party! Dix Hills Park, a short ride from the building, was the festive scene, with music playing, swimming pool sparkling, children racing through the playground, and adults lazing under the shady canopy of the tall oak trees. Everyone enjoyed the "All American Barbeque"…from hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill to corn-on-the-cob and brownies for dessert! A wandering illusionist performed sleight-of-hand amazements, and a SpongeBob piñata took a beating from the kids (of course "Bob" didn't mind…he even gave up lots of candy!!).

EVP Steve Kowarsky was our official photographer, and invites you to view his slide show of the picnic (and his other recent work) at http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewalbum.html?bm=72915.  Steve says, "First download, the ActiveX viewer.  You may need a bit of patience.  When you select the show, right-click on the image and select 'Full Screen.'  Then click on the icon to begin the show."

 As you'll agree from some of these photos, CosmoKids are the cutest around! … A great time was had by all !

NEW MEMBERS OF THE COSMOCOM FAMILY

CosmoCom Headquarters

Sanjiv Deshpande
Recently returned to CosmoCom from Computer Associates, and is formerly from INC Networks, Telcordia, Lucent and ATT. Sanjiv holds a Masters Degree in Electronic Engineering from Bombay University in India, and is working from HQ in the capacity of Principal Software Designer…welcome back, Sanjiv!

Surya Satyavolu
Surya also joined us early July and will be working from Headquarters in Melville, NY . Surya holds a MS degree in Electrical Engineering from Clemson University, Clemson, SC. and has more than 5 years experience as systems engineer and software developer on communication and networking technologies.

CosmoCom Asia

Rex Hui
our new sales engineer in Hong Kong, joined the Company on June 3rd. Rex has formerly worked with PCCW Ltd, the largest telco in Hong Kong, where he served as an Technical Consultant as well Product Marketing Manager. Rex is a graduate of Hong Kong Chinese University with 1st Class Honors Degree with a specialization in Computer Engineering. He then further acquired a Master of Philosophy in Electronic Engineering from Hong Kong Polytechnic.

CosmoCom Japan

Tetsuo Hotchi
Hotchi-san joined CosmoCom at the end of June, and brings with him tremendous sales and management experience in the Japanese call center market, along with an excellent track record of sales successes. Hotchi-san was one of the early sales people at Avaya Japan and helped to open Rockwell's Japan operations. After Rockwell, Hotchi-san founded and managed the Davox Japan (now Concerto) business operations as their Japan Country Manager. In his new capacity as CosmoCom's Country Manager for Japan, Hotchi-san will have overall responsibility for our business operations in that country.

CosmoCom UK

Ade Olufowobi
Ade joined CosmoCom at the beginning of July and will be working from our UK office . Ade holds a MSc. degree in Engineering and Design from Napier University, Edinburgh and has over 13 years of experience on Information Systems, IT support, Software support and Networking.

TRADESHOW NEWS: COMING ATTRACTIONS

	Contact Centres World - Africa 2005 July 26th to 27th Sandton Convention Centre Johannesburg, South Africa http://www.terrapinn.com/2005/ccwza/spList.stm CosmoCom technology will be featured in the booth of partner South African Call Centre Solutions (SACCS) who is silver sponsor of the event.
	SPEAKING ENGAGEMENT Fall VON 2005 September 22nd Boston Convention Center Boston, MA, USA Panelist: Erik Laurence, VP Business Development & Global Accounts, CosmoCom  Topic: Boosting Call Center Productivity  When: Thursday, September 22, 1:30 - 2:45 p.m.
	RightNow Technologies 2005 User Conference October 3-6, 2005 Big Sky Resort Big Sky, Montana http://www.rightnow.com/userconference CosmoCom is proud to be a Gold Sponsor of this event.
	SPEAKING ENGAGEMENT Internet Telephony Conference and Expo IP Contact Center Summit October 26th L.A. Convention Center Los Angeles, CA, USA http://www.itexpo.com  Panelist: Erik Laurence, VP Business Development & Global Accounts, CosmoCom  Topic: "IP Contact Center Shootout”  When: Wednesday, October 26th, 12:30 - 2:15 p.m.
	Broadsoft Connections 2005 Executive Users Conference - Invitation Only October 2005 USA
	RECORDED WEBINARS
	View recordings of our recent Webinar events including "Hosted Contact Center for Outsourcers", "Contact Center On-Demand" and "Telecom Customer Care"

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