In an ongoing effort to provide users with an insight into leading IT technologies, Microsoft South Africa, Buwa Computer Telephony and Voicematix hosted a Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) Industry Solutions seminar in Johannesburg, Cape-Town and Durban last week.
Among other things, the seminar provided users with an understanding of Windows NT computer telephony (CTI) solutions and how these solutions solve productivity, customer service and call centre challenges.
"The CTI market has emerged from the convergence of two of the most essential business tools - the telephone and the PC," said Voicematix CEO, Gil Caplan. " CTI applications provide solutions which enhance individual and workgroup productivity, reduce business operating costs, dramatically reduce the time to disseminate information, and improve customer service."
Dr Hasmukh Gajjar, Chairman of Vodacom chaired the seminar and discussed the development of telecommunications in Africa which were finalised at the recent Africa Telecom conference.
He referred to the Sub-Saharan African region which has approximately 14 million telephone lines compared to the city of Tokyo has more and said that an infrastructure has to be implemented for rural telecommunications in Africa.
"It is hoped, that by the year 2010 there will be 50 million telephone lines in the region," said Dr Gajjar. "Access to information drives society and its economy and is seen as a basic human right and South Africa is the driving force waiting to propel Africa into the information age."
With Africa preparing itself for the information age, service in all areas of business is a priority. The customer Contact Centre or Call Centre plays a significant role in any business in terms of customer satisfaction and building profitable customers. Fairoz Jaffer General Manager of Buwa Computer Telephony explained to the users the importance and advantages of call centres.
"A call centre is a communication link to the customer and should be seen as a strategic asset of the organisation, said Jaffer. "Customer Contact Centres are moving towards decentralisation, are networkable and have the ability to handle different media types. These centres include technical support , help desk, order entry and customer service. They process telephone calls, faxes and e-mails."
Gil Caplan, CEO of Voicematix, provided an in-depth look at Unified Messaging and how it will touch the future of business. He referred to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates recent quote: "Messaging is to the late 90`s what Local Area networks were to the late 80`s."
"The need for efficient ways to communicate information has resulted in a number of different messaging mediums," Caplan said. "Each message type has its own advantages and disadvantages and each requires a different terminal device for delivery and access-the telephone or desktop computer. As the number of voice, fax, and electronic messages grows, so does the need for an improved way of managing them using a common set of management tools from a single terminal device."
He said that tomorrow`s corporate entity requires a mission-critical, industrial strength, unified messaging service. "Unified message applications allow the user to access all messages such as voice mail, fax mail, and e-mail from a Universal Inbox using the terminal device of their choice. The user has more efficient access to messages when in the office, and more flexible access when on the road."
The access points to the Universal Inbox are from a desktop client, phone or fax, web client, alpha numeric pagers and beepers, services such as SMS and portable information appliances such as PDA`s.
"With unified messaging, a global market is a reality. As the world races into the 21st century, Virtual Companies seem to be the obvious next step," said Caplan. "Productivity can rise since nomadic users will constantly have access to all messages - with constant improvements in technology, ever smaller and more powerful laptops and notebook PC`s, PDA`s, `smart` phones, GSM PDA`s, cable modems and the Web keep the travelling businessman in touch."
There is an ongoing process whereby the scarcity of the distribution of information, messages and communications diminishes over time, explained Caplan.
"Costs are also constantly decreasing due to the convergence of physical information distribution and infrastructures carrying similar information types," Caplan added. "The capabilities of computers are also rapidly improving in order to handle interactive information."
The emergence of unified messaging has lead to the conception of the TUI (Telephone User Interface). "One can now listen to and manage voice messages, manage fax messages including voice annotation, listen to e-mail messages with TTS (Text to Speech), redirect e-mails to fax machines and reply to e-mails or faxes with voice," he concluded.
Editors Note
Voicematix: Established in 1992, Voicematix is a leading player in the computer telephony integration (CTI) market. Since its inception, Voicematix has built up a solid reputation for its ability to design, install and commission a wide range of CTI solutions for a client list that now includes a number of the country`s top 200 companies. The company`s product focus includes solutions that encompass unified messaging, voice messaging, network fax services and call centres. Its comprehensive portfolio of CTI products and services are backed by a proven track record of providing and supporting large, complex and technically demanding solutions nation-wide. For more information take a look at the Voicematix web site.
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