Calabrio Announces A New Architectural Direction For Its Software

Calabrio, Inc., a provider of workforce optimization and unified desktop software for IP-based contact centers, today announced a new architectural direction for its software that will be built in an Enterprise 2.0 framework. The new approach will help improve business process integration by providing unified, flexible views of customer interaction, workforce optimization, performance management and analytics activities within the contact center. To reflect the new direction, Calabrio One™ is the new name of the suite of products formerly known as the Calabrio Unified Interaction Suite.

Calabrio also announced new product versions and feature enhancements within the Calabrio One suite, including enhanced graphical reports, knowledge worker support and strategic planning capabilities. In addition, the company announced pre-defined desktop integration approaches between Cisco Agent Desktop and three CRM applications: Salesforce CRM, Oracle's Siebel Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The integrations facilitate screen pops and automated workflows between the CRM applications and Cisco Agent Desktop, which Calabrio distributes through an OEM relationship with Cisco.

"Satisfying customer demands while meeting business objectives is tough enough. Contact center personnel should not have to struggle with their daily tools to interact with the customer, collaborate with team members, and keep their performance on track," said Paul Lidsky, CEO of Calabrio, Inc. "These product improvements further our mission to enhance and streamline the right set of tools into a single view of the daily activities and performance metrics that are appropriate for each individual user."

Calabrio is re-naming its Unified Interaction Suite Calabrio One to reflect the new architectural approach that will integrate a variety of applications into one framework. Today, Calabrio customers can create forecasts, generate work schedules, measure quality and efficiency, access reports and alerts, and collaborate within their teams to impact performance in real time - all from a common desktop. In a move toward further streamlining those business processes and providing one single view of the customer and each user’s activities, Calabrio is re-architecting these capabilities as services within the contact center. Calabrio One will present the appropriate services to each user’s desktop based on their specified role, such as agent, supervisor, evaluator, manager, executive or knowledge worker.

"The vision for Calabrio One is to provide flexible views so that each user can access specific services in a way that is most appropriate for their work style," said Tim Kraskey, vice president of marketing and business development for Calabrio, Inc. "Accessed within a single container, presented as widgets, used within a browser, or accessed from a system tray for integration within business applications, the software will unify the processes that comprise each user’s daily activities in a single, convenient view."

The unified framework streamlines information so users can be more efficient and effective at achieving their performance metrics, such as customer satisfaction, first call resolution, and revenue and profitability. To accomplish this, the newly architected software will leverage Enterprise 2.0 technologies including Web services, IM/presence, Wikis, RSS feeds and tagging, as well as Calabrio’s patented workflow actions.

"To reach the top level of effectiveness and excellence, contact centers will require tight integration of contact center applications, including agent and supervisory desktops that combine a 360 degree view of customer information, and KPIs for monitoring and performance management, in a pre-integrated suite," said Ken Landoline, program manager in Yankee Group’s Enterprise Research group. "Calabrio’s announcements today are an important step toward this next frontier in performance optimization."

Calabrio will make announcements over the next 6 to 12 months regarding enhancements to Calabrio One in line with this paradigm.