Summary: ‘Communications-Enabled Business Processes’ (CEBP) are a key application for voice and messaging APIs. This Briefing Report illustrates three new real world examples of integrating communications into end-user business applications using web services to access telco APIs.

Overview

'Communications-Enabled Business Processes' (CEBP) is an optimisation technique used by business process designers that involves integrating real time communications such as voice messaging, online chat and SMS with existing software frameworks. It is a developer / end-customer application of telco APIs in Telco 2.0 business models.


In general, enterprise CEBP projects do not create new business processes or areas of business. Instead, they extend existing legacy applications making them more efficient and faster, and very often with higher overall quality.  As a powerful addition, CEBP projects provide business metrics allowing managers to optimise processes in real time. From a technology perspective, CEBP is a blend between two normally disparate worlds: the real-time, arcane and difficult technology of the telephone and the thorny, legacy filled and customised enterprise software.

Three New ‘Use Cases'

This report describes three distinct CEBP implementations and opportunities:

• an in-store feedback service
• a decision support application
• a resource tracking opportunity

The in-store feedback service uses phones and text messaging to collect comments and complaints from retail customers using any cell phone.  The decision support application provides mobile and remote decision makers the information they require to make critical business decisions without having to be at their desk. The resource tracking opportunity shows how phones can be used to monitor and manage the use of enterprise resources quickly, easily and at scale.

Telco 2.0 ‘Take-Out'

• The field of ‘Communications-Enabled Business Processes' (CEBP) represents an important near-term market opportunity for telcos building business models that develop core voice and messaging APIs.
• Building a successful Developer Programme is critical to the successful application of CEBP because of the wide variety of enterprise customers and processes to which it is applied.
• The three detailed ‘Use Cases' described in this report illustrate some of the many opportunities for Telecoms Operators and others to create new value in the enterprise market by building the appropriate ecosystem of APIs, Developer Programme (technical and commercial support), and Developer Community.

Introduction

The term Communications Enabled Business Process (CEBP) is relatively new, but the need is as old as business itself. CEBP is an optimisation technique used by business process designers that involves integrating real-time communications such as voice messaging, online chat and SMS with existing software frameworks.

In general, enterprise CEBP projects do not create new business processes or areas of business. Instead, they extend existing legacy applications making them more efficient and faster, and very often with higher overall quality. In addition, CEBP techniques allow managers to measure business processes in real time, providing visibility into key business metrics that would be otherwise unavailable. From a technology perspective, CEBP is a blend between two normally disparate worlds: the real-time, arcane and difficult technology of the telephone and the thorny, legacy-filled and usually customised enterprise software.

Using CEBP techniques, system integrators and enterprise developers can realise productivity gains typically unavailable using other technology approaches, providing strong motivation for them to invest in such projects. Of course, dynamic connections between businesses and customers using phones are not new; the existing contact centre market is huge and mature.

CEBP is the next natural step in the development of this market, driven by advances in Internet and integration technologies, and can be viewed as roughly equivalent to the movement away from computer punch cards towards tape drives and hard disks: instead of requiring human beings to be present for every interaction, some business to human communications can be automated.

To read the full Executive Briefing report, covering...

• The Evolution of Enterprise Business Processes
• Voice: the Universal User Interface
• CEBP 1.0 – and its Limits
• The Rise of CEBP 2.0
• Corn and the food-chain: a Metaphor for Voice
• In-Store Feedback – ‘Use your Mobile Now’
• How CEBP addresses current retail store limitations
• Key Benefits of the service to consumers and retailers
• Implementing the In-store Feedback Solution
• Building the In-Store Feedback business case
• Immediate Decision Support
• How CEBP addresses current system limitations
• Key Benefits to Managers and Business Analysts
• Implementing the Service
• Building the Business Case
• Resource Tracking
• Problems Solved and Business Case Drivers
• How it Works
• Real World Implementations
• Telco 2.0 Conclusions & Recommendations

...Members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing Subscription Service can download the full Executive Briefing report here. Non-Members, please see here for how to subscribe, or email contact@telco2.net or call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.