Bill Manning’s Blog

The promise of a complete CRM solution with an all inclusive CTI solution is the holy grail of the Customer Relation space. Today their are many companies that offer this promise and the follow through is a harder reality. I worked for one such company, it came close and is still working of getting but now that I am working on both sides of issues (Devleoper and Customer) I see where many of the issues show their ugly head. Designing a all inclusive CTI solution is near to impossible. The dream of a plug-and-play, off the shelf , standardized soultion is an illusion and that is all. You can create a generic engine to handle and commit the information to a user within a give CRM, SFA, etc. solution but to impliment the business side and to infrasturce side is true customization. There are many different aspects of customer interaction that must be taken into account. For instance, getting ICR engineers to work with Telecom engineers to work with Infrastucture engineers to with Server engineers to work with Network engineers….. you get what I am saying. Now throw the business expectation in on top of the that and I think you can smell it for here. What needs to be done in a generalized soultion is standardization. The industry attempts to implement standards, but everyone thinks that their standards are correct. So who do you go with, well that is even harder. All I am trying to say is that the CTI all inclusive, one size fits all, etc.. does not exist. But it is also not impossible.
Later,
B

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This past week I have been working out of our Pleasanton location. I have been going through the hell that is QA. I have to run, but I will write a couple of things that I have wanting to write for awhile.
Later,
B

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I have been in the software business for about 6 years now. I started as a consultant and worked my way up to a senior engineer. I have been through the good time and the bad times (the one we are in now). I have been through design session, development cycles and implementations. I went from a company that made CRM solution to a company that is purchasing a CRM solution. I am a CTI Guru, I know the whole system from top to bottom. I am realizing what the problem is, I see where the disconnects are happening. I have seen it before but it is more apparent now.
At my current company we are in the process of implementing a new CRM product with CTI screen pops that was purchase from a company (for legal reasons I can’t say) but it is the same problems that I have seen in the past. Expectations vs. Reality and Understanding the Technology. The Customer expects one thing and Producers of the Product are promising other things. Overall it is knowledge of the software in its design and implementation that is the biggest factor.
My company has been in the process of implementing this software long before I joined the company as a consultant and then as a full-time employee. The problems stem from the earliest meetings that these two companies had about the future of the product and where this product would be able to take this company. How this product would address the needs and that it was ready to go. From the beginning this project was in trouble. I was review some of the e-mails to get a handle on what my company was expecting from the product and what was promised and I found a major problem. The problem is Terminology.
I was reading my friend Alex’s Blog yesterday and he post a comment about Googling and researching. This falls into the basically what I am saying. I have been observing the meetings at my company and the vendor of the product and the two think they are discussing the same thing but they are not. I will use CTI as an example.
There are many components in a CTI CRM solution (CRM Server, CTI Server, Middleware, Switches, etc.) and to different people they have different meanings. The vendor says “CTI Server” and the mean their product that interacts with Middleware. My company hears “CTI Server” and they look at the whole solution. So the two of them are discussing the issues that we are collectively having and there is a disconnect neither one is aware of. The two of them will never come to a conclusion until they are both on the same page with the terminology. I actually sat down and rewrote part of the documentation for the project plan with a glossary so that everyone could agree on the same thing. This helped tremendously and is actually putting things in the correct perspective. This still doesn’t correct the problem with using the wrong teams to solve problems and issues.

To be continued…

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So I am playing around with a HAMMER. What a HAMMER does is simply a bulk call generator. This is a great way for companies to test there CTI and Telecom systems. It using a scripting language to configure and generate the calls needed for testing. I am learning a massive amount about the product and will post information about some tricks and tips on what I learn here.
Later, B

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In this section I will have tips and hints for CTI developers dealing with various middlewares and the best way to intergrate with their API’s.

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