Oracle Releases Oracle® Contact Center Anywhere 8.1

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif.- Following last year’s acquisition of Telephony@Work, Oracle today announced the release of Oracle(r) Contact Center Anywhere 8.1, Oracle’s first comprehensive multimedia IP contact center solution. Oracle Contact Center Anywhere 8.1 is a highly scalable, multi-channel solution that provides agents with a 360-degree customer view across a wide array of communication channels including calls, e-mail, voicemail, fax, Web and interactive voice response (IVR), enabling organizations to communicate more seamlessly and effectively with their customers.

Traditionally, CRM applications and telephony components have been separate applications from different vendors requiring extensive computer-telephony integrations (CTI) between voice and data platforms. As a result, delivering a true multi-channel contact center eludes many companies simply due to the high cost and lengthy integrations required. Oracle provides a complete “customer-to-agent” experience using Contact Center Anywhere’s multi-channel technology. By aligning contact center technologies more closely with CRM and business intelligence, Oracle is helping to reduce the cost and complexity of integrating disparate contact center and CRM data, analytics and communications technologies.

As the first major product release since the Telephony@Work acquisition, Oracle Contact Center Anywhere 8.1 is built to run on the Oracle technology stack including Oracle Database 10g and Oracle Fusion Middleware. This release introduces a new integrated client design that provides a clean, universal approach to contact center interaction and management. The entire customer lifecycle-starting with a customer initiating communication (phone call, e-mail, Web callback, IVR self-service) to the logging of the activity in the CRM system-will be delivered through Oracle’s CRM and business intelligence applications. Contact Center Anywhere 8.1 currently supports out-of-the-box integration for voice calls with Siebel CRM and the client facilitates easy implementation of screen pop and data presentation desktop integration.

Oracle Contact Center Anywhere 8.1 offers enhanced reliability, scalability and manageability across the platform. Key new 8.1 features provide higher agent productivity, smarter management tools and more operational flexibility to contact center outsourcing organizations.

* Higher Agent Productivity - Oracle Contact Center Anywhere 8.1 empowers users with a new Interaction Manager graphical interface that reduces screen clutter and guides agent action by displaying information and controls that are relevant to the agent’s current context, for example, type of channel or customer. This feature also makes it easier to handle multiple contacts and channels simultaneously.
* Smart Staff Management Tools - The Supervision Manager interface helps supervisors maximize staff productivity with enhanced tools for real-time monitoring, whisper coaching and traffic monitoring. The Supervision interface provides greater flexibility with semi-customizable displays so supervisors can create special client views of agent activity, workgroup effectiveness, alarms and service levels.
* Increased Operational Flexibility - New advanced controls enable outsourcing providers with multiple clients to better manage simultaneous campaigns with the capability to securely partition the data and processes of each customer. Supervisors have the tools to manage varying service levels across multiple clients while ensuring that agent communication is appropriate for the specific customer they are servicing. This is especially helpful for outsourcers and service providers that enable agents to answer the phone on behalf of customers whose data stores, views and activities must be kept confidential.

“Our new innovations in Oracle Contact Center Anywhere 8.1 drive higher agent productivity, enhanced service levels and more satisfied customers;” said Oracle Vice President of CRM Strategy Mike Betzer. “Agents can work efficiently from anywhere in the world with 360-degree views into customer interactions and business intelligence delivering a complete ’customer-to-agent’ experience.’ This release opens the door for more enterprises to take advantage of Oracle Contact Center Anywhere along with complementary products from Oracle’s broad portfolio of CRM offerings. No other CRM vendor can match this offering.”