CTI in Telecommunications
Client Problem
Our client, an established provider of telephone call center systems in the computer-telephony integration industry, was being challenged in the marketplace by aggressive, upstart competitors. One such competitor was thought by our client to aggressively promote and position its product as an out of the box, ready to run solution when, in fact, there appeared to be many inconsistencies between the product’s promotion and known experiences with it. And, while the competitor made exaggerated claims of its product’s features and versatility, it offered few details or examples to substantiate them. Our client wanted to know the extent to which this rapidly growing competitor’s product offering truly fulfilled the company’s claims and to what extent it represented vaporware.
What We Did
Our specific assignment in this project was to establish the extent to which the call center reporting capabilities of the competitor’s product offering lived up to its hype. To accomplish this, we initiated an in-depth investigation into the functional capabilities of the competitor’s product as well as its operating schema. We needed to understand how all of the elements of the call center system worked together, how the server worked in conjunction with the switch and the customer database, and how telephony and customer data were stored. To gather the information necessary to solve this puzzle, we interviewed several of the competitor’s customers as well as system integrators and VARs knowledgeable about the company’s product. Each reported different experiences with the competitor and each had a somewhat different understanding of the product’s capabilities. We also visited an industry trade show and spoke with other competitors to obtain the maximum amount of publicly available information about this company’s product capabilities and functionality.
Results
The first hand experiences obtained from the interviews, combined with publicly available information acquired at the trade show, allowed us to build a picture of the functioning of this company’s product. We learned that, in fact, virtually all of the firm’s installations were custom builds requiring a substantial amount of custom programming — much of it at considerable additional expense to its clients. We also learned that apparent inconsistencies between the product’s promotion and its true capabilities resulted from numerous changes to the product between alpha, beta, and final releases of the product. Thus, the competitor did make a practice of preannouncing product features and capabilities that it was ultimately unable to deliver. More importantly perhaps, we were able to discern much about this competitor’s strategy to move from a custom-build shop to an out-of-the-box solution and about its plans to incorporate new features in future product releases. We were also able to report back to our client about certain strengths of the competitor’s products so that our client would have a truer picture of its competitive position.
Our client, an established provider of telephone call center systems in the computer-telephony integration industry, was being challenged in the marketplace by aggressive, upstart competitors. One such competitor was thought by our client to aggressively promote and position its product as an out of the box, ready to run solution when, in fact, there appeared to be many inconsistencies between the product’s promotion and known experiences with it. And, while the competitor made exaggerated claims of its product’s features and versatility, it offered few details or examples to substantiate them. Our client wanted to know the extent to which this rapidly growing competitor’s product offering truly fulfilled the company’s claims and to what extent it represented vaporware.
What We Did
Our specific assignment in this project was to establish the extent to which the call center reporting capabilities of the competitor’s product offering lived up to its hype. To accomplish this, we initiated an in-depth investigation into the functional capabilities of the competitor’s product as well as its operating schema. We needed to understand how all of the elements of the call center system worked together, how the server worked in conjunction with the switch and the customer database, and how telephony and customer data were stored. To gather the information necessary to solve this puzzle, we interviewed several of the competitor’s customers as well as system integrators and VARs knowledgeable about the company’s product. Each reported different experiences with the competitor and each had a somewhat different understanding of the product’s capabilities. We also visited an industry trade show and spoke with other competitors to obtain the maximum amount of publicly available information about this company’s product capabilities and functionality.
Results
The first hand experiences obtained from the interviews, combined with publicly available information acquired at the trade show, allowed us to build a picture of the functioning of this company’s product. We learned that, in fact, virtually all of the firm’s installations were custom builds requiring a substantial amount of custom programming — much of it at considerable additional expense to its clients. We also learned that apparent inconsistencies between the product’s promotion and its true capabilities resulted from numerous changes to the product between alpha, beta, and final releases of the product. Thus, the competitor did make a practice of preannouncing product features and capabilities that it was ultimately unable to deliver. More importantly perhaps, we were able to discern much about this competitor’s strategy to move from a custom-build shop to an out-of-the-box solution and about its plans to incorporate new features in future product releases. We were also able to report back to our client about certain strengths of the competitor’s products so that our client would have a truer picture of its competitive position.