Why Avaya is Differentiating CEBP From Unified Communications
I’m having lots of discussions with the Avaya folks about Communication Enabled Business Processes (CEBP) while in Boston at the Avaya Analyst Conference, and I’m finally starting to see why they’re differentiating CEBP from Unified Communications. I originally disagreed with Avaya about separating out CEBP from UC, since I (and my UCStrategies.com colleagues) believe that business process integration is a key part of UC and its value proposition. That being said, CEBP (the way Avaya defines it) is indeed different from UC. While UC is generally person triggered (an individual or worker initiates the communication), CEBP is event triggered (a business process-related event initiates the communication). The event could be an inventory shortage, a stock price change by a specific percentage, a manufacturing malfunction, a shipment delay, etc.
I’m thinking that instead of calling it CEBP, it should be called Automatic CEBP (ACEBP), since the key is to have the events automatically trigger the communications related to the business process. Rather than having an individual identify a problem or situation and initiate a phone call, conference call, web conference, etc., a specific event automatically generates the notification and communication with the appropriate parties. This may or may not include presence and UC capabilities.
So this really comes down to semantics – CEBP, the way it’s defined by Avaya and others, is indeed different and separate from UC. I still have some problems with the term Communication-Enabled Business Process since Unified Communications is optimized when comm-enabling business processes and applications. The difference is that CEBP does this automatically based on an event trigger.
I’ll be having lots more conversations with Avaya about CEBP and UC over the next couple days, so stay tuned.
from my point of view the avaya CEBP is focused too much on “communication enabled” and not som much on the “Business Process”.
It will be hard to generate a ROI case for a CEBP Project.
Genesys has the concept of Business Process Routing that allows e.g. Workflow or other task holding Systems to leverage the Genesys Universal Routing “Service” to find the best agent in the frontoffice or backoffice.
The approach is broader and will def. help to generate a short term ROI.
Blair,
I am inclined to agree with you about the “semantics” involved with CEBP. I have always viewed business communications from the individual end user perspective, and therefore from a contact “initiation” role vs. a “recipient” role.
From a recipient perspective, there is no real difference whether a time-sensitive notification is made by a person or an automated business process application, other than the application will not carry out a voice “conversation” with the recipient the way a person would. It will be a “message” notification of some kind, which can be retrieved via voice or text through the the facilities of unified messaging.
In fact, several years ago I anticipated what is now referred to as “CEBP” as “application messaging,” where individual end users would be accessible from authorized “application buddies” which had priority contact access to the end user. This would be particularly useful for “action takers” and customer contact applications, where the customer needs to be notified about a time-sensitive problem. In both cases, notification would also include flexible options for responding to such notifications by contacting a person or interacting with a self-service application.
However, what IS going to be the common problem for any contact initiator, is that for a contact to be successful and timely, there will always be a dependency on the individual recipient’s accessibility, availability, and modality of such access. So, a business process application, as a contact initiator of a time critical notification, won’t be any more successful than a person, if the recipient(s) are just not accessible at the moment by any means. That is why personalized, multimodal, mobile devices that are “always on” are a prerequisite for time-critical business processes, but not so important for business processes that are not time critical.
As to the “value” of CEBP to the enterprise from an ROI perspective, we will have both the usual cost reduction payoffs because human labor is reduced in various ways, as well as the business process efficiency payoffs, because human contact latency is minimized and important tasks get done more quickly. But it should be very clear that, unless contact recipients involved in a business process are easily accessible in real time in very flexible ways e.g., through UC and multimodal mobile devices, CEBP benefits are going to remain in the cost reduction area, rather than in the more critical business process performance efficiency area..
Remember, “It takes two to tango” in business communications, both “contact initiators” and “contact recipients.” That’s why CEBP will be joined at the hip with UC.
Frank’s comment is valid to some extent, because there must be a business process work flow that identifies where a person-based function is needed to do something. Then, there will have to be a skills-based directory that will identify who such people are. Then, there will have to be a presence-based function that identifies who is available and how. Then, finally there will have to the initiation of the notification messages to that subset of available, qualified people.
Where are a number of available people to perform a task, it will be appropriate in some cases to broadcast the notification (”dispatch function”) and let the first one to accept the responsibility by a reply, get the assignment. Often, that acceptance might be location-based, or current short term priority task duration. The Avaya CEBP approach, based on their recent Ubiquity acquisition, will allow for that kind of automated process.
And who and how will be configuring and re-configuring this service you are discussing? The problem with all this talk is that what you are talking about is increasing the level of complexity for the enterprise beyond their available complexithy of managing the business currently. Partially trading one complexity for another even greater complexity just won’t work. Avaya and all the other industry crowd pushing UC have no clue about things like the limit of complexity a human being or a group of humans can handle before they tune out.
I agree with Frank’s position and also see the division in the CEBP maket as collabotation-oriented CEBP and transaction-oriented CEBP. BackFlip Software’s solution (www.backflipsoftware.com) is transaction-oriented, and thus focused on the business process.
Blair — I support your original definition because it provides a logical underpinning to the capabilities that must be present in CEPB to make the term useful in the market.
While communications enabling business processes has been around for decades in a custom integrations, placing CEPB outside the UC framework in its present incarnation weakens the value of the term. CEPB is more than simply enabling faster and more automatic communication into a fractured communications environment. UC is the necessary foundation that makes CEPB an important new area of opportunity.
UC should unify communications alternatives for the user and provide intelligent awareness of the best choice for contact (based on participants having a user-centric presence and preferred contact methods).
The real answer to solving your UC “unified field theory” is to define the business application as a “user” as well - because it needs the same tools as a human user - and for the same reasons.
CEPB simply offers the opportunity to have more of the “process” take place in the “system” rather than always using the human interface to integrate “separate” applications for routine input (like making the call). But the fact that the initial communication enabling process is more “under-the-skins” of the workflow process than when a human is involved does not mean that CEPB should be separate from a UC underpinning.
Keep up the great work, Blair.
I think it’s because Avaya is a private company and they specializes in telephony
Ralph Riley hit my “nail” right on the head!
End users, as well as automated business applications, wear two hats for business communications - they either initiate or receive contacts (input or output) information). Making contact with an application is no problem because they are (hopefully) “always on” and can handle multiple interactions. The problem is that people can’t multi-task as well. They can”t carry on two diffeent voice coversations at the same time without putting someone “on hold” and if they try chatting while having a voice conversation, they will have slow something down.
The bottom line is that automate applications can handle multiple concurrent contacts as recipient but people can’t. So, if an application needs to make a “real-time” contact with a person, it will have the exact same problem that another human would. That is where the flexibility of UC and UM come in, because the application is not trying to have a real-time voice conversation with a recipient - simply an immediate notification or delivery of a message to that person.
So, while CEBP is really not part of the UC family, it is something that will drive the need for UC flexibility. This will be especially true if CEPB applications can increase their role in pro-actively monitoring the status of conditions that are important to aend user, either for business or for personal activities.
And it is not just “notifications” that are important, but also the response options that can be made available, whether involving contacts with people or a self-service application function. As you mentioned, automated applications should be treated just as if they were people, and be interactive as both contact initiators as well as recipients!
I dont usually comment, but after reading through so much info I had to say thanks
I would agree that the industry has blurred the lines between UC and CEBP, and perhaps for a good reason — to sell customers enhanced business tools to make people do more with less.
I see nothing wrong with that, in fact, that is the message that I send to the sales people that I support.
Currently, having seen all the productivity tools that have the most depth and breadth in an organization, UC certainly has the most coverage across all areas. IP phones on desks, IM and Presence clients on desktops, UM applications that link to Outlook are directly impacting users up and down the enterprise.
If you look at other technologies such as security, wireless, and virtualization, although they indeed impact an organization, they work mostly ‘behind-the-scenes’ to enable employees and customers to get the work done. These technologies are quite transparent to the end user.
I agree that CEBP is one step above UC in my mind as stated. UC is an enabler to achieve the efficiencies CEBP demands, although there are many, many other technologies that also enable CEBP to happen.
I firmly believe that if we can help our customers connect the dots as to how UC and CEBP align together, we will succeed in helping them experience the business transformation we all want to see as the desired outcome.