NetworkIP Blog

Last Wednesday at PTC ‘09 in sunny Honolulu, Hawaii, our CEO and President, Pete Pattullo, participated in a Telecom 2.0 panel moderated by Gary Kim of IP Business magazine. Joining Pete on the panel were IntelePeer CEO Frank Fawzi and Jeff Lattomus, Area VP of MetaSwitch.

Pete shared with Gary and the audience that NetworkIP formed in 1997 as a Telecom 2.0 company; we built our platform from a “clean sheet of paper” and pioneered a revolutionary business model (at the time) of providing hosted voice applications for customers. Back then, the Telecom 2.0 label didn’t exist, and analysts often categorized us as a CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier).

Now, 10 years later, our core voice and transaction services platform is highly evolved. Our patented software has matured through 8 iterations. Our hosted services model makes it easy for customers to run and manage all varieties and complexities of business applications. And while we process over 25 million API transactions a month, we realize that those APIs are only the table stakes of Telecom 2.0.

For we are all about enabling frictionless transactions and solutions for the enterprise that enable customers to easily and cost-effectively solve complex business problems and drive efficiency, especially in this challenging economic climate.

Pete further elaborated that In 2009, our subsidiary, Jaduka, will be working closely with partners like IBM and initiating new relationships to meet the growing demands of Fortune 2000 companies. We’ll also integrate our real-time transaction processing engine, our billing solution, and provisioning capabilities in ways that save our customers money and enhance their business processes.

Telecom 2.0: that’s where we’re headed.

Brian Kirk
VP Business Development
NetworkIP & Jaduka

I just received a recorded message from the local Toyota dealership in Austin. The message indicated that my vehicle is due for service and then provided me with the dealership phone number so I could call and schedule an appointment.

The approach Toyota is taking in proactively reaching out to their customer is good, but it’s not good enough and, in this instance, it wasn’t frictionless enough to get me to stop what I was doing and make a service appointment.

What might Toyota have done better?

1. Indicate which car required service. I own two Toyota vehicles so how about listing the year, make, and model of the vehicle that requires service.
2. Provide more specific information. Indicate type of service that is due and the cost.
3. Provide a more convenient call to action. Give me the option to connect to a customer service person by pressing a button, or to schedule the appointment via an IVR while I am still on the line.

Telling me which car required service and giving me the specific service information is good. Better is connecting me directly to a customer service agent (press 1 to connect schedule an appointment now) or allowing me to schedule an appointment via an IVR; either of those two options would have likely sealed the deal.

A call to action needs to be seamlessly integrated with convenience and one-click actions to enable the feeling of convenience. In lieu of that, if a customer doesn’t capture the number that is quickly rattled off, it’s less likely the customer will call the dealer. In my case I won’t make the call to the dealer until I have a problem with one of my cars or I remember that it’s time to change the oil.

In 2009 you will see more companies – from major enterprises to suppliers and distributors to brick and mortar establishments – deploying communications enabled business processes (CEBP) in ways that improve customer experience and drive sales. The NetworkIP Jaduka Intelligent Platform and our APIs enable businesses to deploy low-cost, efficient CEBP solutions and accrue benefits from day one. With CEBP, every sale has a far greater chance of being completed, and the customer experience will be both richer and frictionless.

Brian Kirk
VP Business Development
NetworkIP & Jaduka

The first week in August is often referred to as “Simplify Your Life Week.” While not a recognized holiday, it is appropriate that every so often we are reminded to take a step back & evaluate ways to simplify & streamline our lives & businesses. This notion of simplifying isn’t meant to suggest that we get rid of all of our worldly possessions either. Simplifying can be explained as having enough without having too much. I began to think more about our business & not only how we could simplify things around here but how our services & technologies enable other businesses to simplify.

I’ve recently been thinking of NetworkIP’s services as similar to those of a power company. A power company provides power to millions of businesses & homes. Businesses for example don’t purchase generators, boilers, compressors, steam traps, etc. to get power to their systems. They plug what they need into wall outlets & the power company delivers however much power that business needs through that interface. This is very similar to what NetworkIP & more specifically Jaduka offers to the enterprise. If your applications require access to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) you need not purchase telephony switches, arrange & manage complicated carrier connections, workout signaling anomalies, plan for capacity, etc. Rather, you can simplify things by connecting to one of our many Voice APIs offered through the web. Jaduka’s Voice APIs will provide your business with direct access & use of the PSTN which is by far the most reliable & scalable voice network on the planet.
 
Business processes are another area that we could all focus on simplifying. As a business grows its processes often become bloated & require too many manual processes. There are a million different ways that businesses could improve existing business processes by including automated communications into the process. Take for example a simple business process that involves consumer credit protection. Today, if a user’s credit card is used for a purchase that exceeds a predefined limit an automated notification is sent to a representative of the credit card company that will in turn make a manual phone call to the consumer to confirm whether the purchase was valid or not. Rather than involving the representative from the credit card company so early in the process you can automate this process with communication technologies offered through Jaduka’s Voice APIs. When the predefined limit is exceeded, an automated system can dial the user’s phone number & through use of an IVR the user can be prompted to confirm whether the transaction is valid or invalid (press “1” if charge is valid, press “2” if charge is invalid). If the user reports the transaction as invalid (pressed 2) s/he can then be automatically connected to a customer support representative to discuss the matter in more detail. With just a small tweak to the existing processes, Jaduka’s Voice API provides a much simpler, efficient, & cost saving process for the credit card company.

As you kick off this first full week in August consider ways to simplify your business & if you need some help reach out to us.

You can learn more about Jaduka’s Credit Card Fraud Protection Service online.

I commented last week on how many businesses are turning to innovative telephony services such as conferencing to avoid the high costs associated with employee travel. Today while reading about Netflix’s second-quarter net income, which climbed 3.8%, I thought to myself “How did they do it?”

In the middle of googling for other reports about Netflix it hit me - technology is saving their business!

As the price of gas continues to rise, so do the cost of going to the movies. As a result, more consumers are staying at home to watch movies & many of them are renting those movies through Netflix. Unfortunately for Netflix, higher fuel prices are also driving up the costs to deliver movies to the consumer’s mailbox. Netflix’s margin is already pretty thin & those margins can be completely eaten up if you have a consumer base that is exchanging movies almost as fast as they get them. Netflix’s subscritpion model allows their users to exchange as many movies as he/she wants per month & their subscription fee stays the same. This model works very well for the consumer & until recently worked for Netflix too.

Rather than drastically changer their model & risk loosing existing subscribers, Netflix responded with an innovative solution using technology to their advantage. This new solution actually provides more to the consumer & cleverly works in Netflix’s advantage too!

First Netflix began offering a “Watch Instantly” option from their website. Users were allowed a certain amount of hours per month to watch streaming movies to their PC for free. Netflix realized very quickly that this feature resulted in the shipment of less movies to their consumers because they were watching more movies on-line. The costs for Netflix to offer live streaming videos versus mailing movies was significantly less & they quickly removed any maximum on the amount of viewing hours they offered to their users in hopes that the number of shipments required would continue to drop while usership would continue to rise.

Netflix also just announced a deal with Microsoft to stream movies directly to a user’s Xbox 360 game console. It obvious that Netflix is looking to offer their consumers as many options as possible to view movies as long as it doesn’t involve shipping that movie to the consumer. Again, the rationale being that as more users view their movies on-line, the less likely they are to order their movies through the mail & the net result is higher margins & ultimately more profits for Netflix.

Each day I imagine more things that companies can do with technologies to save their company time, money, & resources. One of my greatest pleasures at work is seeing so many companies actively taking advantages of the technologies that we & Jaduka have developed to save money & improve their business processes with communications.