Unify Enhances OpenScape Contact Center Suite

MUNICH and RESTON, Va., Jan. 7, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Building on its strong history of delivering superior contact center solutions, Unify, formerly known as Siemens Enterprise Communications, today announced a number of new features and enhancements to the OpenScape Contact Center Suite, delivering improved efficiency and flexibility through expanded support for major mobile devices, tighter social media integration and improved analytics.

With over 12 billion customer interactions per year currently handled using OpenScape Contact Center Suite, these new features allow Unify to continue its mission to enable the new way to work, providing contact center agents, supervisors and managers with all of the elements required for a world-class contact center. Additionally, key new and enhanced partnerships driving improved productivity and workforce optimization improve contact center efficiency and agility.

Enhanced Mobility

Delivering on its promise to enable the new way to work and responding to the BYOD trend, Unify now offers Mobile Agent and Mobile Supervisor applications for the OpenScape Contact Center Suite, enabling full access to contact center tools via iPhones, iPads, Android smartphones and tablets. This provides anywhere workers increased flexibility and improves responsiveness to customers.   

Increased Analytics

New to the OpenScape Contact Center Suite is an Analytics package through a new partnership with Softcom, a global leader in business intelligence software for contact centers. By incorporating Softcom's InsideEdge line of analytics solutions into Unify's OpenScape Contact Center Suite, contact center managers will be able to monitor agent and campaign stats in real-time, uncover weaknesses, and streamline training to maximize agent productivity and profits.

Other enhancements to existing OpenScape Contact Center Suite offerings include:

• Social Media solution can now route Facebook posts to agents, improving responsiveness
• Campaign Director is now a pure SIP, software-only solution that dramatically reduces TCO
• Improved Workforce Optimization through strengthened partnerships with Verint and ASC, helping drive further efficiencies and effectiveness for contact center users
• AgentDesktop-Web client allows agents to work from anywhere on any device without installing any software on their PCs

"Today's contact center requires a complete arsenal of tools to provide greater responsiveness to customers and to effectively manage internal processes," said Nancy Jamison, Principal Analyst, Customer Contact at Frost & Sullivan. "Unify's OpenScape Contact Center Suite provides a robust tool set for omni-channel customer engagement, with proactive outbound, social and mobile — for agents, supervisors and managers."

The new OpenScape Contact Center Suite is available now directly and through Unify's global partner channel.

Executive and Customer Comments:

"Simplex originally picked OpenScape Contact Center Campaign Director based on its ability to be customized to our exact needs, and based on the cost savings vs. its competitors," said Matthew Hicks, Senior Telephony Engineer of Simplex Healthcare, the third largest provider of mail order diabetic testing supplies in the United States. "The move to a 100 percent SIP platform was a welcome enhancement, since it allowed us to get rid of expensive PRI trunks and use SIP services that greatly reduced the cost of calling our clients."

"The major benefit of Unify's AgentDesktop-Web solution is the Webstart architecture which doesn't require an installation on every agent's desktop," said Stefan Fian, System Engineer for Customer Service Applications for Infineon Technologies, a semiconductor and system solution manufacturer for the automotive, industrial electronics, chip card, and security industries.  "This is very important for Infineon as our Service Desk workplaces are constantly changing and having to update each agent desktop would be a large effort, not only for the initial installation, but also for updates."

"The enhancements announced today provide contact center managers the intelligence and insight they need  to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations, while providing agents and supervisors the gift of using their favorite Apple and Android devices on the job," said Alex Pierson, Senior Vice President and head of Applications at Unify.  "We are committed to evolving our OpenScape Contact Center portfolio to take full advantage of the new way to work and helping our customers make the most of their contact center solution."

About Unify
Unify — formerly known as Siemens Enterprise Communications — is a premier communications software and services firm. Our solutions unify multiple networks, devices and applications into one easy-to-use platform that allows teams to engage in rich and meaningful conversations. The result is a transformation of how the enterprise communicates and collaborates that amplifies collective effort, energizes the business, and enhances business performance. Born out of the engineering DNA of Siemens AG, Unify builds on this heritage of product reliability, innovation, open standards and security to provide integrated communications solutions for approximately 75% of the Global 500. Unify is a joint venture of The Gores Group and Siemens AG.

This release contains forward-looking statements based on beliefs of Unify's management. The words "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "forecast," "expect," "intend," "plan," "should," and "project" are used to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect the company's current views with respect to future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause the actual results to be materially different, including, among others, changes in general economic and business conditions, changes in currency exchange rates and interest rates, introduction of competing products, lack of acceptance of new products or services and changes in business strategy. Actual results may vary materially from those projected here. Unify does not intend or assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

SOURCE Unify