Innovative communication channels in the contact center

In the course of digitalization, Festo, as a leading global provider of automation technology and technical education, is gearing its products and services towards the smart production of the future. Founded in 1925, the independent family business based in Esslingen a.N. has been a driving force in automation for over 60 years. has been a driving force in automation and has developed into the global market leader in technical training and further education with a unique range of products and services. 300,000 customers in factory and process automation worldwide rely on the company's pneumatic and electric drive solutions. Festo Didactic also offers state-of-the-art training solutions for industrial companies and educational institutions around the world. In the 2016 financial year, the Festo Group achieved a turnover of 2.74 billion euros and has 18,800 employees at 250 locations worldwide. 8% of turnover is invested in research and development each year. As a company with strong international operations, collaboration and accessibility, based on standards wherever possible, is a key issue at Festo. The objective was to improve and standardize the communication structure, i.e. to standardize systems such as globally distributed telephone systems, video conferencing technologies and web conferencing tools and to provide a communication system suitable for mass use. For this reason, Festo decided to use Lync / Skype for Business as a global communication platform in 2012. Currently, 12,000 Skype for Business users and 9 Enterprise Voice Servers are already successfully in operation at a total of 100 locations in 50 countries. As a result, Festo received a highly standardized and stable environment with Skype for Business, which allows communication applications to be rolled out quickly and operated highly effectively worldwide. The next step was to evaluate a new and innovative contact center technology that could be used worldwide on the Skype for Business communication platform, as well as allowing the use of SAP CRM as the leading application for contact center agents. Since 2000, Festo has been operating a contact center based on Genesys at various telecommunications manufacturers in 28 countries at 41 locations worldwide. After a thorough evaluation, the decision was made in December 2015 to implement a Voxtron Contact Center based on Skype for Business, together with IP Dynamics. It was crucial that IP Dynamics was able to demonstrate the integration of the contact center with Skype for Business and SAP CRM in a pilot phase.

The particular challenge of the project consisted of several technical, organizational and professional aspects that had to be overcome:

• Project duration of only 18 months for the roll-out of 650 agents in 28 countries worldwide (Europe, Asia and North America)
  
• Skype for Business as communication platform, Voxtron Contact Center and SAP CRM integration
  
• Mapping of complex statistics and reports based on SAP BI
  

What ultimately makes the implementation of such a project successful? One reason is certainly the excellent cooperation between IP Dynamics and Festo. "As with the selection process, IP Dynamics also demonstrated expertise and flexibility during implementation. In the end, the success factors can always be found in these two points. IP Dynamics put together a motivated and very well-trained team to implement the project. The cooperation was at an extremely professional level and thus also a guarantee of success for the implementation. Another reason is not least the choice of the right system integrator, who has in-depth expertise in all the required disciplines (Skype for Business, Contact Center and SAP CRM integration)."

Looking at the current communications landscape, the project described above (Skype for Business platform with SAP CRM and contact center integration), on the scale of Festo, has a certain lighthouse effect. This is due to the fact that Festo has successfully taken on a pioneering role in the changing communications landscape, which has been noted with great interest in the market. The target of completing the roll-out in Q2 2017 was achieved. All locations (Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Spain, France, Turkey, Belgium, South Africa, Austria, Poland, China, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Malaysia, Hungary, South Korea, Canada, India, the UK, Brazil, Mexico, the Netherlands and Russia) are in operation.