This month’s Movers and Shakers

October seems to be a very active month for promotions, acquisitions and award wins in the call centre industry.

We have pulled them together in one article for you to read….

Halford joins beCogent

Signs that the end of the current recessionary cycle may not be far away have been bolstered by Scottish contact group beCogent, which reports a considerable inflow in new business since the middle of the year.  And to take advantage of the more encouraging conditions, the company has taken on a new Business Development Director David Halford, who joins the company with a wealth of experience of senior sales management positions and business psychology in financial services in both public and private sectors.

Dave Halford

For example, at the Prudential, he helped manage the sales process transition from the traditional ‘Man from the Pru’ model through to the modern IFA channel management structure in place today. Holding an advanced Financial Planning Certificate, he and his team provided corporate and personal investment, pension and tax planning solutions.

As UK Head of Sales & Marketing for ASE (Occupational Psychology), he developed a highly successful sales model, providing bespoke and off-the-shelf recruitment and staff development solutions for some the UK’s largest companies. He launched the first UK-based Emotional Intelligence assessment to the UK and managed the national media campaign, which included appearances on national television, radio and commentary in broadsheets.

He has now been working for a decade as a senior business development practitioner in the BPO industry and negotiated several multi-million pound contracts in both the private and public sector. Dave spent time at in senior development roles at Merchants, Kingston Communications and Agilisys.

Dave brings beCogent’s senior team a strong sales and marketing focus to the company’s value-added proposition.

Alan Layton

Qire has appointed Alan Layton as Operations Director to manage Qire’s expanding portfolio of services. Following a 6-month period acting as a consultant to Qire, Alan is taking on this new role in which he will be responsible for service delivery across the business.

After 24 years in retail banking and 14 years in software and services businesses, Layton brings valuable and varied management experience to Qire with strong strategic, commercial and man-management skills and a successful track record of increasing operations efficiency.

Alan commented, “I am pleased to be joining Qire at this exciting time of rapid expansion. I am looking forward to working with the team, helping to drive the company forward and ensuring that we are focused on delivering a service standard that is second to none”.

Guy Cooper (CEO Qire) said, “We are pleased to welcome Alan on board, his skills will be vital to the organisation as we continue to expand the range of services we offer and the markets using our services”.

Guenther Mueller, Chief Executive Officer of ASC telecom has been awarded “Entrepreneur of the Year 2009” in the category Information and Communication Technology.

Mr Mueller said, “I feel honored and very proud to receive this prestigious award, but it primarily reflects on ASC and its extraordinary innovative power. Everyone in our organisation contributed to this result both as individuals and as a team dedicated to providing superior customer-centric solutions.”

Mr Mueller concluded, “Despite the worldwide financial crisis, ASC made contra-cyclical investments by increasing its staff for sales and marketing and emphasizing research and development. As a result, we expect to continue our strong growth rates for 2009.”

Company News

Netcall acquires Q-Max

Netcall supplies call centres with solutions that deliver improved customer experience and productivity benefits.  Adding Q-Max will give customers a wider set of the best workforce optimisation tools.

Agents can be 70% of call centre operational costs, so scheduling the correct numbers of agents at the correct times of day can dramatically reduce costs and also improve customer experience.

Netcall’s QueueBuster allows call centres to handle non-forecasted demand and also allows innovative deployment of agents to improve productivity. Using WFM and QueueBuster together leads to the best balance of staff to calls, delighting customers at the best possible cost.

The acquisition means that Q-Max will become available on Netcall’s Intelligent Communications Platform as a hosted option, giving call centres more choice and flexibility when it comes to purchasing.  Enhancements to the Q-Max solution will highlight when QueueBuster should be used and model its impact. Further development to integrate the solutions is planned.

David Jones, Product Marketing Director commented on the acquisition: “This is a great opportunity for both Q-Max and Netcall customers to achieve maximum quality of service at minimum cost.  Q-Max proactively calculates, in advance, the number of staff required to respond to customer demand.  However, there are still occasions when contact centres need a helping hand to handle excess demand effectively and QueueBuster can provide just that. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”

Jim Foy

Aspect has been ranked in the top 100 of the 2009 InformationWeek 500 list, which analyses and ranks the most innovative corporate users of information technology. Aspect was ranked number 74 on the list as a result of its global unified communications implementation and successful deployment of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 throughout 20 office locations and more than 1,800 employees.

“We are honoured to be recognised within the top 100 on the InformationWeek 500 with so many innovative and forward-thinking companies,” said Jim Foy, president and CEO, Aspect. “This is a great proof point for organisations to see the benefits and savings that they, too, could experience as a result of a well-planned unified communications deployment. It also highlights that Aspect is a leader in this space and fully understands the challenges of converging infrastructures and what it takes from a planning and deployment perspective to bring value.”

Firstsource Solutions has won the UK Trade & Investment’s (UKTI) Investor of the Year category in the  UK-India Business Awards.

The awards were announced on 17th September in Mumbai by Lord Davies, UK Minister for Trade, Investment and Business. The Investor of the Year award was given to the Indian company that has made a significant contribution to the UK economy in the last year. Firstsource has expanded on its initial investment since 2006 and added more jobs during the last year.

Firstsource has been a major investor in the UK in the last three years and has set up two contact centres which now employ over 1,300 people in Belfast and Londonderry, providing outsourced services to leading UK telecommunications companies. According to the  Financial Times FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) market index, Firstsource is  the largest foreign investor in the UK in the contact centre & shared services sector, and the largest creator of jobs in the UK during the last three years, of all the Indian companies that have invested in the UK. Firstsource’s two UK centres have become centres of excellence for  the telecommunications  and media industries.

Voxeo Corporation has acquired Motorola’s OEM VoiceXML browser business, including full and exclusive rights to Motorola’s VoxGateway VoiceXML browser.

Jonathan Taylor

Voxeo and Motorola have worked together since 2004 to advance the VoxGateway platform under a shared development agreement. Under the new agreement, Motorola has made full assignment and transfer of right, title and interest of Motorola’s VoxGateway VoiceXML browser to Voxeo. The agreement also includes cross-licensing of related Voxeo and Motorola patents.

“With over a half-dozen large OEM licensors and more than a thousand end-enterprise customers, VoxGateway is the most proven and widely used OEM VoiceXML browser in the world today,” said Jonathan Taylor, Voxeo CEO. “The browser’s extensive deployment history and flexible integration capabilities make it the ideal foundation on which any company can deliver enhanced VoiceXML solutions.”

Voxeo has full and exclusive commercial rights to the browser source code and has licensed the browser back to Motorola for Motorola’s own use. Voxeo is actively supporting all existing VoxGateway OEM licensees. The agreement is effective immediately.