Chris Crosby

It’s not often that we stop and smell the roses, so to speak, and look at some of the individual impacts that our call center solutions have had in our customers’ environment. So I thought I would start to share a few snippets that we hear from our customers.

I received a phone call yesterday from the WFM guru at one of our Call Center Outsourcing installations. He was ecstatic because the new feature we added into BlueVue for excel integration has reduced the time it takes him to compile a daily report from 2 hours to 45 seconds. That means he has 10 hours back in his week to focus on analyzing data, instead of generating it.

So, I thought that I would give you all a break from my recent blogging about RSS and switch topics completely (don’t worry though, my ranting about the power of Enterprise RSS will soon be back.

With the recent press release from Microsoft about their forthcoming “Office 12″ and integrated “Business Intelligence” functionality, we have been asked by our prospects, customers and partners how we think this will impact us. Therefore I thought that I would give it to you straight from the proverbial horses mouth (that’s me).

Microsoft has traditionally owned two of the key components of a Business Intelligence Solution: 1) Microsoft SQL Server and Analysis Services has long been a staple for creating data marts and OLAP cubes 2) Excel has evolved as a preferred choice of data presentation and manipulation for the “average Joe”. The problem has been that the two are completely disjointed. The average Joe has no idea what an OLAP cube is, let a lone knows how to plug one into excel… 

My opinion is that Microsoft has created tools that lay the foundation for a great BI deployment (all of which we integrate with), but is still missing the crown molding and other finishing touches that truly make one successful. And I seriously doubt that Office 12 will be magical enough to make all of this happen. My suspicion is that its another spin to get their existing customers to upgrade to another version of Office. This will no doubt be an expensive process with an unclear ROI.  We have customers still using Office 97 and enjoying the full functionality of a robust Business Intelligence solution… How will Office 12 address these scenarios? In addition, the web based interface that BlueVue touts has long been a favorite of our users.

I will finish by saying this: “We know your data, so you don’t have too…”. In other words, the day that Microsoft can take your Real Time ACD data, your WFM, QA, HRIS, and CRM data; and with a turnkey solution integrate it and present it to not only your front line staff in interactive and intuitive reports, but also your CEO in his personalized dashboard; then I’ll be worried…

In the meantime, thank you for your loyalty and patronage, and as always… BlueVue Rocks.

Now that we’ve explored using RSS for personal content delivery, let’s touch on using RSS to distribute information. Perhaps the easiest way to get introduced to syndicating information via RSS is to check out a blogging site such as www.blogger.com. Albeit, most of you most likely won’t find a public space as the forum to communicate mission critical information, however you’ll get the idea how the concept of “blogging” could be used to communicate everything from your “thoughts for the day” to informing employees about changes to their benefits program. The trick of course is ensuring that the information you want to published gets to all of the audience you desire, and ONLY the audience you desire. This is where the concept of Enterprise RSS comes in, otherwise your “blog” becomes nothing more than an email that accidentally got sent to the entire company. For purposes of this discussion, we will define Enterprise RSS as:

Enterprise RSS - Utilizing RSS or ATOM XML formats to distribute information securely via a publish and subscribe methodology.

Ok, so you have an RSS reader, now what? How do you find the information that you’re looking for and get it into a feed? The easiest way is to look for the icon on your favorite websites. These represent pre-existing RSS Feeds. When you click on the icon a new page appears, copy that URL into the "Add Channel" feature in your RSS Reader or Aggregator. You should now see the RSS Feed and items in your RSS Reader.

Probably the coolest way to generate a personalized RSS Feed is to go to Google News and type in a search for what you are interested in. Then click on the RSS hyperlink on the left. This will generate the URL for your custom feed. I personally have feeds set-up to monitor Latigent, our key customers, and our competitors. Anytime one them appears in the news, I get the information delivered via my personal RSS Feed.

A Customized RSS Feed from Google for Call Center Software

While we’re on the Google topic. Google has released the beta version of their own "blog reader" (http://www.google.com/reader)  . I haven’t had much time to play with it, but Google Reader Beta appears to be pretty good. The Ajax interface is pretty and imposes a certain "wow" factor. However, it seems to still be a bit buggy and missing some features of the more established players (such as BlueVue Enterprise RSS Server).

A Screenshot of the Latigent RSS Feed viewed through Google Reader Beta

Now that we’ve taken a stab at understanding the basics of XML and the idea that disparate tidbits of data can be accumulated and pushed out into information streams, let’s take a look at how people like you and I find, view and navigate all this “raw data”.

The first thing you need is an RSS Feed Reader. Technically speaking, an RSS Aggregator and an RSS Reader are one in the same. Basically an aggregator is an XML parser that overlays an XSLT to transform the data contained inside the XML tags. In layman’s terms, an RSS Reader takes the XML that pukes out when you hit those little buttons (see my prior blog "XML for the Rest of Us") and makes it useful.

There are two main types of RSS Readers: websites that host the information for you, and those that run as software installed on your computer. There are pros and cons to each. There are several free readers available for download. Once you’ve downloaded and installed your RSS Reader, or signed-up for a hosted service, its time to start playing. Below is a screen shot of what the transformed XML from the RSS Feed looks like when its viewed through an RSS Reader.

Before we start down the path of RSS, we must first take a brief look at XML. A quick note, if you are one of the few that knows what XML is without my over simplified explanation please advance to Jason’s Technical Forum Blog. However, for the "rest of us", here I go:

XML stands for "Extensible Markup Language", and has a striking resemblance to HTML. But all we really need to know about XML is that it is a published and standard format for developers to normalize and store data in a consistent format. This could range from Metadata stored for software programs to operate (such as BlueVue), or actually contain full data stores of information such as Customer Records (like the data contained in a BlueVue report).

XML is the underlying technology for RSS. In essence, an RSS feed is merely an XML file in a specific format. You’ve probably seen that there are different formats for RSS (RSS .91, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 and ATOM). These are simply different layouts for the information contained in the file.

Here is an example of an RSS 2.0 layout taken from the feed for this blog:      

The standard RSS formats create normalization for the raw data, and thus allow any RSS reader on the planet to transform it into useful information, and present it to people like you and I in a "Really Simple" format.

As those of you who know me can attest, I tend to get very excited when I start to explore new technologies, and it usually prompts a million-and-one ideas to enhance the Latigent software offering for our customers. Well, the latest darling of my eye is RSS, or Really Simple Syndication.

Most of you have probably seen the  icon on websites (including ours) and wondered what the heck it meant. And, if you’re like me, you probably clicked on it and got a screen full of "gobily-guck", got frustrated because you didn’t know what it was and then closed out the screen and went on your merry way. If however, you’re one of the growing number of people out there that are already familiar with the concepts of RSS and are using it today, please fast forward to the next blog. For rest of us, please read on…

It may be hard to believe, but that screen full of gobily-guck holds the key to a whole new world of personalized information delivery. It is impossible for me to even touch on the tip of this technology in one blog, so I will break it down into several narratives. I will try to keep them simple, and relevant as to how this technology will be harnessed in new versions of BlueVue; but my underlying message is this: Just like WiFi, VOIP, GOOGLE, and eBay have shaped and changed our lives - so will RSS.