CTI:
Joining the Best
of Two Technologies

Dialogic, a leading maker and vendor of CTI hardware and software components, estimates that the market for CTI in the US is about $5 billion per year, and climbing fast. The CTI market in Japan is nowhere near the size of that in the United States. Indeed, even the concept of computer telephony integration remains unfamiliar to many in corporate Japan. But that will change quickly.

PC-PBX
As the term suggests, computer telephony integration encompasses a set of technologies that integrate computer (data) and telephone (voice) applications. To clarify the concept, it may help to define some of the key business application areas where CTI is already being used.

One obvious place to start is replacing current dedicated, expensive PBX (private branch exchange) systems. Computers equipped with appropriate hardware and software can provide all the functions of a standard office PBX while offering an easy-to-use interface and open system architecture.

While the computing platform necessary to run such a CTI application doesn't need to be a high-end, high-cost system, the hardware and basic OS (operating system) for a business-critical PC-PBX system must be reliable. Even more reliable than the majority of data servers in use today, in fact, since downtime will mean substantial lost business and isolate your office from the outside world. Also, the software necessary to run a PBX application is complex - over 500,000 lines of code just for the billing and accounting functions in the average PC-PBX system, according to one study.

Bill Marjerison, president of Nippon CompuTools, Ltd., makes the additional point that testing a PC-PBX in Japan is an expensive business. "Line costs alone, at an initial per-line charge of over $700, become a significant part of the system cost. So customers often have reservations about installing large CTI solutions. These costs also make it difficult for developers to test large systems in a real environment." He notes, however, that an intelligent CTI solution with facilities such as DID (Direct Inward Dialing) can "share" lines in a way that substantially cuts costs and improves customer service.

Another element in Japan (and in many European countries) is the requirement of having an official body test and approve any piece of equipment connected to the public telephone network. In the past, JATE (the Japan Approvals Institute for Telecommunications Equipment) required that PC-PBX systems based on different computers be approved on a per-computer basis - a time-consuming and expensive proposition. The recent change to board-level rather than computer-level approval is one factor that will help spur development of the Japanese CTI industry, according to Yoshinobu Nakamura, senior specialist for strategic business projects at Dialogic Systems KK.

A PBX is a vital element of most companies' technical infrastructures, representing as it does the contact pipeline with customers and clients. There is an understandable reluctance, therefore, even within the CTI world, to depend on PC-PBX solutions offered by lesser known players without an established track record. In Japan, this generally means that smaller (non-multinational) companies find few business opportunities in this aspect of the CTI market. The field is pretty much limited to NEC, Hitachi, and a handful of other makers of this stature.

If you examine PBX systems of such makers, however, you're likely to find Dialogic or other manufacturers' boards incorporated. This emphasizes the importance of proprietary software as the key differentiating value-added component for a PC-PBX vendor.

For a PBX that makes no attempt to hide its origins as a PC, Richard Rettig, Director of NCL Communications, Inc., recommends the Axxent from Inter-Tel. Axxent, says Rettig, is a tried and tested PC-PBX from a company that has over 20 years of experience working in the PBX field. Although the initial cost of such a solution is not necessarily cheaper than a dedicated "black box" PBX for the same number of lines and stations, deploying a PC-PBX system in your office will almost certainly provide more features that are more easily accessible to the users.

The recurring cost of ownership for a PC-PBX over time is also lower, given that functionality and features can be added for less than with a conventional telephony system. Voice mail, for example, can be added as a relatively easy upgrade, as can DID or even an industrial-strength group faxing solution. And extra functionality for call forwarding, hunt groups, etc., can be distributed as PC software rather than requiring board or firmware swaps. Standards such as Microsoft/Intel's TAPI (Telephony Application Programming Interface) and Novell's TSAPI (Telephony Services Application Programming Interface) even allow the enterprise data network to be integrated with a PC-PBX.

Voice mail
Voice mail is another key application area for computer telephony integration technologies. CTI-based voice mail is much more than a digital answering machine; it will route not only voice messages, but e-mail and fax messages as well, to an "in-tray" on the recipient's computer desktop. CTI voice mail can also enable remote retrieval of such data from outside the office PBX.

As an example of voice mail in action, CompuTools' Marjerison points to a successful motorcycle courier service that has reduced the number of needed call center operators by implementing a CTI solution. Its couriers now dial one central number from their cellular telephones, and by inputting a personal ID number they receive a voice message with the details of their next pickup and delivery. Not only does the new system enable information to reach the couriers faster and more accurately than before, but the company has been able to significantly cut its in-office staff costs.

Other CTI applications
Service call centers can especially benefit from CTI. When Caller ID (which, at the time of writing, is being tested in Chiba, Saitama, and Nagoya) becomes a nationwide standard in Japan, call centers will acquire a new set of capabilities. Caller ID makes possible a fairly accurate identification of the caller before the phone is picked up. In the case of a previously-known caller, a CTI system can automatically extract the customer history from a database, and route the call to the appropriate operator or section (through "skills-based routing") before a word has been exchanged. And if a call needs to be escalated to another level, the operator can attach an electronic "job ticket" to the voice call as it is forwarded, which saves the customer the trouble of having to repeat information.

PHS (personal handyphone system) includes a kind of caller ID as part of its protocol. This is used by some carriers to provide a voice mail service for subscribers whose phones are switched off, or who are out of range of an antenna. When the subscriber accesses this voice mail, there is no need to input an ID; the PHS handset itself provides the identification to a CTI application at the carrier's switching center.

Call and fax logging is a standard practice, or even a legal requirement, in some businesses, such as the financial services industry. This is another area in which CTI is effective. As the ease of computerizing and implementing such logging grows through the use of CTI, call logging will be used to advantage in call centers, for customer service records in helplines, and for operator training.

On the downside, businesses in which calls are originated from a center - such as telemarketing operations (direct sales over the telephone) and debt collection agencies - can also utilize CTI. A CTI board can be programmed to quickly dial its way through a customer list, and only connect the operator's handset or headset when a connection is made to a human being, ignoring answering machines and the like. Upon connection, the called party's history or demographic information will be displayed on the operator's screen.

Nakamura feels, however, that telemarketing will not play a large part in Dialogic KK's expansion. This is partly due to Japanese line costs, and partly due to the traditional preference of Japanese customers for dealing face-to-face with a salesman, he says. Other operator-originated services may, however, start to take off in Japan as CTI technology becomes better known and understood.

Fax-on-demand is an important application of CTI - especially in Japan, where the written word is still of primary importance, and e-mail is nowhere near as universal as in the West. It is worth making a distinction here between everyday fax modems, and CTI-type fax boards that cost many times more. CTI fax boards are designed to be independently intelligent, able to handle such functions as text-to-fax conversion, call routing, and scheduling with little reference to the operating system and with a far higher degree of reliability than can be expected from a fax modem. Synthesized voice prompts, such as those provided by CompuTools' FaxCube and VoiceCube environments, guide the caller through the fax touch-tone menus.

On the subject of user input, speaker-independent voice recognition is another rapidly-developing area of CTI. This technology is likely to find its way into a variety of applications here in Japan in the very near future.

One other CTI application where Rettig sees a dramatic increase in use is low-cost long-distance calling. It is possible to attach a device (such as V/IP from Micom) between the PBX and the corporate WAN (wide area network). When a call is placed through the PBX to this "extension," the telephonic signals are converted to IP packets and routed through the WAN to a similarly-equipped location. The cost of the call is therefore covered by the existing line or packet service that has been leased for data use; up to four voice or fax calls can be set up and carried simultaneously on a single 64K line. For companies whose data WAN is already in place, this offers a method of extending the use of the WAN, even internationally.

CTI and the Net
In theory, the Internet could be used in place of a WAN. Since throughput cannot be guaranteed on the Internet, however, conversations could be "gappy." Rettig cautions that while the Internet might be an acceptable solution for personal calls or real-time faxing, it is not yet a good alternative for business phone-to-phone use. But as the technology improves, Internet-to-phone applications - such as a "talk to me" button on a webpage that instantly links the user's PC to a business call center - have been suggested as possible "killer apps" for CTI.

Thanks to CTI technologies, solutions such as NTT's OCN [Open Computer Network] will go a long way to helping companies achieve low-cost long-distance calling solutions, as will "reservation" protocols such as Cisco's RSVP. Indeed, it is possible to imagine building up and marketing an international network using today's available technology - one that provides publicly-available flat-rate calls to anywhere in the world, at a cost much lower than that offered by traditional long-distance carriers.

From notebook computers that double as phones to multi-line call centers with auto-routing based on Caller ID, CTI is already enhancing our business and personal lives. The potential business power of CTI is enormous. With some imagination and a little skill, your company could even implement its own CTI "killer app."

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