Analysis of Ipscape Company

Introduction

IPscape is not regarded as one of the most successful companies in the sphere of ip telephony, and communication technologies. This is explained by the fact that company lacks the trust credit for the brand, and lack of properly developed business strategy. The activity of the company’s call center is based on the principle of the quickest reaction possible, and regardless of the fact that marketing strategy of the company is not effective enough, the call center offers high quality assistance and consultation associated with the communication and IP telephony. Competitive analysis, as well as the risk assessment of the company’s products will help the company to revise the existing business strategy, and implement the new products for attracting the target audience (Wegge, Dick, Fisher, Wecking & Moltzen, 2006).

Competitive Analysis

According to Read (2000) call centers of other companies are generally featured with a particular business strategy, and all the services offered by the employees of the call centers are performed within the frameworks of the general business strategy. Call center of the Genius Company is featured with essential strengths and large opportunities for further development. Therefore, the company is 33 years in business, and the experience that was collected is sufficient for creating the framework for offering the high quality services. It is also stated that the call center services are featured with the lowest answering time, rigorous quality control, as well as world leading answer rate. These achievements were possible only with the existing clear business strategy, and the properly elaborated marketing aims. Considering the fact that the actual importance of the low answer rates is needed for better customer care, and increased brand awareness, the Genius Company included the call center services provision into a single business framework. This was helpful for achieving the high service parameters (Kroll, 2001).

IBM is regarded as one of the first companies that outsourced the activity of the call center. This helped to decrease the load placed on the IBM personnel, and entrust the communication process, as well as customer care process to experts of communication and answering calls. The outsourcing was performed considering the requirement of extending and improving customers’ relations, and involves the key considerations of the customer care strategy. The strengths of the call center performance involve the 24/7 availability for any customer or client of the company, flexible customer care, and communication strategy that is intended to address the basic needs of the customers, and offer quick and effective assistance for solving problems, or answering questions (Khosrow, 2006).

The research departments of the IBM have performed a thorough analysis of the communication patterns and principles, and it was stated that speech-enabled solutions are able to improve the entire business performance of the company, as the company has an opportunity to get feedbacks from the customers, analyze the incoming data, and provide the corresponding changes and improvements. All the problems and services of the call center are regarded from the perspective of leveraging the sophisticates technologies and service maps that are used for directing and routing callers in accordance with their problems and questions. In fact, this routing presupposes the increased quality of human interaction, and semi-automated routing of the customers, as the actual necessity of the calls is defined by the customer care strategy frameworks, that are closely linked with the principles of business strategy (IBM website, 2011).

Business operations that are performed with the assistance of call center involve marketing, sales, back-office customer support, as well as product support. Therefore, IBM call center may be reasonably regarded as one of the most multi-functional call centers, as well as most effective customer care strategy (Fleming, Coffman, Harter, 2005).

Avaya Company specializes on specific call center services, telephony, and communication. Therefore, the call center services, offered by this company are regarded as one of the most technological and reliable. The company has four key representatives in Korea, Israel, Europe, and the USA, hence, the actions, and information provided by these offices should be coordinated, and without contradicting statements. Therefore, the company had to create single call center service, which offers diversified informational services depending on the region of interest of the clients. Since the actual importance of the customers’ feedback is of great importance for most companies, the Avaya Company based its call center services on the necessity to interfere the existing business strategy with the business communication principles performed by the company. As a rule, the global market of call centers and business communication is highly competitive; hence, the company is aimed at offering the most reliable and high quality services (Plunkett Research Ltd and Plunkett, 2007).

Potential Risks

Operating call centers has various potential risks and this depends on the conditions and circumstances surrounding a particular company. The risks of the cloud computing are closely associated with the improper protection of personal and confidential data that is used for customer care activities, as well as serving customers (Masi, Fischer & Harris, 1998). The key classification of the cloud computing risks of the IPscape Company is performed in accordance with the values of customer care strategy:

• Security. This aspect is properly adjusted, and the company does not have any reasons to worry about it. Protection of personal and confidential data is performed in accordance with 802.16 IEEE standards.
• Compatibility. The existing IT infrastructures of the company are not always compatible with the customers’ systems which makes some connections are vulnerable to network attacks.
• Availability of the necessary data is one of the key principles of ITscape business performance. Since the actual importance of data protection is explained by the increased security rules, availability of the data is diversified properly (Kennedy, 2003).

It is stated that the IPscape executives have identified that Australian blue-chip companies do not progress by moving onto the cloud platform, as this technological shift is regarded as a too risky action for corporations. They are concerned about the general risk of doing business over the cloud but they are probably also concerned about doing business with a small unproven company such as Ipscape (Read, 2003).

As for the pricing strategy, associated with the offered product, it should be emphasized that customers often consider this unreasonable. The companies that clearly realize the necessity of call center have an opportunity to arrange it within the company, or make it outsourced. The outsourced one is more reliable, and less costly. Hence, the prices offered by IPscape are considered unreasonable, as the target audience of the company considers the IPscape brand not reliable enough. However, the key aim of the company is to increase the reliability of the services offered, as well as deserve customers’ trust. This will help to increase the bandwidth of the services, and increase the reliability of communication infrastructure that causes delays in data connection and transmission. Additionally, the company plans to decrease the payments, and expand the target audience by offering additional services. The key principle of the business performance is the absence of price/quality compromise, as the offered services may be of high quality, and featured with low prices. Hence, the competitive capability of the company will increase enormously (Lunt, P. (2001).

Another risk of the company is associated with the technological basis of the cloud computing technology. It is stated that applications may freeze; causing lags in the work of the computing systems, and this dissatisfies customers. These problems and risks are mainly linked with the incompatibility of some network equipment that is used by customers, and the unreliability of communication infrastructure. However, the technological factor of the connection reliability is minimal, and freezes and lags are mainly caused by the overload of the computer systems, as the company serves customers regardless of the geographic location (the whole territory of Australian continent is covered), and ping delay causes lags and freezes of the applications (Hurwitz, Bloor, Kaufman & Halper, 2009). The product strategy that will involve the minimization of the risks, and increase of securities, therefore, the pricing strategy will be more reasonable, and additional customers will be attracted.

Conclusion

IPscape Company is not a leader o thee market of IP telephony and communications, however, the key problems are defined, and the company is seriously intended to resolve the existing problems. As for the matters of risks and pricing strategy, it should be emphasized that the company needs to increase the reliability of the technical infrastructure, and the customers will not consider prices unreasonable.

List of references

Fleming, J., Coffman, C., Harter, J. (2005). Manage Your Human Sigma, Harvard Business Review.

Hurwitz, J., Bloor, R., Kaufman, M. and Halper, F. (2009). Cloud Computing For Dummies. New York: NY, For Dummies.

IBM website (2011).

Kennedy I., (2003). Call centres, School of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand.

Khosrow, M. (2006). Emerging trends and challenges in information technology management. Hershey, Idea Group Inc (IGI).

Kroll, K. M., (2001). “Bigger Role for Call Centers,” Industry Week.

Lunt, P. (2001). “Contact Centers That Work,” Customer Support Management.

Masi D.M.B., Fischer M.J., Harris C.M., (1998). Numerical Analysis of Routing Rules for Call centers, Telecommunications Review.

Plunkett Research Ltd and Plunkett, J. W. (2007). Plunkett’s Advertising & Branding Industry Almanac 2007: Advertising & Branding Industry Market Research, Statistics, Trends & Leading Companies. New Jersey: NJ, Plunkett Research, Ltd.

Read, B. B., (2003). “Bottom Line Property and Design,” Call Center Magazine.

Read, B. B., (2000). Designing the Best Call Center for Your Business. New York: NY, CMP Books.

Wegge, J., van Dick, R., Fisher, G., Wecking, C., & Moltzen, K. (2006). Work motivation, organizational identification, and well-being in call centre work. Work & Stress, 20(1), p. 60-83.