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HiPath – Total Business Communications A White Paper by Siemens Communications (Com)
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Table of contents
Introduction 2
1. Controlling convergence 7
2. Accelerating business processes 18
3. Optimizing customer relationships 27
4. Minimizing risk 344.1. Guarding against attacks with comprehensive security
strategies 344.2. Minimizing business risk with HiPath Managed Services 38
5. Siemens One: Industry solutions from a single source 45
6. Conclusion 46
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Introduction
Today’s global competitive arena poses sizeable challenges for businesses’
communication and information systems: Intelligent communication
systems need to help raise productivity, reduce costs, and optimize
customer service. The growing mobility of the workforce and constant
organizational restructuring also make it essential that information and
communication systems are able to adapt flexibly. Surveys conducted by
Siemens among companies of all sizes and across all sectors of industry
have revealed that the primary challenges in communications at present
are concentrated in four main areas:
1. Controlling convergence
Voice communication over the Internet protocol (voice over IP) is now a
mature technology. For many businesses, the question is no longer
whether, but how they should best proceed with convergence to suit
their particular needs. Structures that have gradually grown up over time
are being superseded by a number of innovative technologies like voice
over WLAN (VoWLAN) that open up promising new perspectives.
At the same time, businesses need to protect previous investments. As a
result many decision-makers in companies feel under considerable
pressure, particularly when required to choose now what the best path
towards a converged solution will be. Clearly, the potential negative
impact of a poor decision is considerable. And if the decision comes to
soon or too late, it can lead to a bad investment or the loss of crucial
competitive advantages.
This means that there’s considerable demand for solutions that not only
offer a high degree of flexibility but also allow businesses to continue
using existing components and equipment. In addition, these solutions
need to provide the means to easily integrate new elements and support
communication across all kinds of networks, both wired and wireless.
This is the only way of creating a truly solid foundation for new business
applications.
2. Accelerating business processes
Today’s communications society has become a society on the fast track.
Time pressure is high, deadlines are getting tighter all the time, and
businesses are expected to react and respond faster than ever. Speed
today is a critical competitive factor, and to keep pace with the globalized
business environment and to gain maximum leverage from information
and data sharing, businesses need to deploy innovative communication
models. The ability to act without delay is a prerequisite for being able to
work more productively and more cost-effectively.
Ideally, it should be possible to reach business contacts immediately,
whenever needed and wherever they happen to be, and to provide teams
with the optimum support to collaborate effectively. Second-generation
Flexibility and legacy
support are crucial
Reaching the people you
need when you need
them
3
IP convergence applications enable businesses to make the most of the
advantages to be gained from uniting data and voice traffic to optimize
business processes and achieve a sustained increase in productivity. This
puts the “real-time enterprise” – in which processes are executed without
delay – well within reach. And the professional integration of voice
communication with enterprise IT applications opens up additional
potential for productivity gains.
3. Optimizing customer relationships
In business today, it’s no longer sufficient simply to take a customer’s call
or to be present in store or on site at a customer’s location: To provide an
optimum service, companies need to put their customers in touch with
the right employees and the right information. This doesn’t just apply to
private enterprises; these are challenges that public authorities and other
organizations also need to address. And when it comes to implementing
effective customer relationship management strategies, contact centers
that provide customer support – by phone, fax, e-mail or the Web – play a
critical role. The goal is always to improve customer satisfaction, foster
greater customer loyalty, capture more revenue per customer, and open
up new and efficient communication channels.
4. Minimizing risk
Keeping pace with tomorrow inevitably harbors risks, both from a
business and an IT security standpoint. Such risks include flawed capital
spending decisions, technological blind alleys, and failed projects.
Increasing convergence also places even higher demands on security
strategies because, provided no security precautions are in place, dangers
from the realm of infotech – viruses, hackers and spam – now also pose a
threat to voice over IP communication.
This is why a comprehensive security strategy has to be designed and
implemented for communication over IP (CoIP) in a convergent network,
a strategy capable of meeting the distinct needs issuing from real-time
communications. Here in particular, third-party service providers can
often provide a level of expertise that would hardly be feasible to develop
in-house.
In addition, many companies need to focus more on sustaining and
developing their core competencies, and these rarely encompass IT and
communications infrastructures. Purchasing managed services –
outsourcing specific areas of information and communications
technology to specialist service operators – can give businesses the
latitude they need. The service operator provides the infrastructure and
operates it reliably on the basis of previously defined service levels and at
agreed rates.
The advantage to this approach is that, even in periods of rapid
technological change, a company can concentrate on its core business
and still keep up with the latest advances. At the same time, the company
Connecting customers
with the right
employees and
information
Controlling IT security
and economic risks
4
can hand off the related technical risks to the service operator: It merely
purchases those capabilities it needs to support its business processes.
Creating greater value by integrating real-time communication
Integrating real-time communication with IT applications can greatly
improve the speed and productivity of business processes. Merging the
two universes of data processing and communications transforms voice
communication into an IT application.
Second-generation IP (2gIP) enables business process and
communication tasks to interlock more tightly, raising employee
productivity everywhere – in the office, home office, or on the road.
More than anything, though, 2gIP creates the right conditions for fully
integrating suppliers, customers and business partners into a company’s
electronic business processes. Besides creating greater value, this gives a
business an important lead on its marketplace competitors. The biggest
benefits are to be gained from the improved support for mobile
employees and for project-based collaboration between teams.
But even first-generation IP (1gIP) – voice and data convergence at the
infrastructure level – can help to substantially reduce operating costs and
make more efficient use of the available network infrastructure, because
uniting voice and data communication on convergent networks running
the Internet Protocol opens up plenty of new ways to master business
challenges.
Second-generation IP
communication
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HiPath – Total Business Communications
With its HiPath portfolio, Siemens offers companies of all sizes – from
small and medium sized contractors to multinational groups – a truly
comprehensive range of communications and security products and
services. HiPath solutions, services and security offerings enable business
to improve and optimize their communication and information
processing, to bring down costs, boost employee productivity, and
improve communication with customers and business partners. And
security solutions like role-based access management and the use of
smart card technology reduce the risks.
HiPath makes it possible to deploy end-to-end, real-time communication
solutions – on all kinds of networks and end-user devices, between
geographically distributed locations, and across borders. Integrating
communication over IP accelerates company processes and closes gaps in
process chains. Total Business Communications is the most
comprehensive and innovative product and service offering available in
the marketplace today.
Siemens has an entire suite of systems and equipment created with the
goal of delivering future-proof communication solutions. Besides the
HiPath real-time IP systems at the core of the portfolio, Siemens also
offers a wide array of end-user devices, wireless mobility, unified
A comprehensive
product and service
offering
Figure 1: Comprehensive
integration of presence-
based communication
and IT solutions delivers
valuable productivity
gains.
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communications and customer relationship management solutions, and
security systems. All of these are backed by a rich HiPath services
offering.
The HiPath architecture is designed specifically to give businesses the
latitude they need to choose what they feel is the right path toward a
converged infrastructure and to create both opportunities for future
growth and value from their capital investment. Open, standards-based
interfaces ensure that business applications such as SAP NetWeaver,
Microsoft Outlook, and IBM Lotus Notes can interlock tightly with the
communication features and capabilities provided by HiPath.
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1. Controlling convergence
Computers and telephony, voice and data networks, wireless
infrastructures, and fixed-line and mobile communications – all these
things are the perfect match for one another and are now gradually
growing together. New communication channels such as instant
messaging, SMS text messaging, internet telephony, and web
conferencing – along with technologies like wireless LAN, Bluetooth,
UMTS/3G mobile, voice over IP (VoIP), and voice over wireless LAN
(VoWLAN) – are opening up additional ways to exchange information
alongside conventional fixed-line and mobile phones, fax and e-mail.
Dozens of new tools are now available to help streamline communication
within companies and between business partners.
But which solutions will really equip companies best to face the future
and which will help drive costs down and productivity higher? And how
can companies protect their past investments? Only communication
solutions that allow businesses to integrate existing infrastructures into
convergent networks and still make the most of the new possibilities
afforded by communication over IP can truly deliver the maximum
advantage to be gained from the technological transformation.
Paths to a converged infrastructure
There are, however, different paths to converged infrastructures. For
some companies, starting completely from scratch with voice over IP is
the right decision, whereas for others a gradual transition is the
preferable route. In the latter case, existing components can commonly
continue to be used and current investments can be protected. The
company’s current circumstances need to be analyzed before deciding on
which path to take, and what’s important here is that the company has to
have the room to make a choice.
According to analysts at Forrester Research, scalable convergence
platforms like Siemens’ HiPath Real Time IP systems can successfully
reduce both call charges and administrative effort in just a short space of
time. This is borne out by numerous successful rollouts of IP solutions in
businesses in recent years. At the same time, the existing
communications infrastructure can continue to be used within the IP
environment. Thanks to open interfaces and compliance with common
standards like the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), HiPath communication
solutions – in contrast to proprietary systems – afford the openness
needed for step-by-step migration.
In addition, many components can be used in multiple modes. A server,
for instance, can be configured to operate both as a stand-alone system
and as a network node or media gateway; end-user devices can be used
with different technologies and transmission protocols; and the majority
of Siemens’ software applications can also be used in heterogeneous
networks with systems from a number of different vendors. This not only
New communication
channels complement
conventional means of
information exchange
Greenfield setup or
gradual migration?
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means that businesses are free to focus capital spending specifically on
those components that they need most, but also that new applications
are quick to integrate and that existing end-user equipment can be
adapted to new requirements simply by installing software updates.
SIP is playing an important role on the way to converged communication.
This standard is not confined to IP telephony, it also supports multimedia
applications and audio and video conferencing.
SIP provides a foundation on which to build not just purely IP-based
networks but also heterogeneous networks that operate seamlessly. The
same standard also enables the transmission of presence information.
SIP-based solutions portfolios like Siemens HiPath make it possible to
deliver voice and multimedia services as well as innovative applications –
company-wide and in real time on an existing IP infrastructure. SIP-
enabled end-user equipment of the kind marketed by Siemens and
numerous other manufacturers can be integrated into systems easily.
The Session Initiation
Protocol (SIP) is an
important building block
Figure 2: Traditional
corporate networks with
fixed lines between
locations are gradually
being superseded by
convergent
infrastructures running
the Internet Protocol.
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A range of real-time IP platforms for businesses
The HiPath convergent architecture for corporate networks provides
location-independent support for all kinds of end-user devices and
delivers all of the functionality typically provided by a classic office
phone. What’s more, HiPath can do this in any network environment – on
IP, Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) or wireless infrastructures.
It also takes into account security issues, providing encrypted voice
communication, as well as the need to support an increasingly mobile
workforce. After all, if a business needs its mobile users everywhere to be
able to connect to the company network via notebook PC and to be
immediately reachable on their regular phone number, an IP-based
communication infrastructure has to be in place. This capability also
ensures that people can even be reached while at other company
locations, without the need to forward their calls.
The HiPath 2000, 3000 and 5000 real-time platforms are intended for
small and medium sized businesses, whereas the HiPath 4000 is aimed at
large, networked corporations. The HiPath platforms and matching suites
of software enable businesses to deploy unified solutions – everything
from stand-alone systems all the way up to complex, multisite
configurations. Cost savings are achieved through the use of central
application servers, common user management, and network
management.
The HiPath 8000 real-time IP system, an SIP-based IP softswitch, was
designed for large and very large companies and for service providers
operating their own IP network infrastructure. It is the ideal fit not just for
HiPath 4000, HiPath
3000 (HiPath 2000)
Cross-linkage overview
No ties to specific
network types
Solutions for small,
medium sized and large
enterprises
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multinational companies but also large companies with extensive
campuses or numerous geographically dispersed locations that need a
single communication system and wish to manage it centrally
themselves. A HiPath 8000 is also the optimum communication solution
for service integrators or for businesses whose systems are hosted in data
centers. This kind of system can be used to deliver centralized
communication services for individual companies on dedicated servers
out of data centers or to make these services publicly available for
multiple companies on carrier networks. The hosted services can be
managed by the customers themselves, by a service provider, or by
Siemens, if required.
HiPath 8000 provides an SIP-based real-time IP overlay network, uniting
for the first time the reliability of a carrier solution with the performance
features and functionalities typical for an enterprise communication
system. This ensures maximum reliability, availability and fault tolerance,
in combination with a rich set of capabilities. The HiPath 8000 softswitch
is an important part of Siemens’ Life Works vision – of integrating
communication technologies used by businesses, network operators,
employees and private individuals, regardless of location, the type of
network, and the applications used. The underlying idea is to eliminate
those barriers to communication between fixed-line and mobile networks
and between corporate and public networks that users commonly face.
High security with SRTP encryption
In pure voice over IP environments – and in converged networks carrying
voice and data – voice calls are transported entirely or partially in data
packets running on Ethernet. Unauthorized individuals who have
succeeded in gaining access to a corporate network can monitor this data
using tools known as packet sniffers. To ensure the greatest possible
security, Siemens has developed a solution based on international
security standards to provide tap-proof communication on HiPath. This
method, which works seamlessly between end-user devices, uses the
Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP) to encrypt the voice data.
Figure 3: With HiPath
8000, voice applications
can be deployed
worldwide on an
existing IP network.
End-to-end encryption
prevents eavesdropping
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SRTP’s algorithm is regarded as immune to eavesdropping and, unlike
virtual private network (VPN) systems, needs no additional software or
hardware to handle encryption and decryption. Instead, encryption is
decentralized and is carried out at each end of the physical connection,
regardless of whether the end-user equipment is wireless or wireline; it is
also built into the operating software. This means that there are no
additional delays in the transmission that might otherwise impact on
voice quality.
Wireless real-time communication on a HiPath WLAN infrastructure
At locations where installing cable runs would be too costly or where the
majority of workers are mobile, voice over WLAN today represents a cost-
effective alternative. With its HiPath WLAN infrastructure, Siemens offers
customers the means to run voice communication parallel to data traffic
on a standards-based wireless network.
This solution offers innovative mobility management capabilities for
every wireless voice or data connection, plus maximum availability and
scalability. In addition, it provides universal, priority-driven access for
voice and data.
The HiPath WLAN infrastructure consists of a HiPath Wireless Controller,
access points, and HiPath Wireless Convergence Software. Together,
these create an IP overlay solution that can be incorporated into an
existing IP network and can be used without HiPath communication
systems, clients, or end-user devices if required.
Thanks to the seamless handovers supported by second-generation
HiPath WLAN components, users can move freely between cells in the
An infrastructure
solution for voice over
WLAN
Figure 4: A HiPath WLAN
infrastructure integrates
wireless networks
seamlessly with existing
IP infrastructures to
support mobile voice
communication.
Second-generation
WLAN infrastructure
components
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wireless network while communicating in real time. The optiPoint WL2
professional handset rounds out Siemens’ WLAN portfolio perfectly. It’s a
VoWLAN terminal but is similar in design and menu structure to Gigaset
cordless phones, the market leaders in DECT.
Supporting third-party systems with HiPath CAP
With the HiPath CAP (Common Application Platform), Siemens offers
middleware that allows telephony functionality to mesh with computer
applications – across platforms and even with systems from other
vendors, including Nortel, Alcatel, Avaya and Cisco. The software
supports a range of standard protocols, and Siemens partners and
customers are given access to these interfaces. This means that
applications no longer need to be adapted to a range of different
telephone systems but can build uniformly on a single, harmonized
interface.
This greatly reduces the amount of effort that needs to go into
application development and adaptation. Another advantage is that XML
phone services are available that can deliver web services to every phone
extension, company-wide. These services may include current stock
prices, rail schedules, weather information, and even facility
management applications. XML phone services for the HiPath 4000
platform are pooled in a special “on a button” suite for the HiPath
ComScendo software package; this package contains the communication
platform’s entire “intelligence” and provides users with a raft of features
and functionalities.
For example, the EasySee function on phones lets users take part in a
phone call or a conference on the screen of their PC at the push of a
button. EasyLookup lets them view, pick and dial names in their
company’s corporate directory on the phone without the aid of a PC. At
the press of a button on the phone, another function, EasyMail, launches
Microsoft Outlook on a workstation PC, automatically filling in the
address fields with the e-mail addresses of the people taking part in the
phone call or conference.
Maximizing the potential benefits with comprehensive consulting
The potential of IP-based real-time communication today is no longer
merely about lowering capital spending and operating costs. Increasingly,
the focus is on achieving synergy benefits and on using integrated real-
time communication to interlock communication and business processes
more tightly. Integrating business communication on a single network
and with corporate software currently in the field – Microsoft Outlook,
IBM WebSphere, Lotus Notes and SAP NetWeaver, for example – greatly
accelerates processes and boosts employee productivity.
IP networks provide a common basis for a large number of new
applications that would be impossible to implement were it not for the
convergence of voice and data communication. Voice over IP’s underlying
Web services at every
phone extension
Uniting real-time
communication with
business processes
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technology is now so mature that VoIP solutions are easily incorporated
into existing networks and, importantly, can be operated reliably. The
quality of voice transmission is on a par with that of traditional telephony,
and switching to VoIP does not mean having to forgo the sophisticated
features available on today’s private branch exchanges. In addition,
advanced encryption technology is available that prevents eavesdrops
and spoofing on connections, end to end, even on public IP networks like
the Internet or on wireless networks.
Siemens’ HiPath services include comprehensive consulting designed to
help companies manage the convergence process. In an initial step, the
HiPath Business Case Builder is used to identify the overarching goals of a
VoIP project. This is a tool that melds professional business expertise
with more than ten years of experience in consulting for customers. With
its support, consultants can compute the cost-effectiveness of an
investment project based on neutral parameters faster and with greater
precision than ever before. The Business Case Builder describes the
advantages of a solution in terms of cost reductions, higher earnings and
productivity gains. Working with templates, it computes the economic
effects of investing either in a stand-alone solution or in a comprehensive
solution package.
By and large, before the first applications are rolled out onto the network,
the performance of the existing IP network has to be tested. The new
VoIP convergence infrastructure is then designed on the basis of the
results of the test. In preparation for the implementation phase, a
requirements specification is prepared for the solution. This sets out in
detail the time frame, individual responsibilities, documentation rules,
the budget, and the design. Siemens can act as a single-source supplier,
offering not just these initial services but also all subsequent services
needed by businesses deploying converged infrastructures.
The benefits for businesses
Siemens offers a comprehensive portfolio of platforms, end-user devices,
components, software solutions, and services for controlling
convergence. The benefits are clear:
• Freedom to choose the preferred route to a converged infrastructure
• Open interfaces and compliance with common standards
• Scalable platforms for companies of all sizes
• Strong security based on end-to-end encryption
• Easy integration of wireless components
• Ability to integrate other vendors’ systems
• Comprehensive consulting on the integration of communication and
business processes
Comprehensive
consulting helps manage
the convergence process
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Case study
Finland’s labor ministry saves EUR1.8 million a year
The customer:
Headquartered in the Finnish capital, Helsinki, Finland’s labor ministry has
around 250 branches around the country. These also include 15 labor
market departments in employment and economic development centers,
as well as 176 local job centers. Some of these offices are staffed by just a
single employee and are not open every day; nonetheless, they need a
phone connection. In Kemijärvi, the country’s northernmost town, the
ministry operates a contact center located in a former factory building. All
of the calls running through the ministry’s central exchange are initially
taken here, in Lapland.
The problem:
Since the ministry’s communication network was installed seven years
ago, the volume of data it carries has increased dramatically. “That’s why
we had no choice but to expand the available capacity,” recalls senior
consultant Matti Ilonen. As plans progressed to expand the network, it
became evident that it would not just be viable to run voice
communication over the data network, it would also, more importantly,
save costs.
The solution:
Once the ministry’s IT department had conducted a nationwide survey of
the phone systems in operation throughout its offices and locations and
had reviewed the contracts in place with different carriers, the ministry
put out a public call for tenders. The contract was awarded to Elisa
Communications Corporation, Finland’s largest private
telecommunications company, with around 6,000 employees. One factor
working very much in the company’s favor was the considerable
experience it had gathered in working with Siemens communication
systems over a number of years.
The solution was implemented using three HiPath 4000 platforms and
around 350 API1120 adapters to support fax services, enabling all
internal voice and fax traffic to run over the current (and upgraded) data
network. More than 1,200 smaller telephone systems installed in local
ministry offices had to be integrated into the HiPath network, and
optiPoint 410 phones were installed as end-user devices. Prior to the
initial rollout, engineers had to make sure that individual locations’ LANs
had sufficient capacity to carry voice over IP, because the narrow time
frame left no room for installing new runs of cabling.
Following the successful completion of a number of pilot projects,
installing 4,700 IP phones at desks and workpoints all over the country
plus all the other work took just four-and-a-half months to complete.
Equipping the labor ministry’s headquarters proved to be the biggest task,
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where 400 phone connections were switched over to the new system in
just one night.
The benefits:
An initial comparison of phone bills prior to and after the migration
revealed a potential annual cost saving on call charges of around EUR1.8
million. All of the ministry’s internal and long-distance calls within the
network are free, and long-distance calls to any city in Finland now cost
the same as a local call. Only international calls are charged at the old
rate. As Ilonen is quick to emphasize, “If the figures are correct, the
investment will pay for itself in next to no time.”
Ministry staff noticed little or no difference following the change: There
was neither a loss of quality nor had anything changed in terms of the
features. Thanks to the success of this project, Finland’s ministry of trade
and industry, ministry of justice, and ministry of the interior are now also
planning to switch to voice over IP. Says Matti Ilonen, looking ahead,
“Sooner or later, the entire government will be using this technology,
enabling us to place calls between all our government offices free of
charge.”
Case study
LTU cuts capital spending and maintenance costs
The customer:
Since it was formed in 1955, LTU Lufttransport-Unternehmen GmbH,
headquartered in Düsseldorf, Germany, has grown into one of Germany’s
largest vacation airlines and has one of the most modern and cost-
efficient aircraft fleets in the world. Under contract from tour operators,
the company’s 24 red and white jets carry more than 5.7 million
passengers annually to over 70 destinations around the world, including
vacation resorts on the Canary Islands, along the Mediterranean, in North
Africa, in the Caribbean, and in Africa and Asia. With a workforce of some
2,610 employees working on the ground and in the air, LTU generates
sales of around EUR855 million annually.
The problem:
In recent years, the travel and tourism industry has faced particularly
difficult problems – not just slower growth, but also politically related
international crises that have caused the public’s interest in international
air travel to wane. This forced LTU to review and adjust its capacity
requirements in the buildings it occupied and to restructure internally.
Initiatives included the sale of its tourism division and relocation of the
company to a new building at Düsseldorf Airport. It was at this time that
the company’s cable infrastructure also came under scrutiny.
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The new telecommunication infrastructure at LTU’s corporate
headquarters in Düsseldorf had to incorporate the existing administrative
building as well as the new facilities. To reduce its capital spending
substantially, LTU opted to install an integrated voice and data network
with structured cabling. The company also aimed to exploit potential cost
savings in connection with maintenance overheads, deciding in advance
of the project to merge its IT and telecommunications people to form a
single unit.
Other goals included improving employee reachability through a unified
messaging solution and shifting from location-based customer service call
centers to a location-independent solution. Here, too, changes in the
company’s business fortunes called for capacity restructuring because the
system already in service, a HiPath 300, was too large for the company’s
current needs. The same was true of the call center solution in use, which
was based on technology from Aspect Communications.
The solution:
Working closely with project managers at LTU, Siemens consultants
mapped out a phased strategy for gradually migrating company units to
voice over IP. Provisions had to be made at all times to safeguard business
continuity and telephony service availability.
The old and new systems were therefore operated concurrently while all
four company locations in the North Rhine-Westphalian capital were
moved over to voice over IP, department by department. Today’s
infrastructure is based on a voice over IP-capable data network. The
communication solution consists of a HiPath 4000 system with multiple
separate access points, all linked to a HiPath system using the Internet
Protocol. Some 800 IP terminals of various types were installed, including
a few software-based optiClients, a large number of optiPoint 410 IP
phones, and several optiPoint 600 feature phones.
LTU’s call center, where around 60 agents take inquiries from customers,
uses HiPath ProCenter, an IP-based contact center solution. Siemens held
training courses for call center supervisors to ensure that agents would be
able to make optimum use of the system’s extensive features and
capabilities. The HiPath Xpressions unified messaging solution supplied
integrates voice mail, fax, e-mail and SMS text messaging in a single user
interface on desktop PCs. SimplyPhone enables agents to place calls with
a simple mouse-click in Outlook. As part of the unified messaging rollout,
Siemens consultants also assisted with the migration of LTU’s messaging
systems to Microsoft Exchange 2003.
The benefits:
Running voice and data over one network played a substantial role in
lowering not just LTU’s infrastructure expense but also, significantly, the
carrier’s maintenance overheads, thanks in part to the merging of the IT
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and telecommunications units. The airline company’s call charges are also
down around 80 percent since the transition.
The HiPath ProCenter contact center solution has improved reachability
for LTU customers, enhancing the level of service. Skills-based routing
enables more carefully tailored service delivery for callers, boosting
customer loyalty, while sophisticated reporting tools optimize the
allocation of HR capacity and help to lower costs. The effort required to
maintain the call center is now far lower than in the past – something
that has had a further positive effect on savings.
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2. Accelerating business processes
Speed is crucial in today’s globalized economy. Companies need to get
innovations and ideas out into the marketplace faster than ever before. In
business, time pressure comes from external factors – increasingly tight
supply deadlines, and customers demanding rapid, more responsive
service, for example. Seamless integration of real-time communication
with the business processes, however, creates a vast potential for
boosting business productivity and speed of response. Managers and the
people they lead have instant access to all the information they need in
order to make the right decisions quickly and efficiently. Being reachable
– anywhere, at any time and by any channel – has become the crucial
factor in process efficiency. And combining communication channels
plays a central role in achieving that.
This is especially true in situations where a growing number of employees
are no longer working exclusively at one fixed location. Several studies
have shown that one in every five employees in western Europe is now
mobile. Forecasts also indicate that by 2006 only around 45 percent of
work will likely be completed at a permanently assigned workpoint,
whereas, on average, 55 percent of work will be accomplished on
business trips, by telecommuting, at shared desks in offices, or on site at
customer locations. A few years ago, the split was 75 percent to 25
percent. According to market researchers Analysys Mason Group (AMG),
mobile business data services will expand into a billion-euro global
market by the year 2009.
Keeping mobile workers connected presents conventional
communication infrastructures with a special challenge. Even without the
anticipated increase in the workforce mobility, the very best systems are
soon stretched to their absolute limits. The following emerged in a survey
of 1,700 businesses commissioned by Siemens:
• Sixty-seven percent of mobile workers have to leave messages in
several different places to actually reach the intended recipient
• Sixty-five percent often defer important decisions because their co-
workers are unable to respond to their inquiries fast enough
• Fifty-nine percent are often not able to reach co-workers when they
need to speak with them directly on urgent matters
• Forty-eight percent have difficulties answering customer inquiries
promptly
A survey by industry analysts Gartner came to similar conclusions: Four
out of five efforts to contact someone in business do not succeed at the
first attempt. In spite of the immense breadth of communication media –
fixed-line and mobile phones, e-mail, fax, SMS text messaging, presence-
based services like instant messaging, and even the internet telephony
solution Skype – people are no easier to reach now than they were
before. The communication universe remains fragmented, and
communication itself remains largely divorced and distinct from other
Integrating real-time
communication with
business processes
Keeping mobile workers
connected is a challenge
19
business processes. The outcome is delayed decision-making and stalled
business processes.
Presence-based communication with HiPath OpenScape
One possible way out of this dilemma is to use new software that
supports presence-based communication. The HiPath OpenScape
software suite, for instance, enables users to be reachable at all times and
to see at a glance when and how associates and business partners can be
contacted. Achieved by tracking presence information and combining all
available communication channels, this capability is key to process
efficiency.
Unified messaging, shared document functionality and multimedia
conferencing are all available at the click of a mouse through a single
user interface. HiPath OpenScape features buddy lists, familiar from
instant messaging, showing individuals contacted most frequently, but
with the difference that the list includes a range of communication
options, including phone numbers and e-mail.
A glance at the “My Contacts” list on screen is sufficient to see who can
currently be contacted through which channels. This puts an end to
having to try different phone numbers or e-mail addresses and leaving a
string of messages in different places. Through a unified, web-based front
end, users can control, manage and coordinate all the available
communication channels with mouse or voice commands. Filter
functions are available to change your individual reachability, because
the idea is not to be constantly available, 24/7, but to achieve an
Figure 5.
HiPath OpenScape
includes a personal
portal which allows
users to configure the
channels through which
they can be contacted.
The goal is not to be on
call around the clock but
to strike the right work-
life balance
20
appropriate work-life balance. Every employee should be able to decide
when and on what channels he or she can be contacted.
HiPath OpenScape can also incorporate all these communication options,
including multimedia conferencing, into existing applications. There is no
need to copy phone numbers into other software, and communication
processes can be initiated automatically, if need be. This expedites
project team collaboration from within business applications, in other
words in the immediate context of a business task or transaction. This is
why HiPath OpenScape can be integrated into e-mail and document
management systems, electronic calendars, and software solutions for
controlling workflow.
With just a single mouse click, users can contact team members they
work with frequently or put together ad hoc teams on the fly. Anyone
involved can always see who else is taking part in a conference or joins it
at a later time, and documents can be viewed on screen and discussed at
every workstation.
Integrating mobile workers with HiPath Field Force Mobility
A cornerstone of customer satisfaction is a company’s ability to respond
to customers’ needs and deal with orders as swiftly as possible. Making
this work, though, calls for requirements-driven, rapid control of the
workflow, plus complete mobile access to all key information.
The HiPath Field Force Mobility solution was created specially for
employees – field engineers, for example – who spend most of their work
time off campus but who still need to be tied into clearly structured
workflows. With this solution, they can receive assignments, complete
with all the requisite background data, wirelessly on their personal digital
Figure 6: Desktop video
conferences optimize
team collaboration and
eliminate the need for
costly and time-
consuming face-to-face
meetings.
Complete integration
into the corporate
network – anywhere and
at any time
21
assistants (PDAs), and can make inquiries whenever necessary via a GSM
mobile phone or wireless LAN.
On completion of an assignment, they can transmit data back to the
central system and pick up the details of their next assignment. This
means that field staff are connected seamlessly with the company –
anywhere and at any time. Customer inquiries are sent in real time to the
relevant employee’s end-user device, and tasks can be assigned based on
the capabilities recorded in the employee’s skills profile, his or her current
location (to optimize routing), or on the customer’s service level
agreement.
Mobile workers can also have constant access to the company’s back-
office applications, enabling them to order spare parts, view assignment
rosters, forward assignments to co-workers, and immediately initiate
billing processes on completion of a task for a customer. Also, software
updates for client applications running, say, on PDAs can be delivered
automatically over the air.
Confidential data being transmitted back and forth is reliably protected at
all times. A combination of firewall-based solutions and encryption
technology means telecommuters and mobile field staff can connect to
the company’s network without risk, no matter where they happen to be.
With virtual private networks (VPNs), businesses can create a secured
corporate network accessible for authorized users on public
communication channels like the Internet.
Figure 7: With a HiPath
Field Force Mobility
solution, field staff can
be contacted in real time
and assignment data
transmitted back to the
company’s offices
instantly.
22
Cutting through the chaos with unified communications
The HiPath application portfolio offers unified communications and
mobility solutions designed to meet a variety of employees’ needs and
requirements. Unified communications combines and consolidates all
kinds of communication, independently of time, place and the end-user
equipment. The applications in the HiPath portfolio make it possible to
manage information flow efficiently without having to take an
employee’s current location into account. They include solutions for
unified messaging, telecommuting, desk sharing, reachability
management, and phone-based access to web content.
Today, it’s common for people to have several phone numbers. Besides
office and mobile phone numbers, they often give their hotel and home
phone numbers so that fellow employees, business partners, and
important customers can reach them when the situation requires. But
these contact details tend to develop a life of their own, and when
numbers are no longer current, confusion and a breakdown in
communication are the outcome.
With a one number service, this cannot happen, because only one
number is in circulation, and all calls can be forwarded as necessary
through a voice portal or software, depending on the caller, the day of
the week, the time and the availability of alternative channels of
communication.
A presence management system, harnessed with the convenience of a
computer telephony integration (CTI) application, enables users to
forward communications on different media (fixed-line and mobile
phones or e-mail, for example) to the best available end-user device.
Different message types and contacts can be sorted and prioritized by
setting filters.
With Siemens’ unified messaging solution, every employee has a
multimedia mailbox that combines all channels – voice messages, faxes,
e-mail and SMS text messages – so that they can be managed easily on a
PC or phone. Messages can be retrieved from any source using a range of
devices, including fixed and mobile phones or laptop PCs. E-mail can be
read out over the phone, a fax can be sent to a PC or a fax machine, and
so on. Users are free to choose how they wish to receive the messages
and how they prefer to respond.
In combination with the one number service, the unified messaging
system offers a highly practical real-time communication solution for
mobile workers. And in conjunction with a CTI solution, it not only eases
dialing, it also helps to handle messages efficiently. Overall, Siemens’
unified messaging solutions deliver the right tools to take the chaos out
of communication in companies, substantially enhance productivity, and
accelerate processes.
A one number service
ensures calls are
forwarded efficiently
Unified messaging
provides a clearer
overview of all
communication channels
23
Optimizing business processes with end-to-end consulting services
from a single source
Achieving a sustained improvement in business processes and exploiting
potential productivity gains and savings calls for more than just isolated
and incremental improvements. This is why Siemens has developed a
comprehensive consulting program that addresses the full breadth of
communications throughout the enterprise.
This program of HiPath Professional Services consists of several
interlocking modules. Ideally, consulting should begin with a shared
vision and strategy-finding process with the customer, either in the form
of an intensive expert discussion or a more comprehensive consulting
workshop attended by Siemens experts and the customer’s own
specialists in such areas as sales, service and manufacturing. Together,
they analyze existing shortcomings in the communication processes and
achieve a baseline understanding on the future communication strategy.
The next step consists of examining the extensive range of possibilities
for optimization to identify those solutions that promise to deliver the
greatest benefits within the limits set by the available budget. The
consultants then prepare a road map, cost-effectiveness analyses, and
project action and implementation plans. Unlike business process
consultants, whose work often ends at this point, Siemens can also offer
to supervise the implementation of the proposed solutions. Besides the
deployment of the requisite hardware and software, this may also include
integrating systems into the current information and communication
environment, customizing standard solutions, and programming custom
interfaces, depending on the customer’s needs.
To ensure that the projected productivity gains and cost savings are
actually achieved, Siemens also offers a range of oversight and change-
management services in the closing phase of the project. These include
delivering employee training programs, authoring customer-specific
instruction manuals, and remodeling and updating existing workflows to
match the possibilities afforded by the new applications.
The benefits for businesses
Siemens has a rich portfolio of applications and hardware components
designed to accelerate business processes. These enable businesses to
win a competitive edge and to tap into potential productivity gains:
• Presence-based communication improves reachability
• Easy organization of virtual team meetings
• Seamless integration of mobile workers
• Unified communications across all channels
• One number service for easy call forwarding
• Comprehensive consulting services for process optimization
HiPath Professional
Services comprise a
range of service modules
24
Case study
The New York Power Authority speeds up its processes
The customer:
The New York Power Authority (NYPA) is the largest state-run power
utility in the United States. The authority, which has annual sales of
around US$2 billion, operates 17 power plants throughout the state of
New York, including major hydroelectric installations on the St. Lawrence
river and at Niagara Falls. Its customers in the deregulated U.S. energy
market include government agencies, municipal administrations, and
businesses of all sizes.
The problem:
To remain competitive and to improve its cost structure, the NYPA
wanted to deploy a unified and optimized communication system. Of the
12 phone systems in service – connecting 20 locations and supplied by a
number of different vendors – several were decades old and
correspondingly trouble-prone. The authority was also eager to speed up
communication processes by introducing new technologies like unified
communications, largely because in crisis situations – power outages, for
instance – every second counts.
Says Gary Schmid, the manager responsible for NYPA’s network services:
“The time was ripe for a thorough overhaul of our outdated
communication infrastructure.” So he began looking for a solution
capable of being controlled centrally that would reliably take the
authority forward into the 21st century.
The solution:
Following a call for tenders in which Avaya and Nortel took part, Siemens
was ultimately awarded the contract. The hub of the solution is a HiPath
4000 platform located at the NYPA’s center in White Plains, where around
900 employees work; there are nine more HiPath systems sited at points
chosen strategically to provide outbound connectivity and full voice
network redundancy. In addition, the NYPA has set up a unified
communications solution, HiPath Xpressions, deployed to accelerate
processes and ensure optimum reachability for employees through a
variety of media.
“The solution Siemens proposed was not just competitively priced, it also
covered the right combination of IP capabilities that we needed,” says
Schmid. The HiPath platform’s reliability and high availability were also a
crucial factor in the decision. Even if individual components fail or there’s
a power outage, communication still has to be possible. Thanks to
uninterruptible power supplies, emergency power generators, and a
redundant network design, calls can still be made between power plants,
even in a major blackout.
25
The benefits:
By unifying its communication infrastructure and by centralizing the
management of its HiPath network, the New York Power Authority has
achieved considerable savings in the area of maintenance costs. At the
same time, the road ahead is open for complete voice and data network
convergence, and the authority is planning a phased rollout of IP phones
and softphones in its offices. At the vast St. Lawrence-Franklin D.
Roosevelt hydroelectric plant (a monumental concrete structure with
fault-prone phone cabling in the walls), the transition to communication
over IP is imminent: Rather than open up the concrete to repair the
existing lines, the NYPA plans to run voice communication entirely over
the much more recent data network.
In the same way that HiPath Expressions and its messaging features help
to accelerate processes, the HiPath platform’s web-based network
management interface eases system administrators’ everyday tasks at the
NYPA’s locations. “At some of our larger power plants, the switch room is
five or ten minutes away from the administrators’ offices,” Schmid
explains. Being able to monitor and control the entire communication
solution from any desktop PC represents “a major productivity gain” for
company admins.
Case study
Unicer now offers better customer service in real time
The customer:
With more than 60,000 customers, Unicer is one of Portugal’s leading
beverage companies. Through a nationwide network of wholesalers and
retailers, the company sells soft drinks, beer, coffee and other beverages
in bars, restaurants, retail stores and supermarkets. Unicer has its own
field force, which is responsible for keeping the vending machines
installed at customers’ locations working properly.
The problem:
For some time, the company had been operating a call center located in
the city of Porto that customers could contact to report problems.
However, retailers’ and service technicians’ calls – on average, around
100,000 a year – all went to the same phone number. As a result,
reachability was poor. In addition, although Unicer had built up a
comprehensive database with detailed information on customers, call
center agents had no access to records of previous calls or service callouts
during conversations with customers.
It was also impossible to view individual service technician’s schedules or
set up appointments during customer calls. “The service we were offering
our customers was extremely inefficient, and the outcome was
26
widespread dissatisfaction,” recalls Fernando Leite, who manages Unicer’s
technical support services.
The solution:
The beverage company launched a project named SAT (Serviço de
Assistência Técnica) with the goal of setting up an improved technical
support hotline to enhance the level of service. Having won the contract
put out to tender and having held several workshops to define the project
schedule and design the application, partners Siemens and SAP embarked
on the implementation process.
A mySAP CRM field force module was added to the existing CRM system,
and the Unicer service technicians were issued mobile phones or PDAs.
Siemens installed a HiPath 4500 communication platform and a HiPath
ProCenter Advanced contact center solution. To gain maximum leverage
from the new real-time communication capabilities that the solution
afforded, it had to be incorporated seamlessly into the SAP desktop at the
interface and functional levels. With the aid of the CRM Ready Kit, an
integration package from Siemens, this succeeded rapidly and without
the need for any major programming work.
The benefits:
Thanks both to the close collaboration between SAP and Siemens and to
the CRM Ready Kit, it proved possible to implement a tailored solution for
Unicer in an exceptionally short space of time. And thanks to this
solution, the beverage company has greatly improved its service hotline’s
reachability.
If call center agents are unable to solve a problem for a customer
immediately by phone, they can now check the current location and
schedule of the service technician in the customer’s area and can
instantly arrange a visit. Access to the SAP back-office systems ensures
that the requisite logistical support is available, and once the
conversation with the customer is completed, all the information
collected during the call is transmitted to the technician’s PDA.
In addition, most of the callers are now identified automatically and their
calls are put through to employees with the requisite specialist
knowledge. These employees have direct access to all the customer data
they need, including records of prior calls and service requests. They now
also have access to a technical support database that enables them to
solve a large number of problems directly by phone. Alternatively, they
can immediately schedule a service technician callout. All this takes place
in real time during the call, and employees work with the familiar SAP
user interface, complete with integrated telephony features.
As Fernando Leite explains, this has dramatically accelerated processes:
“When a customer calls us with a technical problem today, we can
respond immediately, identify the fault, allocate the necessary resources,
and tell the customer when one of our service engineers will stop by – all
within literally minutes, and usually during the call itself.”
27
3. Optimizing customer relationships
Customers’ brand awareness and loyalty to particular companies are on
the wane. For this reason, efficient customer relationship management
(CRM) plays a vital role in the control of customer-related processes.
Phone-based support is the key here, because it offers customers the
fastest and most direct service. In the future, though, this on its own will
not be enough, because customers’ loyalty will depend largely on
whether companies can deliver the same quality of support on all
communication channels, including the Web, e-mail, and SMS text
messaging.
According to a study conducted by Call Centre Focus, a British industry
journal, consumers’ buying decisions are based to 70 percent on how
successful communication with the company is and to just 30 percent on
the actual product. This shows clearly the scale of the role played by the
way businesses interface with their customers. Tomorrow, call centers –
the initial point of contact today and, essentially, a business’s calling card
– will become multimedia contact centers and will play the lead role in
future CRM strategies.
The purpose of these centers is to improve customer satisfaction, build
greater customer loyalty, generate more revenue per customer, tap into
cross-selling potential, and utilize new, cost-saving communication
channels. The quality of a contact center is crucially important in that the
speed of response and agent competency are of direct bearing on
customers’ satisfaction. This applies in equal measure to phone-based
consultations, e-mail correspondence, and web chats.
Seamless integration with existing CRM solutions
If employees in contact centers are to be able to respond promptly and
competently to customers wishes or actively contact customers, they
need direct access to customer and expert databases, phone directories,
and CRM systems. Presence information can optimize processes in
contact centers because agents can see at a glance whether and by what
means experts are available. Rather than being connected repeatedly
without success, customers can be put straight through to the right
contact.
With skills-based routing, contact center software applies rules to
automatically route incoming calls to the employees best qualified to deal
with the issue in question from a virtual pool of specialists. Their
competency may consist of specific language skills, expertise in a
particular field, or the responsibility for a particular VIP customer. With
interactive voice response (IVR) systems, calls can be filtered by a voice
computer. Routine calls like inquiries regarding current bank balances can
also be processed cost-effectively on a purely self-service basis.
When contact center solutions are incorporated into existing CRM and
ERP systems, employees can call up current information through a single,
Customer relationship
management is
becoming increasingly
important
Presence information
optimizes processes in
contact centers
Integrating contact
centers into CRM
solutions boosts
productivity by 15
percent
28
familiar user interface, even on mobile devices. Field force workers, even,
can be reached through the contact center and consulted as experts
when issues are escalated. Monitoring functions enable supervisors and
management to obtain a rapid overview of the efficiency of customer
support services, and real-time reports on peak call loads, call queues and
thresholds are available whenever required. By incorporating contact
centers into electronic customer relationship management (eCRM)
systems, customer service productivity can be boosted by 15 percent on
average and spending cut by around 5 percent, according to a study
conducted by IDC. If a customer inquiry can be processed completely
when the initial contact occurs, customer care costs drop by around 30
percent.
A comprehensive contact center portfolio
With its rich solutions portfolio for contact centers, Siemens has created a
strong foundation for efficiently combining mobile applications, IP-based
platforms, and multimedia and e-business applications within an end-to-
end customer management strategy. HiPath’s open architecture is perfect
for creating an intelligent CRM portal that can scale in line with growing
requirements.
Depending on their scope, presence-based multimedia contact centers
provide advanced capabilities like skills-based routing, comprehensive
administration, reporting, monitoring, simulation, and HR planning tools,
and is able to incorporate mobility solutions. Even voice, e-mail, fax, IP
communication, and web-based contact capabilities can be fully
integrated, as can CRM software from Microsoft, SAP and Siebel on a
media-independent basis.
Figure 8: Sophisticated
contact centers with
presence management
can even tie in mobile
and home office
Making real-time
communication part of
an end-to-end customer
management strategy.
29
Powerful features like advanced e-mail management and scheduled call-
back as well as basic functionality for an interactive voice response
system offer businesses a turnkey solution that’s easy to deploy,
configure and operate. Presence and collaboration features that allow
agents in contact centers to visually track the availability of managers or
specialists in particular fields make work easier.
If need be, individuals can be contacted for assistance by means of
nothing more than a simple mouse click. Intelligent call routing and
sophisticated reporting, available through a well-designed graphical
interface, also ease everyday tasks for agents and supervisors. An
associate desktop allows call routing to be expanded to take onboard
additional human resources at peak periods.
These human resources need not be concentrated in a specific location,
because contact center workstations can be set up more or less anywhere
– in home offices, in telecommuting centers, and offshore. Regardless of
their actual location, workstations belong to the contact center, both
organizationally and in terms of the role they fulfill. With a simple mouse
click, agents can also call on experts to provide additional support,
contacting them by DECT phone, voice over WLAN, or mobile phone as
necessary if they happen to be on the move.
A clear overview of the entire value chain
Today’s contact centers should not merely provide a high-quality,
customer-centric service. They should also work as profit centers,
delivering billable and profitable services that contribute to the value
creation process. Intelligent service engineering helps to meet these
requirements as exactly as possible. Following are some of the areas
covered by Siemens’ consulting services for contact centers:
• Review of current communication processes with regard to
reachability and efficiency
• Definition of inbound processes to ensure an optimum response to
and processing of incoming calls
• Incorporation of the requisite media for customer communications
and adaptation of these media in line with the relevant company
processes
• Optimization of customer servicing by incorporating customer data
into the communication process
• Creation of options for managing customer contacts and for logging
and creating statistics
• Adaptation of internal communication processes to streamline access
to, utilization and sharing of customer data
With Siemens’ HiPath Professional Services for eCRM, consultants begin
by thoroughly examining how a company interacts with its customers
and then optimize customer management along the entire value chain,
Tying in external
workers is no problem
Intelligent service
engineering turns
contact centers into
profit centers
30
targeting everything from workstation configurations and process design
to innovative customer retention initiatives, and employee training.
Specialized solutions are available for a number of industry sectors,
including financial services, health care, hospitality and government. The
HiPath Hospitality Service Center for hotels, for example, provides a
central service hotline and supports the initiation and tracking of service
orders; it even provides features for a detailed analysis of service data. In
the financial services sector, contact center solutions from Siemens
support multi-channel sales, the cross-selling of banking and insurance
products, and the logging of insurance claims.
The benefits for businesses
Designed to cover a wide spectrum of needs, Siemens’ contact center
solutions range from simple entry-level solutions for service hotlines in
medium sized businesses all the way up to sophisticated contact centers
for professional call center carriers. The benefits include:
• Seamless integration with CRM applications
• Improved customer support through skills-based routing
• Integration of presence management and collaboration applications
• Connectivity for home offices and mobile workers
• Unified communications combining all types of communication
• Comprehensive consulting focused on better service
• Specialized solutions for industry sectors
Case study
The Farmers Insurance Group improves customer service
The customer:
The Farmers Insurance Group of Companies, headquartered in Los
Angeles, has a client base of around 9 million households with over 16
million home, automobile, business and life insurance policies. It is part
of the Zurich Financial Services Group and has a dense distribution
network with 7,700 branch offices across the United States. The insurer’s
phone help desk serves more than 30,000 insurance agents, their office
staff, and district managers.
The problem:
On average, the central help desk takes between 1,100 and 1,500 calls a
day, with teams of IT specialists doing everything from solving problems
like printers that won’t print to guiding users through the ins and outs of
mainframe applications. Farmers has noticed that the quality of the
technical support is of direct bearing on employee productivity. Says Pete
Pappas, Farmers’ project supervisor: “If we can’t resolve problems fast,
31
countless people-hours can be wasted, and that means dissatisfied
insurance policy holders.”
In the past, calls were routed to four groups of technicians rather than to
individual specialists with advanced knowledge in a particular field – a
less than ideal setup, given the complexity of today’s IT systems and the
immense variety of hardware and software solutions in operation with
the insurance company. In addition, the call center agents’ workload
varied greatly: Experts in one field were completely snowed under with
calls while experts in another had very little to do. It was impossible to
overflow calls to outside locations, and there was no detailed reporting
system in place. Also, the insurer wanted to incorporate web-based self-
services into the help desk to ease the burden on hotline staff.
The solution:
Farmers decided to install a new call-routing and management system for
its help desk. The company chose a HiPath ProCenter Advanced solution
from Siemens, not least on account of its support for skills-based routing
for voice, e-mail and web chat. Other compelling capabilities included
real-time reporting, and the seamless integration with front-office
applications and back-office CRM applications.
The new solution today supports 57 help desk experts and seven
supervisors, and callers are now routed straight to the employee best
qualified to solve the problem in hand. A help desk certification program
has been launched to qualify personnel, and a catalog of 20 personal
skills has been set up. These skills are stored as rules in the HiPath
ProCenter software so that the right contact can be identified
automatically for any given problem.
The solution also generates extensive statistical reports that provide
Farmers’ management with an overview of the problems occurring in IT
systems whenever needed. Frequently recurring inquiries – concerning
trouble ticket status and password resets after lockouts following several
failed attempts to enter a password – are now handled by a voice
recognition system (IVR), available around the clock.
One of the biggest benefits for Farmers is that the current
telecommunication system didn’t need to be updated or replaced to
support the new multimedia contact center. The HiPath IPortal included
the necessary IP gateway to integrate the system. “Hooking up people
working in home offices went smoothly too,” reports Pappas. Because the
solution also features HiPath Teleworking, Farmers can handle call peaks
better than before. Twelve employees at locations in Pocatello, Phoenix
and Aurora are automatically called in when HiPath ProCenter’s real-time
reporting shows a sharp increase in the number of calls.
32
The benefits:
In its first year alone, the HiPath IPortal saved Farmers more than
US$300,000, because none of the components in the existing
telecommunication system had to be replaced. Farmers was able to
substantially increase its help desk capacity without hiring more people.
Overall, the hotline’s efficiency improved greatly. Pappas also reports that
waits for callers have been reduced dramatically and that 80 percent of
problems can be resolved during the first call. Client satisfaction is much
higher now as a result.
The new self-service options have reduced calls to help desk employees
by as many as 150 each day, and the company expects the rollout of
HiPath ProCenter E-Mail and HiPath ProCenter Web Chat to ease the
workload still further. Says Pappas: “That will enable us to offer our
people nationwide a choice of support channels through which they can
resolve IT problems even faster.”
Case study
Chery Automobile builds on quality
The customer:
Chery Automobile is currently China’s eighth-largest auto maker. Since it
was formed in 1997, the state-owned company has advanced to become
the country’s fastest-growing car manufacturer. Working in collaboration
with top partners like AVL List, Lotus Engineering, Mitsubishi Automotive
Engineering, Bertone and Pininfarina, Chery develops and manufactures
world-class automobiles, and in 2003 built 100,000 units. The company
currently exports engines and five models of car, all Chery-designed and
manufactured, to 29 countries.
The problem:
Chery Automobile wanted to set up a new customer service center, fully
integrated with its current mySAP CRM system, at its primary location in
Anhui Province in Central China. The first project of this kind in the
world’s most heavily populated country, it called for comprehensive
consulting and a considerable system integration effort. At the same
time, it became clear that in China, too, price is no longer everything and
that quality is in demand.
The solution:
During the planning process, Siemens consultants proposed deploying a
HiPath 4300 system platform in combination with a HiPath ProCenter
Advanced contact center solution serving as middleware between the
data network and the telecommunication system. In addition, there was
to be an IVR/IFR solution for voice navigation and phone-based self-
33
service, plus a voice recorder to tape calls and monitor the quality of
service. Call center agents were equipped with optiPoint headsets.
Thanks to the HiPath ProCenter Ready Kit, integration with the SAP
customer relationship management solution was completed quickly and
easily. Users now have instant access to all of HiPath’s features, including
comprehensive reports, from inside their applications. Because HiPath
ProCenter supports conventional circuit-switched telecommunication
systems as well as IP-based solutions, Chery’s system is largely platform-
independent and future-proof.
The benefits:
Chery Automobile now has a highly advanced CRM solution in place with
efficient business processes and extensive databases. This means that
customer inquiries can be processed rapidly, completely and with a high
quality of service. Says Yang Xianping, Chery’s customer service center
manager: “Our new customer service center is highly productive and has
put us in a position to take better care of the people who buy our cars.”
HiPath ProCenter’s powerful reporting and routing capabilities in
particular are easing everyday tasks for service center agents.
34
4. Minimizing risk
As information technology and telecommunications continue to merge,
they are not just creating rich new opportunities but also risks. There are
two focal issues here: the need to increase network and system security,
and the need to minimize business risk by farming out processes to
external service operators.
4.1. Guarding against attacks with comprehensive security strategies
With the advent of voice over IP, many threats familiar from the world of
the Internet – viruses, hackers, spam, denial of service attacks, phishing
and pharming – are now relevant for telecommunications too. These are
compounded by newer threats like spam over internet telephony (SPIT),
clipping (impairment of voice quality through a flood of data packets),
and voice bombing (the flooding of a VoIP connection with recorded
voice messages).
Classic risks associated with telecommunication – the tapping of calls by
unauthorized individuals or the placing of calls at another’s expense –
also play a role. Other risks lie in the confidentiality of the information
carried and in the security of network access. Regular software updates,
too, harbor risks that need to be addressed.
Besides implementing specialized measures such as the encryption of
voice data with the Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP) – available
for the HiPath platform – businesses also need to adapt proven and
established safeguards from the IT world to protect converged voice and
data networks.
These include firewalls, content filters, virus scanners, intrusion detection
and intrusion protection systems, and secured data transmission on
virtual private networks (VPNs). In association with well-known partners,
Siemens offers an extensive range of hardware and software solutions as
well as related services.
Tailored security policies for every business
The HiPath SIcurity portfolio, which spans everything from security
consulting and network and system security to smart card-based
solutions and identity and access management, covers every area of risk
associated with IT security. What is particularly important here is to adopt
an individually tailored approach because every company has different
requirements and prerequisites. With careful calculation, especially with
regard to the return on security investment (ROSI), it is possible to decide
which security solution makes sense from a business and technical
standpoint in each specific case.
Special attention has to be paid to protecting mobile workers accessing
the company network from on the road, because the increase in
workforce mobility must not be allowed to open the gates to intruders.
Covering two areas of
risk
Threats from the realm
of the Internet are also
relevant for voice
communication
Mobile workers need
greater protection
35
The same applies to the protection of mobile equipment like notebook
PCs, which often carry highly sensitive data. Security loopholes that could
provide outsiders with access to confidential information such as research
findings or financial data have to be closed.
Siemens therefore recommends defining an end-to-end security strategy
that provides comprehensive safeguards to ensure the confidentiality,
integrity and authenticity of communications. Detailed security analyses
offering a precise appraisal of the situation within the company form the
basis for tailored security policies that can then be mapped to technical
solutions.
Smart cards: An important key to greater security
Smart card concepts offer a solution to several security issues at once
using just a single card. Intelligent, personalized chip cards are an ideal
and convenient way of managing not just passwords for applications,
servers and networks, but also access to rooms in buildings.
Multifunctional smart cards additionally support legally binding
transactions in e-business, online banking, health care, and e-
government. Putting all these capabilities on a single card affords
optimum protection against data loss, but also greater ease of use and a
reduction in costs.
36
This is why HiPath SIcurity smart card solutions provide features to
support building access control, electronic wallet functionality, IT
application access control, electronic encryption, electronic signatures,
and shared card and personalization management. As a global player,
Siemens works with hardware solutions based on Infineon chips and
equips its smart cards with CardOS, a specially developed operating
system compatible with major chip card standards worldwide that meets
the most exacting security requirements specified under Germany’s
Digital Signatures Act.
Before the cards can be used, general data and user-specific information
(e.g., application permissions and secret keys) have to be loaded onto the
microprocessor. Here, Siemens offers tried-and-tested card management
systems that allow the assignment of keys during chip-card
personalization and the management of the card owner’s personal data
to be carried out centrally. This ensures that management of the
infrastructure is simple and inexpensive and that processes can adapt
flexibly as needs and requirements change.
Siemens works with a large number of trust centers and personalization
specialists who manage the variants of the electronic keys and who put
Figure 9: HiPath SIcurity
smart card solutions
support a wide range of
security applications.
Turnkey smart card
solutions from a single
source
37
individual employees’ data onto the cards. Siemens also offers card
management systems in association with partner companies.
Granting the right permissions to the right people at the right time
Business relationships between companies today are becoming more
complex. Distinctions between internal and external systems are
increasingly blurred, because not just company employees but also a
growing number of external users – partners and suppliers, for instance –
need access to company data if the company is to succeed in competing
effectively. This kind of heterogeneous business environment represents
a mounting challenge, in terms not just of user and access management
but also security.
Making sure that the right people have the right permissions to access
the right resources at the right time is crucial to a company’s success. The
expansion of e-business, the increasing demands of IT security,
compliance with statutory requirements, cost control, and the ability to
respond rapidly and flexibly to changes are all important additional
factors that need to be taken into account. The answer to all these
challenges lies in a comprehensive identity and access management
system of the kind offered by the HiPath SIcurity portfolio.
An identity management system (HiPath SIcurity DirX Identity)
synchronizes data from separate sources, manages the digital identities
that are created and keeps them up-to-date (in a metadirectory). Role-
based, cross-platform provisioning of the data ensures that identities and
permissions are passed automatically to applications and services in order
to automatically regulate access.
The allocation of all user permissions takes place in a single step. The
privileges are authorized dynamically, are monitored constantly, and, if
the need arises, can be revoked immediately and entirely. The identity
management solution also handles web resource management. Access
management (with HiPath SIcurity DirX Access) provides authentication,
authorization, single sign-on, and access control for web applications, as
well as delegating the administration of users and workflow functions.
Identity federation enables the integration of identity information across
company boundaries to build secure business relationships.
Master data on individual identities is stored and provisioned centrally on
the HiPath SIcurity DirX server. DirX Extranet Edition can support
hundreds of millions of users for all kinds of directory-based e-business
applications.
Tight control of access to
sensitive systems
38
4.2. Minimizing business risk with HiPath Managed Services When switching to the convergent world, businesses also face economic
risks and are in danger of making misdirected investments. If the decision
to deploy new technology comes too early, it can lead the company up a
blind alley. And if it comes too late, the company can forfeit a crucial
competitive advantage. Here, HiPath Managed Services offer an
alternative to earlier solutions. These services represent a special form of
selective and intelligent outsourcing in which certain tasks in the area of
information and communication technology are farmed out to an
external service partner.
Cost pressure is still a critical factor but, increasingly, a strategic
dimension is coming to the fore: Outsourcing and outtasking today are a
central foundation for securing a company’s future competitiveness over
the longer term. However, due to negative experiences in the past,
companies are often leery of farming out entire business units to external
service providers, and are now looking more and more towards flexible,
tailored managed-services contracts as an alternative.
With this specialized form of outsourcing, an external partner doesn’t
execute business processes in their entirety but provides and operates the
infrastructure. The overall responsibility and the strategic direction,
however, can remain in the hands of the customer if required. In this
case, the customer merely rents or leases the requisite functionality from
the outsourcing partner at guaranteed service levels. And the customer
protects his assets because the systems and equipment remain the
property of the outsourcing partner.
Figure 10: Identity and
access management
with HiPath SIcurity
increases security and
boosts productivity
through the automation
of processes.
Avoiding bad
investments through
selective and intelligent
outsourcing
39
Telecommunications and networking are ideal areas in which to purchase
managed services. In the majority of companies, the network
infrastructure may be highly important but it’s rarely part of a company’s
core competency. In addition, the technology is both highly complex and
subject to rapid change. This calls for a specialist service provider capable
of deploying and operating such systems who also has a solid
understanding of the complexities involved in voice and data
convergence. This kind of service provider, thanks to his specialization
and the large number of similar contracts handled, is more likely to be in
a position to ensure that the systems are used cost-effectively and that
the company can achieve the potential savings.
Siemens offers this form of outsourcing, primarily in those areas in which
Siemens itself has developed and produced solutions: communication
infrastructure (IP and TDM) and solutions, security infrastructure, and
multimedia contact centers. In each of these segments, the company has
a modular portfolio that provides a basis for customer-specific operator
models. Each of these models builds on internationally recognized best
practices defined in the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). And to ensure cost
transparency and to enable customers to plan reliably, managed services
are generally invoiced on the basis of a flat monthly fee per port or per
user.
Scalable services and tailored solutions
HiPath Managed Services encompass a range of scalable services in the
areas of fault, configuration, accounting, performance and security
management that are designed to safeguard smooth business processes
at network and server level. These services can be used to build individual
solutions for each customer, and besides the operation and
administration of a company’s voice, data and security infrastructure,
they can also include the continuous monitoring of specified components
and the automatic monitoring of service level agreements.
The portfolio additionally includes monthly event reports, traffic statistics
(e.g., error, collision, load, and trend reports), regular recommendations
on how to eliminate bottlenecks and weak points, and the development
of topology plans. Outages and failures are rectified within the agreed
response times, either remotely or by an engineer on site. Thanks to
Telecommunications and
networking are perfect
candidates for managed
services
Figure 11: HiPath
Managed Services offer
tailored multi-location
outtasking services
based on a company’s
specific needs.
40
HiPath Managed Services, companies can focus their valuable resources
entirely on their core business. This enhances their competitiveness and
ensures that they align with their customers’ needs. Companies also
benefit from potential efficiency gains through technological
advancements – and at firmly calculable operation costs – while at the
same time minimizing their capital spending risk.
The benefits for businesses
Security threats and business risks along the road to converged
communications can be contained and controlled effectively with a
number of tailored product and service solutions. Following are some of
the benefits of Siemens’ offering:
• Detailed security analyses and consulting services create the basis for
comprehensive security strategies
• Network and system security provides protection against attacks
• Smart card-based security solutions control access to company
locations and systems
• Identity and access management ensure reliable control over users
and their privileges
• Managed services increase flexibility and reduce economic risk
• Scalable services enable individually agreed levels of service
Case study
The BMW Group manages its voice and data networks through a
single supplier
The customer:
The BMW Group is one of the world’s top ten auto makers today and
employs more than 104,000 employees worldwide. Group headquarters
in Munich is connected with around 200 locations around the world by
an extensive and widely ramified network. The BMW Group’s corporate
network in the greater Munich area has around 60,000 users. A wide area
network (WAN) connects this network via carrier services with BMW’s
other locations in Bavaria and the rest of the world. Parallel to this, the
Group has a network of Siemens HiPath platforms for voice
communication with fixed-line and cordless phones for around 70,000
employees.
The problem:
Siemens has managed the voice network around the clock with HiPath
Managed Services for a number of years now, whereas BMW’s data
networks have been managed by the Group’s own service department.
“In recent years, availability requirements have increased constantly but
the time frames available for data center and network maintenance are
constantly shrinking,” explains Gerhart Feissel, who is responsible for
41
operating the network infrastructure in the data and voice segment at the
BMW Group’s Munich location.
Smooth and efficient network management, he notes, calls for
substantial human and financial resources and could be handled more
cost-efficiently and with a better level of quality by a specialist service
provider. Executives at BMW AG therefore decided to outtask the
management of the company’s own data network to an outside operator.
Besides managing the network in the greater Munich area and its WAN
connectivity, the operator’s tasks included operating DNS and DHCP
servers and monitoring service providers’ internet access points and
suppliers’ extranet access.
Topmost on the list of priorities for the network management solution,
alongside high system availability, stood scalability and consistency. The
latter was important because the auto maker had reorganized internally
in an effort to introduce consistent processes worldwide. As a result,
considerable emphasis was placed on compliance with ITIL (IT
Infrastructure Library), the catalog of best practice standards established
worldwide for first-rate service management.
The solution:
As a professional service partner to the BMW Group, Siemens runs a
specialized network operation center (NOC) with a redundant structure
based on two locations in Cologne and Essen (Germany) to ensure
maximum availability and security. There is also a back level support
center in Munich which provides additional standby services on site as
required by the BMW Group. The Siemens professionals’ expertise, which
included extensive ITIL experience and strong skills in the field of
networking, was as crucial to BMW’s decision as the outtasking partner’s
international presence.
Monitoring, incident handling, and change management – the three
service processes – were gradually rolled out in BMW AG’s greater Munich
area network and in Siemens’ network operation center so that now the
same set of BMW and Siemens tools is available at both locations,
enabling the networks to be managed from the redundant NOC in North
Rhine-Westphalia as well as on site in Munich. Following a six-month
migration phase, the voice and data networks are now monitored
seamlessly, 24/7, by Siemens system specialists.
The benefits:
“With HiPath Manage Services, our service class has moved into a new
dimension,” says Gerhard Feissel, because continuous monitoring means
failures are identified immediately, and network and system operation
can be safeguarded and sustained around the clock. An additional
advantage is that engineers can fix network problems that occur at night
so that they don’t impact on production work the next day. Outages have
already been reduced substantially as a result.
42
A reporting system is in place to support continuous quality management
and provide an overview of all failures and subsequent repairs. The
outcome is that the operating costs for network management have been
reduced substantially even though BMW now has the high network
availability, scalability and consistency it wanted.
Case study
More efficient and cost-effective telecommunication for the Borealis
Group
The customer:
The Borealis Group is one of Europe’s largest makers of polyethylene and
polypropylene. Its products – made from refining oil – are sold on all of
the world’s major markets. These products serve as the base materials for
a large number of manufacturing products – everything from diapers and
packaging to home appliances and cushion materials for the automotive
industry to pipelines and electric cables. Headquartered in Lyngby,
Denmark, the Borealis Group has 5,100 employees and manufacturing
operations at locations in 30 countries.
The problem:
Given its highly international setup, the Borealis Group wanted to
centralize its heterogeneous telecommunication activities and optimize
costs. At the same time, it wanted to avoid impacting its bottom line with
capital spending on technology and installations that would soon be
outdated and could stand in the way of future cost savings. “So we began
looking for an outsourcing partner who was able to give us the
comprehensive support we needed to allow us to develop and expand
our core business,” explains Philippe Van Haren, IT&S Director with the
Borealis Group.
The solution:
Borealis has now contracted Siemens to manage all of its voice
communication systems in 12 key countries in Europe and the Americas –
in total, three-quarters of the Group’s entire infrastructure. As part of the
outsourcing agreement, Siemens not just optimized the infrastructure, it
also took care of negotiations with local telephone companies.
As part of the HiPath Managed Services concept for Borealis, Siemens is
also tasked with applying its knowledge of the global telecoms market to
constantly review and adapt communication channels as necessary in line
with local Borealis branch offices’ needs and the prices charged by the
local carriers.
The custom solution for Borealis includes comprehensive controls for
tracking the entire current infrastructure and the procedures and costs
involved, enabling the customer to assess the highly complex situation at
43
any time and to take action as appropriate. Van Haren is convinced that “a
long-term project like this can only be a complete success if the customer
and the contractor lay their cards on the table and build a strong
relationship of trust.”
The benefits:
With HiPath Managed Services, Borealis has a first-rate outsourcing
solution that meets its strict standards and requirements. At the same
time, Siemens experts have centralized and standardized the
infrastructure and services to an optimum. “The greatest benefit for the
Borealis Group to emerge from the outsourcing partnership with Siemens
is, without doubt, the drastic reduction in the total cost of ownership and
operating overheads,” Philippe Van Haren explains.
Case study
The Generali Group Switzerland plays it safe with identity and access
management
The customer:
Assicurazioni Generali, Italy’s leading insurer, is the third-largest life
assurer in Europe and controls 626 companies worldwide, including
Generali (Schweiz) Holding. The latter has a workforce of around 1,900
employees and four service companies, including units that manage
investment fund business in Switzerland and the Principality of
Liechtenstein, that complement its core operations.
The problem:
As part of a series of mergers and acquisitions, many formerly
independent Swiss insurance companies were united within a single
organization. This led to rapid growth in the number of IT users needing
access to a wide range of services. The data and applications they were
using were based on numerous different platforms operated by the
Generali Group Switzerland. In the past, manually assigning permissions
with the aid of paper forms appeared to work well, at least superficially,
but given the growing complexity of IT environments, the procedure was
not just costly and time-consuming but also exceptionally error-prone. To
increase the security of its IT systems, the company went in search of a
solution capable of automating the management of user privileges.
The solution:
Jürgen Lorek, IT professional and supervisor of the entire project,
designed a strategy around an upcoming standard known as Role-Based
Access Control (RBAC). The primary objective behind his strategy was to
eliminate the time-consuming, system-specific allocation of user
privileges and permissions and to introduce a strategic, centrally
managed directory service based on standards like X.500 and LDAP
44
(Lightweight Directory Access Protocol).
The HiPath SIcurity Meta Directory solution with its role-based system of
identity and access management corresponded exactly to the concept
mapped out by Lorek. “The descriptions, the structures, the semantics,
the language, the important role played by objects, the relationships – all
of this matched what I was looking for, one to one. I found nothing else
on the market that came anywhere close.”
The Generali Group Switzerland’s legal insurance department was chosen
for the initial rollout. Some 55 users needed differentiated access to a
variety of resources and services: sales administration, policy
management and claims estimation systems (all on Oracle) and Microsoft
ADS/Exchange. “We viewed the project as a business and organizational
challenge that we could overcome with the right IT tools,” says Lorek,
explaining his approach, which differs markedly from a purely
technology-oriented approach.
Accordingly, a large amount of time was spent on preparation, much of it
on describing specific job functions and defining them in terms of roles.
One key challenge was to put the human resources department in a
position to assign user roles for every single employee. As soon as the
name, address, salary, contract start date, effective start date, etc. are
recorded, the HR manager can assign a role specifically to suit the job. As
soon as this has been accomplished, a number of procedures are
triggered automatically: The entire user/role assignment is read out of the
human resources database and passed to HiPath SIcurity DirXmetaRole,
where the appropriate access privileges are assigned. “All of the
complexity of the paper-based, manual process that we used before this
project has been reduced to a single mouse click,” says Lorek, summing
up the outcome.
The following components of the HiPath SIcurity DirX product suite were
deployed: DirX V6.0, LDAPv3/X.500 Directory Server, DirXmetahub V6.5,
DirXmetaRole V2.0, Provisioning, and User and Access Management. The
identity master data is maintained consistently in the DirX Directory
Server and provisioned centrally. The Meta Directory Engine DirXmetahub
ensures automatic synchronization of the data across all of the connected
systems. HiPath SIcurity DirXmetaRole handles the provisioning. The
Generali Group Switzerland deployed three separate systems for
development, testing and production use of the DirX-based solution.
Siemens supplied the software components and the licenses, consulted
on the project, and provided a standard package of maintenance and
support services.
The benefits:
The HiPath SIcurity solution implemented by the Generali Group
Switzerland enables cross-platform resource provisioning. The roles, role
hierarchies, relationships and restrictions defined reflect the levels of
responsibility and tasks assigned to persons in specific jobs. This has
greatly increased the security of the Generali Group Switzerland’s systems
and reduced the risk of abuse and potential damage for the insurer.
45
5. Siemens One: Industry solutions from a single source
Siemens Communications (Com) is the world leader when it comes to
innovation in convergent technologies, products and services for mobile,
fixed-line and corporate networks. Com, Siemens’ largest operating
group, has around 60,000 employees, does business in more than 160
countries, and in fiscal 2004 reported sales of approximately EUR18
billion. Siemens Com is the only vendor in the industry to offer customers
a complete and comprehensive portfolio from consumer devices to
complex network infrastructures for the enterprise and network
operators, plus related services in areas like security.
At the same time, as part of the Siemens One strategy, Com works with
other Siemens operating units to create synergies and to offer customers
complete, turnkey solutions. These end-to-end vertical solutions are
designed to meet the distinct and unique needs of specific industries and
segments. And because every customer segment has its own rules,
Siemens Com extends its reach in the area of information and
communication technology by drawing on the breadth of industry-
specific expertise available throughout Siemens as a whole. Because,
increasingly, customers want complete, tailored solutions rather than just
components. Offerings designed to support industry-specific business
processes are available for a number of sectors, including health care,
hospitality, financial services, government, events and venues, and the
automobile industry.
In the automotive sector, for example, business processes today extend
well beyond company boundaries and interlock tightly across increasingly
complex supply chain networks that unite a growing number of suppliers
and service providers. With HiPath Automotive Solutions, Siemens offers
tailored solutions and services for auto makers and their suppliers,
spanning the entire value chain. These solutions and services accelerate
processes, promote leaner structures, tighten cost management, and
open up new customer care channels.
It’s much the same with the hotel industry: HiPath Hospitality Solutions
expedite hotels’ internal processes and help hotel operators to streamline
their human resources management. Siemens’ solutions not only help to
track and fulfill guests’ wishes, they also record and analyze important
data and information. Intelligent reports, available whenever needed,
offer hotel management an overview of the quality of service delivered,
plus statistics that help track and shape parameters such as customer
satisfaction scores and brand loyalty that are crucial to market value.
Thus, HiPath helps to achieve greater profitability and customer retention
in the hospitality sector.
46
6. Conclusion
Siemens HiPath stands for a broad spectrum of customer-focused,
innovative communication solutions. With HiPath, companies and
organizations of all sizes and structures and in any industry can gain
those crucial advantages and benefits that you can only get from IP-based
real-time communication and its integration with business processes. The
modular HiPath portfolio enables the creation of a secured and reliable
information and communication environment that promotes more
efficient business processes and better customer service. There are four
key aspects: control of convergence, acceleration of business processes,
optimization of customer relationships, and minimization of risk.
47
NT Network Termination
NTT Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation
OAM Operation, Administration and Maintenance
OAM&P Operation, Administration, Maintenance and Provi-sioning
OPEX Operational EXPenditures
PBX Private Branch eXchange
POTS Plain Old Telephone Service
PWE3 Pseudo Wire Emulation End to End
QoS Quality of Service
RPR Resilient Packet Ring
SDH Synchronous Digital Hierarchy
SHDSL Symmetric High bitrate Digital Subscriber Line
SIP Session Initiation Protocol
SLA Service Level Agreement
SOHO Small Office Home Office
SONET Synchronous Optical NETwork
SW Software
TV Television
VDSL Very high data rate Digital Subscriber Line
VLAN Virtual Local Area Network
VPN Virtual Private Network
WAN Wide Area Network
www.siemens.com/hipath
All rights reserved. All trademarks used are owned by Siemens or their respective owners.
© Siemens AG 2005
Siemens AG
Communications
Hofmannstraße 51
D-81359 München