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Business process orientation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is an orphan, as few or no other articles link to it. Please introduce links to
this page from related articles; suggestions may be available. (October 2008)

The concept of business process orientation (BPO) is based upon the work of Deming (Walton,
1996), Porter (1985), Davenport and Short (1990), Hammer (1993, 1996 and 1999), Grover et al.
(1995), and Coombs and Hull (1996). This body of work suggests that firms could enhance their
overall performance by adopting a “process view” of the organization. Although many firms
have adopted the BPO concept, little to no empirical data existed substantiating its effectiveness
in facilitating improved business performance. McCormack (2000) conducted an empirical study
to explore the relationship between BPO and enhanced business performance. The research
results showed that BPO is critical in reducing conflict and encouraging greater connectedness
within an organization, while improving business performance. Moreover, companies with
strong measures of BPO showed better overall business performance. The research also showed
that high BPO levels within organizations led to a more positive corporate climate, illustrated
through better organizational connectedness and less internal conflict. Another empirical study
by Kohlbacher (2009) reveals that BPO is positively associated with customer satisfaction,
product quality, delivery speed and time-to-market speed [1].

For a central concept, one that has become something of a Holy Grail for 1990s managers, BPO
has remained remarkably hard to pin down. Its champions argue that it is a new approach to
management that replaces the rigid hierarchies of the past ("I report to my boss") with structures
that are much flatter, more cooperative, more process-oriented ("I report to my customer.").
Many of us have had experience with both types of organization and we know intuitively what
BPO feels like. Yet, if you're like me, you want a more solid foundation on which to make
decisions and recommendations.

Most of the literature on business process orientation has been in the popular press and lacks a
research or empirical focus. Although empirical evidence is lacking, several models have
emerged during the last few years that have been presented as the high performance, process
oriented organization needed in today and tomorrow’s world. Deming, Porter, Davenport, Short,
Hammer, Byrne, Imai, Drucker, Rummler-Brache and Melan have all defined what they view as
the new model of the organization. According to each model’s proponent, the “building” of this
model requires a new approach and a new way of thinking about the organization which will
result in dramatic business performance improvements. This “new way of thinking” or
“viewing” your organization has been generally described as business process orientation.

Process centering or building an organization with a business process orientation has led to many
reported successes. Texas Instruments, Progressive Insurance and American Standard have all
been reported, albeit anecdotally, as receiving improved business performance from building a
process orientation within an organization (Hammer 1996).
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Process orientation, and its relationship to improved cross-functional interaction, was introduced
almost fifteen years ago by Michael Porter. He introduced the concept of interoperability across
the value chain as a major issue within firms (Porter 1985). W. Edwards Deming also
contributed with the “Deming Flow Diagram” depicting the connections across the firm from the
customer to the supplier as a process that could be measured and improved like any other process
(Walton 1986). Thomas Davenport and James Short (1990) described a process orientation
within an organization as a key component in the “New Industrial Engineering: Information
Technology and Business Process Redesign.”

Michael Hammer also presented the business process orientation concept as an essential
ingredient of a successful “reengineering” effort. Hammer coined this term to describe the
development of a customer focused, strategic business process based organization enabled by
rethinking the assumptions in a process oriented way and utilizing information technology as a
key enabler (Hammer, 1993). Hammer offers reengineering as a strategy to overcome the
problematic cross-functional activities that are presenting major performance issues to firms and
cites many examples of successes and failures in his series of books and articles. Hallmark and
Wal-Mart are often put forward as success stories and IBM and GM as the failures.

Culture is a major theme in the examples cited. A “business process culture” is a culture that is
cross-functional, customer oriented along with process and system thinking. This can be
expanded by Davenport’s definition of process orientation as consisting of elements of structure,
focus, measurement, ownership and customers (Davenport 1993). Davenport also stressed
commitment to process improvement that directly benefits the customer and business process
information oriented systems as a major component of this culture

Finally, Hammer (Hammer 1993, 1995, 1996, 1999) described “process thinking” as cross-
functional and outcome oriented. He also used four categories to describe the components of an
organization. These are:

1. Business Processes
2. Jobs and Structures
3. Management and Measurement Systems
4. Values and Beliefs

[edit] The Definition of BPO

To establish a more solid foundation, I would like to propose a definition and an approach to
measuring BPO. The BPO concept has sufficient practitioners and researchers and has been
implemented in enough companies that we now have the information we need to develop a
testable statistical model. The trick, of course, is getting at that broad range of experience and
boiling it down in scientifically acceptable ways to a point where practitioners can use it easily in
the field.

Our approach to building this foundation began with an extensive literature review, interviews
with experts both in the U.S. and Europe and testing with experienced practitioners and experts
to determine the key definition and variables within BPO. Using various statistical techniques
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(domain sampling, coefficient alpha testing, and factor analysis), we both determined the validity
of various BPO variables and condensed those variables into a simpler composite list (survey
instrument) that offered easy use in measuring BPO within an organization (McCormack 1999).

Or research found that the practitioners and experts said a Business Process Oriented
Organization comes down to this:

"An organization that emphasizes process as opposed to hierarchies, a process oriented way of
thinking, outcomes and customers."

We also found that BPO also breaks into three elements:


o Process Management and Measurement – measures that include aspects of the
process like output quality, cycle time, process cost and variability compared to
the traditional accounting measures.
o Process Jobs – "product development process owner" rather than "research
manager".
o Process View – thorough documentation from top to bottom and beginning to end
of a process.

Call centre
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A very large collections call centre in Lakeland, Florida.

A call centre or call center[1] is a centralised office used for the purpose of receiving and
transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone. A call centre is operated by a company to
administer incoming product support or information inquiries from consumers. Outgoing calls
for telemarketing, clientele, product services, and debt collection are also made. In addition to a
call centre, collective handling of letters, faxes, live chat, and e-mails at one location is known as
a contact centre.

A call centre is often operated through an extensive open workspace for call centre agents, with
work stations that include a computer for each agent, a telephone set/headset connected to a
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telecom switch, and one or more supervisor stations. It can be independently operated or
networked with additional centres, often linked to a corporate computer network, including
mainframes, microcomputers and LANs. Increasingly, the voice and data pathways into the
centre are linked through a set of new technologies called computer telephony integration (CTI).

Most major businesses use call centres to interact with their customers. Examples include utility
companies, mail order catalogue retailers, and customer support for computer hardware and
software. Some businesses even service internal functions through call centres. Examples of this
include help desks, retail financial support, and sales support.

A typical call center worker's desk environment in Lakeland, Florida, United States.

A contact centre, also known as customer interaction centre is a central point of any
organization from which all customer contacts are managed. Through contact centres, valuable
information about company are routed to appropriate people, contacts to be tracked and data to
be gathered. It is generally a part of company’s customer relationship management (CRM).
Today, customers contact companies by calling, emailing, chatting online, visiting websites,
faxing, and even instant messaging.

Call centre worker at a very small workstation/booth, participating in a survey campaign.

Contents
[hide]

 1 Technology
 2 Patents
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 3 Dynamics
 4 Varieties
 5 Criticism and performance
 6 Outsourced bureau contact centres
 7 Unionisation
 8 Standardisation
 9 Mathematical theory
 10 See also
 11 References
 12 Further reading

[edit] Technology
Call centre technology is subject to improvements and innovations. Some of these technologies
include speech recognition software to allow computers to handle first level of customer support,
text mining and natural language processing to allow better customer handling, agent training by
automatic mining of best practices from past interactions, support automation and many other
technologies to improve agent productivity and customer satisfaction.[2] Automatic lead selection
or lead steering is also intended to improve efficiencies,[3] both for inbound and outbound
campaigns, whereby inbound calls are intended to quickly land with the appropriate agent to
handle the task, whilst minimizing wait times and long lists of irrelevant options for people
calling in, as well as for outbound calls, where lead selection allows management to designate
what type of leads go to which agent based on factors including skill, socioeconomic factors and
past performance and percentage likelihood of closing a sale per lead.

The concept of the Universal Queue standardizes the processing of communications across
multiple technologies such as fax, phone, and email whilst the concept of a Virtual queue
provides callers with an alternative to waiting on hold when no agents are available to handle
inbound call demand.

A typical call centre telephone. Note: no handset, phone is for headset use only.

Premise-based Call Centre Technology Historically, call centres have been built on PBX
equipment that is owned and hosted by the call centre operator. The PBX might provide
functions such as Automatic Call Distribution, Interactive Voice Response, and skills-based
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routing. The call centre operator would be responsible for the maintenance of the equipment and
necessary software upgrades as released by the vendor.

Virtual Call Centre Technology[4] With the advent of the Software as a service technology
delivery model, the virtual call centre has emerged. In a virtual call centre model, the call centres
operator does not own, operate or host the equipment that the call centre runs on. Instead, they
subscribe to a service for a monthly or annual fee with a service provider that hosts the call
centre telephony equipment in their own data centre. Such a vendor may host many call centres
on their equipment. Agents connect to the vendor's equipment through traditional PSTN
telephone lines, or over Voice over IP. Calls to and from prospects or contacts originate from or
terminate at the vendor's data centre, rather than at the call centre operator's premise. The
vendor's telephony equipment then connects the calls to the call centre operator's agents.

Virtual Call Centre Technology allows people to work from home, instead of in a traditional,
centralized, call centre location, which increasingly allows people with physical or other
disabilities that prevent them from leaving the house, to work.[5]

A predictive dialing system running out of numbers to dial.

Cloud Computing for Call Centres Cloud computing for call centres extends cloud computing
to Software as a service, or hosted, on-demand call centres by providing application
programming interfaces (APIs) on the call centre cloud computing platform that allow call centre
functionality to be integrated with cloud-based Customer relationship management, such as
Salesforce.com and leads management and other applications.

The APIs typically provide programmatic access to two key groups of features in the call centre
platform:

Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) APIs provide developers with access to basic telephony
controls and sophisticated call handling on the call centre platform from a separate application.

Configuration APIs provide programmatic control of administrative functions of the call centre
platform which are typically accessed by a human administrator through a Graphical User
Interface (GUI).

[edit] Patents
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Call centre floor during shift.

There is a large number of patents covering various aspects of call centre operation, automation,
and technology. One of the early inventors in this field, Ronald A. Katz, personally holds over 40
patents covering inventions related to charge-free numbers, automated attendant, automated call
distribution, voice response unit, computer telephone integration and speech recognition.[6]

A report on the performance of an outbound call centre agent.

[edit] Dynamics
Types of calls are often divided into outbound and inbound. Inbound calls are calls that are made
by the consumer to obtain information, report a malfunction, or ask for help. These calls are
substantially different from outbound calls, where agents place calls to potential customers
mostly with intentions of selling or service to the individual. (See telemarketing). It is possible to
combine inbound and outbound campaigns.[7]

Call centre staff are often organised into a multi-tier support system for a more efficient handling
of calls. The first tier in such a model consists of operators, who direct inquiries to the
appropriate department and provide general directory information. If a caller requires more
assistance, the call is forwarded to the second tier, where most issues can be resolved. In some
cases, there may be three or more tiers of support staff. If a caller requires more assistance, the
caller is forwarded to the third tier of support; typically the third tier of support is formed by
product engineers/developers or highly skilled technical support staff of the product.
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Call centres have their critics, some of which argue that the work atmosphere in such an
environment is de-humanising.[8] Others point to the low rates of pay and restrictive working
practices of some employers.[9][10] There has been much controversy over such things as
restricting the amount of time that an employee can spend in the toilet.[11] Furthermore, call
centres have been the subject of complaints by callers who find the staff often do not have
enough skill or authority to resolve problems,[12] while the dehumanised workers very often
exhibit an attitude of apathy to even the most abusive customer.[13]

Owing to the highly technological nature of the operations in such offices, the close monitoring
of staff activities is easy and widespread.[14] This can be argued to be beneficial,[15] to enable the
company to better plan the workload and time of its employees. Some people have argued that
such close monitoring breaches human rights to privacy.[16]

1. From a customer perspective, there is no way of telling whether or not you are calling
virtual call center or a regular call center. The customer will call the regular 800 number
and that call will be routed to a customer service representative at the virtual call center.
However, a virtual call center does mean that customers can call at their convenience and
not be limited to the business hours of a certain time zone, as reps are scattered across the
country and are able to work the hours that suit both theirs and the business' needs.
2. CSRs at their homes would start their day at their scheduled start time by simply turning
their home computer on, logging into their employer's system, plugging in their phones
and making themselves available to take calls. Calls are routed by the web-hosted call
center to an available CSR with the right skills set to assist the caller. A CSR will even
have access to managers and coaches if they need to transfer a call that they are unable to
resolve. Just like at a regular call canter, CSRs would have scheduled breaks that they
would take during their day, except that they would be at home. However, some
companies pay only for the minutes that the CSR is taking a call, meaning that CSRs can
be more flexible in taking their breaks.
3. The calls are directed through a web-hosted or on-demand call center provider. Just like
in a brick-and-mortar call center, calls are routed to available CSRs according to their
skills. Rather than having managers in a call center, companies can manage their CSRs
using monitoring software through the web hosted call center. Through the system, a
manager can monitor who is logged in and how many calls they've taken. If a CSR has an
escalated call in which a caller is requesting a manager, then the call can be re-routed to a
manager. And if a CSR has questions, he can get answers to problems via instant
messaging. CSRs are also given performance evaluation just like a regular call center. A
virtual call center will be able to monitor calls for quality control, and evaluations can be
given over the phone or through instant messaging. Training CSRs is done online using
tools such as web-inars.

4. How heavily your company should invest in customer service, whether you outsource the
whole operation or build up your in-house service staff, depends on the nature of your
business.

5. If you have, or are building, your own staff to handle sales and customer support, the size
of that staff will be one major factor in deciding whether you need to support them with
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call center technology. When you have 25 employees engaged in customer contact by
phone, you’ve probably reached the minimum size for a call center.

6. With an in-house call center, your employees use equipment you own. You’ll pay several
hundred thousand dollars to deploy a typical call center system, or about $2,500 per user
just for software (sources suggest you can amortize this over three to five years). That
includes everything from equipment to integration services.

7. The size of the company is not related to the size of the call center. A lot of small
companies do business over the phone, so a large percentage of their work is essentially
done through a call center. Ultimately call centers are there to support one or more
business objectives, and you have to understand those before deploying a call center. In
other words, if your business objective is to increase customer retention through customer
service, deploying call center technology makes sense, even if it means asking almost
every employee to staff it.

8. Having lived through the dot-com boom, you may be concerned about the reliability of
anything that’s not within your four walls. You may also be in a business, such as small-
scale investment banking, the defense industry, or other professional services, that prizes
security. In that case, you may see owning your own call center, and thus dealing with
associated security and privacy issues yourself, as a competitive advantage.

9. If you don’t require your own call center, the advantage of a hosted call center system is
simple: Someone else maintains the software, which means they can also upgrade it with
new features and amortize that cost over a number of clients. This means that even
though you have a small business, you can still use the latest features available to the
industry as a whole.

10. In a hosted scenario, your employees would use their own desktop computers to access a
call center system hosted by a third party. The cost is about $100 to $250 per month per
user, depending on the number of services and options you need (usually relating to
metrics and analysis). When you’re doing it yourself, you may have to pay an integrator
to bring in certain capabilities, and that can get expensive.

11. In fact, another trend in the call center space that benefits small business is the rise of the
ecosystem: groups of companies integrating capabilities from a group of existing vendors
that frequently offer their software on a hosted basis. That eliminates one integration step.
12. A call center is an office where a company's inbound calls are received or outbound calls
are made. Call centers are increasingly popular in today's society, where many companies
have centralized customer service and support functions. Call centers employ many staff
in customer service, sales, and support functions.
13. Call centers are often large offices staffed with representatives who either make or
receive phone calls. Depending on the size of the call center, a single office could have
anywhere from a few dozen to hundreds of telephone staff. Depending on the needs of
the company, call centers can make either incoming or outgoing calls.
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14. Some call centers focus on answering inbound calls, such as a bank that gives out a toll-
free number for customers needing assistance. In this example, call center representatives
can give account balances and take loan applications over the phone. Other call centers
focus on outbound calls, such as a survey company, where representatives make
outbound calls to ask people to answer survey questions over the phone.
15. Call centers can provide a number of advantages to companies. By centralizing
telephone-based service and support in one location, companies can easily adjust staffing
to match call volume. Call centers can be located almost anywhere, allowing companies
to take advantage of time zones and cheaper labor rates in different states and countries.
They also centralize the technology needs of companies, allowing major
telecommunications setups to be installed in a small handful of call centers instead of a
number of smaller offices, making upgrades and training easier.
16. Many call centers use a number of different technologies to help improve performance
and customer experience. Inbound call centers often use automatic call distribution, in
which incoming calls are assigned to representatives in the order in which they are
received. Other call centers utilize call monitoring, in which customer calls are randomly
monitored by quality assurance staff to ensure that phone representatives meet customer
needs. Call center technology evolves constantly, helping call center staff assist
customers more efficiently and effectively.
17. Call Center
18. Call Center Crm
19. Virtual Call Center
20. Voip Call Center
21. Call Center System
22. Call Center Technologies
23. Call Center Solution
24. Call centers have been increasingly popular as outsourcing increases. With outsourcing, a
company contracts out some jobs to be handled by other companies. As it can be
expensive to maintain call center equipment and staff, some companies choose to
outsource their telephone functions to an external call center. In this case, external call
center staff can be trained to answer phone calls from a number of different companies.

is a phone center which provides help desk, customer support, lead generation, emergency response,
and telephone answering service, inbound response and outbound telemarketing services for a
company and in mean time its a much needed part.

The market of Call centers as increased rapidly in recent years, in whole world. As a result of the same
competition is also increased. By providing customer services, tele calling, backend, technical support,
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transactional process etc. Call Centers help the company to get maximum target. These services help to
tune quality programs to promote higher and steady levels of customer satisfaction
Benefits of Call Center Services :-
* CallCenters not only can keep existing clients satisifed, but they are also capable to generate new
clients for company.

* The major benefit is that clients can speak to a person directly at first time without any hold. Since
everyone hates having to be placed on hold or told to call back. Satisfaction of clients greatly increase
because of call centers services.

* There are many copanies all who do the business with clients all around the world. Many Call Center
representatives are multilingual. They may be able to help new foreign clients. It is also possible to have
a 24-hour Call Center service to support clients that are from different regions of the world and in
different time zones. So another benefit of having a Call Center Service for business is that they could
increase the number and type of clients.

* Call centers have range of relevant equipment so they are able to provide the required equipment to
their call center operater thus cost will reduce by this way.

* Make the most out of your investment and get a nice return by investing in your time wisely. Call
Center services will hopefully free up more for you to focus on the work you like and take more time for
marketing and advertising, to improve sales and projects.

* Call centers representative are capable to answer the calls professionaly by their intelligence and they
can provide required information to callers easily.

* Call Centers can provide the status and all data of calls such as percentage of hang-ups on answering
machines is significantly greater than a live answering service. And they also record all the calls as well.

* Some companies managed Call Center services based on the Cisco solution. CISCO provide great
features to call centers and they can trace more and more data by using CISCO. IP-based customer
interaction networks are enabling companies to measurably improve response time and increase
customer satisfaction while at the same time reducing agent costs and improving network efficiency.

These above-mentioned benefits can show up summary about the importance of Call Centers. Call
Center services are more beneficial and profitable for all type of business.

Many use the words off shoring and outsourcing interchangeably but in reality; there is a big
difference between the two. Since inbound call centers are the focus usually for these terms, we
are going to set our focus on these services. When a certain company outsources, it is buying the
call center services from a third party provider and in turn it provides the services for the
company. It does not necessarily mean you get services abroad; it can also be from one point to
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another point in the same territory.  If the company opts for offshore call centers, the company
shifts or moves the location the call center to another location abroad. This can also include call
center outsourcing. This could either mean that a call center can be owned or run by the same
company or it has been outsourced. It may seem complex but the most essential aspect of the
business is to get ready for a real expansion.

call center outsourcing

Call center outsourcing is a very popular option now for a lot of businesses. This is a platform
the businesses take to ensure that their presence in the customer service industry is strong and
that their overall presence can lead to profits. It is a trend that is required by many businesses
right now. It is important to find a dedicated 24/7 call center that can give the best services at the
most competitive prices. Part of the reason why a company opts for outsourced call centers is
that those that are from developing countries have lesser labor costs. Another aspect why people
opt for call center outsourcing is that the technology is usually dedicated already for the needs of
the company. When the call center is chosen by the company, they provide a customized plan for
the needs of the company.

When companies outsource call centers, they are much ready to accept expansion. Because call
center outsourcing costs less, the company can save more and dedicate the remainder of their
budget to expansion projects. The company will also have less stress in directly addressing the
customer requirements and what they will get is a rigorous analysis of the demands and needs of
the customers for a better business experience. With the research done for the company, the
business can grow towards the needs and requirements of the customers.

The company needs a call center service that is dedicated and is customer centric. That is the
reason why 24/7 call centers are present right now. With the high demands on service
availability, it is essential that the business take advantage of the various benefits of having 24/7
call centers for their business.
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Whatever your needs are and whatever things you do for your business, there are dedicated call
center solutions that can handle all the needs of the company. By addressing these aspects and
needs, the company can be on its way to becoming a reliable and top notch entity in the
international scene. It is essential to be on the cutting edge at all times.