1394 — Envision Leverages eLearning Leadership to Bolster QM, Logging Solutions. By Donna Fluss

In the first five parts of this series, we examined why it’s important to invest in, or upgrade, quality management (QM) and logging applications in your contact center, and focused on four leading vendors: NICE Systems, Witness Systems, Verint Systems, and etalk. In part six of this series, we’ll focus on another leading QM and logging vendor, Envision.
 

Envision, headquartered in Seattle, Washington, was founded in 1994 by CEO Rodney Kuhn. It is a privately held company without venture capital backing and has been profitable since 1999. The company introduced its first call center QM product, SoundByte Enterprise, in 1996. In 2000, little-known Envision caught the attention of the call center market when it introduced Click2Coach, a product that seamlessly integrated eLearning with QM to address the contact center training challenge. Today, Envision is acknowledged as the contact center eLearning market leader. In 2003, Envision introduced a 100 percent logging product and an internally developed workforce management application that makes it possible to determine contact center agent staffing needs.

Envision has stayed true to its roots in the contact center QM market. Eighty-five percent of its 100 customers do both voice and screen capture and 60 percent use its eLearning module. Envision is a private company and shares limited financial information. The company claims 2002 revenues of $11.7 million and it’s estimated that they realized 2003 revenues of approximately $10 to $15 million. Envision did communicate that they were profitable.

Envision Products
The company’s QM/logging suite includes:

• Envision Quality Monitoring: Automated monitoring, streamlined evaluation and personalized coaching.
• Envision Logging: Full-time recording.
• Envision eLearning: Video authoring, content integration and training library.
• Envision Performance Suite: Includes three primary products: quality monitoring, eLearning and workforce management.
• Envision Workforce Management: Agent forecasting, scheduling and dynamic analysis.
  

Envision Technology
Envision products are Microsoft-centric and developed in-house . The QM and eLearning products are primarily coded in C++. The new workforce management application is coded in C#, using Java and HTML for the agent desktop. The products run on Microsoft Windows 2000, NT and 2003 servers and support Microsoft Windows 98, 2000, NT and XP Professional clients. They use a SQL (MS or Sybase) database and are open database connectivity (ODBC) compliant. Envision built its own screen capture software. Envision uses Dialogic voice cards in its QM application and AI-Logix cards for its 100 percent logging solution. Customers can purchase their own servers and send them to Envision for installation or Envision will purchase the server for the customer.

Envision Recording and Quality Monitoring
Envision provides 100 percent logging, quality monitoring, random recording, on-demand recording, live monitoring, event-driven recording and scheduled recording. Envision can do trunk side IP-recording. When doing on-demand recording, the call is captured from the time the agent or supervisor makes the request. The system maintains two copies of transactions when doing both 100 percent logging and QM.

Envision Differentiators:

• The leader in the contact center eLearning market.
• Very satisfied customer base with an impressive 97 percent on maintenance.
• Only QM vendor whose workforce management solution is part of their product suite.
• Focuses on agents, as is demonstrated throughout its product.

Envision Challenges:

• As the smallest of the top seven vendors in the market, the company invests much less in R&D than the majority of other vendors.
• U.S.-centricity, direct sales model and small sales force keep it from effective international competition, which is required to grow. (Envision opened a sales office in Australia in June 2004).
• Limited marketing investments. Should invest a greater percentage of profits into marketing initiatives to more effectively communicate its message to the market.

Looking Ahead
Despite its relatively small size, Envision has managed to deliver two market firsts—in eLearning and integrated workforce management. The company is expanding its footprint and product offering to catch up to some of its larger competitors.

Envision needs to build a strong worldwide partnership and distribution channel as well as invest more in marketing initiatives, to increase market awareness in and out of the U.S.

In my next, and final, article in this series, we’ll look closely at an emerging QM/logging market vendor—Magnetic North. This series is based on DMG Consulting LLC’s new 2004 Quality Management/Liability Recording Product and Market report (www.dmgconsult.com).

Donna Fluss

2004-07-30

Donna Fluss is the Principal of DMG Consulting LLC, delivering customer-focused business strategy, operations and technology for Global 2000 and emerging companies. Ms. Fluss is a recognized leader and visionary in customer relationship management and a highly sought-after writer and speaker. She is the author of the industry-leading 2004 Quality Management/Liability Recording Product and Market Report and the 2004 Guide to Successful Contact Center Offshore Outsourcing. Contact Ms. Fluss at [email protected].

Consultoria – Advice