Transera™ Communications Unveils Seratel™, the First On-Demand Global IP Call Center Platform; In-House, Outsourced and Remote Customer Care Agents United Through Virtual Call Center

Business Wire,  Nov 15, 2005  

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LAS VEGAS -- Transera(TM) Communications announced today the immediate availability of Seratel(TM), its collaborative call management software. Delivered as a service, Seratel presents groundbreaking tools for the widespread shift to decentralized customer service operations. Transera's Seratel on-demand call management software enables multiple enterprises to collaborate in providing customer care across organizational, geographical and technological boundaries.

"Conventional call center solutions require a huge upfront investment in costly equipment that requires ongoing management and maintenance fees," said Art Schoeller, senior analyst, CRM Strategies, Yankee Group. "With the deployment of next-generation networks and Web-based software applications, customers can deploy systems at a much lower cost, and have more flexibility and access than ever before. From a virtual point of control, agents can now be distributed anywhere in the world as long as they have a phone and PC."

"Enterprises are increasingly sourcing call center agents outside of their brick and mortar call centers. The market for multi-sourcing of agents is growing rapidly," said Prem Uppaluru, CEO and co-founder of Transera. "Today's call centers are characterized by disparate environments that include outsourced contact centers, branch offices, knowledge workers and at home agents. Transera allows companies of any size to rapidly deploy a feature rich call center -- anywhere in the world -- without any upfront hardware or software capital expenditures. In addition to the cost savings, Transera's on-demand service allows for easy set-up and administration of distributed call center resources, regardless of geographic location."

Through the official debut of Seratel, Transera helps organizations globalize, diversify and grow their call center operations to deliver exceptional customer care with no infrastructure investment required.

Global Dashboard: Seratel is powered by Open Midpoint Call Management(TM) -- a centralized point of visibility and control for managing and monitoring calls across global call center operations. With Seratel, executive management and call center supervisors can react immediately to changing business conditions and adapt global call management strategies in real-time. Businesses can match the fluctuating demand of calls with available capacity -- for any call and any agent, regardless of location or technology infrastructure.

Global Call Routing and Queuing: Seratel maintains a centralized queue that globally manages and distributes calls across organizational, technological and geographical boundaries. Traditionally, in multi-sourced call centers, calls are either distributed to remote locations based on static information, much like the lines in a grocery store, or enterprises install expensive proprietary call center solutions. With Seratel, companies can rapidly deploy a multi-sourced call center that manages customer calls in a global queue and intelligently routes callers to the next available agent at any remote call center, much like a bank teller line, enabling call centers to better utilize resources, lower administration expenses and extend the boundaries of their call center to include outsourcers, branch offices, home agents and knowledge workers. Transera empowers any business, on any budget, to deploy a world-class call center solution -- for a fraction of the traditional cost and set-up time.

Globalization of Agents: With Seratel, call center agents need only a phone and Internet connection. With no expensive hardware or complex software to install, agents simply download a Java applet from the Internet and log-in to Seratel as an available agent. Seratel's global dashboard provides supervisors with historical reports and real-time views of call volumes and agent activity across diverse locations, networks and call center technologies. Information is now at the fingertips of management and delivers the required tools to measure and monitor agent productivity and service levels.

Global Screenpop: To agents anywhere, Seratel provides simple screen pops with embedded URLs to their CRM application. Call centers reap the benefits of a screen pop without installing expensive CTI hardware and software at each service delivery location. Screen pops are presented to the agent when the customer call arrives, eliminating the need for customers to repeat information thus decreasing call handling time while increasing customer satisfaction.

Borderless Call Center Infrastructure

Seratel leverages open industry standards such as SIP, Web Services and XML, rather than proprietary mechanisms, eliminating complex integration requirements and significantly reducing maintenance overhead. By linking to multiple existing carrier networks based on off-the-shelf IP network elements, Seratel dramatically reduces call center cost of ownership and provides customers with freedom of choice. With Seratel, the network becomes the platform and applications overlay the infrastructure for the rapid deployment of value-added services.