Ericsson, Siemens, Alcatel and Siebel

[Amezouj]

We are in process to install a virtual call center across 3 contry. Each contry have a diff PBX (Ericsson MD110, Siemens Hicom 300 and Alcatel 4400). We have make a choice for Siebel for the CRM tools.
But now we are looking for CTI link and we found Genesys a good solution. Now we only found that Siebel certified Genesys 5.0 and 5.1 for Siemens, Nortel, ... but not Ericsson and Alcatel.
Nobody have a remarque,a solution or mayby a way to find a solution.
Thk
Karim

[amezouj]

In fact (but mayby a concept ?) Genesys isolate Sibel from the rest of the contact channel (voice, email, web , ...) but in fact the prob with Siebel and Genesys is only when the agent do a login or logout or a pause. You need to customise the client part of genesys.
But my prob is that the custo is diff for this 3 PBX.
This is only a explication from some guys from siebel and other company, not the result of a test.
Karim

[Shiva]

I may be ignorant about this, but I think that the CRM interface
with Genesys should not have much to do with the switch because
TServer "insulates" the switch details from rest of the system.
The CRM interface happens on the desktop, wherein, the data
delivered by TServer to desktop application is parsed by the desktop
application and the desktop application then invokes CRM
functionality by talking to CRM applictaion's server.
So, CRM vendor should not need to certify the switch.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
Shiva

[Xiang]

You are correct, but you must keep in mind that if vendor does not certify a particular product, there is a very high chance that they will not support you when something goes wrong.
Are you sure that Alcatel does not mention Genesys as a compatible CTI product. I would imagine that
with Genesys acquisition by Alcatel last year all their sqitches would be fully Genesyscertified.

Just a few pennies for my thought

[Jim]

We are finishing up a Siebel installation and certification between Siebel and Genesys with our Lucent switches became a big issue. Siebel supported only to version 5.1.054 of the TServer (Lucent) which is a 1 1/2 year old release, there have been many patches since then. The switch they support is the Lucent Definity v6 and we are on a v8. Siebel will send out a team to certify the system but any upgrade (switch or Genesys) will require another certification. I had assurances from multiple people at Genesys, Lucent, and even a few at Siebel that the systems are fully backward compatible and will work but Siebel is still demanding to bring in a certification team or they will deny technical support. It's just a way for Siebel to get more money. If you have not signed a contract with Siebel get it in writing that they will support at least your current system without having to pay for the silly certification team. Siebel knew from day 1 what versions we were running but didn't bother to mention the certification until we were 9 months into the project. I have already tested CTI functionality and everything is working perfectly, (at least in a test environment). Siebel does look like a good product but they will nickel and dime you to death with extra "certification" charges not only with the CTI but everything else Siebel connects up to. We are on Call Center 99.6 and were thinking of just going ahead with Call Center 2000 to avoid some the certification headaches but were told that Call Center 2000 did not support anything higher then 99.6 other then Win 2000. Siebel should change to $$$iebel.

[Victor]

Karim,
are we talking here about simply passing the data to Siebel through Genesys TLib? Yes, for all of those switches you would have a rather different softphone; however, the difference has to do with the way call is signalled to the application, not with the way attach data is delivered to it.

So, yes, it is rather painful to develop and maintain three different versions, but the the interraction between TLib and Siebel would be the same in all of those cases, thus making your application development not as grizzly of a task as you would imagine.

What exactly are you trying on doing?
Vic

[amezouj]

Ok Vic

But if this is the only solution, do you know a solution to mix
the 3 clients (Alcael, Ericsson and siemens).
Why ? We have what we call a standard work station, with siebel client install, but we don't know with wich PBX the client is connect.

Thanks for your input.

Karim

[Jeff]

I have to agree with Vic (Victor?) here. you should be able to use TLibrary to access any switch compatible with TLibrary.

What do you mean agent does not know which switch he or she will be connected to? What about the physical phone? Or are you doing everything with VoIP?

Confused but ticking,
Jeff

[amezouj]

The agent is working first week in brussels (MD110) then next week in luxembourg then ...
And of course we are looking VoIP.
But the Agent have one login and the NT domain (then the profil) is the same across the 3 countrys.
Karim