From Rockwell Iron to Cisco Software: A BPO's JourneyFrom Rockwell Iron to Cisco Software: A BPO's Journey

Cisco has proven itself the next-generation vendor of choice for Afni, a demanding outsourcer.

Mike Schwermin, executive director of IT services at Afni, a customer engagement business process outsourcer (BPO), has a technology story to share that will sound familiar to many large contact center organizations. It's a tale involving end-of-life legacy systems and next-generation technology choices.

I got to hear Schwermin's story at the Cisco Customer Collaboration Analyst Days held late last month in Austin, Texas. With its intimate nature, this event differs from the large Cisco collaboration-related events -- Cisco Live! and Cisco Collaboration Summit -- analysts typically attend. No more than 15 to 20 analysts attend Customer Collaboration Analyst Days, allowing for easy dialogue among presenters and attendees.

Mike Schwermin, Afni

As he related, Afni started as a consumer collections agency in Bloomington, Ill., in 1936. Today the company describes itself as a full-service BPO customer engagement organization with global operations centers. Afni has 6,500 employees, 5,500 of which work in the contact center operation.

In 2011 the company found itself at the end of a long road with the Rockwell/Aspect ACDs that had been in use in several cities -- "each ACD an island," Schwermin said -- since the 1990s. Extending the life of this legacy equipment was no longer an option. The systems were out of capacity, had zero geographic redundancy, and could only handle inbound voice interactions. Plus, they'd reached support end of life, he explained.

At the same time, IT was dealing with a set of centralized and disparate TDM PBXs. To support administrative employees, Afni had a Nortel Meridian 81C, an early Cisco Call Manager, and an Aspect ACD. Two of the three vendors' solutions had reached support end of life, software bugs were disruptive to the business, and the TDM systems required costly local T1 service and hardware.

In selecting new ACD and dialer technology, Afni conducted extensive RFI and RFP processes over a three-year period. It evaluated more than 55 specific features and more than 25 specific use cases to measure and score each vendor. After vetting approximately 10 vendors, it narrowed the list to a final two and, ultimately, selected Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise and several Cisco partner solutions. In a separate evaluation, Afni chose CDW as its implementation partner.

Why Cisco? Schwermin gave a long list of reasons, including a few I've highlighted here:

Afni planned a six-month deployment. However, Afni had an opportunity to work with a new client, and so asked Cisco to bring up a new contact center quickly, a net add to the initial deployment plan. "Sixty days later, we were taking calls in a new 350-seat center." Cisco's and CDW's ability to bring up a new contact centers on short notice instilled confidence that Afni had "made the right decision," Schwermin said.

In the 1990s, not only was Rockwell the call center market leader, but also the vendor of choice for "hard core" dialing environments like collections or reservations. Cisco has come a long way to be a next-generation choice of these demanding customers.

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