How Sytel Approaches Development

September, 2017

Constant improvement and innovation is a necessary way of life in our industry. Find out how Sytel approaches development.

We have been asked to talk about how we manage our software development.  What reassurance can we offer to our own customers that we are getting things right and what lessons can we offer to others?

It is a tall order. Development strategy is a function of many things and no one formula fits.  For example, if we were an industry behemoth, we might well be busy paying lip-service to software standards, but working furiously to create our own as well, so as to lock users in. We are in fact the opposite of this. We provide a core platform for managing call center sessions.  On top of this we empower, if not actively encourage our partners to integrate all manner of third party applications. Of course, we have many applications of our own, but if they want to do their own reporting for example, then we will happily cooperate by supplying data feeds.  This means that a significant part of our development process is focussed on all the technical stuff to do with integration, so that it is as easy as possible.

What about our core platform?  A key challenge for any established software house is how to combine “the new” with its legacy systems.  One solution is to build a wall around your legacy systems and provide some basic interfaces.  This can work for a while but is usually self-defeating in the medium term.  Some new kid on the block is going to come along and eat your lunch with better-engineered systems.  So legacy systems are usually a lingering death.  Instead, we do continuous refactoring of our code, meaning that we are able to deliver new functionality to customers in an incremental way, preserving their investment in our software.  A good example of this might mean the move from say client server to web services.

But of course, refactoring alone isn’t the answer.  The real key to our development efforts is to have a very strong innovation mindset.  This allows us to do two things.  Firstly, to constantly extend the product to meet changing customer requirements.  And secondly, it allows us to intercept new technologies, such as WebRTC and build solutions around them, sometimes before our customers have even thought about it.

Perhaps the most exciting challenge for us is the move from Static Service Configurations to Service Orchestration.  This brings major advantages to our customers and we will touch on these in a forthcoming blog.

Staying relevant and competitive in this way costs time and money but if you want to survive and offer great solutions to your customers, there is no alternative.  No amount of marketing will compensate for software development which gets caught in a time warp. If you are not sure about this take a close look at some of the giants in our industry who have been failing over recent years.  The main reason lies in product and the failure to understand that constant improvement and innovation is a necessary way of life in our industry.

What We Offer

Sytel Limited develops and supplies Softdial Contact Center® (SCC) – multimedia, multichannel, fully blended cloud contact center solutions.

Available by subscription as CCaaS, fully managed and supported by Sytel, or for quick and easy deployment by partners and enterprise users.

All Sytel cloud components are secure, resilient and scale seamlessly from 10 agents to 10,000+, whether local, mobile or remote.

Flexible Contact Center Software

Softdial Contact Center™ – rich functionality, all-in-one, designed to deliver at scale

  • Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS)

    CCaaS for subscribers – global service​, with no upfront costs

  • Contact Center Platform – CCaaS Partners

    Build your own CCaaS business using the power and flexibility of Sytel software

  • Contact Center Platform – Enterprise

    High performance platform to drive contact center productivity – cloud, on-premise or hybrid

Blended Media Desktop

Fully customisable, multi-channel, multi-session workspace

Work Anywhere

Browser-based tools, no software installation required

Customise, Localise, White Label

Design all user interfaces to individual requirements

Integration via APIs

‘Swap out’ components and integrate with 3rd party apps

World Class Development

Continuous evolution pushing technical boundaries

Capabilities

Softdial Contact Center™ (SCC) is designed to be flexible, extensible and scalable, integrating with any legacy equipment, and meeting the most complex of requirements.

All Media Channels

Voice, chat, email, social, etc – fully integrated and blended

Agent Multi-Tasking

Work with multiple live contact sessions of any media channel

Dynamic Workforce Management

Optimise agent usage and balance workloads in real-time without human intervention, across all media channels

Predictive Dialing

Best-of-breed performance under compliance

Optimised Inbound Routing

Smart rules and ‘best-available’ decisions to drive great customer service

Agent Scripts

Help agents achieve and maintain excellence

Voice and Screen Recording

See and hear exactly how agents are interacting

Analytics and Data Feeds

Measure and evaluate performance at every level

IVR, Bots & Conversational AI

Design effective automated flows or integrate with 3rd party providers

Customer Journey Tracking

Stored customer contact history, to aid routing and add context to conversations

Modules

Drive operational efficiency, increase customer satisfaction & improve agent performance

Softdial One™

Highly flexible unified web UI for agents, supervisors and administrators

Softdial Scripter™

Create complex process flow scripts for agents, IVR, chatbots and other applications

Sytel AI Dialer™

Maximum predictive dialing performance, under any compliance rules

Softdial Pathfinder™

Precise routing rules for ‘best available’ connection

Softdial Media Server™

Core telephony functions to manage all inbound/outbound SIP calls

Softdial Reporter™ 5

Fully customisable performance stats, charts and reports, across all channels

Softdial Publisher™

Comprehensive data output to build your own reports

Softdial Recording Monitor™

Audio and screen recording of agent activity to ensure the highest standards

Softdial Campaign Manager™

Automation to optimise any outreach strategy

Softdial Repository™

Central storage and configuration of common resources

Sytel Global Compliance™

Flexible ‘no contact’ rules to protect contact center and consumer

Solutions

Performance and efficiency for a wide range of business applications

By Business Type

Enterprise

A full featured contact center software solution, designed for optimum performance at scale

Small/ Medium Business

Options for SMBs to subscribe to our full-featured cloud service managed and hosted by either one of our partners or by Sytel themselves

By Industry

Customer Service

Connect quickly to well equipped agents

Market Research

Best-of-breed predictive dialing with CATI integration

Debt Collection

Automated inbound/ outbound blending integrated with any debt management app

Sales & Telemarketing

Maximise agent productivity with best-of-breed predictive dialing

Healthcare

Secure, highly-configurable multichannel communications for excellence in patient care