Computer Telephony

The year 1997 saw

much activities in the Indian Computer Telephony (CT) market. The evolution of Indian

voice processing market from voicemail to real CT applications, which started in 1996,

continued throughout 1997. The year also saw the much-awaited segmentation in the CT

market with companies getting more focused on their positioning. And finally, voicemail

emerged as a separate market with mass-market characteristics. On the higher end, quite a

few CT-enabled call centres were deployed successfully in India. However, unified

messaging failed to take off.

The year 1997 also saw some clear trends

emerging in the market-place. Open system-based applications are making strong inroads,

thanks mainly to Dialogic’s initiative and the small Indian technopreneurs.

After a boom phase of two years that saw

the CT and voice processing industry strongly establishing itself as a promising segment

in India, things were not so good in 1997-98, primarily because of a slowdown in the

second half of the year. The market grew by only about 37.5 percent in terms of number of

ports, as opposed to a much more impressive 56.5 percent estimated by Voice & Data

in October 1997. From a market of about 12,000 ports in 1996-97, the market in 1997-98

grew to the size of about 16,500 ports.

The reason–virtually the only

reason–for this was the cash flow problems in most organizations due to general

recession in economy. Though many users are more than convinced about the need for CT and

voice processing technologies today, the decisions have been delayed because of the

cash-crunch.

Slowdown Is In Market Growth, Not In Activities SIZE="2">

It is a temporary slowdown, caused mostly

by the overall recession in economy. But the lean, active, and flexible CTI players are

showing their older cousins in the industry how to make the most of a difficult time.

Serious companies with long-term investments have focused on studying the user

requirement, something that they always wanted to do but never had the time. The efforts

are likely to pay off once the slowdown phase is over.

As usual, very few new users are expected

to invest in this period on CTI. A few companies in segments like IT, office automation,

and white goods have however taken the initiative. These companies are expected to invest

in call centres for bettering their customer service. In future, a few companies might

choose to supplement these inbound call centres with outbound ones for direct marketing

and sales support purposes.

Existing users of Interactive Voice

Response (IVR) and call centres who have made sizeable investments on this technology may

upgrade the system. This trend is already being observed. Users like Dialnet (solution

provider: Parsec), Sahara India (solution provider: SISL), and HCL Frontline (solution

provider: Parsec) have plans to upgrade soon. This will help the companies who work

closely with their customers and provide good and timely support. Because, normally a

decision to place the order on the existing vendor requires much less time than a decision

to change the vendor.

On the user side, this will help the users

who have invested on open systems, the cost of enhancement in case of open systems being

incremental and according to the exact requirements of the user, rather than being in

bulks like high-end proprietary systems.

Among user segments, banking/finance are

likely to continue investing during this phase. Telecom, seen as the hottest opportunity a

year back, has now taken the back seat. But it will catch up once the industry settles

some of the problems that it is facing. Even in this period, DoT will continue to make

investments in new systems in its circle headquarters and other major cities. In the areas

where new private operators are coming—like Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh,

Maharashtra, and Punjab—DoT will have to take the help of IVR and call centres to

counter competition. MTNL has already started planning for IVR for almost all information

dissemination. DoT is planning to install fully CT-enabled call centres for supporting its

National Internet Backbone (NIB) in major cities. It is likely to go for as many as 45

help-desk applications. That itself is a multi-crore opportunity. After the Internet

market is opened, almost all category A and category B ISPs will go for fax-based

information dissemination.

Open system-based solutions are likely to

consolidate their position further. Open systems are flexible to upgradations in smaller

increments. Those users, for whom CTI is absolutely critical, but which do not have the

requisite cash to go for bigger systems, will go for open systems.

The Industry SIZE="2">

The popularity of open systems in India is

largely due to the presence of a number of small Indian companies. The Indian CTI industry

today has typically four kinds of companies—the EPABX companies who have taken to

CTI, the IT integrators who have taken to CTI, focused medium-sized CTI companies, and the

small companies targeting the tender-driven DoT/Railways market. The first two categories

till now dominated the scene with major installations. Examples include Tata

Telecom/Lucent, Global/Nortel and Usha/Tadiran in the first category. Among the IT

companies are HCL, Wipro, Tata IBM, and Tata Infotech. The latter two have been active of

late but are doing well.

In the third category are companies like

Parsec, Voxtron, ICSS, and SISL—companies which have taken to CTI business with

sincerity and are focused on it. All these companies—except SISL—are totally

focused on CTI. The fourth category includes many companies which are unheard of till they

win some DoT tender and go into oblivion soon afterwards. These companies come and go. The

last two categories usually have open-system based solutions, but of late, even companies

like Wipro, Tata IBM, Nortel, and Tata Infotech are taking to open systems.

One decision by DoT is likely to affect

small developers of voice processing systems who almost entirely depend upon DoT.

According to sources at TEC, engineers at the Andhra Pradesh circle of DoT are developing

an integrated package which will include directory enquiry, fault repair service,

commercial services, and billing software. DoT is planning to use only this software

throughout the country. If that happens small companies will either have to look at other

areas where they have to strengthen their support or face extinction. And in the ensuing

scenario, spread of open systems will get a major jolt.

The Forecast SIZE="1">

• The victory march of
  
  open systems will continue.

• Telecom, when it
  
  recovers, will be the biggest buyer of CTI systems.

• Banking/finance to
  
  continue as a major buyer. IT and office automation will emerge as a user of call centres. SIZE="1">

• The government will be a major
  
  driver of technology and price.