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How Automating Communication Management Workflows Drives Digital Transformation: A Case Study with HM Health Solutions

Matthew Sentz

IT Manager, Integrated Communication HM Health Solutions

David Raanan

Partner, Starfish Associates

Introduction

Starfish is a leading software company providing communication management solutions for multi-vendor unified communication and contact center platforms for on-premise, cloud-based and hybrid environments.

We provide solutions for automation, self-service, and monitoring of communication platforms including Avaya, Cisco, Genesys and Microsoft Skype for Business. Our solutions are tightly integrated with leading IT business applications including ITSM such as ServiceNow, Identity Managers and HR systems.

Starfish automates millions of transactions annually for many of the world’s largest enterprises and Fortune 500 companies. Our technology empowers these enterprises to become more agile and respond faster to dynamic conditions.

Replacing manual processes with software/hardware based processes.

Example: Use of bar codes and bar code readers to replace price tags and manual data entry by retail cashiers.

Communication systems are still managed by a fair amount of manual processes.

Cumbersome manual processes should be transformed into automated, integrated workflows. This transformation would result in a more agile business with the capability to respond faster and more accurately to dynamic conditions.

Digital Transformation

• Growing complexity of managing UC and Contact Center applications, involving disparate systems from multiple vendors.

• Limited telecom staff to deal with requests and incidents.

• MAC requests typically take 2-3 days from submission to resolution, at a cost of $25 -$75 per request.

• Improved Telecom support SLA, reduced cost, aggressive ROI.

• Improve business agility by adjusting communication systems to handle dynamic business conditions.

The Case for Automating Communication Management

Most large enterprises are looking for ways to manage increasingly complex business communication environments by automating and streamlining their communication management workflows.

“Communications automation can help companies digitize efficiently and realize gains

in responsiveness, time, and agility.”

Dave Michels - contributing editor to NoJitter & analyst at TalkingPointz

Automating Communication Management Workflows

• Many processes of IT administration are already integrated and streamlined across multiple systems; like automated account creation using Identity Managers.

Automating Communication Management Workflows

• Automation typically stops as the gates of telecom administration. A user added to HR database may already trigger an IT workflow to create an AD user, set an email mailbox etc. Then a ticket is created for Telecom Admin for manual processing.

• Extending automation to communication management can have a dramatic impact on the quality of operations.

• Enterprises that automated communication management reduced the number of manually processed tickets/incidents by thousands per month.

Example: On-boarding

If the new user is a contact center agent:

• Allocate a station extension and login ID extension from ranges corresponding to the LOB and location.

• Create a station on CM with the LOB template.• Create an AVST mailbox.• Create an agent login ID and skill it based on the agent role.• Create user and configure settings on the NICE call recording server. • Send a Welcome Aboard message to the user and notification to the administrator.

If the new user is not a contact center agent:

• Allocate an extension from a range corresponding to the line of business and location. • Determine which PBX and voicemail system to use.• Create a station on CM with the LOB template.• Create an AVST mailbox.• Send a Welcome Aboard message to the user and notification to the administrator.

Example: On-boarding Workflow

Starfish

Provisioning

Solution

Create

CM Station

Create

AVST mailbox

Create

CM Station

Microsoft

FIM

1

2

Pho

ne #

up

date

Create

Agent login ID

Update CMS

Configure

Call Recording

Create

AVST mailbox

Send

Notifications

Send

Notifications

3

4

5

6

7

2

3

4

5

User Agent

Where do we start?

Automating Communication Management Workflows

2. Document the current sequence of steps used to implement the required workflows.

3. Document any desired improvement of the process (besides the automation aspect).

6. Monitor and optimize resource usage.

4. Identify which use cases are the most conducive for automation: which ones are the most common, or the most time consuming.

1. Document use cases that involve communication administration workflows.

5. Identify the appropriate trigger, and possibly the IT system that can generate the trigger, for each use case.

Use Cases: User Centric Workflows

Automating Communication Management Workflows

Life cycle events of user objects can be associated with a workflow:

• Add• Edit• Delete• Enable • Disable • Move

Natural integration to IT systems like HR databases, Directories, IT Service Management.

Configuration settings derived from user profile (or ticket data).

Use Cases: Device Centric Workflows

Automating Communication Management Workflows

Requests to modify a specific device (or account):

• Add device/account• Remove device/account• Modify device/account configuration (buttons, options, passwords)

The device/account is explicitly identified in the request, no need to derive information.

Triggering Workflow Execution

Automating Communication Management Workflows

• Integration with IT systems• HR systems (SAP, PeopleSoft, Workday)• Directories (Active Directory, Identity Managers)• ITSM (ServiceNow, Remedy)

• Provisioning Portals (for delegated administrators)• Single workflow• Bulk workflows

• Self Service Portal (for end users)• Provisioning SDK (for enterprise developers)

Triggering options can be combined to achieve optimal results.

ServiceNow integration demo

Triggering Workflows from ITSM

Triggering Device Specific Workflows

Triggering Migration Workflows

Automating Communication Management Workflows

Monitor and Optimize resource usage:

Automating Communication Management Workflows

• Visibility into resource inventory• Which resources are configured across all relevant

systems• Maintain resource to user association

• Audit configuration changes• Track resource usage and licenses• De-provision idle resources

Attribute to look for in an Automation Platform

Automating Communication Management Workflows

• Flexibility to fit into your environment and processes• Extensibility to evolve with your environment• Enterprise grade scalability• A vendor you trust

Starfish Automation Platform

Case Study

HM Health Solutions (HMHS) delivers business solutions to health plan payers so they can run their organizations efficiently in a competitive and ever-changing market. By offering cutting-edge technology and unparalleled industry knowledge, HMHS meets the many operational needs of health plan payers. HMHS is partnered with 13 health plans serving 10 million members. Headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, HMHS has more than 3,500 employees.

See: www.hmhs.com

Solutions:

• Enterprise Health Solution

• Information Security

• Data and Infrastructure Management• Voice and Contact Center as a Service (VCCaaS)

• HM Document Solutions

• Consulting Services

• Actuarial and Underwriting

Case Study:

Customers and Technical Landscape

VCCaaS (Insurance & Contact Center) Provider (Clinical) Customers

• 20,000+ users (domestic & int’l)• 4 Avaya CMs (w/ ESS)• 4 Avaya Session Managers• 4 HA SBC (Acme and Sonus)• Aura Messaging• Microsoft Lync (Click 2 Call)• CCElite• Avaya Experience Portal (800+ ports)• NICE Engage and WFM• Avaya Wallboard• Nexidia Voice Analytics• Virtual Hold• VeraSMART Call Accounting• Nectar UCMP• Empirix

• 15,000+ users• 8 Avaya CMs (w/ ESS)• 11 Avaya Session Managers• 4 Avaya SBCE• Aura Messaging• Microsoft Lync • SPOK• Voalte• Vocera

Case Study:

Since 2010, we have partnered with Starfish to design and integrate and implement solutions and workflows to achieve our organizational goal to Make IT Easy by:

• Streamlining, standardizing and automating labor-intensive, time-consuming process of on-boarding and off-boarding in a dynamic multi-vendor telephony environment

• Basic Telephone Users

• Contact Center Users

• Maintaining a clean environment and optimize license usage

• Reducing telephony Help Desk admin burden by delegating specific tasks to end users via a Self Service Portal.

• Implementing resource version control and auditing/reporting capabilities

Case Study:

Core Functions

• Provisioning/De-Provisioning

• Self Service Portal

• CM Connector

• Terminator

• Reporting and Auditing

• Avaya CM Auditor

• Avaya CM Inventory

• Administrative Support

• SPS Admin

• Help Desk Module (future module)

Case Study:

Provisioning and De-Provisioning: Self Service Portal

• Simple to use UI for provisioning resources

• Role-based feature and selection access and options to support multitenancy (e.g. Company)

• Provision Station, Voicemail, Lync Click-to-call, Agent Login ID, CMS account and update AD

Example: Basic Telephony User RoleExample: Contact Center User RolePortal Landing Page: New User

Case Study:

Provisioning and De-Provisioning: Self Service Portal

Case Study:

Provisioning and De-Provisioning: CM Connector

• Synchronization process that receives notifications from CM and Active Directory and processes valid event notifications and executes workflows accordingly

• Handles MACD made by admins outside of the Self Service Portal on station and agent login IDs

• Name changes in AD automatically updated on stations, agent login IDs and CMS data dictionary entries

• Available extension management for DID assignments

• Feeds data to CM Auditor and CM Inventory applications

Provisioning and De-Provisioning: Terminator

• Daily process that removes terminated users based on data feed

• Provides auto-recovery of DIDs, non-DIDs and licenses

• “Business Logic” to prevent auto-removal and notification of high-level executive terminations

• Potential to feed termination information to “decentralized” applications• Example: removal of station results in an event sent to NICE Engage for account disablement

Case Study:

Reporting and Auditing: CM Auditor

• Maintain a detailed audit database of all move, add and change transactions for configured resource types

• AAR, agent, announcement, ARS, hunt-group, mailbox, route pattern, signaling group, station, trunk-group, VDN, vector and VRT

• Search capabilities

• Ability to restore versions (e.g. revert station delete)

Reporting and Auditing: CM Inventory

• Representation of CM object types exposed for programmatic access via LDAP

• Data source exposes capabilities for automating billing and inventory reporting

Case Study:

Streamlining and Automating Provisioning Impacts

• 98% of MACD transactions on user object types are processed by our Starfish solutions• Stations, Agent Login IDs, Voicemail, Lync Click-to-call

• Self-service has significantly reduced the effort telecom analysts devote to moves, adds and changes allowing them to focus on career and skill development

• Self Service Portal is embedded into the new-user onboarding process for VCCaaS

• Aligning termination activity to enterprise IAM schedules

• The flexibility and scalability of the Starfish solutions allow us to quickly deliver telecom resources when onboarding new customers and locations

• The Self Service Portal is incorporated into the Service Desk FCR protocol

Streamlining and Automating Reporting and Auditing Impacts

• 95% of billing and charge back processes are automated

• Audit capabilities extremely beneficial when researching issues and reverting accidental changes

Case Study:

Our Roadmap:

• Help Desk Module to expose to our support staff • Consolidated user report, Polycom administration, Lync user access, manage AD “telecom” fields

• SIP endpoint provisioning

• Self Service Portal integration to additional Contact Center apps• CMS account management and password reset• Avaya Wallboard

• Enhancing integration with NICE Engage and WFM and Workday

• Identify and scope out opportunities for Starfish solutions in the Clinical environment

Why partner with Starfish Associates?

• Starfish has been a tremendous partner in advancing our automation capabilities

• Within our organization, Integrated Communication Solutions is a model group for driving Make IT Easy results and Starfish plays a big role in delivering on that goal

• Engineering team is first class and we enjoy working with them from design through implementation

Case Study:

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