EPICAcce, EasyRun LTD’s flagship product, is an all-in-one contact center solution for the small and midsized markets. The solution offers most functionality that a contact center requires, including ACD, IVR, reporting and agent desktop. EPICAcce also supplies advanced features like multimedia interactions, outbound dialing, call recording and an Asterisk’s open-source IP PBX.
EasyRun is a privately held supplier of contact center and voice solutions. EasyRun’s R&D and most of its executive engineering staff is located in Ra'anana, Israel. The company’s sales and support organizations, including the CEO, President and VP of marketing and customer services are located in Monroe, Connecticut. EasyRun has sales offices throughout North America. The Company employs approximately 50 employees which are distributed between the US and Israel. EasyRun has a worldwide customer base with customers located in North America, Australia and New Zealand, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East. EasyRun offers its solutions through certified resellers.
EasyRun is the OEM supplier of contact center solutions for 3Com (now part of HP). The company’s EPICCenter contact center solution as the basis of HP's (formally 3Com's) NBX/VCX automatic call distribution systems. In addition to 3Com and HP, EasyRun partners with Xorcom, IBM, Citel Telephone, Telrad Networks, Tadiran Telecom, and ShoreTel.
EasyRun offers EPICAcce in two packages: EPICAcce and EPICAcce Pro. EPICAcce is EasyRun’s introductory package. EPICAcce Pro is EasyRun’s more advanced package, offers among other features, IVR, skills based and statistical routing and CRM integration tools. EasyRun also offers several add-on modules to the Pro package, including dialer, multimedia agent, and call recording.
Both packages of EPICAcce consist of three components: Communications Server, EPICVisor, and EPIC Agent. The Communication Server contains the ACD, IVR, dialer, call recording software, and PBX in a single Xorcom 2U appliance provided by EasyRun or on any standard industry server. EPICVisor is the administration and system management application that is installed on customer supplied PCs. EPIC Agent is installed on individual user’s systems and phones and EasyRun supplies the agent interface in three flavors, a full agent desktop with and without softphone, and PC-less agents.
Although EPICAcce was released GA in June of 2009, it is functionally is a continuation of the EPICCenter application, which is installed and functioning in over 2,000 customer sites worldwide. EasyRun has designed EPICAcce specifically for the small and midsized contact centers and has created a product that is easy to install, use, and maintain. Furthermore, EasyRun product direction has enabled partners to quickly come-up-to-speed and to streamline its deployment. EasyRun loads all of EPICAcce’s functionality, except for administrative and agent functions, onto the rack-mountable Xorcom chassis. Upgrades and add-on modules are accomplished through license changes and can be completed within a business day.
The Asterisk PBX is an integral part EPICAcce and is a baseline component in both the EPICAcce and EPICAcce Pro packages. The PBX enables EPICAcce to be PBX-neutrality and allows the contact center solution to be deployed in environments where a PBX is already employed. The Asterisk PBX supports all types of traffic, including TDM, VoIP and SIP. It can also double as an enterprise’s corporate telephone system, simplifying support further and creating technical efficiencies by combining the PBX and contact center solution.
EPICAcce provide features that are common among rival solutions from larger vendors. The solution supplies multichannel communications, enabling business to cater to the communication needs of their customers and potentially increasing customer loyalty. The solution also supplies call recording, which is a requirement for many contact centers in the insurance and financial services industries. EPICAcce supplied cradle to grave reporting and include real-time as well as historical reports in tabular and graphical formats. Report data can be integrated into third-party reporting packages. Finally, EPICAcce offers outbound dialing, including predictive dialing and blended agents, enabling contact centers to provide proactive communication.
While EPICAcce provides required and many advanced features for the vast majority of small and midsized contact center, it lacks the innovative functionality found in solution from its larger rivals. EPICAcce does not include presence, unified messaging, or unified communications and it cannot easily interface easily with Microsoft Office Communication Server, Cisco’s TelePresence Server, IBM Lotus Sametime Client or other UC solutions. As UC becomes more accepted in the SMB market, a solution’s ability to provide at least presence may be a deal breaker. In addition, EPCIAcce does not include mobile solutions. The requirement to disconnect from a desktop is growing in parallel with the demand of UC applications.
EPICAcce’s multi-channel capability is an add-on feature to the EPICAcce Pro package. The world is a multimedia type of place and customers are requiring more companies to supply multiple communication channels. Vendors should be offering this as a baseline function. In addition, EPICAcce’s cradle to grave reporting only supports inbound data.
The call-recording feature included with EPICAcce is basic and does not provide the advanced quality assurance features (like an electronic QA checklists). Other all-in-one solutions, such as ones offered by Interactive Intelligence and Noble Systems provide more QA functionality, albeit with significant cost associate. Companies needing these functions may need to invest in a full features workforce optimization solution such as Calabrio One from Calabrio
EPICAcce is a recommended solution for small and medium contact centers. The amount of functionality rivals those of EasyRun’s larger competitors, but EasyRun offers its solution at a competitive price. EPICAcce is easy to install and easy to maintain, requiring little IT support. Finally, EPICAcce is flexible enough to be used in existing environments, eliminating the cost of “rip and replace” and decreasing the cost of professional services needed to install. Companies interested in learning more about EPICAcce should contact EasyRun directly.
Comments