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Exony Completes Successful Knowledge Transfer Partnership Programme with London South Bank University

31 Dec 2005

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships are government-funded programmes, designed to boost UK industry by providing enterprises with resouces to improve their market position. The government offers grants to both small and large companies looking for additional expertise and funding to improve their business performance over the medium term. The initiative seeks to strenghen competitiveness and wealth creation in the UK through the encouragement of innovation in the private sector. By forming collaborative partnerships between universities and expanding businesses, the KTP programme helps enterprises to access the knowledge and skills available in the UK.

Exony, founded in 1999, develops innovative next-generation software for the operation of telephone call centres. Its products allow customers to optimise contact centre performance, improving efficiency and reducing operating cost.

Recently, major businesses have invested in the development of telephone-based call centres as they sought to meet customer demand for more responsive services.  As more businesses have come to rely on call centres, the need to lower cost and increase profitability has grown.  Companies cannot afford to lose inbound calls, but many cannot afford to staff their centres with sufficient operators to put a voice to every call. Increasingly, companies are looking to IT solutions to optimise resources.

Exony recognised the market gap for optimisation software that could monitor systems and automatically route-manage calls.  In early 2004, Exony began a project with London South Bank University to develop a software product.  KTP recruited Ezzat El-Barbary to design and develop a user-friendly software system to improve virtual call-centre performance.

Ezzat began by researching the needs of the market and investigating current software offerings.  He then designed a software solution to meet this market opportunity, and went on to build and test design prototypes.   

The Call Centre Optimiser, the new software programme, manipulates queues of calls to allow businesses to service as many of their customers as possible.  Identifying an inbound caller by their account number, the Call Centre Optimiser can recall the caller by their account history.  Based on these details, the software will route the call according to the enquiry, preventing an unnecessary drain on operator resources. 

Steve Grainger, Senior Business Consultant and Industrial Supervisor at Exony, explains, “The product identifies people’s different needs based on their demographic information.  Organisations can cherry-pick which calls to handle and by whom.  The software’s artificial intelligence capability allows it to continually develop caller profiles, increasing response accuracy and effectiveness.”

“This product will change the way customers interact with call centres,” commented Rex Dorricott, Chief Operations Officer at Exony.  “The initial product will enable users to make informed choices about how they interact with customers.  Calls are routed based on client-specific information which can be tailored to include client history or where callers are within a business process.”
 
With no optimiser present in the current market, Exony can expect great success with the Call Centre Optimiser in both domestic and international markets.  At the cutting edge of call centre technology, Exony is building a reputation as a thought leader in UK telecoms software. 

Exony is now working to integrate their new product with others to develop a comprehensive call centre platform.   Steve concludes, “Leading this project has differentiated us from our competitors.  Working with KTP allowed us to develop a completely innovative product, which has extended our knowledge footprint.” 

Professor Allen Long is the Academic Supervisor from London South Bank University working on the project.  Allen has supervised over seven KTP programmes over the last six years.  He also works as the Head of Centre for Intelligent Business Systems, a group that applies artificial intelligence systems to business problems.  His wealth of expertise has been critical to the development of Exony’s project.

This KTP project has introduced artificial intelligence into Exony, and has allowed the university to enhance its own expertise and to gain experience of call centre technology.

Exony has already offered Ezzat a permanent employment position following the KTP programme.  A second associate is currently being recruited to continue developing the project. 

SOURCE: Centre for Knowledge Transfer Annual Review 2005