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Interactive Intelligence's Interaction Process Automation (IPA) is a feature-rich sophisticated solution that keeps track of work, progress, people, skills, qualifications, availability and resources. It optimizes processes by automatically prioritizing and routing work to the best qualified and available worker - regardless of location - for timely completion.

To make the benefits of IPA a reality for companies, CollabGenis expanding its practice beyond migration to unified communications and improvements in contact centers to also include communications-based process automation, which IPA represents. It has become an Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert) IPA Preferred Consultant: one of the first consulting firms it says to achieve the designation, which requires participation in a portion of the Interactive Intelligence IPA certification class for resellers.

CollabGen is excited about the designation. The communications-based process field is one where it says significant and tangible return-on-investment can be realized. IPA accomplishes this by reducing costs and the time it takes for organizations to complete tasks.

Process consulting is necessary says CollabGen because the IPA product requires it for business process discovery, analysis including for ROI and design. This proven best practice ensures a given process is a good fit for IPA with a demonstrable ROI, and has been correctly re-designed for automation. Process consulting keeps the IPA deployment moving forward and maximizes success.

Consultants provide a neutral view of the organization and each functional area involved. They have clear understanding of how the customer interaction and the contact center impacts and how it is impacted by other groups within the enterprise. They are knowledgeable about customer life cycles, contact center operations, organization and technology. They can synchronize customer needs with solution functionality.

"The fact that the IPA is the first solution of its kind coming from a communications vendor is significant due to the advantage of having communications at the foundation of business process automation," said CollabGen's founder and CEO, Ed LaBanca. "It also means that designing and implementing IPA processes is very different from replacing or integrating communications servers (PBXs) and contact center systems.

"CollabGen is partnering with Interactive Intelligence to help organizations transform their business processes toward considerably more efficient task assignment and management. Initiatives such as this require consulting and project management experience with business process re-engineering and change management where different departments are involved in the process, and people's work routines are orchestrated in a more efficient manner. It's also part of an organization's IT framework and communications architecture. CollabGen has done a lot of research and work in all these areas which can help in the strategic and tactical planning process for IPA."

Interactive Intelligence recognizes the importance of consultants experienced in business process mapping and other related disciplines in order to maximize IPA's ROI. Business process mapping refers to an activity involved in defining exactly what a business entity does, which individual or team is responsible for a process, and how the success of a business process can be determined. Yet mapping a process is subtle and it requires experienced facilitators to get the best results, according to Interactive Intelligence founder and CEO, Dr. Donald E. Brown.

"Using the services of an IPA Preferred Consultant, organizations have the opportunity to capitalize on the benefits of reduced deployment time and costs as a result of in-depth business process discovery sessions, analysis, mapping, and documentation," Brown said. "Working with a professional in this area will also enable organizations to gain the knowledge, methodology, training and experience they'll need to perform future process automation projects on their own."