APPLICATION NOTE

Business Application Solutions

Collaborating the way you want

Overview

Video collaboration is transforming from a conference room application with pre-defined use cases into a critical communication tool being incorporated into everyday business processes and workflows. This transformation is unleashing a whole new sleuth of opportunities and advantages that require integration into industry standard business processes so that video collaboration is seamless, easy to use, and intuitive. Polycom has developed a

comprehensive suite of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for endpoints and infrastructure solutions that

unlock the potential and power of video communication services. These open APIs create opportunities for new innovative services to give companies a competitive advantage, by driving productivity and increased end user satisfaction. Polycom and Polycom partners offer a suite of off the shelf productivity applications and also specific applications for healthcare, finance and other industries. Additionally, applications can be either developed or modified to meet specific business requirements.

Polycom partners have an extensive portfolio of industry specific application solutions for Public Sector, Pharmaceutical, Financial, Health Care, Entertainment, Legal, Education, Retail, Manufacturing and others. These solutions incorporate video into applications and workflows ranging from video robotics, resource scheduling, call control/queuing, text indexing and video streaming.

Polycom has likewise developed several applications based on customer demand that are readily available and can also be customized. These applications include end user productivity tools such as Conference Control and scheduling solutions for leading UC partners. These applications are quick to deploy and provide immediate end user solutions.

Application development services are a very valuable option, providing outsourced development or supplementing in-house resources. The service offering provides blocks of hours of expert resources to supplement your existing IT design team or develop the entire application to your specifications. Through this service, Polycom will gather requirements, design, write, install and test the customized software applications.

Business application solutions from Polycom increase end user productivity, lower administration costs, and increase organizational responsiveness.

BUSINESS APPLICATION SOLUTIONS

Polycom Technology Partner Solutions

Polycom technology partners have an extensive suite of customer focused solutions for multiple industry segments. These innovative solutions are built by combining core competencies and products from each organization, expediting solutions to market that one company alone could not provide. While not inclusive, the solutions range from scheduling applications for major UC providers, resource management, and even robotics! For the expansive list and details, each partner’s solution can be found here: (http://www.polycom.com/partners/find-a-partner/application-partner.html)

Polycom Business Applications

Polycom’s pre-packaged collaboration applications have been developed to solve the most common requests from customers. These applications solve end user issues, increasing productivity, driving higher customer satisfaction and lowering administrative support tasks. The applications are focused on two areas – putting end users in full control of managing their conferences and scheduling video resources for companies who have investments in large deployments with UC vendors such as Microsoft and IBM. While these applications are off-the-shelf ready, Polycom can provide a level of customization to meet the needs of the organization.

End User Productivity Solutions – Conference Control Application This end user application puts the conference owner in full control of managing their conference and overcoming challenges presented during video calls. Typical challenges span from knowing who is on the call, recording/replay of the conference, and muting noisy participants.

Most people have experienced conference calls where a person connected via a noisy cell phone or pressed Hold and music started playing. Suddenly the whole meeting comes to a halt, creating frustration and delays. When this happens, the only options are to obtain IT support immediately or reschedule the call. The Polycom Conference Control web based application places the chairperson in the driver’s seat and with a tap of the button, allows them to immediately resolve the disruptive participant by muting the audio or disconnecting them.

BUSINESS APPLICATION SOLUTIONS

Many conference owners want to record the call or change security passwords. Typically this involves submitting a ticket to their video IT department. IT tickets consume a considerable amount of time for both users and administrators and the overall process is not conducive to responding to these types of requests. The Conference Control application provides the chair person or conference owner, the ability to stop and start the recording, play it back, and also change passcodes for their virtual meeting room. It provides other easy to use functions such as roster control, receiving and sending content and layout options, putting the chairperson in full control of the meeting, while minimizing administration support requests.

Scheduling Solutions Scheduling is a critical task that maximizes the usage of video conference resources such as bridges and video equipment. Providing end users with a familiar tool that is integrated into standard UC applications is paramount to driving satisfaction and increasing usage and adoption. Polycom provides scheduling plug-in applications for major UC partners such as Microsoft and IBM.

These applications allow end users to use Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar and Lotus Notes to schedule video resources for their meetings. When a meeting is scheduled, the invitation includes video conference details such as the click to join URL for Lync users, the dial information and passcodes.

BUSINESS APPLICATION SOLUTIONS

App Development Services

The possibilities are endless with application development services. Whether the goal is increasing revenue by on-boarding new customers through a video enabled website or saving money and increasing productivity by video enabling HR interview applications, the result is the same: a tightly integrated workflow that includes powerful video collaboration. Embedding video communications into workflows such as ERP/CRM applications provides a competitive advantage and can help drive incremental revenue, increased customer satisfaction and save costs. Furthermore, this application development service marries ERP/CRM applications with video communications without the dependency of either vendor to put it into their product roadmaps. The customer has full control of the timeline and end results. These business applications development services utilize the Polycom API suite for quick turn of new communication workflows and use cases suited for any environment.

While Polycom has assisted many customers in their business solutions, here are some example applications:

Video enabling web portals for customer service – new customers and support Text chats and click to call support is common place on many web pages for both customer buying and support. The benefits of these are obvious and have been proven to assist a buyer and convert them to a customer through the interaction of an expert agent. On the flip side, nothing beats talking to a live person when you have an issue with a product. With the Polycom App Development Services and API suite, these sites can now be video enabled providing the increased benefit of seeing the agent who is providing the assistance. It also opens up new possibilities such as deploying video kiosks to bank branches so that the mortgage broker experts can assist more people without actually traveling to each branch office. This increases the broker’s availability to help more new customers who might not have had been brought on board.

BUSINESS APPLICATION SOLUTIONS

Further support and resources

Depending on your interest, Polycom’s Developer forum offers developers access to documentation and an SDK (software development kit) for voice and video endpoints as well as the Polycom RealPresence Platform infrastructure. Common questions around getting started are published on this site and developers share and answer questions on many API topics. The SDK includes API documentation and sample software code for common applications. If you are designing the application in house, Polycom can provide assistance through purchasing of blocks of service hours. This site can be found at:

www.developer.polycom.com

Summary

The possibilities are endless with Business Application Solutions. To get a quick start, Polycom and the technology partners have an extensive suite of applications readily available to help customers unlock new revenue potential, increasing user productivity and driving down costs. If an app is not available to meet a particular use case, Polycom App Development Services can assist you in getting started using the comprehensive API suite. Video communications can now be seamlessly integrated into common enterprise and customer applications and workflows, driving your organization to the next level.

About Polycom Polycom helps organizations unleash the power of human collaboration. More than 400,000 companies and institutions worldwide defy distance with video, voice and content solutions from Polycom. Polycom and its global partner ecosystem provide flexible collaboration solutions for any environment that deliver the best user experience and unmatched investment protection.

© 2014 Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved. All Polycom® names and marks associated with Polycom products are trademarks or service marks of Polycom, Inc. and are registered or common law marks in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. No portion hereof may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, for any purpose other than the recipient’s personal use, without the express written permission of Polycom.