Normally when an organization decides to use an e-mail automation product, its IT group handles the installation and operation. But there is a group of products in this market that is normally installed and configured by the vendor. Some of these vendors go further and offer their product's services on an outsourcing basis.
We looked at four products in this market: WebLeader E-Mailroom from ErgoTech International, Email Management System (EMS) from eGain Communications, E-Mail Option from Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, and Kana Customer Messaging System (CMS) from Kana Communications. These are big products in the sense that they address enterprise-scale e-mail automation. They are intended to handle tens of thousands of messages per day. Consequently, the products represent a significant financial and organizational commitment to implement and operate. Choosing between these products is difficult as they all have different approaches to solving the same problem.Leading the charge
In WebLeader E-Mailroom from ErgoTech, agents handle messages through a Web browser interface or a standard Post Office Protocol 3 client, although in the latter case a lot of the product's functionality is lost. The server software is written in Java, and the client and administrative browser interfaces rely extensively on JavaScript. The server uses Microsoft SQL Server or IBM's DB2 for its database. The administrative interface is complex because there are a lot of parameters to configure, but as the vendor normally installs the product, this is largely transparent to the network manager . . . until the network manager needs to modify the system. You need to understand a lot of detail even for casual management tasks. However, WebLeader lets you apply fine-grained control to user rights, message handling, message display and routing rules - just about anything you can think of for message handling. The client is easy to use. A feature to autosuggest responses from a canned response library is very effective. Another system design issue that impressed us was the ability to deploy server components on multiple machines to increase throughput.E-mail gains
EMS from eGain has an agent interface that's completely Web-based (Version 4.0 or higher browsers). It lacks the polished presentation of some of its competitors in appearance and ease of use. The server components run on Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 3 and Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle. EMS has a strong architecture built around an object model and a powerful rules-handling subsystem to classify, route and manage messages. There's a complex canned response subsystem that can be accessed directly from the agent interface or indirectly by macros - shorthand text that agents enter in the reply that are automatically translated to the official response text. The product has an outbound mailing system for e-mail campaigns and an extension interface for integration with legacy data sources and other trouble ticket management applications. We discovered a bug after eGain installed the product, and the company took it seriously enough to fly an engineer to our office to fix it. This was a surprising (but encouraging) thing to see during a vendor-installed product review. It implies that the Version 1.5 release of the product is still young. That said, there is a lot to like about this product.Kana can
CMS from Kana Communications has two agent interfaces: a Web browser-based client and a custom Windows application Kana calls the Power Client. A basic CMS server configuration runs on NT4.0 Service Pack 3 with Internet Information Server and uses Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 or Oracle 7.3 as its database. Web clients require Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0+ or Netscape Navigator 4.03. Power Client requires Windows NT Workstation Service Pack 3 or Windows 95 SPB. The Kana agent interfaces, especially the Power Client, are elegant and well laid-out. Reporting features are excellent. In particular, CMS has the ability through the Kana Classify subsystem to analyze message content to spot trends, an extremely useful feature for catching problems before they become critical. Another powerful feature is Kana's canned responses, called templates. The templates support automatically merging data from the sender's message with predefined text into the response. Kana also offers an API called Kana Link to build custom extensions for CMS and a mail campaign subsystem that lets you create and run custom mail-outs (Kana euphemistically refers to this as "direct outreach campaigns").Ambition and complexity
Of the products examined, the most ambitious by far is E-Mail Option from Genesys. E-Mail Option's framework merges messaging with Web form handling, computer telephony integration, facsimile, chat services and other communications media to create a comprehensive solution for enterprise call center operations. We looked at only the E-Mail Option and found a solid and comprehensive e-mail automation product, but one that is very complex - just starting it requires that a series of modules be loaded in a specific sequence. The product was created by merging Adante's eponymous e-mail automation system (which Genesys acquired when it bought the company) with Genesys' CTI call center product. The product is first and foremost a telephone call handling system; the integration of other messaging media, including e-mail, is grafted on to make e-mail messages, Web form data and all other media "simulated calls." This approach actually works well and provides a sound model for generic multimedia message handling. The product uses a central server process, the Email Server, and Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 Service Pack 4 as the data store. When a message is retrieved, Genesys' Automated Workflow Engine analyzes the messages content and, depending on rules you have configured, either generates an automatic response or routes it to an agent. Queuing and routing configuration is complex and is one of a number issues in which you'd want to rely on Genesys consulting services. To reach an agent, a routed message is turned into a simulated call by the E-Mail Adapter and handed to the Genesys T-Server. T-Server interacts with the Interaction Router to get routing instructions and, well, leaving out a lot of detail, the agent is finally notified that there's a message waiting. Agents interact with the server using a client application or Web browsers that run ActiveX and Java components. The system can autosuggest responses to agents, and clients have access to a centralized response library. We were impressed with the Genesys' E-Mail Option. It goes further than any of the other products in integrating all aspects of customer communication, and it has excellent reporting facilities. Our only criticism is that the architecture is a little disorganized, with a flotilla of interdependent servers that surprisingly can't detect when their dependencies are satisfied. Such kludgey architectural issues are likely to lead to instabilities and make us wonder what ugly problems are hidden. Genesys claims a new version due this year will streamline the architecture and add a number of features for improved automatic message routing.Enterprising vendors
While all of these products are ambitious in scale and complexity, we wonder whether their high price really buys your organization much more than the products in our main review. Given their cost and complexity, you need to do a lot of research to understand how these products might meet your organization's requirements and whether you can really use all the features they offer. RELATED LINKS Back to the main review of e-mail automation apps
Vendor sites:
ErgoTech WebLeader
eGain EMS
Genesys E-Mail
Kana CMS
