At Call Center Demo and Conference this February in Austin, TX, there was a Texas-sized abundance of great ideas. We found some of the best ideas during our search for the finest new products on the show floor.

We're not gun-shy about seeking out the latest in call center technology, as attendees on our tours of the exhibit hall will attest. And we had much to see. Power over Ethernet displays. High-end forecasting software. Multimedia routing and knowledge management tools specially fashioned for small and midsized centers. It's no wonder that we will remember our inaugural call center event of 2006. The types of call center technology applications we saw in Austin are precisely what our industry needs to continue its growth.

BAY BRIDGE DECISION TECHNOLOGIES' CENTERBRIDGE 3.5

Workforce management typically refers to the processes of forecasting the number of agents you need and devising schedules for them. But workforce management can also inform your decisions, such as whether to pay overtime to existing agents, hire more agents or open new centers. After all, an accurate, realistic forecast is the difference between an organization that's equipped to assist customers, and one that isn't.

That's why we were impressed with Bay Bridge Decision Technologies' (Annapolis, MD) CenterBridge 3.5. This software lets you run simulations to determine which combination of hiring and overtime compensation has the best chance to achieve, say, the lowest abandon rate among callers, the highest rate of availability among agents, the most revenue for the company or any combination of these goals. With CenterBridge 3.5, you can apply this type of analysis among multiple locations to figure out which sites are most efficient at assisting customers, or to develop a staffing plan among all your sites.

If you assign agents to different groups to handle certain types of calls, or calls from certain categories of customers, CenterBridge 3.5 lets you see the effect of changes in staffing within one group on the efficiency of other groups. CenterBridge 3.5 also shows you how adjustments to a given metric, such as to abandon rates, can influence other metrics, like agents' availability.

What's more, the software provides you with a data warehouse that gathers information from your phone switch and payroll system, among other sources. Using this information, CenterBridge 3.5 enables you to forecast how vacations, training, sick time and attrition will affect your staffing and scheduling requirements. In addition, CenterBridge helps you gauge how a variety of activities within your company could impact your center. CenterBridge helps you estimate, for instance, how many agents ought to be available to answer calls after you mail your company's newest catalog to customers, or after the airing of a TV commercial for your company.

Lastly, it's worth noting that CenterBridge reports how accurate its forecasts actually are. By advising you on how to adjust the number of agents in a specific group, or how to set targets for various metrics, so that you can improve your center's overall efficiency, Bay Bridge's newest software raises the bar for forecasting to a higher level; that's why CenterBridge 3.5 earns a Best of Show award. 410-224-7778, baybridgetech.com

INOVA SOLUTIONS' POWER OVER ETHERNET DISPLAYS

In recent years, the big trend in electronic displays has been the emergence of plasma and liquid crystal displays as alternatives to more traditional readerboards that present letters, numbers and images using light-emitting diodes, or LEDs.

But LED displays may be poised for a comeback, thanks to another technological breakthrough: power over Ethernet networks.

Back in the 1990s, readerboard manufacturers began enabling call centers to connect their displays to Internet protocol (IP) networks. In time, IP networking became a standard for sharing call center data among not only telephony devices like phone switches, but also among displays. Yet although computer and telephony networks converged, power lines have remained separate. There hasn't been a way to circumvent the need to plug these displays into electrical outlets – that is, until now.

With Inova Solutions' (Charlottesville, VA) X Series OnTrack LED displays, your Ethernet network serves as the displays' source of power. To take advantage of this source of power, you may require additional equipment. At Inova's booth in Austin, for instance, the OnTrack display we saw was connected to a power over Ethernet network jack from 3Com. Nevertheless, the convenience of locating LED displays wherever you need them – and not only where you happen to have an electrical outlet – is an outstanding benefit of Inova's newest displays. 866-686-8774, inovasolutions. com

TALISMA'S TOOLS FOR SMALL AND MID-SIZED CENTERS

Quite a few attendees in Austin were from small call centers, and their interest in technology was no less than it was among their counterparts from big organizations.

One of the best new products we encountered on the show floor was Talisma's (Bellevue, WA) Talisma Professional Edition for small and mid-sized call centers. The suite comprises software modules that let you route calls, e-mail messages or live chat messages to agents. Talisma also offers software for building and maintaining knowledge bases. Best of all, Talisma enables you to choose between on-site and hosted implementations of the software.

With the debut of its suite in Austin, Talisma joins the growing ranks of software developers that are introducing multimedia routing and knowledge base suites for small and medium-sized call centers. (In case you're wondering what we mean by small and medium- sized centers, here's a rule of thumb. Small centers generally employ fewer than the equivalent of 50 full-time agents, with midsized centers employing the equivalent of more than 50 and fewer than 100 full-time agents.)

However you define the size of a call center, it was clear in the exhibit hall that high-end multimedia routing and knowledge base tools have become realistic options for many companies, no matter how big or small their centers are. That's good news for all of us. 888-462-3484/425-688- 3800, talisma.com