Last week Ed Peters, CEO of OpenConnect briefed me about his company’s plans to help its clients make “process intelligence” more closely integrated into their multimodal customer care strategies. His visit came on the eve of the launch of Comprehend 6, which is the latest version of OpenConnect’s core product. The company, which tracks its history back to the early 1980s as a provider of SNA “gateways,” has evolved into a software and professional services provider concentrating on capturing the content of conversations and “voice of the customer” input across a number of channels and then performing analytics and pattern detection that help managers discover the “root causes” of problems and provide the sorts of reports that lead to process improvements that provide for a better customer experience and more productive employee activities.

Ed made it clear that (to paraphrase an old TV Show theme) “We have the technology” to capture and analyze the multifarious and multidimensional conversations taking place between and among companies and their customers. As discussed at the C3 Conference in February, the data and analytical engines have long been hermetically sealed in CRM or “knowledge management” systems. Many of these systems have proved up-to-the-task of aggregating input and activity streams from search histories, browsing histories, blog posts and the like. OpenConnect, with roots in business process management and a discipline Ed calls “Process Intelligence” has developed a way to interpret activities across multiple sources and deliver reports to top executives from multiple departments and disciplines to help them identify the root cause of problems and begin remediation.

The potential for supporting better customer care is very clear. Comprehend 6’s release also includes some pre-packaged “Solutions Kits” for such disciplines as insurance claims processing. The potential for multiple industries and for helping businesses to shorten the time it takes to detect and react to customer issues and initiate product or service refinements is promising.

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