StarPound Technologies Inc. is an enterprise software and solutions provider specializing in cloud contact center solutions that are designed to streamline the way businesses interact, communicate, and operate electronically. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, the companyâ??s core mission is to dramatically simplify business processes and reduce their operational cost through its innovative platform. The company's technology is rooted in model-driven architecture (MDA) and metaprogramming, with its principal technologists having developed the first model-driven development engine, "MDE," for the popular Eclipse IDE in the late 1990s. This history of innovation underpins their current offerings, which are built on a philosophy of fully integrating communications, business processes, and the Web.
The central pillar of StarPound's offerings is its proprietary StarPound Platform. This platform is a complete, model-driven application development and delivery environment for creating fully converged and composite applications. The StarPound platform is particularly adept at leveraging network convergence, which is the merging of voice and data over the Internet. This allows a single application to simultaneously manage both voice and data interactions, providing a rich experience and sophisticated interaction flow for customers and agents alike. The company provides its software, on-demand infrastructure, and outsourcing services to enable clients to design, execute, and adapt all their interaction-based business processes.
The platform's key component is StarPound COREâ?¢, which is described as a fusion of Business Process Management (BPM), IP telephony, and enterprise web services (SOA). This technology allows developers and process owners to visually "mash up" voice, data, business processes, web services, and workflows. This visual, model-driven approach drastically reduces the time required for the development of enterprise applications, web services, and converged/composite applications.
Products and Services
StarPound Technologies offers a range of products and services built upon the StarPound Platform and StarPound COREâ?¢:
1. StarPound Cloud Contact Center Solution
The Cloud Contact Center is a complete, multi-channel solution that can either revitalize existing contact centers or be used to build new ones from scratch. The delivery service is on-demand, transforming traditional contact centers into models for next-generation service delivery.
* Converged Applications: The platform offers an array of innovative converged applications, including voice and Web self-service, collaboration tools, chat, and interactive live agents.
* Agent Workflow: The solution powers enterprise-sized call centers driven by model-driven agent workflows and business processes, ensuring tighter integration between voice systems, web channels, and internal business processes.
* Work-Item Management: The system handles the routing of work itemsâ??which can include incoming telephone calls, emails, chat requests, transactions, and other types of requestsâ??based on pre-defined criteria such as agent skills and permissions.
* Key Architectural Components: The solution includes specific components for management and delivery, such as the StarPound Application Server (handling requests, voice tasks, and agent workflow), the StarPound Work-Item Server (distributing work items to available agents), the StarPound Work-Item Console (WIC) which is the agent interface, and the StarPound Dashboard (providing real-time visibility into queues and statuses).
2. Business Process Management (BPM) and Application Development
StarPound COREâ?¢ serves as a powerful development engine that simplifies the integration of customer-facing business applications. It is a tool visually optimized for integrating voice, data, and the Web within a contact center or extended enterprise environment.
* Composite Application Creation: Organizations use the platform to create and deploy composite web and voice applications and to build front-end web and voice applications that interface with existing backend systems.
* Process Initiation: It allows for receiving and processing various interaction types, including incoming calls, email, faxes, and web service requests, and automatically initiating a process workflow from any of these entry points.
* Data Integration and Mashups: The platform enables the creation of custom "mashups" for screen pops, integrating data from multiple disparate backend systems (like CRM, Financial, and Knowledge Management) into a unified, browser-based solution for agents. Data retrieval uses web services or database functions for use in forms, voice prompts, outgoing email, or web service responses.
* Interaction Channels: The platform supports seamless integration of numerous interaction types, including web forms, web collaboration (chat, click-to-talk, click-to-callback, and page sharing), telephony (managing incoming and outgoing calls), and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menus with speech recognition and text-to-speech.
3. Enterprise Application Integration
Beyond contact centers, StarPound's platform is designed to help companies integrate their applications across the entire enterprise.
* Diverse Use Cases: StarPound is used in a variety of scenarios, including customer contact centers, B2B marketplaces, internet community sites, Enterprise 2.0 social networks, and advanced e-commerce and CRM applications.
* Workflow Automation: For workflow applications, the platform creates a work assignment and dynamically routes it through a defined process, leveraging criteria such as skills, permissions, financial costs, and workforce availability to ensure end-to-end task management.
* Outbound Communication: A notable application is the web-based "message blaster" for sending outbound phone, email, SMS, and other notifications as part of a campaign or process workflow.
In summary, StarPound Technologies Inc. does not primarily offer physical networking products but rather provides sophisticated software solutions that operate at the convergence layer of voice, data, and business process workflow, delivering unified, cloud-based interaction solutions for the enterprise.
