Jacada Defines Next Generation Contact Centre Desktop with Release of Jacada WorkSpace

Further enhancements to agent desktop solution move company’s product strategy forward and sets industry standard for next generation contact centre desktops

ATLANTA – April 12, 2006 – Jacada Ltd. (Nasdaq: JCDA), a leading provider of contact centre productivity solutions, today announced the availability of version 3.0 of its unified desktop solution, Jacada WorkSpace, and outlined the company’s vision and strategy to meet the demands of the growing number of contact centres that must modernise the agent desktop.  

Jacada WorkSpace 3.0, formerly branded Jacada Fusion Agent Portal, represents the next generation of the contact centre desktop, a single agent console that unifies customer interaction tools with a single access point to all the mission-critical applications required by the agent to effectively complete a customer interaction. Jacada WorkSpace 3.0 delivers a wealth of capabilities that enable companies to freely implement optimal contact centre processes and maximise customer service representative (CSR) productivity. Enhancements to this new version include universal agent capabilities, support for multiple, simultaneous call sessions, support for Linux servers, and Asynchronous JavaScript Technology and XML (AJAX) controls and features found in the new Web 2.0 rich client foundation.

“Most companies today utilise a wide variety of tools to service customers, such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems, computer telephony integration (CTI) screen pops, call scripts, knowledge bases, email, chat, and a growing number of business applications required to retrieve and input customer data,” said David Holmes, executive vice president of marketing for Jacada. “As a result, the CSR’s desktop has become extremely complex, resulting in costly operational inefficiencies and frustrated agents and customers. Jacada WorkSpace 3.0 is designed to remove complexity from the customer interaction process, allowing the agent to spend less time navigating systems and more time nurturing relationships.”

New Features in Jacada WorkSpace 3.0

Universal Agent. The Universal Agent feature in Jacada WorkSpace 3.0 automatically displays the right tools and applications on the agent desktop based on any number of parameters, including the task or role the CSR is to perform, the geographical location of the caller, the number dialled, or information captured from the interactive voice response (IVR) system.

Contact centres face pressure to find better economies in operations as well as to enable agents to respond more effectively to customer enquiries that concern multiple products or services. As a result, more and more businesses are turning away from the traditional idea of the specialist agent and towards the well-informed generalist or the universal agent. The universal agent feature of Jacada WorkSpace 3.0 enables one agent to handle enquiries from multiple geographies that may span multiple products by providing exactly the information and tools they need for each interaction.

Web 2.0 Rich Client Foundation. Web 2.0 has been steadily increasing in popularity, driven by consumer-facing applications, such as Google Maps. Jacada WorkSpace is one of the first business applications to leverage rich client, browser-based application design techniques to provide a rich user experience for the enterprise worker. Using Asynchronous JavaScript Technology and XML (AJAX), Jacada WorkSpace now delivers client/server-like features and controls in a web-based, thin client solution.  

For example, the AJAX implementation in Jacada WorkSpace enables the support of CTI integration for thin client desktops. As a result businesses can employ remote or work-at-home agents and provide them with contact centre functionality that is usually available only within the walls of a contact centre operation, such as screen popping, the technology that provides agents with the information that a customer has entered into an automated system so that the customer does not have to repeat his or her details.

Jacada WorkSpace also leverages AJAX to deliver real-time notification and alerts to the desktop without requiring a page refresh. Utilising AJAX also significantly reduces bandwidth and server load requirements.

Jacada and its Vision for the Next Generation Contact Centre Desktop

“Market experts and industry visionaries continue to place significant importance on the adoption of a unified CSR desktop,” remarked Gideon Hollander, CEO of Jacada. “But while desktop unification is a top priority in many contact centres, what this next generation desktop should actually be has, until now, remained undefined.”

According to Jacada, the next generation contact centre desktop must be an interaction hub built on an open architecture that leverages the latest advancements in web technology, and can be extended out of the contact centre into the enterprise and beyond.

The next generation desktop must go beyond simply providing a central platform for customer communications, but must empower the contact centre with flexibilty and agility in regards to the business systems required for customer interactions. Contact centres inherit a multitude of applications from the business and have been forced to design their processes around these applications.

“A next generation desktop needs to be built on an open platform, such as a service-oriented architecture (SOA), to work seamlessly with existing applications and technology. This enables the contact centre operation to align external business systems with their own internal processes, “ said Sheryl Kingstone, director, Yankee Group Customer-Centric Strategies. “In addition, an enterprise contact centre using SOA can now leverage components from their existing CRM application, such as Siebel, or create web services for legacy applications to create a true, real-time single view of the customer from data scattered across the enterprise.”

About Jacada
Jacada is recognised as a leading provider of contact centre productivity solutions. The company’s solutions help customers rapidly simplify and improve high-value business processes without the need for long and expensive systems replacement projects.

Jacada provides two award-winning solutions that have been proven to make a significant impact on contact centre efficiency and effectiveness. Jacada WorkSpace is a unified desktop that incorporates all critical functions required by the contact centre agent to successfully complete customer interactions. Jacada Fusion is a process optimisation solution that leverages patented technology to enable contact centres to improve customer satisfaction and increase revenues by providing customer service representatives with more time for customer care and revenue-generating activities.  

By significantly reducing call handle times, training costs and error rates, Jacada solutions deliver a rapid, easily measured return on investment, with payback typically achieved in weeks or months. Jacada solutions are deployed in hundreds of contact centres worldwide, and to millions of users through self-service applications designed to off-load contact centre activity.

Jacada has over 1200 customers worldwide including many Fortune 1000 corporations and government organisations. Founded in 1990, Jacada operates globally with offices in Atlanta, Georgia; Herzliya, Israel; London, England and Munich, Germany. Jacada can be reached at www.jacada.com or at 1-800-773-9574.

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, such as statements relating to future financial results and plans for future business development activities, and are prospective. These statements include all statements that are not statements of historical fact and consists of those regarding intent, belief or current expectations of the Company, its directors or its officers with respect to, among other things: (i) the Company’s financing plans; (ii) trends affecting the Company’s financial condition or results of operations; and (iii) the Company’s growth strategy and operating strategy (including the development of its products and services). The words "may," "could," "would," “will,” "believe," "anticipate," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "plan," and similar expressions or variations thereof are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of the future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company’s ability to control. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors including the performance and continued acceptance of our products, general economic conditions and other Risk Factors specifically identified in our reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement for events or circumstances after the date on which such statement is made.  The Company cannot assess the impact of or the extent to which any single factor or risk, or combination of them, may cause. For a more complete discussion of risk factors, please see the Company's Form 20-F and other Statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Jacada is a trademark of Jacada Ltd. All other brands or product names are trademarks of their respective owners.

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Jacada Contacts:

Paul Sewell
770-352-1310 ext 383
psewell@jacada.com

and

Manuela Whittaker
IBA, PR for Jacada UK
01780 721433
mwhittaker@iba-europe.com


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