INDIANAPOLIS & MONTREAL--Canadian-based outsourcer, Nordia, received the Interactive Intelligence Inc. (Nasdaq:ININ) Innovators Award last month for its IP-based deployment of the vendor’s unified, “all-in-one” contact center automation software.

An Interactive Intelligence customer since 2000, Nordia deployed the vendor’s SIP-based Customer Interaction Center^® (CIC) software to support one of the largest IP migration projects in Canada, with five distributed contact centers and 2,200 agents handling 100 million customer contacts per year.

Of its 2,500 global customers, Interactive Intelligence honors just one end-user annually with its Innovators Award, which is based on the most unique and extensive use of the company’s software, along with the ability to show tangible results.

Nordia best met these award criteria this year with a “virtualized” voice-over-IP network resulting in a return on investment in less than six months; a reduction in contact center services deployment time from several weeks to less than one week; a 25 percent increase in annual revenue through improved operational efficiencies; and decreased costs, including a reduction of 15 percent of its T1 lines – the equivalent of nearly $100,000 annually.

Nordia was also able to pass along a $500,000 annual reduction in toll charges to one of its clients, and the company eliminated the investment required to open a new site by improving remaining capacity utilization. Furthermore, a teleconferencing add-on module that the company integrated to CIC called the “Nordia Teleconferencing Solution,” which has generated revenue of about $10,000 per month, realized a return on investment in just over a month.

“We selected the Interactive Intelligence software based on its end-to-end SIP support, its flexible, single-platform architecture, and its breadth and depth of applications,” said Nordia’s vice president of information technology, Pierre Grimard. “By fully exploiting these attributes we’ve been able to deploy a ‘future-proofed,’ cost-effective, and truly innovative IP-based solution that provides maximum benefit to our clients.”

Nordia uses CIC’s full breadth of applications to optimize agent productivity at the desktop, including automatic call distribution, interactive voice response, conferencing, outbound dialing, multimedia recording and logging, and supervisory monitoring.

“Nordia’s deployment is not just impressive due to its size and extensive use of IP, but because of how the company has used CIC’s flexible customization options,” said Interactive Intelligence founder and CEO, Dr. Donald E. Brown. “For instance, Nordia uses CIC to route not just calls, but ‘generic objects,’ such as Web-based trouble tickets. It also uses TTY, a telecommunications device for the deaf, so CIC can process interactions from the hearing impaired. Through innovative uses of CIC such as these, Nordia has taken full advantage of the kind of customer empowerment we believe is the hallmark of our offering.”

Nordia has used CIC to centralize its multi-site operations through functionality such as common agent queues, which links agents across multiple contact centers, making more agents available to handle interactions, and also enabling them to request assistance from supervisors regardless of location. This centralized functionality has also enabled Nordia to simplify IT administration and management, according to Grimard.

“In our world of multiple services and sites, it would’ve been incredibly expensive to integrate and upgrade duplicate systems,” Grimard said. “This is compounded by the complexity associated with maintaining things like duplicate call routing rules. Using CIC running on IP to ‘virtualize’ our network, we were able to eliminate this cost and complexity, which has directly resulted in reduced staffing requirements and shorter hold-times.”

Interactive Intelligence honored Nordia with its Innovators Award during the vendor’s annual User Forum held in May at its global headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana.

About Nordia

Nordia, a world-class multi-contact customer care solutions provider, is part of one of the largest contact center networks in the world operating on three continents. Over 2,200 employees in five contact centres based in Quebec and Ontario handle 24/7 services in French, English and Spanish for Canadian and American companies in industry sectors such as telecommunications, financial services, banking, e-finance solutions, government, marketing, etc. Nordia’s extensive range of customized inbound & outbound services is designed to enhance its clients' reputation and brand recognition to help them retain their customers and to grow their loyalty. Nordia also offers specialized programs such as Directory Assistance, Teleconference & Relay services (Canada, U.S.). A fully integrated multimedia suite of e-mail, text-chat, fax, voice, as well as self-service solutions, IP telephony and transparent multi-site capacity are also part of Nordia’s numerous advantages. For more information, visit www.nordia.ca.

About Interactive Intelligence

Interactive Intelligence Inc. (Nasdaq:ININ) is a global provider of business communications software and services for contact center automation and enterprise IP telephony. The company was founded in 1994 and has more than 2,500 customers worldwide. Recent awards include the 2006 Network World 200, CRM Magazine’s 2006 Rising Star Excellence Award, Network Computing Magazine’s 2006 Well-Connected Award, and Software Magazine’s 2006 Top 500 Global Software and Services Companies. Interactive Intelligence employs approximately 525 people and is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. The company has five global corporate offices, with additional sales offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Interactive Intelligence can be reached at +1 317.872.3000 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; on the Net: http://www.inin.com.