Application Design

• It will take as long to formalize a requirement as it took you to find out about it. For example, if you spent 30 minutes in a conversation with your boss to understand that an order has 5 possible statuses and that order numbers are 10 digits long, you will probably spend another 30 minutes writing what the statuses are, and identifying the appropriate actions to offer the caller when their order has a specific status.
  
• It will take the VUI designer about 1 hour per dialog state (each point in the call flow) to accomplish the task of designing the application. Building a Voice Site representing the states will take 10 - 20 minutes per state.
  
• As a rule of thumb, you may consider that any querying "dynamic access point" will take 4 to 8 hours of development. If the transaction performs a system update, it will take 6 to 12. This would encompass the time of designing the proper architecture for the scripts, implementing it and providing functional unit tests.

These, of course, are simple guidelines. There are many ways to accelerate or slow down these tasks, including the level of expertise of the people performing the tasks, whether they are being performed on a full or part time basis, or how accurate the requirements are.

Decide if you will need outside help.

Many Angel.com customers will perform all these tasks themselves. Some will seek advice from us. And a third group will prefer to buy a turnkey solution from our Solutions team.

• The Site Builder platform. Starting at $119.95 / mo, our plans give you access to the Transaction Page functionality you need for dynamic applications and 1,000 minutes to start out with.
  
• Auxiliary services:
• Voice Talent recording
  
• Web hosting for voice applications
  
• Components: Reporting, Sound file storage, Payment gateway integration
• Professional advice on the following subjects:
  • Requirements gathering / project management
    
  • Voice Interface Design
    
  • System integration
    
  • Testing strategies

How do you decide which services you need? Determine how many of the skills named in the first section you have in your organization.

• If you have the three skills, and time to implement the project, use the self-service approach. If you don't have the time, give Angel the specific requirements and we can implement the project for you.
  
• If you have two of the three skills, consider the complexity of your project:
  • For simple projects, I recommend the self-service approach. Take some time to learn about the missing skill. This can be enjoyable and knowledge your organization can re-use in the future. There are many resources available through Angel to learn more about IVR. We also have links to programming learning resources.
    
  • For complex projects, I recommend the Advisory approach. With an Angel Solutions professional to guide the learning process, your organization can quickly acquire the needed skills in a targeted manner. As your project evolves, the acquired knowledge will pay off.
• If you have one of the three skills, I recommend the turnkey solution approach. This will give your organization a solution that is custom-fit, that will make everybody productive from day one.

Discuss the project with us
A quick conversation with us can give you an opportunity to get any outstanding questions answered. As we work with many customers, we may be able to save you time by pointing you towards resources built through other projects.

We can also help you estimate the call volume your application will need to handle, and discuss any plans for growth. This can be a confidence building measure in many projects.

Finally, we can run a quick check on your plan and point at any problematic areas, or offer helpful suggestions to save you time and money.

Kick start the project

In summary:

• Once you know what you want to build ...
  
• ... have gathered the right resources ...
  
• ... are comfortable with the time estimates ...
  
• ... have chosen a preferred collaboration method with Angel ...