When it comes to technology purchases today, most companies find that cost and return on investment are kings. Long gone are the days when departments could make technology “wish lists” and have those wishes come true. More often than not, department heads need to justify every penny of expenditure and prove that it will bring more pennies in return. For contact center technologies – already consider cost black holes by many companies – this is doubly true.

Luckily for many contact centers today, the proposition of the call center on demand, or hosted contact center, has been a good one. Not only does it not require much by way of upfront capital, it can keep monthly costs (comparable to amortized costs, in the case of a premise-based solution) low since companies pay for only the capacity they need. (In the case of a premise-based system, they must be the maximum capacity they will need and let those licenses idle during quiet times of the year). A call center on demand solution can also greatly lessen the IT resources required, since the solution is maintained by the provider and not in-house.

But cost savings of an on-demand solution are about more than this. There are also benefits in the way the services are delivered, according to a recent blog post by hosted PBX (News - Alert) solutions provider Press8 Telecom.

“Cloud-based call centers leverage both the scale and economics of the internet to deliver enterprise-level strength, security and reliability without the cost and complexity of a traditional POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) setup,” wrote the company. “A great communication service for startups, these call centers also offer big company phone features, scalability and reliability without the upfront equipment purchases or ongoing operations burden.”

Some of these extra features include services that might have otherwise been cost-prohibitive for smaller companies, including inbound and outbound blending, skills-based routing, remote administration and remote working capabilities, enhanced security, reporting and monitoring, natural language processing, analytics and more .

The ability to integrate easily with other solutions is also key, according to Press8 Telecom, and may help save even more money.

“Cloud-based call centers with VoIP phone systems enable business to utilize UC (unified communications) communications integrated to optimize business processes,” wrote the company. “These call centers synthesize voice, text, chat, video, and even screen sharing into a unified communication experience. Most cloud-based call centers also integrate with Google (News - Alert) Apps and CRM suites such as Salesforce.”

In essence, companies can reduce their total cost of ownership while improving their contact center metrics and the quality of the customer support they offer, all  thanks to the on-demand call center solution. Managed correctly, smaller organizations can now offer customers the kind of functionality that only larger competitors were able to do…which can only be good for the bottom line.