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Leveraging the Value of the Hosted Contact Center Model
The value of the hosted (also referred to as “cloud-based” or SaaS (News - Alert)) contact center model continues to grow, providing more and more companies, including some of the largest enterprises, with a favorable alternative to premises-based operations. Global market research firm Gartner (News - Alert) named cloud computing one of its Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2010, declaring the service an evolution of business no less influential than e-business. They predicted that 95 percent of companies using SaaS will expand or maintain their investments in 2010.
Users obviously appreciate this provision of scalable resources, software, and information, along with freedom from the responsibility of controlling a technology infrastructure. As the dynamic delivery model is now well-established and supplied by industry leaders , rather than the small, obscure companies making the initial offerings, the hosted contact center solutions become increasingly streamlined, supporting smooth integration into existing enterprise systems, and delivering quicker, more seamless implementation.
Businesses experiencing rapid growth, changing requirements, and outdated or unsuitable systems benefit greatly from the adaptable on-demand systems, as do new enterprises needing a fast, effective installation. The advantages of hosted applications include budgeting flexibility, reduction of internal IT support costs, on-demand capacity, up-to-date technology, rapid implementation and time to market, and a better focus on core business rather than operational tools, which all add up to more competitive performance and an improved customer experience.
To install a traditional on-premises contact center requires a large upfront capital expense, with costs involving software and hardware purchases, building the environment, providing dual power sources, and retaining skilled IT staff to determine what to buy, how to build it, and to support the ongoing process. The hosted contact center, instead of requiring that big initial cash flow, allows a company to “pay as you go.” It significantly reduces the costs related to internal IT support and avoids staffing and depreciation that can cost three to six times the software investment.
Many businesses undergo substantial cyclical changes in volume. Rather than building an internal system designed to handle peak demand but operating at a much lower rate the majority of the time, the hosted solution always offers the necessary capacity, accommodating seasonal fluctuations and typical ups and downs without sacrificing the customer experience.
Keeping up with constantly changing technology internally involves risk, cost and domestic IT dependency. A hosted provider stays up to date with current innovations and passes progressive, tested technology upgrades on to its clients as part of the service.
It can take six months to a year or more for a business to build its own large-scale contact center—finding proficient IT staff, picking the right vendors for software and hardware, putting all the pieces together, and testing and implementing the process. If a business is buying contact center operations as a service, all those functions are essentially prebuilt and just need to be customized and deployed, requiring a fraction of the time.
Why should a company whose business isn’t networks and operating systems have to set up servers and software? Those elements enable the business to run, but they aren’t what the business is about. The hosted contact center model allows a company to focus on its business core rather than buying, installing, building, and maintaining the operational tools to enable the business.
Research from Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) projects that hosted contact center spending will grow nearly five times globally through 2014, with 75 percent of the spending from small to medium businesses (with about 350 to 500 agents). The numbers demonstrate the current awareness in the industry that the strongest possible competitive advantage can be acquired by utilizing hosted services from the right provider.
Matt Bieber is president of Teleperformance (News - Alert) Interactive and can be reached at matt.bieber@teleperformance.com
TMCnet publishes expert commentary on various telecommunications, IT, call center, CRM and other technology-related topics. Are you an expert in one of these fields, and interested in having your perspective published on a site that gets several million unique visitors each month? Get in touch.
Edited by Tammy Wolf
