A number of companies have recognized the benefits of moving specific operations to the cloud, but moving the call center to this platform can be daunting. When things have been successfully done a certain way for some time, convincing decision makers that the hosted contact center is a better choice can seem like an uphill battle – until the benefits are truly explored.

This Working Solutions (News - Alert) blog captured some of the very real benefits associated with the call center on demand, highlighting what a business may be giving up by insisting the on-premise contact center is good enough to ensure performance expectations are met. When cost and productivity improvements are explored, however, change can appear attractive.

Some of the benefits associated with the hosted contact center include the ability to backup data seamlessly and drive team collaboration, regardless of location. CRM (customer relationship management) tools and business applications are easily available in the cloud and the call center on demand can access the necessary tools when needed, paying only for what they use.

The hosted contact center has garnered much attention as a positive business move as the growth in cloud adoption continues. Morgan Stanley predicted last year that public-cloud usage would experience 50 percent compounded annual growth over the next three years. Forrester Research (News - Alert) also contributed to this data, suggesting revenues from PaaS, IaaS and SaaS services will increase from $15 billion in 2010 to reach $160 billion by 2020.

Features, benefits and performance are all used to tout why the call center on demand is the preferred platform among decision makers today, but the true driver to business applications in the cloud is cost. When managed services replace on-premise capabilities, costs associated with operations and hardware are immediately reduced.

Companies no longer need to purchase new servers to launch an application, and ongoing maintenance and building space no longer cut into the budget. When services are leveraged on demand, businesses are only billed for what is used and the hosted contact center manager enjoys complete visibility and flexibility to support mounting activity in a dynamic industry.

In fact, according to Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert), the use of the hosted contact center has been proven to be up to 50 percent more cost-effective than the on-premise solution. Cost benefits are greater the larger the organization. With the call center on demand, the same platform can be used at multiple sites to allow companies to quickly scale and accommodate growth. Likewise, call centers can become virtual to support the home-based agent or serve as a business continuity solution.

As business processes of all kinds continue to move to the cloud, it’s expected this platform will become the norm. Given the importance of cost containment in today’s call center, it couldn’t come at a better time.