There are many contact centers in the world, from tiny one- or two-person operations to huge companies with thousands of workers located all over the world. At some point, all of them need to make a decision: what type of platform will we build our call center operation on?

Today, in 2014, the answer is more likely to be a hosted solution rather than a premise-based one, according to a recent blog post on the Web site BPOVoice.com. This is a great option, particularly for smaller companies without large equipment budgets.

“In a hosted call center or contact center, the manager or business does not own the hardware on which the call center operates,” wrote the blogger. “As a result the business does not have to spend bundles of notes to buy expensive hardware and can use this money in expanding their business. This enables businesses in adding software as and when required and, hence, pay more attention into the development aspect. On the other hand, with a premise based call center, there is no cheaper and flexible option that business’ can incorporate with.”

Contact centers, free from software maintenance headaches, can focus more on their core responsibility: supporting customers. Since the solution is managed in an external data center, the software will be constantly upgraded and maintained, and the contact center always has access to the latest version of the solution. Then, there’s the matter of cost savings.

But it’s more than just cost and convenience. Customers today increasingly expect a robust, flexible, personalized and multichannel approach to their support issues, and these are difficult to provide with a rigid premise-based system. The hosted contact center solution has the advantage of being able to easily blend phone, e-mail, SMS and social media, allowing agents to serve customers across multiple channels with no loss of knowledge. Accomplishing the same task with a series of premise-based solutions is difficult if not impossible, and would involve significant costs that are simply out of the reach of most companies.

“A cloud-based call center such as hosted call center is also a better option for business funds,” according to the BPOVoice.com blogger. “Those who prefer a hosted contact center over a premise based call center have found that it results in a 20 percent cost reduction, a huge amount for any business. A recent Frost and Sullivan poll showed that the revenue for a hosted call center will reach a minimum of $1.5 billion by 2015, a definite boost to the industry.”