Staying ahead of the pack - Contact Management

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Unified Communications Cloud-based communications can offer contact centres costeffective, fast, and reliable access to a wealth of applications whether agents work at headquarters, at remote offices, or even from home. Is a hosted UC solution right for you? What’s driving contact centres to adopt cloud-based unified communications solutions? Here are the main drivers and the criteria for choosing such a lofty route. BY JASON ALLEY It’s tough to flip through a technology publication today without seeing some mention of “cloud computing.” And it’s no wonder why. Cloud computing is providing scalable, cost-effective resources as a service over the Internet. In this tight economy, that’s a huge value proposition. The trend of cloud computing has increasingly spurred technology decision-makers in contact centres to ask: “Why can’t we reap the same benefits from moving our unified communications (UC) applications to the cloud?” Vendors are responding. Today, there exists a wealth of hosted UC solutions for contact centres. What’s interesting is how the original drivers for this migration have already begun to change. Traditional drivers boiled down to reduced costs: lower up-front capital expenditures, a “pay-asyou-go” pricing model, and reduced IT maintenance and management expenses. A more recent driver, however, is flexibility: both the ability to quickly scale up and down (especially the ability to quickly provision multiple sites and remote agents), and the ability to more quickly add sophisticated applications. This latter benefit is especially crucial because it gives contact centres a key competitive advantage by enabling them to differentiate services. While not a major driver yet, contact centres are weighing “green” factors more heavily too, which is making the eco-friendly attributes of hosted UC solutions more desirable (e.g. less infrastructure equals reduced carbon footprint). The growing number of hosted UC solutions offered, combined with new drivers for adoption, makes the decision-making process for contact centres increasingly complex. But contact centres must start at the beginning. Despite the potential benefits of hosted UC solutions, it’s not for everyone. Hosted versus premise How do you decide if a premisebased or hosted UC solution is best for your contact centre? There are certain business environments that might be better suited to a premise 14 contact management.ca March / April 2011
Unified Communications model. These include the following: • IT staff requires full administrative access and control • Applications require a high degree of custom development • Industry requires stringent compliance with many regulations and/or security policies While all of these are valid considerations, it’s important to note that the industry is rapidly addressing them. Some hosted UC vendors are offering new delivery models and new server architectures designed to dramatically improve control, security, and reliability. In addition, migrating to the cloud is no longer an all-or-nothing proposition. More vendors today are offering hybrid options that enable contact centres to host some UC applications, while keeping others on-premise. Though not a reason alone to keep UC applications on-premise, contact centres should also be mindful of cultural shifts that must take place if they elect to migrate to the cloud. Senior staff will have to learn new best practices for managing processes and people. If these inevitable cultural shifts are not addressed early in the decisionmaking process, even the best hosted UC deployment will be compromised. Should your contact centre decide to move to the cloud after a thorough due diligence process based on benefits, risks, and business requirements, the next step is selecting the right vendor. Selection criteria What are the criteria contact centres should use to select a hosted UC solutions provider? Control, security, and reliability One of the most important factors to consider when selecting a hosted UC vendor is the degree to which it offers control, security, and reliability. Differences in hosted delivery models and server architectures directly impact these capabilities. For instance, does the vendor’s delivery model allow your contact centre to keep all voice traffic on the company’s network? Does it enable you to record and store all calls behind your firewall? And does the vendor offer virtualized, dedicated servers for each customer? Finally, be sure to conduct a thorough audit of the vendor’s hosted facility (both the infrastructure and policies). How many data centres does the vendor operate and where are they? Are they 24/7-monitored and SAS 70- certified? If the vendor can provide all these capabilities, then you can be pretty confident your control, security, and reliability requirements will be met. Software supplier versus third-party Another important factor is whether the service is offered by the company that developed the software or by a third-party. If it’s the software supplier, as long as the vendor has a proven track record developing and delivering hosted UC solutions, there are typically only advantages to acquiring services from them. First, the software supplier gives contact centres immediate access to enhancements -- customers don’t have to wait for third-parties to get trained on enhancements and test them. Second, contact centres have a greater ability to influence development. And third, because the supplier develops the software, they are maximally invested and odds of them abandoning the business are reduced. Migration path to premise Providing contact centres with an easy migration path from hosted to premise is another crucial factor when selecting a vendor. Does the vendor even offer a migration path? If so, what, if any, application re-writes will the “The fastest adoption of hosted UC solutions is among organizations with 500 or more contact centre seats.” “Contact centres should also be mindful of cultural shifts that must take place if they elect to migrate to the cloud.” contact centre incur as a result of the migration? If the hosted UC vendor also offers premise-based solutions, and if it also functions as the software supplier, odds are good that this migration is possible with no impact on applications. Single-platform architecture This is where the “UC” aspect of hosted really kicks in. Many hosted UC vendor solutions are based on premise equipment composed of loosely integrated products from different manufacturers. This introduces an element of cost and complexity that the movement of “UC” has tried to address. But don’t be fooled. Many of these same vendors have simply slapped the UC label on the same old products. Ask the vendor which applications were inherently developed versus which are offered via partnerships or acquisitions. The more platforms in the mix, the greater chance of management complexity and finger-pointing should things go awry. A true UC hosted solution should include a wealth of applications running on the same all-in-one platform. And this platform should be open and software-based for maximum customization and interoperability. The future Industry analyst firms are increasingly bullish on the hosted contact centre market. Most are predicting growth rates during the next few years of between 18 and 35 percent. While many expected much slower adoption among large organizations, interestingly, this trend is reversing quickly. In fact, according to most analyst reports, the fastest adoption of hosted UC solutions is among organizations with 500 or more contact centre seats. While growth is occurring across all vertical markets, the financial services industry is currently the leader of hosted UC adoption. Communications, retail, and healthcare verticals are also showing strong interest in deploying hosted UC solutions for their contact centres. Today, most core contact centre applications are offered via a hosted model. These include automatic call distribution, call recording, outbound dialing, screen pop, and more. The market has also seen a surge in interactive voice response, multichannel, and workforce management applications. Most recently companies are turning to hosted providers to provide the full suite of contact centre applications, soup-to-nuts. However the hosted UC market grows, one thing is for sure, growth will continue into the foreseeable future. Innovations in the areas of networks, virtual server technology, and Web interfaces will eliminate any remaining functional limitations, and vendors will continue to add applications to their hosted UC solutions. So do your due diligence and be glad to know that you’ll have plenty of company should you decide to walk the hosted path. Jason Alley is solutions marketing manager for Interactive Intelligence, Indianapolis, IN, a global provider of unified business communication solutions for contact centre automation, enterprise IP telephony, and business process automation. Alley has more than 16 years experience in customer interaction management technologies, and has served as product manager and strategist for Aspect, Nortel, and Hipbone. Interactive Intelligence employs 800 people serving more than 4,000 customers worldwide. The company can be reached at +1 317.872.3000, info@ inin.com or www.inin.com. March / April 2011 contact management.ca 15
Page 1 and 2: contactmanagement.ca march / april
Page 3 and 4: table of contents March/april 2011
Page 5 and 6: eaderboard March / April 2011 conta
Page 7 and 8: Showtime [Lavalife] and Ben Newton,
Page 9 and 10: eaderboard Study cites Gen X as tru
Page 11 and 12: eaderboard Salesforce.com purchases
Page 13: Staffing Matters route, make sure y
Page 17 and 18: Unified Communications legacy inves
Page 19 and 20: “When properly implemented, Exper
Page 21 and 22: First Call Resolution Amy Frenzel,
Page 23 and 24: Software Solutions Unified Communic
Page 25 and 26: eaderboard Agent Productivity Tools
Page 27 and 28: People Etelesolv expands sales team
Page 29 and 30: Association news The International
Page 31 and 32: ContractXchange.com Home Agent Recr

Staying ahead of the pack - Contact Management

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?