cloud-based contact center infrastructure market report ... · based contact center infrastructure...

- 1 - © DMG Consulting LLC

Cloud-Based Contact Center Infrastructure Market Report

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- ii - © DMG Consulting LLC

Table of Contents

1. Introduction ................................................................................................ 1 2. Hosted Contact Center Technology and Applications ............................... 1 3. How to Determine if Hosting is Right for Your Organization ...................... 4 4. Cloud-Based Contact Center Infrastructure Market Projections ................ 6 5. NewVoiceMedia ......................................................................................... 9 About NewVoiceMedia ...................................................................................... 14 About DMG Consulting ...................................................................................... 14


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1. Introduction

The contact center infrastructure market is at the most significant inflection point in its 30+ year history. The cloud-based contact center infrastructure market is booming and showing no signs of slowing, while the premise-based sector is struggling to hold its own. End users around the world, in contact centers of all sizes, are adopting cloud-based contact center solutions, and are considering this acquisition model as an important enabler for their future. IT and business managers are coming to realize that there are many advantages to cloud-based solutions. Besides the financial benefits – no capital investment, lower start-up and integration costs and no upgrade fees – contact centers are finding it compelling not to have to purchase, set up, maintain and upgrade hardware and software. Once freed from this burden, managers can dedicate their time and resources to optimizing the business aspects of the solutions. The concept of cloud-based solutions is increasingly capturing the imaginations and pocketbooks of IT and business leaders, as well as chief financial officers (CFOs), who see it as a highly effective method for acquiring technology without a major capital outlay and with reduced risk. Currently, most sales of cloud-based contact center solutions are for environments of 100 to 250 seats, and deal sizes continue to grow. Although cloud-based solutions are not for everyone, both public and private-sector organizations are already realizing their benefits, and when the need arises, are looking to expand their implementations.

2. Hosted Contact Center Technology and Applications

Contact centers are comprised of multiple applications, systems and underlying infrastructure technologies, making them among the most complex operating environments within many businesses. Figure 3 shows that there are five main technology categories associated with most contact center environments: Core Systems: The core routing, queuing, switching and processing engines for contact centers. Management Systems: Applications that give managers visibility into contact center and agent performance. These applications are intended to make it easier to manage the operation.


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Supporting Systems: Applications that enrich contact center interactions and make them easier to process. Servicing Applications: Applications that manage and track customer requests, inquiries, sales, appointments, etc., and what an agent does to address issues/opportunities. This is a broad category, as the type of servicing or customer relationship management (CRM) application depends upon the purpose of the contact center. Enabling/Common Applications: Technology, solutions and applications that are used in other parts of the enterprise and are being leveraged in the contact center. Figure 3: Contact Center Infrastructure Technologies and Applications

Surveying/VOC

eLearn/Coach

WFM

Quality Assurance

Speech Analytics

Desktop Analytics

Recording

Perform Mgt

Text Analytics

VoIP/SIP/UC

Universal Queue

Messaging

CTI

Dialer

Network Mgmt

Telephony

ACD

IVR/Speech Rec

ERMs

Collaboration

Voice Verif

eService Suite

Chat/IM/SMS

Letter Writing

Knowledge Mgt

Web Self Svc

Scripting

SUPPORTING SYSTEMS

CORE SYSTEMS

MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS ENABLING/COMMON

APPS.Middleware

Workflow

Integration

Security

Databases

Data Marts

Config Engine

Mktg Encyclop

Content Mgt

SERVICINGAPPLICATIONS

CRM Suites

Cust Svc Apps

Telesales/Telemktg

IT Help Desk

Collections

Field Svc & Dispatch

SFA

ERP

Campaign Mgt Sys

IM/ChatMobileFaxEmailWebVoiceSocialMedia

Source: DMG Consulting LLC, September 2012


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In today’s cloud-based contact centers, all of the technologies and applications shown in Figure 3 are available as part of a hosted service, but there is still no single vendor who provides all of them as a single solution. Figure 4 shows the technology, applications and capabilities that are on their way to becoming standard components of many cloud-based contact center infrastructure solutions within the next few years. These solutions will be comprised of the following modules: Core Functionality: Automatic call distributor (ACD) (routing and queuing), switching (SIP-based call control), interactive voice response (IVR), computer telephony integration (CTI), presence management, dialer, recording (Internet protocol (IP) and time-division multiplexing (TDM)) and reporting. These solutions will support universal queuing and routing that enables them to simultaneously handle a variety of channels, including voice, email, chat/instant messaging (IM)/short message service (SMS), and social media-based interactions. Optional Modules: Quality assurance (QA), screen capture, workforce management, contact center performance management, coaching, eLearning, surveying/voice of the customer, speech analytics, CRM and campaign management. The applications and technologies shown in Figure 4 will be available through a combination of in-house development and partnered offerings, but will be fully integrated and made available through centralized Web-based administration environments. The standard cloud-based contact center infrastructure solution will come with the ability to handle multi-channel inbound, outbound (preview, progressive and predictive), blended, email, chat/IM, SMS and, increasingly, social media interactions. They will be based on multi-tenant principles, with the ability to support TDM, IP and SIP-based transactions. Increasingly, contact center solutions are also coming out-of-the-box with standards-based connectors that enable integration with both premise-based and cloud-based home-grown and third-party applications. A majority of cloud-based contact center infrastructure solutions are built using a services-oriented architecture (SOA), which facilitates integration and ongoing R&D.


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Figure 4: Typical Hosted Contact Center Infrastructure Solution


3. How to Determine if Hosting is Right for Your Organization

Cloud-based contact center infrastructure solutions may not be right for every environment, but it’s clear that they are highly appealing to a steadily increasing number of companies, in all segments, large and small. In addition to the traditional benefits of any cloud-based solution, the hosted contact center infrastructure market is very attractive because of the innovation coming from the competitors. In general, organizations with the following characteristics are excellent candidates for cloud-based contact center solutions:

• Require a system or application but lack the budget to purchase it

• Require a system or application but lack the internal IT and administrative resources to install and maintain the system


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• Have a geographically dispersed organization with multiple sites and remote users, including at-home agents, but cannot build and maintain the required support infrastructure

• Need to scale up and down throughout the year

• Need to implement a new system quickly and lack the time or resources to do an on-site installation

• Want to stay current with leading technological innovation but do not want the expense/work of system upgrades

• Have a short-term need for an application or functionality

• Want to be able to test the application and prove out expected return on investment

• Premise-based licensed offerings are too costly or do not have the right-sized and right-priced functionality for a small to mid-sized organization

Prospects should perform a lease (host) vs. purchase/license financial analysis to understand the impact of each acquisition model on their bottom line. Chief financial officers often prefer the cloud-based/hosted acquisition approach because it allows them to hold onto their company’s capital. This benefit is compelling, even when CFOs know that after three to five years, the cumulative cost could be higher for a cloud-based service model. In general, if an organization were to buy a premise-based contact center solution and not make any upgrades or enhancements over the life of the asset, it would likely cost less than a cloud-based solution would have. However, if an organization plans to keep its solution current, take advantage of product enhancements, or has to upgrade hardware every few years, a hosted solution would likely prove more financially beneficial. Another important factor to consider in a host vs. buy analysis is the impact of operating costs. When the costs of IT support staff, electricity, and rent and occupancy are included, it often influences the decision in favor of hosting. End users are strongly encouraged to perform both a host (lease) vs. buy analysis and a total cost of ownership (TCO) assessment. However, keep in mind that many factors must be weighed in addition to the financials. While there are many general pros and cons to take into consideration when deciding which business model to use, every organization needs to consider the impact of the decision on their business, as each environment has unique needs.


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4. Cloud-Based Contact Center Infrastructure Market Projections

The cloud-based contact center infrastructure market hit its stride in 2011. New market entrants, improved functionality, converging market trends, the need for virtual, multi-channel, scalable and flexible servicing infrastructures, and a slowly recovering economy have contributed to a “perfect storm.” The pace of adoption is accelerating and is expected to continue to pick up momentum. When cloud-based contact centers were first introduced more than 15 years ago, the innovators believed that they would democratize the world of contact centers by making technology cost-effective for small and mid-sized servicing environments. The goal of the early adopters has been accomplished. The concept of cloud-based solutions has captured the imaginations and pocketbooks of IT and business leaders, as well as CFOs who see it as a highly effective method for acquiring technology without a major capital outlay or risk. Cloud-based solutions are no longer just for small environments, however. Currently, most sales of cloud-based contact center solutions are for environments with 50 to 250 seats, and deal sizes continue to grow. Although cloud-based solutions are not for everyone, both public and private-sector organizations are already realizing their benefits and are looking to expand their implementations. Figure 5 shows the number of cloud-based contact center infrastructure seats that were in use during the period from 2009 – 2011. It also shows four-year projections for 2012 – 2015. As we’ve been saying for years, this market is going to continue to grow and, very importantly, will be adopted by larger contact center environments. The increase in the size of cloud-based contact center infrastructure users is one of the reasons why the seat count is increasing even more rapidly than the number of customers, which is growing at a fast rate. The cloud-based contact center infrastructure solutions are good, and getting better every year. These vendors continue to pour millions of dollars into innovation to enhance their offerings by adding features and functionality that are required by more sophisticated environments. While most of the cloud-based contact center solutions do not offer all of the features that are available from the leading premise-based contact center solutions, they do offer enough functionality to satisfy a growing number of users in the 100 to 400+ seat range. (Avaya is the premise-based current contact center infrastructure market share leader.)


Figure 5: Cloud-Based Contact Center Infrastructure Growth Rates: Actual and Market Projections, 2008 - 2015 Seats and Growth Rates

Actual 2008 - 2011 Projected 2012 - 2015 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

Growth rate N/A 26.4% 42.4% 80.2% 45% 40% 40% 35% Net new seats N/A 71,056 144,025 387,842 392,273 505,596 707,834 867,097 Total cloud-based seats 268,794 339,850 483,875 871,717 1,263,990 1,769,586 2,477,420 3,344,517



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Figure 5 shows that the number of contact center infrastructure seats grew by 80.2% between 2010 and 2011. While some of this increase is due to DMG’s extended access in this market and the inclusion of more vendors in the Report, most of this growth is the result of increasingly broad acceptance of the cloud-based delivery model in contact centers. End users are simply finding it more convenient to acquire cloud-based contact center infrastructure solutions. DMG expects the rapid growth to continue. The four-year seat growth projections are 45%, 40%, 40% and 35% respectively between 2012 and 2015. For most markets, a poor economy could derail the growth of an emerging sector. This is the opposite for this market, as sales of these solutions are counter-cyclical. Sales of cloud-based solutions, including contact center infrastructure, perform well when budgets are tight, there is uncertainty about a company’s performance, and capital spending is limited. However, DMG expects that now that cloud-based contact center infrastructure solutions are recognized as viable alternatives to premise-based solutions, they will continue to grow once the economy fully recovers.


5. NewVoiceMedia

Founded: 2000 Headquarters: Belvedere Basing View Basingstoke RG21 4HG UK Website: www.newvoice media.com Ownership: Private Product: ContactWorld ContactWorld for Salesforce ContactWorld PCI Current GA Version: N/A Current Release Date: Bi-weekly for minor updates; quarterly for major releases Service Delivery Model: Software-as–a-service Production sites: United Kingdom (3) High-Level Functionality: Inbound/Outbound/ Blended

NewVoiceMedia, a privately held company headquartered in the United Kingdom, has approximately 80 employees. NewVoiceMedia is a provider of an integrated cloud-based contact center software suite. NewVoiceMedia’s hosted contact center strategy is to “continue to offer simplified access to complex contact center functionality with industry-leading performance, regardless of location, while remaining highly flexible and configurable.“ NewVoiceMedia defines their “sweet spot” as organizations and contact centers with 20 to 500 seats. ContactWorld, the company’s hosted contact center solution, is sold primarily on a direct basis. Key verticals include finance and retail. NewVoiceMedia’s contact center focus is providing core services such as automatic call distributor (ACD), outbound dialing, customer relationship management (CRM), and agent productivity optimization. Product Profile: ContactWorld’s core system components include automatic call distributor (ACD),skills-based routing, computer telephony integration (CTI), interactive voice response (IVR), call recording, conferencing, voicemail, post-call IVR-based surveying and reporting. Supported channels include inbound, outbound and blended voice, email, short message service (SMS) and chat. The product also supports proactive customer care via outbound notifications. The application comes with a basic customer tracking/customer relationship management application called Contact Manager. On an outbound basis, ContactWorld does preview, progressive and predictive dialing. It also has an outbound IVR capability. Optional system capabilities include ContactWorld for Salesforce, which is an out-of-the-box integration with Salesforce.com, and ContactWorld Payment Card Industry (PCI), a PCI-compliant solution for processing credit card transactions and payments via IVR. Solution Overview: Agent Interface Agents are provided with an integrated set of standard call control functions (pick-up, disconnect, hold, conference, transfer, speed dial, etc.) for handling inbound, outbound and blended calls. The agent


ACD Skills-based routing CTI IVR Recording Conferencing Voicemail Surveying Reporting CRM management application Dialer Outbound IVR Email IM Chat SMS Sales model: Direct and indirect

interface provides access to Contact Manager, NewVoiceMedia’s basic desktop servicing CRM tool, websites, social media sites, scripting, company intranet, phonebook, or other applications that agents routinely access while assisting customers. Supervisor Environment Service Control Suite is the Web-based supervisory interface for real-time management and monitoring of agents, agent groups and queues. Displays are fully configurable; users define what information is most relevant to them and select how the information is displayed. Supervisors can live-monitor agents and/or conference in on the call. Supervisors can configure customized threshold-based alerts for any assigned agent or queue metrics. Alerts can be issued as an email, SMS, or hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) post. A broadcast feature allows supervisors to distribute information to agents. Broadcast messages can include embedded links. Administrator Environment ContactWorld has a centralized, Web-based administration environment for system and user set-up and configuration. The Call Plan Architect module is a graphical design and development environment that enables administrators to configure call flows and design call routing plans. The application supports skills-based, conditional and real-time adaptive routing. Routing can also be based on a systemically generated social media score derived from customer information retrieved from social media activities. Data from other applications can be accessed by NewVoiceMedia’s simple object access protocol (SOAP) applets. The solution also has a contact database that can be used for real-time adaptive routing. Administrators can configure SMS email and HTTP post alerts. Reporting ContactWorld provides both real-time and historical reporting. The solution comes with an integrated statistical reports module containing over 100 system metrics that can be client-configured and fed into ad hoc and scheduled reports. Alternatively, users can export system data to Excel or in a .csv format. Reports can be scheduled and sent via email on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. NewVoiceMedia also provides real-time client-configurable dashboards.


Technical Overview: Multi-Tenancy ContactWorld is a multi-tenant-based application. All clients and calls share a common infrastructure and application with functionality enabled at a client level. NewVoiceMedia uses logical application partitioning with a user and role management system and security model to separate tenants. Each tenant’s sensitive data is encrypted using AES with individual keys. Scalability NewVoiceMedia’s ContactWorld environment is flexible. The solution can start with a minimum of 5 agents and 1 supervisor and scale as needed. To date, NewVoiceMedia has over 300 deployments supporting approximately 4,900 seats. There are no practical limits to the number of tenants that can be supported per CPU. Security Access to the system is role-based and controlled via log-in and password authentication. Customers are assigned a unique account with a log-in that restricts access to data and parts of the system based on roles and permissions. Sensitive data is encrypted with advanced encryption standards (AES) using a key per tenant. Physical security at the hosting locations includes perimeter security, closed-circuit television, locked cabinets, and a 24x7 security guard on-site. NewVoiceMedia is a member of the Cloud Security Alliance serving on the Telcom Working Group (TWG). This group is responsible for providing feedback on how to deliver secure cloud solutions. Disaster Recovery and Contingency NewVoiceMedia maintains an active/active business continuity model. Multi-site capability is included in the standard package. Back-ups are run continuously. NewVoiceMedia performs daily back-ups with incremental data stored every second. The company’s redundant data centers are geographically dispersed across the UK. Integration ContactWorld is pre-integrated with Salesforce.com. ContactWorld for Salesforce also provides real-time adaptive routing based on field values within the Salesforce application. Additionally, through the


integration with Salesforce, ContactWorld can capture call outcomes and tie them back to agents and business results. NewVoiceMedia supports Web Services for real-time integration with other CRM systems. ContactWorld has an open application programming interface (API) for CTI integration. Implementation The average time required to implement a single-site contact center varies based on number of seats. The average time required to implement a 50-seat contact center is 1–2 weeks, and 4-6 weeks is typical for a 250-seat environment. Implementations can be completed on-site or remotely. Future Minor upgrades to ContactWorld are generally issued every 2 weeks. Major upgrades and significant new feature releases are typically done once a quarter. The next major release is expected to feature the following product enhancements:

• Multi-channel Web chat and e mail completion – fully integrated agent workflow for Web chat and email transactions based on skills, service level agreements (SLAs) and availability

• Workforce management – integrated internally-developed workforce management capability that supports scheduling, forecasting and planning; capabilities include real-time routing based on actual arrivals versus forecast

• Universal queue – ability to handle multiple interaction channels centrally

• Social contact center – capability to route arrivals based on defined social parameters, with the option to provide social meta context information to agents at the time of delivery and to use social channels for inbound and outbound interactions

• Mobile app – ability to deliver various contact center metrics and services via mobile platforms

Bottom Line NewVoiceMedia’s ContactWorld is an integrated hosted software suite that supports skill-based routing and queuing of multi-channel


contacts. The application has a layered agent interface that provides agents with ready access to the CRM application, websites, scripting, company intranet, phonebook, or other applications that they need in order to assist customers. NewVoiceMedia is continuing to invest in building and enhancing the capabilities of their solution. NewVoiceMedia is the only cloud-based provider with a Customer Trust Site that provides transparency into system performance. This site publishes system test results every 15 minutes, showing the performance of their hosted environment. Their data centers are ISO 27001 and Payment Card Industry-Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) compliant. NewVoiceMedia’s primary customer base is in the UK, although they continue to branch out into other geographies. Prospects looking for contact center functionality that is highly flexible, configurable and simple to deploy should consider NewVoiceMedia.


About NewVoiceMedia

ContactWorld from NewVoiceMedia is an enterprise-class contact center, delivered via a true

multi-tenant cloud architecture. Our customers benefit from fast, flexible and cost effective access

to contact center capabilities that would normally be very complicated, expensive and slow to

acquire, integrate and use.

NewVoiceMedia’s ContactWorld gives you the power and freedom to provide the best customer

experience with complete flexibility and scalability to suit your needs. Ideal for teams of any size,

it enables you to recognize your customers and dynamically route calls whilst operating at any

location, on any device and on any browser. The ContactWorld platform provides a market leading 99.999% service availability SLA, and

processes hundreds of millions of calls, for thousands of agents working across the globe. We

have customers in 29 countries, including Photobox, Long Tall Sally, QlikTech, Royal Mail, SHL

Group and Lumesse. For further information, please visit www.newvoicemedia.com

About DMG Consulting

DMG Consulting is the leading provider of contact center and analytics research, market analysis

and consulting services. DMG’s mission is to help end users build world-class, differentiated

contact centers and to assist vendors in developing high-value solutions for the market. DMG

devotes more than 10,000 hours annually to researching various segments of the contact center

market, including vendors, solutions, technologies, best practices, and the benefits and ROI for

end users. Our research covers Hosted Contact Center Infrastructure, Hosted/Managed Service

IVR, Quality Management/Liability Recording (Workforce Optimization), Speech Analytics,

Surveying/Enterprise Feedback Management, Text Analytics, Desktop Analytics, Contact Center

Performance Management, and Workforce Management. DMG is an independent firm that

provides information and consulting services to contact center management, the financial and

investment community, and vendors in the market.

This reprint is excerpted from the 2012 - 2013 Cloud-Based Contact Center Market Report, which

was released in October 2012 with the permission of DMG Consulting LLC. More information

about this Report and DMG Consulting is available at www.dmgconsult.com.

http://www.newvoicemedia.com/

http://dmgconsult.com/services/speechreport.asp


© 2013 DMG Consulting LLC. All rights reserved. This Report is protected by United States copyright law. The reproduction, transmission or distribution of this Report in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of DMG Consulting LLC is strictly prohibited. You may not alter or remove any copyright, trademark or other notice from this Report. This Report contains data, materials, information and analysis that is proprietary to and the confidential information of DMG Consulting LLC and is provided for solely to purchasers of this Report for their internal use. THIS REPORT AND ANY DATA, MATERIALS, INFORMATION AND ANALYSIS CONTAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE DISCLOSED TO OR USED BY ANY OTHER PERSON OR ENTITY WITHOUT THE EXPRESS PRIOR WRITTEN CONSENT OF DMG CONSULTING LLC. Substantial effort went into verifying and validating the accuracy of the information contained within this Report, however, DMG Consulting LLC disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy or completeness of this information. DMG Consulting LLC shall not be liable for any errors or omissions in the information contained herein or for any losses or damages arising from use hereof.

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