Some Additional Insight Into ContactBabel's US Contact Center Operational Review

In "The US Contact Center Operational Review", a free study of over 200 contact center operations carried out by ContactBabel in association with the American Teleservices Association (ATA), they report some interesting reasons why outsourcers are, or are not, adopting hosted vs. premise-based solutions.

Drivers for adopting hosted solution
According to the report, the main drivers for adopting a hosted solution are:

...decreased capital expenditure that such a model brings, as well as the possibility of increasing functionality quickly and cost-effectively, allowing them to try new applications without having to commit massive resources of time and money. More than half of respondents report that they strongly feel that hosted solutions can provide these two advantages.

The report also indicates that other drivers for hosted solutions include managing call fluctuations, reducing ongoing costs and saving on technical support costs.

Concerns about adopting a hosted solution
Reason for concern, according to survey participants, in adopting a hosted solution included 1). a lack of justification for replacing an existing system and 2). the loss of control as it related to getting problems fixed quickly.

I tend to agree with Contact Babel on all of these points, but a glaring omission in their report, as far as reasons NOT to adopt a hosted solution, have to do with inflexibility for integration.

Increasingly contact centers have to connect with multiple and numerous disparate systems, both internal and external to their enterprise. Once you've hosted your contact center capabilities, you no longer have direct, immediate access to the architecture that must be exposed in order to facilitate integrations with mission-critical systems like CRM packages, ERP systems, and a whole host of other business applications and systems that play an integral part in every interaction.

I completely understand a contact center's need to manage and reduce costs and to expand functionality quickly and selectively based on customer demand and seasonality. And I am a fan of the SaaS model when appropriate. But it's important to keep in mind that, because the contact center is becoming more and more a major part of the enterprise and thus requires comprehensive integration into the rest of the business, the ability to achieve integrations should be as lofty a consideration as price.

Make sure your contact center solution provider can give you the best of all worlds. Many vendors offer leasing options for premise-based systems to create the "feel" of a hosted solution. Large up-front capital investments can be repurposed as monthly payment that prevent cash flow crunches while enabling the scalability for connectivity that your center will undoubtedly need.

The report, created in association with ATA (The American Teleservices Association) is entirely free and can be downloaded from www.contactbabel.com.