There was a time, until recently, when all companies ran their own call centres. Many still do. But the current drive is towards providing contact centre services and associated resources through hosted platforms.
Key to this is a concept known as multi-tenancy, which will result in a steady evolution away from on-site technology ownership to network-based managed services, says Mike Renzon, CEO of Intelleca, the master value-added reseller for CosmoCom in sub-Saharan Africa.
The fastest growing paradigm in the world of software today is software as a service, or SaaS as it is widely known. Among the key concepts of SaaS are the ability to expand and contract as the business dictates; to defer capital investments up-front; for clients and solution providers to share risk, depending on value derived; and for more than one client to absorb the cost of service provision. SaaS is such a vast trend worldwide that it is fundamentally changing the face of business and IT; and it is shifting the way companies think about their strategy; their clients` value proposition; their software licensing model; and their own business strategy.
Critical to the success of SaaS in the contact centre space is multi-tenancy. This ability is not native to most existing contact centre offerings: while many solution providers have tried to retrofit multi-tenancy to existing single-tenant contact centres, all they end up with is a cumbersome, awkward, multi-instance contact centre.
Software vendors looking to offer contact centre software in the SaaS paradigm need to deploy true multi-tenant software. As this needs to be built from scratch, it can be costly to build - or cumbersome or impossible to retrofit.
But, because the prize can be so attractive - reduced costs and complexity and less management bandwidth - many software companies are choosing to go this route.
Far more elegant, and extensible, is to implement SaaS contact centre software that is inherently multi-tenant.
This is delivered today by the concept of the contact centre on demand, also known as either hosted or on-site managed contact centre services.
What to look for
Given that this is one of the true growth markets, many vendors are going to emerge as having multi-tenancy capable platforms/offerings. In reviewing them, service providers should look for these features, as they are critical to the successful delivery of multi-tenant contact centres on-demand:
* All-IP architecture: Having an architecture based entirely on IP makes it uniquely suited as a platform for service providers to offer contact centre on the software as a service model. Being based on the Internet Protocol makes it relatively easy to deploy it in a virtual way; to support a large number of agents irrespective of location; and to accommodate both dedicated and shared platforms. In addition, such architecture is inherently hostable with the adoption of multi-tenancy, scalability and robustness of the core services.
* Ease of administration: Adding a new tenant should be as easy as filling out a form on a securely accessed Web page.
* Rapid time to market for customers: Subscribers to the service avoid large capital expenditures, and instead pay for the service on a month-to-month basis. They get to market fast, since there is no long implementation period required. For many contact centres, call volumes can change with the season, and it is hard to predict future needs. With the SaaS model, subscribers pay for the capacity they need, when they need it.
* Tenant self-administration: This self-administration needs to be rich and robust to ensure success of contact centre SaaS. Hosted contact centre service providers should be able to manage and configure their platform, as well as attributes of each tenant, through a browser-based interface. Each tenant should be able to administer their own virtual call centre, while the service provider manages all of the tenants: issues such as real-time, on-the-fly changes to queues, skills, teams, groups, routing parameters, recording configurations, and outbound campaign management. Of vital importance, each of the tenants should have the same features, flexibility and control that they would have if they owned their own system - but without the capital investment or administration overhead.
* The platform should be software-based: This makes deployment easy and flexible. All server components reside on the service provider`s network, but the platform can also be extended to allow servers to be hosted from anywhere (including the customer site). All components communicate via IP, so the distribution of servers can be implemented seamlessly, with advanced security and system partitioning features to ensure all tenants are secure and isolated from each other.
The opportunity for service providers
A multi-tenancy system empowers service providers to offer hosted call centre services. A multi-tenancy system, such as CosmoCall Universe, has features such as tenant self-administration which ease the management and costs of hosted call centres for both service providers and their tenants. Service providers benefit by being able to offload the day-to-day activities of administering a call centre to their tenants. Service providers can focus on their core network operations; and tenants gain control and the flexibility to manage their own call centre operations. Service providers may optionally decide to offer, as an added-value service, professional management of these day-to-day activities on behalf of the tenant.
South Africa has been nominated as one of the true growth markets for contact centre services, due to its geographic location, sound infrastructure, competitive currency, quality of skills, work ethic and compatible languages.
All of these factors are supported and fulfilled by the IP-enabled contact centre on demand. Service providers which see the potential, and begin to familiarise themselves with this new paradigm, will be well positioned to take market share and gain competitive advantage - and without the traditional capital investment.
This is the market Intelleca is addressing, and initial indications are that it will have a fundamental bearing on the contact centre landscape in South Africa.
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