Best Hosted Contact Center Tools

CirriusIMPACT — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 15:38:04 +0000

What are the best virtual/hosted contact center tools on the market today? (ACD / PBX / CTI / IVR / ETC)

The best call center tools are the ones that most effectively complement your business needs. Assuming that we have already factored in the savings of cloud base solutions, a contact center’s needs generally fall into one of three scenarios:

1. You already have some functionalities on –premise and you want to leverage the cloud without losing your existing investment. For example, a company may want to add cloud-base workforce management to their existing infrastructure or may want to run marketing campaign or collection and need a robodialer or outbound sophisticated algorithm that will suite its multiple department needs.

2. You want to have all your functionalities in the cloud. The usual case for a complete cloud-based solution is when a company is building a new contact center and focusing on investing in the most precious and important contact center asset, its agents. Presented with limited start-up funds, a company should leverage its investment on human capital instead of diverting it to technological infrastructure that may not needed in a year or two or, even worse, be obsolete in 3-5 years.

3. You want either of the above scenarios as well as the flexibility to move functionalities from the cloud to on-premise, or vice versa.

At the end of the day, a top-line contact center has:

- Brand-name technologies that have proven themselves and that meet .your specific needs e.g. outbound capabilities can mean as little as being able to dial out from a static list or as much as the ability to run multiple campaigns at the same time.

- Technologies that work either on-premise or hosted

- The support of a professional IT consulting company that can provide you with the planning, execution, and service of your desired cloud strategy

Good Luck in Your Contact Center Planning!

Yossi Teichman

Cloud Computing is Here to Stay

CirriusIMPACT — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 15:37:37 +0000

Cloud Computing is here and exploding. For contact centers, migrating portions of their technology needs to the cloud is not a question of if, it’s how and when. I’ve been getting many questions lately about the cloud and hosted contact centers. Mostly, they imply that the cloud technology is coming. The problem is that’s a false premise. Cloud technology is already here in a big way. Over the last few months, CirriusImpact has already shown that there is a vast current need for cloud computing out there right now and we are on the cusp of some big industry changes. Those industry experts who follow the trends are pretty much uniform in concluding that Cloud computing SaaS is ramping up to be the ?next big technology wave. Per industry experts from Gartner, Saas activities will soar between 2012-2014. The main drivers, like most business decisions, come down to costs savings in an era of tight IT budgets. It is well established that cloud computing saves money from every angle; lower TCO, lower Capex and lower Opex.

The Contact Center industry is a veteran industry with an existing technology infrastructure. As such, these organizations face a few major decisions as they examine the cloud and determine what is right for them.

1. Some contact centers want a complete on-premise solution with all the “bells and whistles” available today. Others own some of the technologies that they need for their operation and are seeking complementary technologies to help them ?provide better service.

2. Some contact centers are concerned that technologies that they have worked with on premise may not necessarily be available through cloud Saas providers.

3. For various reasons (financial, focus or others), some contact centers would like to lease cloud technologies with the long-term objective of one day moving the cloud base technologies to their site.

CIrriusImpact is here to address these issues and provide the perfect? solution for organizations that demand high-end communication application features at a fraction of the cost of an on-premise solution. CirriusImpact offers comprehensive superior on premise tested technologies as a cloud offering. We have the ability to provide end-to-end solutions as well integrate to existing Contact Center technologies.