The Inner Circle Guide to Cloud-Based Contact Center Solutions

Transcription

1 The Inner Circle Guide to Cloud-Based Contact Center Solutions Sponsored by

2 The Inner Circle Guide to Cloud-based Contact Center Solutions (2 nd edition) ContactBabel 2015 Please note that all information is believed correct at the time of publication, but ContactBabel does not accept responsibility for any action arising from errors or omissions within the report, links to external websites or other third-party content. 2

3 CONTENTS Contents... 3 Introduction... 6 Cloud : Terms & Definitions... 8 Drivers & Inhibitors Financial End-User Question #1: Is the operating expenditure / pay-as-you-go model still a big deal? Where do the biggest cost savings come from? Flexibility & Agility Functionality Security Control Integration & Customisation End-User Question #2: We ve got a lot of sunk cost in technology, as well as bespoke reports and processes that we want to keep. Won t moving to the cloud just cause upheaval without necessarily gaining much? Performance & Reliability The Relative Importance of Drivers and Inhibitors Cloud: Who s Using It? What s changed since 2012? Best Fit Vertical Markets and Contact Center Sizes Usage in

4 Implementation and Usage Pre-Implementation ROI, TCO & Pricing Vendor Requirements End-User Question #3: What sort of assurances and guarantees should we look for from a cloud provider in terms of security and performance? Cloud Decision-Makers Proof of Concept and Trials Implementation Timescales End-user Question #4: How can we get the quickest win from the cloud? Evolution or Revolution? End-User Question #5: Is it best to wait until we can move everything to the cloud, or do it bit-by-bit? Which sorts of functionality work best in the cloud? Post-Implementation: The Results of Using Cloud End-User Question #6 : What things do the most successful cloud customers have in common? What pitfalls should we avoid?

5 Strategy & Market Landscape The Vendor Community Content Guru Enghouse Interactive Genesys incontact Interactive Intelligence Intradiem NewVoiceMedia Noble Systems Rostrvm Solutions Ultracomms VoltDelta Ormuco The Future of Cloud-based Contact Center Solutions About ContactBabel Supplier Directory

6 INTRODUCTION The Inner Circle Guide to Cloud-based Contact Center Solutions (2 nd edition) is the 7 th in the Inner Circle series of ContactBabel reports. Other subjects include Multichannel, Self-Service, Interaction Analytics and PCI DSS Compliance, and can be downloaded free of charge from here. The Inner Circle Guides are a series of analyst reports investigating key customer contact solutions. The Guides aim to give a detailed and definitive view of the reality of the implementing and using these technologies, an appraisal of the vendors and products available and a view on what the future holds. The Inner Circle Guides are free of charge to readers. Research and analysis costs are borne by sponsors - solution providers in the specific area of study - whose advertisements, case studies and thought leadership pieces are included within these Guides. Solutions providers have not had influence over editorial content or analyst opinion, and readers can be assured of objectivity throughout. Any vendor views are clearly marked as such within the report. As well as explaining these solutions to the readers, we have also asked the potential users of these solutions whether they have any questions or comments to put directly to solution providers, and we have selected six of the most popular to ask to the report s sponsors. These branded Q&A elements are distributed throughout the report and give interesting insight into real-life issues. Please note that statistics within this report refer to the US industry, unless stated otherwise. There is a version of this report available for download from with equivalent UK statistics. 6

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8 CLOUD : TERMS & DEFINITIONS Having technology provided and managed by a third-party away from a customer's premises is not a new idea, with service bureaux and ASPs (application service providers) being around for many years. PBX functionality through Centrex has been available since the 1960s, with IVR and ACD functionality often being offered through a network provider too. In the past few years, the success of SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) solutions such as Salesforce.com have paved the way for widespread creation and adoption of cloud-based solutions, both from incumbent vendors and solution providers new to the industry, with the take-up of IP and movement towards more open systems also driving the use of cloud. The economic downturn s negative effect on capital investment made businesses demand more flexible pricing alternatives, which made the pay-as-you-go, operating expense of cloud-based solutions an attractive proposition. The past few years have seen many CPE (customer premise equipment) vendors react to this demand by offering rental-based options similar to their cloud competitors, although CPE provision will still require payment for hardware, testing etc. The modern contact center has a multitude of applications supporting it, with hardware, middleware and networking equipment around and inside it. The traditional method of deploying these resources has been on a CPE basis, with the business's IT resource implementing and maintaining it. Now, the vast majority of this equipment, functionality and supporting resource is available in a third-party hosted environment, through one of the various types of cloud-based delivery. Broadly, there are five types of technology that contact centers have, although not all subscribe to all of the functionality within them of course: Contact center functionality: ACD/PBX-type functionality (including interaction routing and queuing), CTI, IVR (routing and self-service), outbound dialing Desktop applications: CRM, customer management systems, helpdesk applications, agent desktop, knowledge bases, multimedia response applications, scripting, web chat & collaboration Management applications: workforce management, QA/QC, call recording, speech analytics, reporting, MIS and business intelligence, elearning, workforce optimization Enabling technology: security, databases, middleware, IP networks and other common architecture or hardware Other hardware: IP phones, PCs or desktop terminals, headsets etc. Cloud-based solutions are the latest in a line of alternatives for businesses to owning and running their own technology. Here are explanations of some of the terms that readers may have encountered in researching cloud-based contact centers. 8

9 Cloud is the delivery of computing and storage capacity as a service to different business, organizations and individuals over a network. It can be said to consist of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - servers and storage space, Platform as a Service (PaaS) - operating systems and web servers, and Software as a Service (SaaS) - the functionality of software available on demand without the need to own or maintain it. The cloud is characterized by huge scalability and flexibility, (often, but not always) shared resources, a utilities approach to billing (pay for what you use, for example) and an abstraction of obvious on-site infrastructure. There are various deployment models: o o o o o Public cloud: applications, storage, and other resources are made available by a service provider, often offered on a pay-per-use model. Public cloud service providers own and operate the infrastructure and offer access via the Internet Private cloud: infrastructure operated solely for a single organization, whether managed internally or by a third-party and hosted internally or externally. They require management by the organization or its third-party Virtual private cloud: a deployment model that pulls in public cloud infrastructure-as-aservice (IaaS) while running the application on-premise or in a private cloud, in order to improve disaster recovery, flexibility and scalability and to benefit from Opex-based costing while avoiding expensive hardware purchases Community cloud shares infrastructure between several organizations from a specific community with common concerns (security, compliance, jurisdiction, etc.), whether managed internally or by a third-party and hosted internally or externally. The costs are spread over fewer users than a public cloud (but more than a private cloud), so do not gain as much from cost reductions. It may be a more appropriate deployment model for departments within government or public sector bodies, than within commercial organizations, for example a department offering Contact Center as a Service to other departments or agencies within their network Hybrid cloud is a composition of two or more clouds (private, community, public or a linked cloud/cpe solution) that remain unique entities but are bound together, offering the benefits of multiple deployment models. By utilizing "hybrid cloud" architecture, companies and individuals are able to obtain degrees of fault tolerance combined with locally immediate usability without dependency on internet connectivity. Hybrid Cloud architecture requires both on-premises resources and off-site (remote) server based cloud infrastructure. 9

10 SaaS (Software as a Service) is a model of software deployment whereby a provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand. SaaS software vendors may host the application on their own web servers or download the application to the consumer device, disabling it after use or after the on-demand contract expires. The on-demand function may be handled internally to share licenses within a firm or by a third-party service provider sharing licenses between firms. On-demand licensing and use alleviates the customer's burden of equipping a device with every conceivable application. It also reduces traditional End User License Agreement (EULA) software maintenance, ongoing operation patches, and patch support complexity in an organization. Ondemand licensing enables software to become an operating expense, rather than a fixed cost at the time of purchase. It also enables licensing only the amount of software needed versus traditional licenses per device. SaaS also enables the buyer to share licenses across their organization and between organizations, to reduce the cost of acquiring EULAs for every device in their firm. Using SaaS can also conceivably reduce the upfront expense of software purchases, through less costly, on-demand pricing from cloud providers. SaaS lets software vendors control and limit use, prohibits copies and distribution, and facilitates the control of all derivative versions of their software. Hosted solutions have similarities to SaaS in that the application is hosted off the customer's premises, but may not actually be managed by the service provider. A hosted solution may be an individual instance of an application running on a single server dedicated to the customer, restricted in scalability by its finite nature. Although this may allow greater control and flexibility, it can be more expensive and there is less redundancy. It may be thought that all SaaS solutions are hosted, but not all hosted applications are SaaS. Network-based solutions are marketed as solutions with equipment physically located in multiple locations, permitting users to access the various services via a combination of the contact center s internet connection and the standard PSTN networks. This allows complete geographic independence and disaster recovery (DR) solutions. Multi-tenancy refers to where a single instance of the software runs on a server, but serves many customer organizations. Clients data and configuration are separated virtually but the same actual hardware, software versions and databases are used. This deployment model is likely to be able to offer functionality at a lower cost due to the economies of scale possible, but is less customizable than other options 10

11 Multi-instance occurs where separate software instances or versions (and possibly actual physical hardware) are provided for each individual business. This deployment option is considered most effective for complex and deep integration, but is unlikely to be offered at a similar cost to a multitenant option Hardware virtualization masks from users the physical characteristics of the platform, hosting multiple isolated instances of an application on one or more servers. The same image can be used on multiple sites, whether customer-owned or hosted. 11

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13 DRIVERS & INHIBITORS The many factors influencing the uptake of cloud-based solutions can be grouped into several areas, and it is important to remember that a factor (e.g. security) can be both a driver and an inhibitor: Financial: how does cloud affect the investment and ongoing expenditure connected with technology and the operations of the contact center? Flexibility & Agility: how can cloud-based solutions help businesses with changing interaction volumes and distributed operations? Functionality: what is the effect of cloud-based solutions on the functionality available to the contact center? Security: does Cloud bring a greater risk to security, or the opposite? Control: can a contact center change how it operates quickly enough? Integration & Customization: while out-of-the-box functionality can be quick and cheap enough to get things moving, what if businesses need more a personalized approach? Performance & Reliability: how does cloud affect the contact center s ability to deliver its service? 13

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15 FINANCIAL Cloud-based solutions are sometimes thought of as having a pay-as-you-go financial model that allows business of all sizes to move away from high front-end expenditure, in favor of a more manageable operational expenditure approach without any overspending. It is perhaps better to consider the financial opportunities of cloud as being related more to shifting expenditure from capital expenditure (Capex) to operational expenditure (Opex). Small and mid-size companies in particular typically did not have the ready access to cash to make the necessary capital expenditures for expensive CPE. As a result, making the shift from Capex to Opex has been especially relevant for these organizations, although the traditional CPE vendors have reacted by offering a lease/rental option as an alternative to the traditional lump sum plus maintenance fee pricing structure. Cloud offers contact centers a way forwards without relying on capital investment: Businesses can scale down future customer premises equipment (CPE) investment, with a resulting decrease in capital expenditure Services are bought using a per-concurrent-user or even per-hour pricing model, which helps to keep operating expenses manageable and controllable Outright purchase of equipment isn t for everyone, perhaps for reasons of budget or the ability to maintain the systems There is the opportunity to scale up quickly as demand dictates, without purchasing lots of redundant licenses or the hardware to support them Low-risk ability to start up, move, expand or trial new functionality without risking existing business plans Business retain the freedom to downscale, change targets and react to meet demand, rather than commit themselves to long-term arrangements needed to justify CPE investments. 15

16 Apart from the general, Opex-driven payment model, there are a number of specific scenarios which could impact cost positively for organizations: For outsourcers and telemarketers who may have call volumes that vary dramatically depending on campaign levels, solutions with a flexible pay per usage pricing structure are particularly important. When production levels are the highest, and agent time is being billed to clients, the cost will increase. When there is less work on, the cost drops accordingly. This allows the outsourcer to reduce risk, being able to predict one of the elements involved in profitability with much greater accuracy While it may not be relevant to every organization, cloud offers the freedom to choose location(s) which can affect ongoing costs considerably in cases where property leases or excessive rental costs are an issue A cloud solution can offer organizations the opportunity to consolidate multiple suppliers into fewer (or even a single supplier), reducing the time spent on the supplier management role through having one point of contact and a single bill. One of the major triggers the considering the move to cloud is that telephony switch and infrastructure has reached end of life, with vendors indicating that there will no longer provide maintenance of support. At such a point, organizations have no choice but to consider their options, one of which is almost always cloud. Solution providers note that the financial benefits of cloud are not simply related to the cost model, noting that the decision point for some businesses can be where they see a loss in potential revenue caused by the existing contact center s inability to deliver what is needed in terms of functionality which may be unaffordable or impractical in a CPE environment. 16

17 A contact center s ongoing costs are mainly spent on staffing, with around three-quarters of operating cost spent on agents, IT staff and management. As cloud-based solutions are closely linked with moving from Capex to Opex, it is worth considering how a movement from CPE to cloud-based solutions could impact on expenditure in each of these Opex categories, thus reducing or substituting existing expenditure within the Opex budget and freeing up budget with which to pay the cloud provider. Figure 1: US contact center operating expenditure, 2014 Contact center operating expenditure Utilities / local taxes 3.0% IT maintenance 4.5% Telecoms charges 5.8% Training 4.0% Recruitment 2.5% Other 3.8% Rent 5.9% Agent salaries 56.9% Other salaries (management, IT, etc.) 13.4% Agent salaries At 57% of Opex, any small change in agent salaries will make a large impact on overall spend. Moving to cloud means that companies can be more flexible in their staffing arrangements, either through having agents in lower-cost locations (either onshore or offshore), and by supporting a more volume-driven staffing schedule (e.g. by having homeworkers log on for short shifts when they are needed, rather than the full eight hours). It may also be the case that agents place an actual monetary value on the opportunity to work from home, reducing wage inflation pressure. Seasonality is also addressed, through being able to add and shed agents as needed depending upon the needs of the business throughout the year, without having to purchase all of the licenses needed outright. Cloud offers various ways to reduce or otherwise manage overall salary costs, through contact center virtualization in all of its forms. 17

18 Other salaries (e.g. management & IT) Businesses can experience a decrease in development & implementation costs and attendant IT management salaries, as cloud solution providers will already have solutions up and running. Moving physical hardware off-site also means that these maintenance requirements will no longer be an issue for the contact center. Furthermore, for multisite operations, moving to the cloud will offer greater opportunities for having a single-cross-site management team in place, with call routing and self-service controlled at a single point, reducing management costs as well as improving consistency and increasing the available labor pool. Infrastructure and processes which are held in the cloud can avoid issues which CPE resources can experience, such as unnecessary duplication across multiple sites and a corresponding increase in management costs for configuration, administration and performance checking. Rent, utilities & local taxes Although businesses are usually tied into contracts for their premises, a cloud approach to technology means that a growing business can look for value elsewhere if a new operation is to open; or a contract break occurs, without the upheaval and downtime associated with moving on-site hardware to another location. Moving equipment to the cloud will also reduce energy expenditure. Additionally, as cloud supports a remote worker/home agent scenario more cheaply, this can reduce the need to find additional physical space at a central location if the operation is growing. Telecoms charges Call queuing at the network level also saves money. In multi-site operations - rather than pass a call down to a contact center which may not have an agent immediately available to take the call it makes sense to queue the call at the network level until an agent is capable and available to take it. The call is then passed once to the agent in the specific contact center. IT maintenance Cloud-based solutions can mean that the need for large server farms is reduced or removed, lowering the cost of hardware and maintenance. Software upgrades are carried out at a network-level, reducing cost and upheaval. 18

19 Training & Recruitment Cloud does not offer a great deal of opportunity for saving costs on training, although there may be some opportunity for recruitment savings based on having the ability to locate contact centers or homeworkers anywhere, including in lower cost areas, and through supporting the retention and attraction of high value agents by offering a homeworking option. Other expenditure Apart from these instances of reduced Opex, cloud offers other opportunities to cut down on unnecessary expenditure, including: Operations with fluctuating traffic (either on a seasonal or more frequent basis) do not have to buy sufficient software licenses and telephone line capacity to cover the peaks, as many cloud providers offer the possibility of adding short-term licenses on a pay-as-you-go basis The cloud allows users cost savings associated with not having to own or run their own hardware. Although servers may be a commodity purchase, the energy costs involved in running them can far outweigh the initial purchase and 85% of computing power generally sits idle in any case Disaster recovery may be offered as part of the cloud package, reducing the cost of purchasing this service elsewhere. Shifting Capex to Opex provided options for small and medium contact centers when budgets were tight. This is less of an issue now, and even those that were amongst the most cost-sensitive of operations now consider the cloud to be at least as much about functionality and freeing up resources as it is about cost. However, in the interests of balance, we should also consider cost as being a potential inhibitor. While this may seem strange, using a cloud solution for a long time may end up costing more than purchasing the technology outright. The truth of this will be determined in the TCO/ROI study that will be undertaken before any decision is made about cloud, and will need to include related elements such as the cost of CPE system purchase and application updates, as well as the greater benefit and lower cost associated with more frequent upgrades and recent functionality. The cost of terminating a contract should also be considered as a potential risk element in the cost equation, if the move to cloud does not work out. 19

20 COLLABORATION COMMUNICATIONS CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT TOGETHER. Plan your C strategy at

21 END-USER QUESTION #1: IS THE OPERATING EXPENDITURE / PAY-AS-YOU-GO MODEL STILL A BIG DEAL? WHERE DO THE BIGGEST COST SAVINGS COME FROM? When the recession hit, many organizations were unable to invest significant sums in capital expenditure (CapEx). An operational expenditure (OpEx) model proved attractive as it removed the enormous spikes in spending. Today we re seeing some organizations invest more aggressively in CapEx but in general on-site equipment is going through a decline whereas the cloud OpEx spend is increasing at a double-digit rate. Yes, in the current economic environment clear control of operational costs and predictability of these costs is important, so a monthly subscription or a pay as you go approach provides the flexibility to only pay for what is required. Also much lower cost of entry to an advanced service and feature set is attractive, no need for large upfront CAPEX investments reduces the risks of the projects. The biggest savings come from reduced CAPEX for hardware, software and integration services, as well as the need to have skilled engineers for operational support, i.e. much lower fixed costs to carry forward. The business case is still strong, as the OPEX expenditure model allows organizations and enterprises of all sizes to right-size capacity and accommodate seasonal ups and downs. The outsourcing of operations enables leaner IT organizations while putting more control into the business leader s hands. The pay-as-you-go model continues to be a sought-after and preferred business arrangement for many contact centers especially those with the aforementioned traffic fluctuations. Most contact centers prefer to pay for X throughout the majority of the year, and then pay for Y and Z when they ramp-up for their holiday rushes instead of paying for X, Y, and Z when they only need it for 2 out of 12 months. 21

22 END-USER QUESTION #1: IS THE OPERATING EXPENDITURE / PAY-AS-YOU-GO MODEL STILL A BIG DEAL? WHERE DO THE BIGGEST COST SAVINGS COME FROM? Yes, the pay-as-you-go model and lower cost of ownership are still key drivers for customers looking to move to the cloud. However, increased business agility has become an increasingly important driver alongside cost considerations. The biggest cost savings tend to be associated with organizations that have more seasonal businesses which yield large swings in contact volume and agent counts. That said, many things factor into the level of cost savings a company may experience when moving to the cloud things such as time, size, applications, seasonality, customization, availability and business continuity, security, and in-house investments and expertise. Companies should evaluate both cost and business agility when developing the business case. The biggest cost savings from cloud computing comes from the ability to pool computing resources and allow the cloud provider to server multiple customers using a multi-tenant model with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned based on demand. This also allows you to scale as needed. While not as revolutionary a concept as when SaaS first appeared, the operating expenditure model is still a big deal. It eliminates the need for large up-front payments for physical equipment or huge, multi-year contracts where the customer needed to estimate future usage years in advance. The benefits of cloud contact center solutions allow for scalability, so customers can afford to start with what they need and scale up as required. You don t have to buy any additional hardware or software. All you need is the phone system you already have and PCs with an internet connection. As mentioned, you pay for what you use, when you use it. 22

23 END-USER QUESTION #1: IS THE OPERATING EXPENDITURE / PAY-AS-YOU-GO MODEL STILL A BIG DEAL? WHERE DO THE BIGGEST COST SAVINGS COME FROM? The shift from Capex to Opex suits certain organizations, but this is increasingly not the main reason organizations are moving to the cloud. The biggest cost savings come from the flexibility that a cloud solution provides, allowing you to scale your operations to meet your changing needs. From adding seasonal employees, to handling volume spikes, to growing your permanent workforce, a cloud solution makes it easy to add or remove agents based on your business requirements. In addition, organizations can save costs by leveraging your workforce more effectively, no matter where they are located; on-site, at a remote office, or working from home, a cloud solution can connect them all with IP-based networks. This enables organizations to select from a broader pool of agents, particularly homeworkers that are proven to reduce costs by 15%+; in addition, studies show that homeworkers are 10%+ more productive and feel increased job satisfaction which reduces attrition by 50%+. A cloud solution gives you access to the latest in contact technologies without requiring you to make an investment in expensive hardware to support the contact center telephony. Your cloud provider will maintain the infrastructure at their secure facilities, limiting your equipment risk and expense. In addition, Cloud-based contact routing platforms centralize resources to support the agent network, allowing access from wherever your agents are located. Cloud contact center deployment offers customers several areas where money can be saved. The biggest savings come from the fact that the core infrastructure telephone lines, internet services, servers and network equipment are provided and managed by the cloud service provider. This reduces significantly the start-up costs and implementation time for a new project. Also, cloud delivery is inherently location independent so home working can be organized easily. This offers more options for flexible shift patterns, with the benefit of matching staff levels to call demand, lowering business costs. 23

24 END-USER QUESTION #1: IS THE OPERATING EXPENDITURE / PAY-AS-YOU-GO MODEL STILL A BIG DEAL? WHERE DO THE BIGGEST COST SAVINGS COME FROM? We can only speak from our experience here. Our pricing is based on per concurrent seat license and minutes utilization. However, the impact of our technology in place and properly configured is where the biggest saving are made. Other aspects that affect pricing for us are volume and whether predictive dialer services are needed, versus lower intensity in-bound/outbound services. We also offer a ROI model, guarantees and trial period. The biggest cost savings will come from a couple of areas: obviously, in the future, no need to invest significant amounts in new hardware and the ability to scale up capacity easily and at reduced costs compared to traditional on-premise server-based solutions. There are also the less obvious but equally important cost savings. For instance, cloud-based services enable agent time to be allocated in a more dynamic, real-time way (for instance, switch from outbound to inbound) and there are other features that make better use of staff time, only possible thanks to cloud technology. All this contributes to improved contact center productivity and thus, reduced operating costs. Opex is a big deal especially when you consider that replacing a legacy premise-based system will almost always add new features and benefits that would probably be considered cost prohibitive with the previous system. Areas where costs savings tends to be initially most visible include elimination of upgrade/maintenance fees, and anything to do with hardware maintenance. The ability to redeploy staff dedicated to a premise system will also lead to significant savings. The biggest savings come from only paying for what you use, which seems obvious, but who wants to pay for a service that is not being used? You wouldn t pay for electricity you haven t used so why should you pay for an application instance that is not being used? Other large savings come from the ability to easily modify your cloud environment as your business needs change. A cloud infrastructure is much more malleable than physical hardware in a data center, and it can be reconfigured with little to no outlay. Finally, real-time consumption billing gives you total transparency of costs, which allows you to manage OPEX on projects in a much more fine-grained way. The ability to allocate services and instances and their associated costs to different departments, teams and projects means you have ongoing visibility of the P&L and ROI of each of these at all times, and can take decisions appropriately. 24

25 Improve Your Contact Centre Performance with Noble s Cloud, Premise or Hybrid Solution Unified Communications Workforce Optimisation Analytics Learn more: +44 (0) noblesystems.com #1 Market Leader 25+ Years of Innovation Copyright All rights reserved. Noble Systems, Noble and the N-logo are trademarks of Noble Systems Corporation. All others are trademarks of their respective companies

26 FLEXIBILITY & AGILITY The maturity of Western contact center markets, coupled with the high levels of mergers and acquisitions in industries such as utilities, telecoms, insurance and finance mean that many large companies are now in a position where they provide customer contact via multiple sites, often running on disparate technologies. Cloud-based contact center solutions allow a way out of proprietary systems, lack of interoperability and the expense of maintaining many different systems without gaining from economies of scale. For example, only 46% of multisite US operations ran as truly virtual contact centers in The strongest reason stated for staying non-virtualized was that there were too many different systems at each location to work together: a problem that cloud-based contact center solutions address. On a day-to-day basis, cloud-based contact center solutions can theoretically offer a better service level and a simpler environment for businesses to operate in. Reduced need for IT support and implementation Having hardware and software based in the cloud means that ongoing system maintenance is significantly reduced, as it is the duty of the cloud provider to handle such matters. This is also the case in terms of implementing new systems, with users generally stated to be up and running in days, although of course the level of customization may be less than that in a CPE environment with dedicated IT and business resource available, depending on the cloud deployment model. Larger pool of agents to choose from Treating multiple contact centers as a virtual contact center allows great efficiencies can be made through economies of scale. This is especially true where businesses are using skills-based routing. All agent competencies are displayed to the scheduler regardless of agent location - who can be more flexible, simply because the available resource pool is so much more deep. Cloud enables advanced features to be deployed without complex and possibly unreliable call flows, while offering disaster recovery and risk minimization. For example, queueing interactions in the cloud allows for the searching and identification of relevant agents based on skill and requirements before the call is routed. The distributed nature of cloud enables users to state where they are working from at a particular time, giving single number contactability as the cloud service will find them. The support of contact center virtualization that cloud solutions provide is also applicable to homeworking. 43% of US contact centers now use homeworking, and the proportion of UK agents industry-wide that are homeworkers having risen by over 140% in the past four years. 26

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28 Short-term scalability The cloud offers great flexibility in adding or shedding agents and user licenses, of particular relevance to businesses which have substantial changes in call volumes over a year (such as the seasonality experienced by healthcare providers in the US, retailers and travel agents) or which have to react quickly to handle event-driven call spikes (e.g. an emergency weather situation affecting utilities companies). Scalability is key: many contact centers want to be able to gear up and down to suit business demands and cope with peaks and troughs without unnecessary expenditure, and with cloud-based solutions they can do this on a daily or even intraday basis if necessary, instead of spending on capacity that they may not use for months. Some solutions offer a hybrid model, a mixture of CPE and CCaaS, which allows them to instantly access extra capacity on demand, depending upon the needs of the business. This can help to break down traditional barriers around providing cost-effective handling of seasonal volume spikes, peak periods, new campaigns and homeworkers. Opinions are divided upon this: some solution providers report that hybrid is an effective and popular way of offering an elastic demand capability and disaster recovery, whereas others have found that in their experience, hybrid is more of a stepping stone to pure cloud implementation, used as reassurance and proof of concept by businesses that were not 100% convinced. Centralized management In a multi-site, cloud-based environment, self-service and call routing scripts can be held centrally to increase the speed to alter these as required, and also to maintain consistency across sites. Infrastructure and processes which are held in the cloud can avoid issues which CPE resources can experience, such as unnecessary duplication across multiple sites and a corresponding increase in management costs for configuration, administration and performance checking. 28

29 Intraday Automation: The Future of the Agile Workforce As contact centers struggle with increasingly complex operations and goals and budgets that are still largely cost and productivity oriented, customer service can lose relevance, and customer experience and the bottom line feel the impact. Here s the scenario: It s an average 500-seat contact center. Customer demand is highly unpredictable. Some weeks, volume spikes in the mornings, other times in the evenings. Forecasting is haphazard and scheduling is very basic because no one knows when to expect the next spike in volume. Attrition is high as much as 20% a month and agent morale is low. Agents can work anywhere from hours in a week, depending on call volume, and intraday management is done on a manual, ad-hoc basis if it even exists at all. There is no planning for extra agent training or development and as issues come up, supervisors and managers put out fires just to get through the day. Voluntary time off and voluntary overtime are often offered in the same day. Direct expense, which is usually somewhere between 50-60% of total revenue, is exceeding revenue. A lot of time and money is spent training new hires because of agents lost through attrition and, as a result, the center isn t profitable. All of these things low employee morale, haphazard intraday management, unreliable forecasts, and standard schedules that aren t working are causing the customer experience to suffer. Currently, it s below 80%. In this center, three people spend all day entering schedule exceptions, which doesn t leave a lot of time to analyze data. And, as in all modern centers, there is a lot of data! With increasingly complex multi-channel, multi-skill, multisite and multi-queue contact centers, forecasting and scheduling has also become very sophisticated and complex. Dashboards monitor all kinds of metrics like service level, speed of answer, average handle time and revenue per call. At the same time, scheduling and forecasting is done in silos and coaches and quality teams have to compete for agents time. Though there are lots of tools, they don t work together well. Data is coming in from workforce management, the ACD and the IVR, and people have to make decisions quickly. More often than not, agent development plans are pushed to the back-burner. At the same time, there is always an emphasis on cost and customer service. Over the past several decades, lots of time and resources have been spent on technology innovations to get the call from the customer to the agent, but very little is spent on intraday management. What the industry needs and has needed for some time is something that takes the data from all of these technologies and automatically makes fast decisions based on business rules about where time can be garnered to develop agents without being stuck in manual processes. Automating intraday management and real-time processes is the next big thing in workforce optimization. A new process and technology solution, Intraday Automation enables contact centers to unify siloed tools and operations, and from a tactical standpoint, use data to trigger real-time workforce adjustments throughout the day. Intraday Automation creates value for contact centers of all sizes, solving the challenges of complex manual processes and the need to improve the customer experience all while holding costs constant. The result is an agile workforce that can respond to changing events and circumstances throughout the day and deliver a dramatically better customer experience and at a lower cost. To learn how Intraday Automation can help your contact center simplify and automate your processes to achieve your agent engagement, productivity, budget and C-SAT goals, go to

30 FUNCTIONALITY Solution providers that offer both cloud and CPE solutions are at pains to point out that it is not the deployment model that comes first, but rather how the operational requirements and functionality of any solution match the business s strategy. Historically, cloud-based or hosted solutions were primarily tailored for SMEs, with a trade-off between low-cost of ownership and speed to deploy against less powerful functionality. These cloud-based offerings would tend not to offer the full range or richness of functionality of their CPE equivalents, but recent years have seen concerted efforts by solution providers to be able to offer the same levels of functionality regardless of deployment model. This is not to say that the cloud-based solution offered by a solution provider to a business with 20 seats will be the same as to one with 500 seats: small operations are more likely to require a solution which is relatively easy-to-use as well as being cheaper, but any functionality which they do not have as part of the package is likely to be able to be switched on as and when they require it. For some solutions, the levels of functionality available can differ from provider to provider, and of course businesses need to decide which pieces of functionality are vital, and which are worth foregoing to gain the benefits of cloud-based solutions. Customization in multi-tenancy environments is obviously far more limited than with a CPE delivery model and the cloud provider may not be able or willing to support unique customization requests. This has tended to mean that there has been a balance between functionality, cost and flexibility, although solution providers are still trying hard to offer similar levels to their CPE offerings. Having said that, the majority of functionality that contact centers require will be available through a cloud-based model, and the prevailing opinion is that with the level of competition in this area, cloud providers will be more likely to update and innovate to keep ahead of the game. The issue of customization and integration with existing legacy systems is of differing importance for every business. Some businesses may welcome the opportunity to revisit their old business processes, management information and general operations with a completely open mind. Others may have very specific requirements which are non-negotiable. For most businesses, there will need to be a balance between the way they are used to doing things, and the way the cloud solution works. Having said that, cloud providers are at pains to point out that legacy systems do not have to be replaced or abandoned, just that the levels of customization and integration required may take off a little of the edge that moving to a cloud-based solution can bring: the rapid implementation of technology, with minimal requirements for IT resource and seamless integration between components. Vendors note that cloudbased solutions have often been architected the various components to work together seamlessly, requiring less time and effort to use. 30

31 Trial new applications quickly using a low-risk pilot Contact centers can expand, move, increase size or try out new functionality without the high initial setup costs. Using a pay-per-use model allows businesses to start a contact center or move at low risk or increase for a temporary campaign or try out new functionality without having to spend excessive amounts of time and money first. This is especially true for applications such as speech recognition which can be a very expensive solution to implement at a CPE level, and also ones where the business wishes to trial a technology quickly, or simply use it in a specific business unit. Amongst the biggest gainers from cloud technology are mid-sized contact centers, a market which many vendors had been failing to address in the terms which its size and importance deserved. Solution providers which have deep and rich CPE functionality aimed at the high-end of the market had historically been reluctant or unable to offer similar features to smaller operations at a price point that was acceptable to both parties. Cloud-based solutions mean that this market is becoming more important to vendors: for example, when using a multitenant deployment, the reduced implementation time and lower levels of integration and customization means that more achievable price points can be offered than in a CPE environment, as vendors gain from the economies of scale associated with multitenancy (assuming a critical mass of customers). Future-proof A competitive, open cloud environment should mean that vendors will be motivated to innovate and provide better service. Cloud solution providers have continually to enhance and develop their services which bestows a competitive advantage to business users who can deploy the latest technology and the often inherent advantages of improved functionality, service and reduced costs, through their contact centers. In effect, a cloud solution removes the technology stranglehold experienced by many contact centers with CPE and allows them to concentrate on their core business as this release of frequent new functionality can be used to achieve a strategic service advantage. In a CPE environment, upgrades to applications are carried out under ongoing maintenance contracts. Upgrading one element may cause a knock-on effect requiring other applications to be upgraded as well, a task which can be long and expensive. Cloud-based providers update applications on an ongoing, regular basis. 31

32 poweredbyrostrvm powerful cloud solutions poweredbyrostrvm provides intuitive, high-performing and flexible apps your way, in the cloud. poweredbyrostrvm acts in harmony with your communications infrastructure and provides: Enjoy exceeding targets and delighting customers with no expensive outlay or high maintenance and upgrade costs. Inbound: from simple call queuing to multisite, multi-skilled contact handling with routing to the right person at the right time. Outbound: Achieve goals and keep promises to customers with blended Precision dialling. Integrated and professional remote working capability CallGuide scripting for a consistent, compliant customer experience Integration with CRM systems Compliant call recording The ability to scale up and down as need dictates Real time and historical management information delivered to any device Call us on enquiries@poweredbyrostrvm.com poweredbyrostrvm.com

33 SECURITY Concerns about data security has tended to be the greatest concern expressed around moving to a cloud-based solution, as naturally businesses will tend to think that they can look after their precious data better than anyone else, as they have the most to lose through any mistakes. Worries about attacks from outside or within the service providers' organizations, or through poorly-designed security creating potential risks, mean that allowing a third-party to be in control of a businesses' data security is a major cultural and technological change to the way most businesses and IT departments have operated. Yet serious cloud-based solution providers have invested very heavily in physical and logical security - which many organizations have not done themselves - as it is in the solution providers own best interests to do so: fear of a substantial data breach, and the consequent damage to brand and any financial penalties means that taking security shortcuts creates great risk for the viability of the solution provider. For an enterprise to set up its operations with a similar level of security and disaster recovery is extremely expensive, and the increasing number and stringency of regulations means that this is unlikely to change at any time in the near future. Organizations should expect that data should be at least as secure in a third-party environment that is dedicated solely to providing a high-quality cloud-based service, as this is one of the factors by which the solution provider will succeed or fail. Potential cloud clients should look for: multiple levels of firewall protection continuous intruder detection systems a two-person rule for changes to code or hardware frequent scheduled password changes external testing and audit trails data encryption used both in storage and in transit, under the control of the user additional layers of user authentication and privilege vetting of employees with access to sensitive information or hardware internal traffic and server monitoring. Businesses should make sure to ask their cloud provider what data encryption levels are operated, and whether the customer is given control of the data encryption key. Data should be encrypted at all stages, when travelling over the network between business and the database, and also when it is in the database and any back-up databases too. US organizations may wish to check that providers have the appropriate level of FIPS 140 certification, and are compliant with PCI-DSS, Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and any other regulatory requirements. 33

34 A cloud deployment may be more likely to be associated with security risks as the transmission of data is assumed to be over the public Internet, and that data from multiple customers may be held on shared hardware in place physically separate from the business. This is not necessarily the case: businesses may choose to have a private circuit such as an MPLS network, or to secure the Internet connections by using IPsec VPN tunneling. In any case, the physical and logical security offered in an offsite, dedicated location may well be superior to the business s existing IT/IS environment. Different architectural approaches may be appropriate: virtualization offers a separate single customer, multi-instance environment in the data center; the hybrid, local control model may offer the option to keep voice traffic and customer data (including recordings) locally within the business s own private network. Agents working at distributed locations may require controls such as audit and fraud programs, functionality to control what agents can hear or view, strong and regularly updated protection of the PC environment (including anti-malware, anti-virus and firewalls), as well as screen and voice recording. Some elements to ask about include: Security: the cloud provider must have a strong security management system based on an internationally-accepted security framework, to include physical security measures and secure data center facilities. Relevant policies, certifications and standards include ISO27001/2, PCI-DSS Level 1 Service Provider, and ISAE 3402 / SSAE 16. It should be noted that with the increased use of homeworkers, security controls should be data centric, rather than location centric Access: access to the service provided using industry standard encryption, or via a VPN. Data in transit should be encrypted using strong encryption Usage: make sure customer data is used only as instructed or to fulfil the cloud service provider s legal requirements and that governance and role-based access management policies, and ongoing process testing procedures are in place. This should include user profile controls; all data having a unique key for its owner; authentication; deactivating unused accounts; automated alarms; logging; audit; penetration testing and regular changing of encrypted passwords Data ownership: make sure the cloud provider claims no ownership rights to customer data Payment functionality: see The Inner Circle Guide to PCI DSS Compliance in the Contact Center for full details on the payment card solutions available in the cloud Disclosure: the cloud provider must only disclose customer data where required by law 34

35 Geographical data location: the cloud provider must specify the locations and countries in which data will be stored. Physical protection of the data center(s) should also be considered. Data centers in multiple physical locations will offer disaster recovery options if servers are fully mirrored Auditing: the cloud provider must use third-party auditors to ensure compliance, both physical and technological, and should submit to audits by their clients IS teams as required. Readers may also like to be aware of the policies and aims of the Cloud Security Alliance ( It is worth noting here that the greatest risk to security does not usually come from technical malfunctions or sinister attacks on a company s infrastructure, but rather through human error, failing business practices and a lack of understanding where the greatest risks are. For example, even if a cloud provider can demonstrate the highest levels of security, the overall business is still at risk if the contact center s agents are scribbling down customers payment details on Post-It notes. As such, security can be less about technical elements, and more about governance and processes in place within the organization. Having said that, some solution providers note that the business level executives tend to believe the cloud security isn t a problem, but the IT department can be concerned about opening their firewall. 35

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37 CONTROL Control, visibility and reporting Loss of control is of as much concern to businesses as fears over integration. A service provider may not be as responsive as an in-house team, and it may take hours or even days to make changes to the system, so service level agreements should include response times. It is also the case that the solution provider upgrades or implements new functionality as and when they wish, in the case of the multitenancy model, and backing up the system is also something that the solution provider becomes responsible for. It is vital that these issues too form part of any agreement between the client and the cloud solution provider, with expectations of the provider's speed to react stated and agreed in writing before any contract is signed. Some cloud vendors provide complete visibility of their service availability and performance through web-based dashboards. Cloud-based contact center solutions are more likely to have an ongoing, real-time monitoring capability included in it, rather than operational performance management being an end-of-day activity Some solution providers note that some traditional BPOs and outsourcers, as well as large financial institutions prefer to own and control their own technology, which is a major hurdle to overcome for a cloud provider. These organizations also have significant resources and focus upon security and governance, which makes the cloud proposition a more difficult sell, although not impossible. Having said that, multisite, global enterprises would benefit both in terms of cost and functionality by being able to consolidate their operations over a single platform, utilizing a single supplier. 37

38 JustGiving and NewVoiceMedia: Scaling global customer support with a human touch nnsector: Tech for good nnproduct: ContactWorld for Service NewVoiceMedia s ContactWorld for Service is enabling JustGiving to grow its services globally. With a team in Sydney and on-going expansion in the Asia-Pacific region, ContactWorld for Service can be scaled at any time to meet customer demand thanks to its true cloud technology. Wherever JustGiving s customers call from, they get the same great experience that they do when using the website. In little over 10 years, JustGiving has achieved remarkable success, becoming a household name and the world s leading fundraising platform for good. Trusted by more than 13,000 charities and used in more than 160 countries, JustGiving has helped 24 million people to raise a staggering $3.3 billion for charity. JustGiving provides the technology, advice and support to help charities and individuals reach a much bigger audience for their fundraising, and raise more money for their cause. It s quick and easy for someone to find the person or group they want to support, and donate in just a few clicks or taps sometimes with incredible results. With customer satisfaction currently at 95%, NewVoiceMedia is helping JustGiving deal with call fluctuations and provides the level of service demanded by callers. The key benefits JustGiving has found using NewVoiceMedia s ContactWord for Service are: Better advisor experience and performance thanks to NewVoiceMedia s whispers and easy-to-use interface Seamless integration with Salesforce Case-based management and improved workflow Disaster recovery at a touch Customer insights driven by real-time reporting We needed something that would allow us to scale globally, at low cost, and also rapidly. We effectively outsourced a lot of the technical support that our old system required to NewVoiceMedia, allowing us to get on with helping people raise more for their causes. Huu Anh Chu, Head of Customer Experience, JustGiving Click here to download the full case study CS EC15361 PO /15 US 1 (855) International sales@newvoicemedia.com

39 Cultural considerations Making the move to cloud is seen as a far bigger proposition than deciding whether to implement or replace a particular contact center application such as call recording or workforce management. The decision can be as much cultural and political within an organization as it is technological or operational. As the report shows, the perceived security and data privacy issues around cloud are always present in any such discussion, and a lack of confidence or understanding of the reality around these issues, especially in the higher echelons of decision-makers, has on occasion vetoed or delayed the move to cloud, regardless of the financial or functional arguments put in its favor. Solution providers note that it has also been the case that there has been a common perception that cloud is an all-or-nothing infrastructure decision, which is untrue. Many vendors offer options for customers to keep what they feel that they need on-site - for example call recordings and sensitive data - while moving offsite the elements of the contact center solution that businesses are most comfortable with outsourcing. The move to cloud has similarities to the decision-making process around IP that many contact centers have been through: it may not be related just to the contact center, but other business areas too the technical elements of the decision may not be easily understood by business-focused executives concerns about security and reliability are frequently aired the general movement of control away from the enterprise to a third-party can cause uneasiness final decisions may not be made from within the contact center environment. Using the case of IP, 40% of contact centers in the US and UK stated that the move to IP was a corporate decision, not a contact center decision. Although the case for cost reduction via a single IP network was stated to be the most important factor in the final decision, corporate sponsorship was placed at no.2. 39

40 INTEGRATION & CUSTOMISATION Some solution providers may state that much of the integration required within the legacy CPE environment is unnecessary within a wide-ranging cloud-based solution, as the various components and functionality are architected to work together from the beginning. However, while out-of-the-box, plugand-play application functionality is possible, the reality is that some level of integration with legacy applications and data sources will be required in order to fulfil the business s needs, and solution providers offer API connectors to CRM systems and other applications to this end. Being able to continue using relevant existing CPE systems, and access databases and back-office systems is a minimum requirement for all businesses considering cloud-based solutions, and one which of great concern to a significant minority of organizations. As all businesses are unique, there is no generic solution to this, but many cloud providers have pre-built integration with leading CRM applications such as Salesforce.com, MS Dynamics, SAP and Oracle CRM, and web service APIs enable customers and technology partners to create tightly-integrated contact center applications. Many users of cloud solutions require interaction routing based on data extracted directly from an enterprise data source, or through interaction with a web service or Java API. It is important to deploy a strategy that keeps data in the most suitable locations and which can be linked through the use of unique identifiers. If dynamic routing or self-service is required, there may well be some software development required to link the cloud solution with back-end systems, but the use of open web-based interfaces rather than proprietary client/server protocols to transfer the CTI-type data will reduce the effort of integration. Depending on the requirements of the business and the application involved, solution providers note that there are numerous ways of integrating: by transferring data periodically in data batches, through real-time communication on the server side or by actioning real-time requests from the workstation. Some solution providers note that the private cloud option is becoming more popular, where a third party is responsible for the management of dedicated infrastructure, especially in environments which require complex integration and customization. Other solution providers state the private cloud is far more suitable to very large customers, and that the democratization of technology offered by multitenancy means that everybody gets the most up-to-date functionality at the same time. 40

41 Some things are better together... For the Customer Choose or switch channels without having to start again For the Manager Unified view of customer, centralize management of agents For the Agent Handle multiple channels from a single desktop view...with VoltDelta, ACD and CRM are integrated for a better customer experience. Download the White Paper Now!

42 END-USER QUESTION #2: WE VE GOT A LOT OF SUNK COST IN TECHNOLOGY, AS WELL AS BESPOKE REPORTS AND PROCESSES THAT WE WANT TO KEEP. WON T MOVING TO THE CLOUD JUST CAUSE UPHEAVAL WITHOUT NECESSARILY GAINING MUCH? The beauty of cloud-based services are that they can act as an overlay to existing infrastructures without necessarily causing disruption. You can also make the transition from on-premise to a fully-cloud based environment progressively. Most cloud contact center solutions offer robust integration options to a wide range of systems that you may have within your organization. In many cases a significant portion of your existing environment can be added to a cloud solution that also provide new benefits. The cloud can deliver large gains in terms of flexibility, scalability, and cost control. Organizations that decide this is the right option for their business do not need to abandon their existing investments in hardware and software to access these benefits. The Ormuco Connected Cloud on HP Helion is vendor agnostic, so a customer is able to create a private cloud on their existing hardware and immediately have access to a hybrid solution with seamless workload portability into a HP Helion Public Cloud. Existing legacy applications can also be cloudified to run on a private or public cloud which diminishes any disruption to business as usual. All legacy hardware and software has an expiration date in any case, so customers can phase their transition to the cloud by gradually retiring existing assets starting with the oldest and least mission critical. This can drastically reduce the cost to change without compromising investments made and taking a loss. Ormuco also has a buy back policy for customers who transition to the Ormuco cloud to assist them in recovering monies spent on existing hardware. Cloud maximizes the usefulness of existing technology investments. Instead of forcing organizations to rip-and-replace existing deployments, cloud enables them to continue to use existing technology platforms just as they are but also allows them to cut down on a costly investment path of upgrades and technology refreshes in the future. Technology that resides in the cloud is continually updated and customized, enabling businesses that migrate to retain existing information systems, but operate them in new ways. 42

43 END-USER QUESTION #2: WE VE GOT A LOT OF SUNK COST IN TECHNOLOGY, AS WELL AS BESPOKE REPORTS AND PROCESSES THAT WE WANT TO KEEP. WON T MOVING TO THE CLOUD JUST CAUSE UPHEAVAL WITHOUT NECESSARILY GAINING MUCH? Traditional CPE systems will continue to require new investments to keep the technologies up to date and to get access to the latest capabilities and trends in the market space. Moving to a cloud based solution would reduce this and as long as you choose a flexible solution with strong open APIs many integrations can be ported to a cloud service. A major benefit of moving to an omnichannel cloud Customer Experience (CX) and journey management solution is to upgrade reports, journey analytics and process for all channels. This helps you understand your customer s journey across all touchpoints, including web and mobile. However, that does not mean that everything has to change drastically. With modern and secure APIs, it is possible to integrate and maintain desktops, work force planning systems and legacy back office systems like CRMs, databases, etc. To some degree; yes making changes is rarely without its hassles However, that sunk cost in technology will increase over time as inevitable upgrade costs arise. The incontact Cloud Contact Center includes twice-a-year upgrades at no additional cost. Investments in existing technology are an important concern and companies often look to move to the cloud when systems near the end of their useful life or a significant upgrade event looms for an aging platform. A move to a more modern, all-in-one platform in the cloud can provide similar reports and support similar processes while 1) providing a higher return on investment with quick access to a broad set of sophisticated applications, 2) increasing the level of trust in technology solutions with enhanced availability, business continuity and security, and 3) enabling the business to better adapt to changing business needs with increased flexibility. 43

44 END-USER QUESTION #2: WE VE GOT A LOT OF SUNK COST IN TECHNOLOGY, AS WELL AS BESPOKE REPORTS AND PROCESSES THAT WE WANT TO KEEP. WON T MOVING TO THE CLOUD JUST CAUSE UPHEAVAL WITHOUT NECESSARILY GAINING MUCH? Even if costs have been sunk into certain on-premise technology, over time that technology will still have to be maintained and upgraded to keep up with business needs. As these upgrade needs arise, cloud solutions should be considered for benefits such as: lower overall costs and capital expenditure free computing; the ability to deploy projects faster and foster innovation more quickly; the ability to scale up or down as needed; lower maintenance costs; and improved resiliency and redundancy. Moving to the cloud requires a strategic shift in mind-set. By moving to the cloud, you re not looking to use the same technology in the same way instead you re looking to access better technology in a more streamlined and integrated way. Cloud contact center solutions allows for enterprise functionality in companies without the hefty upfront cost, along with greater visibility, scalability and a democratization of the technology. When you take into account the huge level of inter-connectivity between systems now, it is likely that the custom reports could be exported. If not, Cloud technologies such as ContactWorld from NewVoiceMedia and Salesforce make it easy to create reports, with even more information that could previously be accessed. Moving to the Cloud provides an opportunity to improve. With any change to technology, there will be some disruption; however, most cloud vendors are agile enough to have the technology up and running in a few days. If your organization requires the flexibility of a cloud solution, then the benefits will far outweigh the stress of change. Some organizations offer a hybrid cloud model; this offers even greater flexibility by combining the advantages of both the cloud and premise based solutions to deliver optimum functionality and efficiencies, and offering an easy transition to a premise environment should it be preferred in the future. We agree that the advantages of moving an existing operation to the cloud should be carefully thought through. If you have well-supported technology and you are delivering a quality service to your customers and prospects already then moving to the cloud might not be the correct thing to do; you can always enhance your on-site technology with rostrvm! But if your technology is outdated or you plan operational changes such as multi-location working - or you need to look at disaster recovery plans for example - then cloud flexibility can deliver significant gains. 44

45 Contact Center Revolution: the cloud impact The New Contact Centre Technology Revolution Previous revolutions were driven mainly by the appearance on the market of transformative new B2B technologies. Businesses jumped on board the first digital revolution because it allowed them to do the same things they had always done take and make calls, manage orders and payments, dispatch product only much faster and more cost-effectively. This was enabled by cheap and powerful hardware and software, which gave managers new capabilities such as CRM, digital order processing, and of course IVR for call queues, routing and self-help options. But if you think about it, until recently not much really changed for consumers. Even when they began to adopt the Internet in large numbers the fledgling ISPs TV ads still had you ring a freephone number so that AOL, or whoever, could post you a CD-ROM! You ve probably seen this hilarious parody. This contact center revolution is different. While it is partly driven by the availability of new B2B technologies particularly the cloud this time there are two additional factors to take into account. The first, and most important, is the massive change in consumer behavior brought about by their use of digital mobile devices. The second is the need for businesses to adapt to today s post-great Recession economy by doing more with less. Our Customers Have all Gone Digital Look at the diagram below from the highly-recommended Merchants 2015 Global Contact Center Benchmarking Report. It shows that while we have been talking about multi-channel since the early 2000s, only in the last few years has it become a significant reality. But even these figures do not tell the full story. For example, social media is already the first choice channel of communication for Generation Y consumers. As people in this age group account for around 20% of consumer spending, few companies will be able to survive and grow without catering for them. And yet, according to the Merchants report, 57% of contact centers still have no social media capability! The real game changer here is not the multiplication of channels but the need to integrate channels so that customers can move between them at will and expect to receive the same level of service. Today s revolution is omni-channel. The Three Business Factors Driving this Revolution The boom times of the late nineties and early noughties are long gone. Even companies that aren t strapped for cash are reducing capital expenditure on technology in favor of operational expenditure. There are three reasons for this. Firstly, operational expenditure can more easily be linked directly to results, allowing every business unit to become a profit center that contributes to the bottom line - including IT & the contact center, which under the old model could only ever be cost or admin centers. Secondly, both technology generally, and businesses operational requirements specifically, are changing too quickly, which means hardware and software can be out of date or no longer fit for purpose within months of being purchased. Finally, to meet the demands of omni-channel customers, there is a need today for everything to be joined up. This means breaking down the barriers between business units, business functions, data silos and communication channels. Only in this way can companies present a cohesive face to customers as they switch from voice to to web chat to social media even during the course of a single transaction.

46 PERFORMANCE & RELIABILITY Cloud clients depend upon the solution provider to maintain a high level of service reliability, availability and uptime. This means there must be data center redundancy and geographical separation, and enforceable service level agreements. Service providers will test their systems on an ongoing basis, and a few will even guarantee their availability to % (the '5 9s target of carrier-grade availability), backed by penalties if they do not achieve this. This level of reliability is the standard for very large contact centers which have paid significantly for this in a CPE environment, but is likely to be an improvement on what SMEs are used to, with their much smaller budgets. The nature of cloud-based systems - that they can be accessed from anywhere by anyone with a browser, with little or no client-side software needed - means that problems at the client's premises can be circumvented by physically moving staff elsewhere. Potential users of cloud-based solutions should be aware of what they are comparing when they place vendors side-byside for reliability assessment. Some vendors include the necessary downtime associated with maintenance and upgrades of an instance, others only count unscheduled downtime. Potential clients should make sure that the provider's infrastructure is load-balanced and overprovisioned relative to the number of users to ensure resilience and consistent levels of performance. There is a risk that some providers add new clients without adding new hardware or other supporting systems (which would obviously be more profitable), and this would negatively affect the response times of the applications. Ensuring business continuity during outages, facility emergencies and inclement weather is a critical requirement for any contact center operation. Cloud-based contact center models ensure business continuity by enabling agents to be connected to the technology platform and necessary applications from anywhere with Internet access. Even in an outage, companies maintain the ability to service and sell to the client base, undermining what could otherwise be a disastrous situation resulting in lost revenue, dropped calls and negative customer experiences. Cloud solutions eliminate the costly and time-intensive process of building and maintaining a back-up site from which to take calls and deal with emergency situations, and superior solutions are fully-redundant, with complete disaster recovery and business continuance delivered from multi-site locations. Cloud solutions can also provide back-up disaster recovery protection to centers which prefer on-site CPE or a hybrid model, as reserve protection. In this way, disaster recovery can act as a first step into the world of cloud, with the company becoming more familiar with offsite functionality and hardware, which can lead to a greater commitment to put the primary functionality into the cloud once their own technology is at end of life. 46

47 THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF DRIVERS AND INHIBITORS As this section has shown, there are a number of drivers and inhibitors that can affect the implementation of cloud. The following chart shows the pressure that contact centers under from various issues related to cloud, in order to see what is really driving any decision. Drivers After considering several potential financial and operational drivers for cloud solutions, survey respondents were asked how these factors affect their own contact center operations, to see if there are forces that would make a contact center consider changing the way they deploy technology. Figure 2: What is your opinion on these cloud-related issues as they apply to your contact center? (US) What is your opinion of these cloud-related issues as they apply to your contact center? A pay-as-you-go model is attractive 16% 29% 34% 14% 7% IT support & implementation teams are more overworked 27% 43% 16% 12% 1% Virtualization & homeworking are more interesting to us 28% 28% 23% 16% 5% Reducing capital expenditure is a focus 31% 38% 25% 6% 1% Our IT systems need to be improved 34% 40% 14% 9% 3% Flexibility to add agents and change functionality quickly is vital 44% 38% 11% 3% 4% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Strongly agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree With 82% of respondents agreeing or strongly agreeing, the ability to improve flexibility comes out on top again, with the opportunity that cloud solutions offer to optimize user licenses being widely acknowledged as a chance to cut costs while maintaining or improving functionality. Virtualization and homeworking is of interest to over half of respondents. As more solutions become available and more businesses actually go ahead with this, the non-centralized model is something that is frequently being revisited. The flexibility of adding agents and licenses is also connected with this. 47

48 There is a definite feeling held by the majority of respondents that systems need updating urgently, which offers contact centers the opportunity to look at other options to the traditional CPE model, as it becomes a matter of choosing which change to make, rather than deciding whether any change is necessary. This can be also linked with the fact that over half of respondents say that their IT staff are increasingly overworked. A cloud-based solution can offer a significant reduction in the level of on-site support required. As interviews with solution providers consistently show, the interest in cloud-based solutions seems more driven by what this deployment method can offer in terms of adding functionality and operational effectiveness, rather than through purely financial concerns such as using pay-as-you-go, or a reduction in capital expenditure. 48

49 Genesys Thought Leadership EMBRACING THE CHALLENGES OF OMNICHANNEL ENGAGEMENT IN A CLOUD CONTACT CENTER Support for multichannel customer engagement is seen as a basic requirement for any organization looking to support their customers where and how consumers want to connect. Sales, service and support organizations know that most customers are using mobile devices for voice and SMS interactions, participate in social media, and use the web to research before they buy. According to the Customer Experience Board, 58% of consumers have visited a company s website before calling to pose questions or order, and 34% are doing so at the very same time they are on the phone with a rep. PLEASING CUSTOMERS REQUIRES EVOLVING BEYOND MULTICHANNEL Even in providing support for multiple channels and capabilities such as chat, , mobile and SMS not connecting those interactions together means that consumers have to repeat information and endure poor customer experience. Organizations are powerless to gain efficiencies or design more effective customer journeys across sales, support or account management events if they are not integrated. Omnichannel engagement requires that customers are served using all relevant channels, while transitions and connections across them are smoothly enabled through the sharing of context. Not only does this deliver more personalized customer service, but it ensures consistency across intentionally optimized customer journeys. Omnichannel capabilities also enable you to seamlessly move customers between channels based on their segmentation -e.g. Premium customers get access to enhance tiers of service. TRANSFORMING SELF-SERVICE THROUGH MULTIMODALITY Self-service has traditionally been offered to customers using a single channel such as voice, web or mobile and many of these self-service applications to date have been inconsistent and of varying effectiveness. Consumers are rapidly shifting from the traditional IVR to digital channels, and want more options to connect with greater richness of interaction. American Express reports that 93% of Americans surveyed stated that companies regularly fail to exceed their service expectations. The ability of consumers to switch providers and vendors, with only a mouse-click, means that the bar for customer experience has been raised above legacy interaction types and channels. Next generation self-service involves simultaneous engagement on multiple channels, within a single interaction. A classic example of this multimodality involves a consumer talking to an agent on their mobile device, while receiving an SMS from the agent linking them to help documents or videos, and then receiving an appointment confirmation confirming the next step in the journey. Automated multimodal interactions present consumers with the ultimate in personalization and care driving loyalty and repeat business this interaction can rival the most polished salesperson. In addition to delivering personalized responses, a focus on omnichannel engagement enables companies to orchestrate customer journeys. Interactions are linked in a step by step workflow driven by business rules and analytics for more efficient operations. Managing the lifecycle of customer journeys involving; design, orchestration, monitoring and tuning, provides a personalized and context-appropriate experience for each and every customer. MODERNIZATION AT THE SPEED OF THE CLOUD The promise of cloud solutions has always been to deliver a level of agility not found with traditional, onpremises systems. Organizations looking to modernize their contact centers to address customer demand for omnichannel engagement can do so more immediately and cost effectively through cloud deployment. The ability to scale up capabilities and orchestrate customer journeys across digital and voice channels without capital expenditures can drive customer loyalty and repeat business better than any other short-term investment. Paying only for capabilities utilized and demanded by consumers reduces risk, while equipping agents with the tools they need to become more productive and to become more successful in serving customers. The market is rapidly shifting from onpremises to cloud solutions, because operational flexibility means leaner IT organizations, faster response to changing conditions, and a new empowerment of business users and customer service personnel. For more information on enhancing your organization to support orchestrated journeys, see the ebook, Supporting Customer Journeys and Your Business with a Cloud Contact Center. Or visit our website.

50 Inhibitors The large amount of primary research data collected through interviews - both with those that use cloud, and those that do not - allows us to examine not only what is holding people back from implementing cloud, but make some sort of judgement on how fair or realistic their assessment is. Figure 3: What are your concerns about cloud-based solutions? (respondents not using cloud) 100% What are your concerns about cloud-based solutions? (respondents not using cloud) 90% 80% 70% 48% 33% 22% 19% 15% 13% 23% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 17% 15% 21% 6% 15% Data security risks 27% 13% 6% Difficulty integrating with existing systems 29% 13% 20% 16% Danger of wasting investment on existing systems 17% 25% 27% Lack of reporting capability 30% 21% 11% Loss of control 5 - of great concern of little concern Looking first at those who have not implemented a cloud, the strongest inhibitor is the concern that data security will be compromised by allowing a third-party to control customer details. 48% of noncloud-using respondents state that data security in the cloud is of great concern to them, showing that communication of the reality of these risks still needs improvement. For example, while some cloudbased providers allow clients to keep call recordings and sensitive customer information on their own site, most have external audits and accredited dedicated security to surpass the security delivered by on-premise offerings. 50

51 The difficulty in integrating with existing systems, and the danger of wasting existing investments is also of concern, although most respondents do not consider a lack of reporting or loss of control to be a deal-breaker. Those with concerns that existing investments would be wasted if they were to move to cloud, should note that many vendors offer a solution that can work alongside existing CPE elements. Solution providers should continue to focus their efforts on demonstrating the strength of their security measures, and reassuring potential users of cloud and hosted solutions that the security measures in place are actually stronger than would be feasible within a fully premise-based system. Concerns about the practicality of integrating with existing solutions, along with guarantees over performance should also be addressed. When the same questions about concerns are asked to users of cloud-based contact center solutions, it is noticeable that 21% still have strong concerns about data security. While this figure is much lower than that given by non-cloud users, it shows that data security issues have not yet been fully addressed to the market s entire satisfaction. The concerns about making sure existing investments are not wasted are certainly still present, as well as managing potential risks around data security. It seems that almost 40% of survey respondents have also found some issues with integrating their cloud components with their existing systems (and this is an area that should be understood fully by those looking to implement cloud-based solutions before they commit), although a lack of reporting capability and loss of control are rarely major issues. Figure 4: What are your concerns about cloud-based solutions? (respondents using cloud) What are your concerns about cloud-based solutions? (respondents using cloud) 100% 90% 80% 70% 26% 2% 21% 19% 15% 23% 7% 6% 6% 17% 26% 11% 60% 50% 40% 30% 22% 24% 19% 23% 17% 21% 24% 34% 5 - of great concern of little concern 20% 41% 10% 26% 23% 17% 28% 0% Danger of wasting investment on existing systems Data security risks Difficulty integrating with existing systems Lack of reporting capability Loss of control 51

52 Support with a Smile Outdated premises systems make the wrong impression. You want to give your customers the best experience possible, but you re struggling with simple tasks like optimizing your workforce and informing your CRM. It s time you ditch your outdated premises system for the power of the cloud. incontact s cloud software gives your contact center Don t settle for bad impressions. Take your contact center to the cloud at: incontact Inc.

53 CLOUD: WHO S USING IT? WHAT S CHANGED SINCE 2012? In the first edition of this report, written in 2012, it is probably fair to say that the main driver for cloud was that of Opex payments, rather than capital expenditure. All of the solution providers interviewed for this report indicates that while the pay-as-you-go, or monthly rental model is still an attractive proposition, it is far less important in 2015 than it was three years earlier, a view which is backed up by survey data earlier in this report. Solution providers point out that CPE deployments can now often be paid for in an Opex model, and that the movement to cloud is more about the functionality, agility and scalability that this model offers. It is also the case that operations have generally become more complex, certainly in the number of channels offered and the proportion of interactions going through them. It is no longer possible for many companies simply to focus upon voice, and the attendant need to provide a single view of customer regardless of channel acts as a inhibitor to the siloed approach. Quality monitoring, analytics, workforce management and the unified desktop are some of the tools used today that take all of the siloed data and try to put it into a holistic context, taking advantage of all the different data sources, and the expansive, open nature of cloud solutions encourages this outlook. Looking at the inhibitors, concern over data security is still one of the most important factors holding back the movement to cloud, although solution providers point out now that the concerns that potential customers hold seem to be much more specific to their business, rather than being a wide-ranging, generic fear of losing control. Solution providers point out the one of the main differences to have occurred in the past three years is that cloud is now seen as a genuine alternative to CPE for even the largest of enterprises, not just smaller operations. Some state that they originally focused their product and marketing efforts on the small and medium contact center sectors, but have been surprised by the interest shown by those with many hundreds (if not thousands) of agents, and have changed their strategy and marketing approaches appropriately. There is an increased familiarity and trust in cloud-based solutions, both in decisionmakers personal (i.e. non-business) lives, and in the prevalence of cloud-based enterprise applications, which is meant that cloud is no longer a particularly tough sell. 53

54 Solution providers note that there has been great growth in cloud solutions that support outbound sales activity, where the pay-as-you-go model allows outsourcers to have some control over their profit margins depending on the amount of work that they have, as well as benefiting from the immediate use of added functionality that cloud-based solutions provide. It is common for cloud providers to tightly integrate with CRM and contact management packages (e.g. Salesforce.com), and adding dialing functionality supports the consultative style of selling, giving agents the opportunity to read up about customers before they dial. This is not just the case for traditional contact centers, but also for organizations which may not see themselves as having a contact center, but which carry out large amounts of sales communication with customers and prospects, albeit in perhaps a more informal environment. Cloud-based solutions offer such enterprises the benefit and efficiency of the contact center world, without the high levels of sunk cost and operational and technical expertise that a CPE solution would demand. Solution providers report that there is far less effort needed these days to explain the business benefits of cloud, noting that the widespread adoption of salesforce.com and other hosted CRM solutions has done a lot of the market education work for them. Almost unanimously, they note that while issues around cost and productivity are still important, organizations as a whole tend to be more concerned about the customer experience and service delivery, and that these are the messages that the market listens to. Currently, solution providers cloud customers tend to come from CPE environments which have reached end of life - which may then choose to migrate to cloud using the same provider, or come from a competitor - rather than from competing cloud vendors. 54

55 Case Study: Whitney Bank With all of the power and performance of the award-winning Noble Enterprise Solution in a unified platform, Noble Enterprise Cloud offers a seamless alternative to the premise-based solution with advantages in scalability, business continuity, and cost-of-entry. Our most recent case study comes from one of America s strongest financial institutions, Whitney Bank. Whitney Bank chose the Noble Enterprise Cloud solution to support their customer service efforts. As an institution committed to helping people achieve their financial goals and dreams, Whitney Bank plans to use Noble s cloud-based suite of unified communications products to create greater opportunities for the individuals and communities they serve. Noble s cloud technologies were the perfect fit to complement our commitment to service with honour and integrity, said Dustin Redden, VP of Collections and Recoveries at Whitney Bank. The new system will reduce the labour-intensive tasks of our representatives and help them focus on serving our customers. Whitney Bank will use the inbound routing, contact blending, and call recording technologies in the Noble solution to enhance its contact operations as it supports thousands of clients with personal and commercial banking services throughout the US. The Noble security and compliance tools will help Whitney Bank maintain the safety and integrity of their data and contact procedures. Noble Systems is very pleased to work alongside an establishment with the reputation of Whitney Bank, said Chris Hodges, Senior Vice-President of Sales and Marketing at Noble Systems. For financial organisations with detailed customer service requirements and a desire for a versatile hosted arrangement, there is no better choice than the premier unified agent desktop and call management tools of Noble s cloud offering. Learn more: +44 (0) noblesystems.com #1 Market Leader 25+ Years of Innovation Copyright All rights reserved. Noble Systems, Noble and the N-logo are trademarks of Noble Systems Corporation. All others are trademarks of their respective companies

56 BEST FIT Not all businesses are ready for the cloud: perhaps there may be too many concerns about security within various areas of the business, or there may have been a major recent capital investment in CPE. Moving to cloud is not a 'no-brainer'. Below are some of the characteristics that mean some businesses will choose CPE while others will migrate to cloud-based solutions. Many solution providers emphasis that cloud/premise decision is just as much about attitudes and commitment to internal IT as it is about cost. For many organizations, the IT department is freed from its role of ongoing maintenance and management, and can look at other projects of more strategic benefit to the business. Figure 5: Characteristics of businesses choosing cloud and CPE More suitable for Cloud More suitable for CPE Fluctuating call traffic (e.g. seasonality) that requires flexibility in adding & shedding agents Planned addition of new sites and/or homeworkers Looking to add functionality and/or have technology at end-of-life Multi-site locations that could benefit from consistency of technology and management Innovative and risk-taking culture aimed at gaining competitive edge Simpler reporting & routing More standardized back-office integration Willing to look at Opex model of funding Do not have enough experienced IT staff to implement, support and maintain desired systems Willing to cede some control over privacy and security to third-parties More predictable traffic that does not require changes in agent numbers Stable contact center environment in terms of headcount and location Have made substantial and recent investments in technology Single-site location or no need to virtualize Conservative cultural approach to new technology and risk management Very complex routing & reporting requirements Sophisticated and deep integration with backoffice systems, developed over many years More comfortable with Capex model Have a lot of experienced IT staff Culturally unwilling to relinquish control over privacy and security 56

57 VERTICAL MARKETS AND CONTACT CENTER SIZES The suitability of cloud-based solutions by vertical market segmentation is perhaps less relevant than some other contact center functionality, being more a factor of the individual organization s requirements for flexibility, access to Capex funding, attitude to IT and the state of their existing systems. Having said that, the outsourcing sector has been very quick to embrace cloud technology, with the very nature of their business is a cultural fit with the idea of letting a third-party take control of non-core activities. The ability to add and shed agents very quickly, coupled with the definite knowledge of the associated cost appeal to the way in which these organizations do business, which also enables them to produce rapid and detailed bids for new work without fear of long technology implementation times, and with certainty over costs. The movement away from high-volume outbound campaigns into more of a blended environment has also put pressure on certain types of outsourcer to include new functionality, and cloud offers a quick and integrated way to do this. The flexibility of billing is a major attraction for a contact center whose actions implement directly upon profitability. Formerly a major growth pool in the industry, public sector contact centers have seen investment budgets reduced in recent years with little hope of a reversal in the near future. Cloud-based solutions offer a way to maintain a good level of functionality without having a large in-house IT operation, while keeping costs low and predictable. However, some vendors report that this is a very difficult market sector to sell into, with a high degree of inertia due to the defensive attitude towards any new expenditure and the shedding of knowledgeable and experienced resources. Seasonal contact centers (such as retail, travel and outsourcing) are also a major target for cloud-based solution providers, who can add pay-as-you-go functionality almost immediately. Even paying a premium for a short-term usage contract will be far cheaper for a contact center which would otherwise have to buy extra full licenses at a far higher cost. A solution provider comments that the great level of competition in B2C, especially retail puts this vertical market far ahead, although some aspects of finance are not far behind. Healthcare is further back: hospital networks are not directly competitive, so have less focus upon being a step ahead of the competition. Those businesses with a fixed, heavilyregulated environment are also less likely to be early to the cloud, as they will want to maximize their existing infrastructure investment, and are likely to be risk averse to allowing individual departments to buy what they want. Departmental contact centers have also been quick to consider cloud-based solutions, as their IT operations may not fit with the rest of the organization and can be a burden rather than a strategic asset. Cloud offers them a chance to take control of their own destiny, rather than be a small part of a much larger whole that may be moving in another direction. Such departmental contact centers may be in the sales and marketing function, which means that outbound functionality is of great concern to them. 57

58 The SME (small-medium enterprise) sector s theoretical desire for the rich functionality available to large enterprises has been dampened by the cost of implementation, as well as the general lack of IT inhouse resource available to fine-tune and customize it so as to get the most of the solution. Previous years have seen numerous attempts by leading on-premise solution providers to cut down their toplevel offerings to suit the mid-market, but it has been difficult to offer something of real value at a reasonable price without alienating their existing customer base or cannibalizing their own revenue streams, despite the large proportion of operations industry-wide being in the SME bracket. Cloudbased solutions can now alleviate much of the requirement for in-house resource, as well as offering an Opex solution at a lower price point for sophisticated functionality, and is a hugely attractive option for this sector of the market. The SME sector is far more likely to take up cloud-based solutions wholesale, whereas many solution providers report that large enterprises will evolve into cloud piece-by-piece. At an enterprise level, organizations that are young and rapidly-growing that don't have the experience or incumbent team to run their own contact center are prime candidates to consider cloud. Where the contact center is dynamic - adding and shedding agents as required, whether contract-based, seasonal or multi-site/global - cloud is also a good fit. Organizations where finding Capex is difficult are of course also more likely to look at cloud-based solutions. Many solution providers report that enterprises have shown significant growth in interest in cloud-based solutions over the past 12 months, with some CPE/cloud providers now stating that the majority of new sales are for their cloud-based solution, even at the top-end of the market. Cloud-based solutions are finding their way into even the most risk-averse verticals, such as finance and healthcare, for which the importance of customer/patient data security cannot be overestimated. Standards such as HIPAA and SSAE 16 must be complied with, and many cloud providers have made it part of their strategy to meet or exceed the prescribed levels of security and audit in order to be able to address these markets and take away one of the most pressing issues faced by these clients. 58

59 Philips (Healthcare) U.S. headquarters and contact center, Atlanta, GA 2,300 total users worldwide Challenges Outdated on-premises system End of life High operational and maintenance costs Limited multichannel capability Insufficient virtualization for global operations and work-at-home agents Solution deployed Interactive Intelligence Communications as a Service CaaS benefits Common global platform Rapid deployment Supports contact center/ enterprise operations worldwide 35 healthcare sites 5 human resource sites 2,000 clinicians 100 supported sites in all by 2017, including contact centers in Japan, Germany, UK Increased virtualization Work-at-home agents globally DR minimizes downtime Uninterrupted customer service All-in-one multichannel technology Advanced functionality Multichannel routing/ queuing IVR Unified messaging Presence management Costs reduced significantly More efficient operations Reduced IT workload Investment protection long-term Hospital imaging centers using systems from Philips must keep downtime to a minimum. For the 650 engineers, radiation technologists, and clinical personnel at the Philips contact center in Atlanta in particular, resolving customers issues therefore is both critical and continuous. Customer service excellence Philips has used the Interactive Intelligence CaaS solution to overcome many of the barriers its contact center experienced with a previous on-premises system. Peak volumes required 200 engineers to be accessible to customers, but only 64 virtual engineers were available in queue at any time. Now, work-at-home agents globally and a 24/7 follow-the-sun configuration have increased service resources and uptime to handle peak volumes effectively. Most imaging equipment support issues mirror the urgency of hospital operating rooms and ER departments themselves. inquiries from customers could not be queued and routed to the proper clinical personnel in the expedient manner needed. An intelligent routing scheme now enables Philips to route phone calls, s and Web chats quickly, with high levels of accuracy. Philips imaging devices include phone-home capabilities that automatically alert agents to technical problems. Attempting to integrate this process with the previous communications platform would have been difficult and costly, if not impossible. Intelligent routing in the Interactive Intelligence CaaS solution associates phone-home alerts with a specific clinician for immediate routing. For Philips customers, potential imaging equipment problems are now resolved with the appropriate efficiency. A future capability will allow customers to open a Web chat window from within their imaging device and be directly connected to support. The Philips contact center required multi-level call routing beyond just skill sets. To maintain account and service continuity for select customers, customercentric routing ensures that such customers are always routed to the same engineer. ACD flexibility to any phone further ensures that engineers can be reached when working remotely. To avoid downtime and maintain service to customers and hospitals, the move from Philips existing system to its new CaaS model had to coincide with an office move and be completed quickly. The Interactive Intelligence CaaS platform was configured prior to the actual office move. During the transition, no calls or customer interactions were ever dropped. Prepared for the future Philips views Interactive Intelligence CaaS as protecting its investment well into the future. Primarily, the company and its service operations must maintain the ability to adapt to changing customer needs quickly. With the previous on-premises infrastructure, system changes would have taken months or longer to deploy. Now, however, Philips can leverage many of the Interactive Intelligence contact center applications immediately via the cloud

60 USAGE IN 2015 CRM and call routing functionality were the most likely to be deployed through cloud-based solutions, with call recording functionality also used in a significant minority of instances. 46% of US survey respondents had at least some contact center functionality in the cloud. Figure 6: Is any of your contact center functionality hosted in the cloud? (US, 2014) Contact center functionality hosted in the cloud 60% 54% 50% 40% 30% 20% 31% 23% 21% 17% 17% 10% 0% 10% 5% 1% 1% 1% 60

61 Looking at the use of cloud-based solutions by contact center size, 44% of respondents from large operations used some cloud functionality, with call routing and IVR functionality being the most popular, and automated outbound dialing was more prevalent in large operations than elsewhere as well. Perhaps the most interesting finding from this table is that more than half of respondents from small (sub-50 seat) operations report having some cloud-based contact center functionality this year. Of this, CRM/agent desktop software was by far the most prevalent, although call routing and call recording were also well-represented relative to larger operations. While the actual respondents to this survey (and consequently the overall statistics) vary from year-toyear, these findings suggest that cloud-based functionality - as logic dictates it should be - is widely accessible and used by all areas of the contact center industry. Figure 7: Is any of your contact center functionality hosted in the cloud? (US, by contact center size) Technology Small Medium Large Average CRM/agent desktop software 38% 33% 22% 31% Call routing functionality 21% 24% 30% 23% Call recording 21% 24% 19% 21% Workforce management systems 10% 21% 22% 17% IVR/speech recognition 15% 10% 30% 17% Automated outbound dialing 8% 7% 19% 10% Speech/interaction analytics 3% 7% 4% 5% management 3% 0% 0% 1% Knowledge base 3% 0% 0% 1% Reporting and Analytics 3% 0% 0% 1% No cloud-based functionality 49% 60% 56% 54% 61

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63 IMPLEMENTATION AND USAGE PRE-IMPLEMENTATION ROI, TCO & PRICING Before being able to calculate return on investment, it is necessary to understand the total cost of ownership of cloud-based solutions compared to their CPE equivalents. These can include: Reduction or redistribution of agents (e.g. through homeworking or virtualization) expanding the agent pool and service levels without increasing agent numbers overall. This is particularly the case for businesses requiring highly skilled and trained agents - health, medical, technology, life sciences and pharmaceuticals for example - as homeworking is seen as an effective agent retention and attraction method Impact of increased functionality on call handling times and first-contact resolution rates (e.g. having multi-site skill-based routing strategies supported in the cloud) The in-house cost associated with the maintenance and management of on-premise hardware and software, compared with that spent monitoring cloud-based systems (although minimal, businesses will still want to be aware of what is happening, when upgrades are scheduled, supplier liaison, etc.) Initial cost of CPE and the structure of financial payments, effect of depreciation, etc. (NB CPE costs are likely to be substantially higher than cloud at first, but lower as time passes and costs are written-off. It is important to compare the overall cost of any cloud contract with the TCO of the CPE solution over the appropriate timescale) The value of staying current with technology, both in terms of reduced license fees and the impact of superior systems on agent performance. Include the cost of additional training requirements in a frequent release environment Whether additional functionality provided by the cloud provider over time is included in the fixed monthly payment, and if so, what would be the cost of upgrading on-premise solutions to include this functionality? Cost of calls, the ease of moving between telephony providers, and the extent to which calls are included in the cloud package Compare the cost of staffing for seasonal volumes and spikes (licenses, recruitment, training, staff salaries etc.) compared to cloud-based PAYG and homeworkers or short-shift workers, as well as attendant additional hardware fees for major on-premise volume increases (e.g. adding an extra server). 63

64 The distribution of payments is very different, as well as the overall fee paid. Although there may be an initial fee associated with cloud-based solutions (connected with the discovery and implementation phase, as well as a payment in advance), this upfront cost is likely to be far lower than with traditional on-premise purchases, although the latter may be alleviated somewhat in the case of a leasing arrangement. TCO assessments of cloud vs on-premise deployments generally reach a conclusion that cloud-based cost savings are proportionately larger with increasing contact center size, and also where the level of functionality is greater too. However, some solution providers report that longer-term, the depreciation associated with on-premise solutions means that the TCO gap narrows, so that after 7 years or more, the difference is much less, if not wiped out totally. As expected, there is no single right calculation to the ROI question, although payback is stated to be within 12 months in virtually all cases, and in many, a considerably shorter timescale (perhaps 3-6 months). The actual figure depends on factors such as number of seats, the number of contact center locations, the functionality employed, the costs of integration or customization and other such factors. Most vendors have an ROI calculator for prospective clients to use. Any choice not to move to cloud is less frequently financial than for many other types of technology decision (except perhaps in cases where there has been large recent capital investment made), but may be more concerned with cultural issues, existing IT infrastructure and expertise, and other concerns which may or may not be entirely justified. From the vendor perspective, some say that cloud-based solutions don't impact particularly positively on their profitability, as revenues from contracts are recognized over a number of years, rather than immediately in the case of many on-premise sales. It does however provide a guaranteed income stream and help cashflow forecasts, allowing them to run their business with a greater confidence and stability, which is obviously helpful for their customers as well. Contract lengths vary, but are generally in place for at least a year, more often two or three. Some vendors provide a zero-commitment option but these are likely to work out pro-rata perhaps 40-50% more expensive than long-term contracts. Solution providers differ widely in their contract offers, with some operating a very flexible 'per logged hour' billing system, whereas others will want an agreed minimum number of agents per month, with additional users billed as required. For most vendors, especially those offering a multi-tenant model, the cost of maintaining and upgrading the solution is lower, which impacts positively upon their own costs. 64

65 Pricing will of course depend on the features and functionality that client choose to use, although the following table gives a rough idea of what users can actually expect to pay. Generally speaking, when comparing similar levels of functionality, price points have come down over the past three years. Figure 8: Pricing examples Functionality / size Price ($ per agent per month) Small contact center - voice only $75 - $150 (typical $110) Small contact center - full blended and multichannel $175 - $240 (typical $200) Enterprise - voice only $50 - $135 (typical $90) Enterprise - full blended and multichannel $90 - $210 (typical $150) Further notes on pricing Potential cloud clients should also check and include the cost per minute of delivering and making calls, as well as any additional platform usage fee (e.g. per logged-in agent minute) Non-standard service requests (such as customization, extra reporting etc.) will also usually be charged for separately, with a rate of $100-$150 per hour being typical Multichannel functionality may be added on a per-seat basis, including , social media and chat. Extra pricing of $30-$50 per agent per month per extra channel can be expected Potential customers should also take into account any per supervisor/manager license costs Most cloud-based providers offer pricing based on concurrent users, rather than specific named users, which reduces wasted license fees Most cloud vendors offer pricing on a per-seat/per-month basis, but some offer the even more granular approach of per logged hour, which is of particular interest to outbound telemarketing companies and outsourcers, for whom this directly impacts upon profitability, with daily viewing of billing offered by some vendors 65

66 Businesses may be charged separately for connectivity to the data center which may be on a per minute basis, so will need to make sure that any request for quotation includes the same levels of access, data and voice traffic. Solution providers also note that prospective customers should ask about minimum call charges, per second billing, per digit billing and the rounding up or down of telco charges Standard service level agreements start at around 99.7% guaranteed availability, with some vendors offering % on a premium contract. If these SLAs are not met, vendors will offer reduced rates as compensation. Service levels offered by some vendors may differ depending on contact type, although with the multi-tenancy approach, everyone gets the same service levels. Contact centers will experience significant reductions in one-off implementation costs, as there is little or no hardware or software to be deployed in the contact center environment. It is likely, especially in multitenant environments, that any maintenance fee will either be included within the package, or at least much less than the typical CPE maintenance charge, which can be around 15-20% of the original license cost per year). Solution providers comment that the majority of savings realized in the first year are due to the elimination of maintenance and implementation costs, particularly in environments where there is a single cloud provider delivering all of the services, rather than the organization still running some functionality itself, which would still require maintenance and effort to keep software levels compatible between products. The length of the contract is also an issue. Cloud solution providers will prefer long-term multi-year contracts, and offer significant discounts to encourage this, enabling them to predict their revenues more accurately and thus be able to invest in the solution with some confidence. Those customers which are new to cloud may prefer to have shorter contracts, with the option to break, at least until they become familiar with the offering. In theory, longer-term contracts benefit everybody, in that customers of businesses which are financially secure are more likely to benefit from the stability and consistent levels of R&D that such a supplier can provide, as well as not having to re-engineer their customer contact environment and processes every few years. Other factors influencing pricing are: number of agents number of supervisors functionality required (e.g. outbound only, blended, call recording, multichannel etc.) number of logged in agent minutes per month number of outbound minutes dialed per month (split by landline, international and mobile) number of SMS sent length of contract. 66

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68 VENDOR REQUIREMENTS Most cloud contact center solutions only require agents to have a standard telephone/usb headset and an Internet connection from their desktop. Some cloud-based solution providers require software to be downloaded upon the agent desktop, whereas others need only a standard Internet browser. Security There are various accreditations and certifications used by providers of cloud-based solutions, some aimed at demonstrating the security of the datacenter (whether physical or virtual security) including ISAE 3402 or SSAE 16 in North America. Others focus on the process of processing payment card data (PCI DSS), whereas others are around information security controls (ISO 27001/2). Other interested parties include the Cloud Security Alliance, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within cloud computing as a whole. Potential customers should look for independent third-party accreditation, proof of investment above and beyond the minimum required by regulation and regular penetration testing. The importance and concern about security has been seen elsewhere in this report. The solution providers interviewed for this report were confident that the dedicated security procedures and architecture in place within their solutions were likely to exceed those found in their clients' previous contact center operations, having full-time dedicated security resources and a vested interest in keeping client data safe. A security breach for in-house contact center is damaging and embarrassing; for a cloud provider to suffer a similar failure would impact very severely on their credibility and the very future of the company. However, as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) states in its Guidelines on Security and Privacy in Public Cloud Computing, security should not be left simply to the solution provider. Solution providers note that while security concerns are still very much to the forefront of the conversation, the questions that potential customers have are now far more sophisticated and realistically founded compared to a few years ago. There is a great desire across the entire business to ensure all security requirements are met, and much greater detail offered to the solution provider on what is actually needed. 68

69 Functionality Solution providers state that moving from a premise-based deployment to the cloud should not reduce the functionality available to users. Potential cloud users are responsible for carrying out an audit of all existing and required functionality, and how it relates to defined business processes, before asking solution providers to guarantee that any move to cloud will include the required depth of functionality. It is not enough simply to accept that solution providers have 'workforce management' or 'outbound' capabilities. There is a great deal of upgrading and increased sophistication happening in the cloud world, which in some cases is from quite basic functionality, so potential users should have a list of specific processes and functionality that any solution should be able to deliver, and make sure that the chosen solution can deliver that, as well as being able to view a product roadmap that is updated on a regular basis (e.g. quarterly), which will project expected functionality a least a year in advance, preferably more. It is also important to understand the opportunities for scalability. Adding and shedding agents when required is one of the big advantages that cloud computing has over its premise-based equivalent, but potential users should put real-life scenarios in front of bidding suppliers to make sure that the required level of scalability is possible and that no hidden costs or nasty surprises are associated with it. Reliability Multi-location datacenters are ubiquitous amongst cloud providers, providing redundancy and disaster recovery as part of the deal. Stated levels of availability amongst interviewees range from 99.7% to %, and most if not all are backed with performance-related guarantees, with reimbursement of fees if targets are not met. While this is somewhat reassuring, it will do little to assuage the loss of revenue or customer goodwill if the cloud-based contact center solution is unavailable for any amount of time. Potential clients should investigate the exact levels of redundancy built into solutions, including the use of alternative network providers and mirrored datacenters if the problem occurs outside the software providers' purview. Solution providers note that quality of service testing is vital to ensure that contact center network traffic and any associated data processing has sufficient guaranteed bandwidth. For operations using dynamic scripting, it is vital to ensure the fast and immediate reaction of input and response, and guaranteeing network quality of service should be high on the implementation priority list. 69

70 Cost Most cloud solution providers operate a per-agent/per-month option to pricing, with a minimum number of logged-on agents per month being the baseline minimum cost. To this, the cost per minute of calls made or delivered should be added, although many providers will offer this as part of the package, to make fees more predictable. Additional costs for customization and integration should also be investigated. More detail on costing can be found in the ROI, TCO & Pricing section of this report. Integration and customization Cloud vendors will keep APIs up-to-date, with screen-popping into a home-grown CRM system, look-up of call recordings in a CRM system, and sending reporting and recordings to a third-party application being mentioned as some of the more frequent integrations requested. Some providers have very close relationships with specific CRM vendors, and as a general maxim, cloud-based contact center solutions can be seen to be following in the footsteps of cloud-based CRM. Some customization in existing operations may have come about as an ad-hoc 'work-around' that has over time become the way in which things are done. It is important to revisit the business processes that the technology is there to facilitate, to see if there are easier ways to achieve this rather than reproducing the same method in a cloud-based environment. 70

71 Suggested process for choosing a cloud-based provider The selection of most IT solutions is normally carried out in a similar way, but some steps you may wish to consider for cloud-based solutions include: A selection team should be chosen with responsibility for all of the areas affected, including contact center operations, IT, compliance, back-office, business operations and probably sales and marketing While bearing in mind the underlying business processes that the technology supports, select the specific technologies that are to be cloud-based, and also those bespoke applications that are to remain in-house, such as specific complex reports. Take the opportunity to consider 'ideal world' functionality as well Research the types of solution available in the market, and understand any actual differences between premise-based and cloud-based functionality. Provide vendors with specific instances of complex functionality and business processes required to meet your own particular requirements and challenge them to prove that they can be met. This should include all instances of existing backoffice functionality that the solution needs to integrate with and where possible, a wish-list of functionality in the future Investigate publically-available referenceable sites from cloud-based providers that are similar to your own requirements, and submit an RPF (request for proposal) to the long-list. Request a detailed product roadmap along with timescales in order to assess whether this solution will meet your demands along the line. You may wish to invite solution providers informally to demonstrate their product before offering an RFP. Potential clients should look closely at the vendor's financial position and backing to make sure that the quality of service and level of innovation can be maintained in the future, also that they have the technological expertise in-house to keep making these improvements Any response to an RFP should include service level agreements over availability, call delivery, voice quality, speed to make requested changes, support hours and availability, details of security and redundancy offered, prices for customization, contract length options, implementation times, contract cancellation penalties and notice periods. 71

72 10 Questions To Ask When Buying Cloud-Based Services By Justin Hamilton-Martin, CEO, Ultra Comms Cloud technology has a lot to offer scalability, ability to remotely add new features or upgrades, not to mention cost efficiencies but it can be very confusing for the customer. The situation is not helped by the fact that some vendors are themselves still learning what moving to a cloud-based environment is all about. Here at Ultracomms, we have been cloud-based since day one over a decade ago, so we are able to share the lessons we have learned around what works or what doesn t with our customers. Some companies we work with are very comfortable with the cloud, others are new to this area of technology and have a lot of questions or concerns. Some of these are well-founded, considering that the variation (and dare I say, quality or experience) of cloud service provider is tremendous. The reality is much of what customers expect from traditional on-premise based contact centre solutions also applies in the cloud, such as service level agreements. Cloud also opens up new business models and that has to be good news for end users. Based on my experience as a cloud provider, buyer and user - here are the questions I would ask if I were in a business buyer s shoes today: ONE: how well do you understand our business and how cloud can fit into that? Has the cloud services provider spent sufficient time with senior management to understand the business drivers, processes, challenges and KPIs? What about with the operational staff (for instance, contact centre supervisors) to find out what is required in practice? TWO: what level of support and performance is included? Does the provider give 24/7/365 monitoring and support? What training is included within its set-up? What tools are given to help maintain control, minimise business risk, and maximise service quality? What performance monitoring and campaign support is provided? THREE: how will our data be securely held? Will you be able to securely access contact centre-related data? How is your data separated from other clients data? How does the provider return data to you at the end of the agreement? How do you integrate locally held data and applications with the cloud service? FOUR: how will you ensure that we can meet regulatory requirements? Does the company provide features within its cloud-based services that help us to achieve compliance, for instance Ofcom, FCA, PCI DSS and CSA? FIVE: what is the total cost of service ownership? What costs lie outside the official quote, such as maintenance, customisation and integration costs, future upgrades, infrastructure costs and extra license costs? Will we need extra personnel to manage specific aspects of the system or is that taken care of within the contract? SIX: what is included in Service Level Agreements (SLAs)? How is cloud performance measured? Does the cloud service provider take into account voice quality, vendor capacity, provisioning response times etc.? SEVEN: do we need to make any changes to our infrastructure or existing applications? Can we retain existing CRM and other systems, for instance invoice applications? EIGHT: what disaster recovery contingencies are in place? How fault-tolerant is the provider s network infrastructure? What happens in the event of a network outage or equipment failure? Is its technology platform distributed across multiple telecom sites and connected to multiple ISPs to ensure 24/7/365 operation if disaster does strike? What happens if my site fails? NINE: how complex is the service to implement? How long and complicated is a typical implementation? What are the minimum requirements for individual users (Internet connection, DDI numbers etc.)? What internal resources are required to get the service up and running - such as IT and telephony team time? Is there additional hardware or software to install on-site? What bandwidth and reliability issues need to be addressed with the ISP? Do we need additional phone lines? TEN: how can we be sure you re a credible supplier? What is your company s history and experience working in the cloud? Are you selling your own services or a third party s? Can you provide customer references? And finally, can you give us an insight into your future roadmap, so that we can be sure you are going in a direction that serves us? For contact centre owners and operators that can successfully navigate the waters of buying cloud services, the potential benefits are huge: flexible, adaptable services that are monitored and looked after by an experience third party, often offered in an attractive business model. It s just a question of knowing what to ask (and what the answers should be) when selecting the right supplier.

73 END-USER QUESTION #3: WHAT SORT OF ASSURANCES AND GUARANTEES SHOULD WE LOOK FOR FROM A CLOUD PROVIDER IN TERMS OF SECURITY AND PERFORMANCE? Data security is a critical factor. Cloud providers should provide you with assurances about this in several areas: is the data secure? How is it backed up? Is information encrypted across the Internet? And, of course, you should be looking for system availability assurances: are standby mirrors available? When are system updates applied? A decent cloud provider will be as keen to ensure these aspects are right as you are I know at Rostrvm we are! Look for 24/7/365 monitoring and support. How is Cloud performance measured? For example, does the Cloud services provider take into account voice quality, vendor capacity, provisioning response times, etc. Look for a vendor with a track record for handling large call volumes, especially during periodic spikes. Ask them to provide a service level guarantee. Cloud vendors should offer proof of security with PCI DSS Level 1 third-party certification of their entire cloud solution, not just part of it. Any reputable cloud vendor will build guarantees into their service regarding data security and encryption, disaster recovery and up-time. After all, the success of their own business depends on the delivery of a reliable and secure service as much as yours does. The specific SLAs put in place should, however, be bespoke for each customer and directly influenced by the impact of a disaster on any service that is being provided. Customers should review very carefully in the planning stages what applications should take priority and classed as Gold level or above, to ensure that any service provisioning put in place provides the assurances they require. The discussion to be had with a cloud provider on security should be around firewall configurations, network security and DDoS mitigation. The reality is that no environment can be 100% secure but all reasonable infrastructure protection needs to be in place. A customer needs to clearly identify which services require the highest level of performance and the architecture of the cloud should be able to accommodate these. We would always caution customers who feel that ALL services require the highest level of performance guarantees that this can become expensive and is largely unnecessary. Analysis and discovery of the environment BEFORE a service transition begins is essential to make sure the right services benefit from the right performance characteristics and are thus cost controlled. 73

74 END-USER QUESTION #3: WHAT SORT OF ASSURANCES AND GUARANTEES SHOULD WE LOOK FOR FROM A CLOUD PROVIDER IN TERMS OF SECURITY AND PERFORMANCE? Cloud providers should have relevant accreditations, audited independently, which indicate their suitability to deploy cloud services for serious enterprise. These include ISO9001 for quality and ISO27001 for data security, which latter is a critical concern for businesses preparing to take information and processes off-site and into the cloud. Additional accreditations should be considered for areas of cloud that have sparked more controversy, such as around payments, where PCI DSS compliance is an absolute must, preferably at Level 1. Solutions should also be resilient and must provide at least five nines (99.999%) availability, ideally tending towards 100%, and a cloud provider should offer a level of scalability and resilience that exceeds anything possible with on-premise hardware. As many as you can! Look at proven track record of providing stable and reliable services in the past, contact existing customers and ask for reference calls to verify that the providers services are indeed as they claim. Finally look at the generic financial stability of the service provider, are they here to stay for the long term or are you willing to risk working with new start-ups that are financially less established and more risky. Security and performance are the most important features of a cloud solution. First, your provider should treat your data like you would or even better. They should be able to back up their claim of security with third-party proof as they have to be audited for their certifications; for example they should share information about the qualified assessor that certified them for ISO/IEC Information security management, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and for Service Organization Controls (SOC) 2 compliance. On performance, your provider should be able to openly share historical service uptime and explain how it is calculated. The stricter the better, and beware of what gets excluded from the calculation. Uptime is generally presented as a % of time that the cloud service is available the closer to 100% the better. It should be at least 99.99% and your provider should strive for 100%. It is not uncommon to get a Service Level Agreement on uptime that has monetary penalties against it. 74

75 END-USER QUESTION #3: WHAT SORT OF ASSURANCES AND GUARANTEES SHOULD WE LOOK FOR FROM A CLOUD PROVIDER IN TERMS OF SECURITY AND PERFORMANCE? Start by finding the Trust Office (or similar) page on their website and look for an uptime guarantee and/or Service Level Agreement of no less than 99.99%. Other questions to ask include: How many call center deployments? What is your service level agreement? Is your solution fully redundant to minimize downtime? How proven is your software? What s your approach to security? Will I need to maintain hardware on my premises? How many agents use your platform? How many customers are willing to publically endorse you? Do you have the seal of approval from other industry leaders? What can you help me learn about the industry? What is your integration and partner strategy? Who provides service and support is it outsourced to a partner? Can I make changes at the speed of my business? Providers should offer % uptime and have well documented service level agreements (SLAs) with teeth, meaning there are penalties if service levels are not met. As well, service providers should have the necessary security and compliance certifications at the corporate (SOX, ISO 9001:2008, ISO 27001, JITC), cloud services (SSAE16, PCI DSS) and data center levels to ensure your data and, more importantly, your customers data is safe and secure. When evaluating cloud-based solutions, one of the keys is to become comfortable with the access control and identity management processes. Establish clear resiliency and business continuity practices to ensure your organization receives continual service, and agree to clear up time commitments. Customers should also establish clear guidelines for issue management and response time based on issue criticality. It s also important to understand cloud-based data privacy and security standards. 75

76 END-USER QUESTION #3: WHAT SORT OF ASSURANCES AND GUARANTEES SHOULD WE LOOK FOR FROM A CLOUD PROVIDER IN TERMS OF SECURITY AND PERFORMANCE? There are a number of accreditations and certifications that cloud vendors can achieve which are independently awarded ISO is one such security accreditation awarded by the highly regarded International Organization for Standardization. You can check to see if these companies are certified in these areas, and whether or not they are PCI compliant (for those customers who may handle card payments). Along with this, you can enquire as to what uptime is guaranteed by the vendor, and what SLAs they have for support queries or outages. Determine that the vendor and its data centers has full security certification (e.g. SOC 1 Type II, ISO and/or PCI DSS Level 1) and that all data traffic between your site and the cloud is encrypted using https or similar. Cloud service providers should also demonstrate a data center structure which supports redundancy and fail-over. Your cloud provider should also be ISO certified; this is a global security standard that ensures that there is physical and software security and procedures are in place to manage security properly. Your cloud provider should also comply with data privacy regulations as specified by the Data Protection Act 1998, which states that EU customer data must be stored in locations within the EU region. 76

77 CLOUD DECISION-MAKERS Solution providers indicate that decision-makers tend come from two main areas: IT and finance, with senior people within contact center operations (e.g. Contact Center Director) who want specific functionality also heavily involved in some cases. While business and contact center management have input into the cloud decision, some solution providers see more drive coming from the CIO or strategic IT leader, particularly in the midmarket. Larger enterprises decisions will tend to be driven more by a mix of business unit owners and IT leaders. IT is often keen to minimize the management and support of server environments, with the main focus on the key IT systems that support the business. If they can move telephony to the cloud, it gets rid of significant resource overhead and allows them to focus on key systems. Some solution providers state that the majority of their opportunities customers come from businesses which are solely looking at cloud, having made their minds up usually due to their telephony infrastructure being at end of life. Such businesses wish to redeploy their IT resource away from the maintenance and integration of the contact center platform into something more strategic. The finance driver comes from the easy management and control of budgets, with fixed cost per head per month making financial planning easier as well as removing the necessity of having upfront capital expenditure. PROOF OF CONCEPT AND TRIALS Solution providers note that proof of concept and trials are now less likely to be requested by potential clients than they were three or four years ago, as large numbers of reference sites and general levels of market education are far higher than the used to be. Having said that, solution providers note that it is the enterprise organizations that are keenest to prove the concept first: for example a single office or department will try it, then they will roll out the solution more widely. Small and medium organizations are more likely just to implement cloud functionality straightaway. It is worth noting that cloud offerings can speed up sales and deployment cycles, as companies can move faster to purchase a cloud-based solution because there is no large upfront investment required needing multilevel sign off. This can also enable smaller, autonomous departments to begin using cloud solutions from their own budget, rather than have to look for budget from corporate. 77

78 Creating Tomorrow s Contact Center. Today. Great Wolf Resorts Increasing Customer Satisfaction and Reducing Agent Labor Costs With incontact As the premier family entertainment brand and an icon in the hospitality industry, Great Wolf Resorts is focused on creating family traditions, one family at a time. Its 12 resorts raise the industry standard by combining quality accommodations with the finest in family recreational activities, all under one roof. The themed vacation packages provide more than 2.5 million guests each year with the ability to customize their experience to enjoy specialty restaurants, several recreational activities, spas and their well-known indoor waterparks. With its centralized contact center, Great Wolf Resorts has been taking advantage of incontact s cloud technology since September The incontact solution enables Great Wolf Resorts to: Scale procedures for growth from 75 contact center agents to over 150 agents at peak Standardize customer feedback mechanisms and increase CSAT scores to 89% Project outcomes and make decisions by implementing a simulated contact center environment Provide a preferred work environment and support agent growth Manage over one million calls and 250,000 web chats each year Generate $100 million dollars annually through its contact center We wanted to get up and running at a steady state, but we also needed to know what made the most sense for our business. It took time, but it was worth it. We were able to provide real examples to senior leadership and say, In this scenario, we will save $5,000 per week. That s pretty powerful. Jim LeMere Director of the Customer Contact Center Great Wolf Resorts Forecasting for Success With the adoption of incontact, Great Wolf Resorts successfully reduced agent labor costs and have also experienced a 10-second decrease in average handle time. In order to predict the impact of incontact and demonstrate future success with Workforce Management (WFM), LeMere s team set up a WFM Lab that acted as a mock contact center. In the lab, they applied a variety of scenarios and tested multiple full-time/part-time shift block combinations. The Great Wolf Resorts team wanted to know how each decision would impact their agent labor costs, efficiency and revenue. With incontact fully implemented, LeMere s Workforce Manager, Nick Cooper, is able to test new ideas in the WFM Lab. He examines how a newly developed staffing model runs in the lab for a week or two. Then, only when he is happy with the result and secure in its impact on the business does the team consider it for production. LeMere projects that Great Wolf Resorts can save upwards of 15% in agent labor costs with some of the workforce modeling. incontact.com info@incontact.com incontact, Inc. 1384

79 IMPLEMENTATION TIMESCALES In a traditional CPE project, the project life cycle can take well over a year, from the scoping of initial requirements through to implementation and use. Cloud offers the opportunity to reduce this greatly, and with the fast pace of customer contact technology, businesses are scared about missing the next wave of innovations. The time required to implement a cloud-based solution will differ hugely depending upon the level of complexity and functionality required, the level of integration and customization and the cloud deployment method chosen. As a general rule of thumb, solution providers indicate that a cloud-based implementation will tend to take around half the time of an equivalent CPE deployment, as there are fewer delays while companies purchase hardware and upscale their teams. The more cloudy the deployment model (e.g. multitenant/public cloud rather than private cloud, multi-instance or hybrid), the quicker the deployment tends to be. While the actual technical implementation stage may last only a matter of weeks, the move to cloud environment is an opportunity for businesses to re-evaluate the extent to which their customer contact operation supports the goals of the business. As such, it may be beneficial to carry out a root-andbranch exploration of current contact center operations, identifying any gaps in functionality or process that the move to cloud would give an opportunity to improve. The timescale for this, which will include the functional design specification, is unlikely to be measured in days or even weeks. Once the organization is satisfied with the direction in which it wishes to go, the vendor selection process may be carried out, using the results of this assessment to guide the decision-making process. Once the decision to proceed with a specific vendor's cloud solution has been made, the next step is to implement. While every project is different, and depends upon the size, functionality and complexity of any integration, most solution providers report that cloud-based contact centers can be operational within a matter of a few weeks (or even less if the implementation and integration is relatively simple). It may be divided into the following stages (some of which may run concurrently), which will differ greatly in length due to the size and complexity of the organization and its required functionality: Discovery: 4-10 days Build, training and reporting: 5-20 days Implementation and testing: 5-10 days Fine tuning and adoption: 2-10 days Bespoke agent and management training: 2-6 days elearning and training support as appropriate (likely to be 1-2 weeks). Post implementation support is becoming an increasingly important element of the overall package, and 24/7/365 support with dedicated account / technical contacts is much more common. 79

80 Case study BT Cloud Contact powered by Enghouse Interactive Global cloud contact centre platform finds favour with BT and its customers alike In achieving service excellence BT faces exactly the same contact centre challenges as its customers: for example, cutting costs, to work anywhere across the planet. Deeper customer intimacy, faster time to answer, are just some of the desired outcomes. Those things were front-of-mind when BT developed the Cloud Contact architecture with Enghouse Interactive. Bringing exactly Customers already using the BT Cloud Contact platform include global brands such as GlaxoSmithKline, Fiat Group Capital, and Standard Life as well as UK businesses such as Nuffield Health. Cloud Contact makes it the perfect choice. It s fast becoming the preferred option for BT and customer contact centres around the world. Luc Puylaert, Senior Product Manager, BT Global Services

81 END-USER QUESTION #4: HOW CAN WE GET THE QUICKEST WIN FROM THE CLOUD? One of the most important things is to ensure that there is full buy in across the business - if everyone is employing best practice with a cloud solution, they can start seeing the benefits straight away. Secondly make sure that you choose a solution that will go from Marketing, to Sales, to Service in a way that will reap benefits across the whole customer lifecycle, and to eliminate traditional technology silos. The cloud offers quick wins in terms of fast deployment and speed to market. Choose a vendor that allows you to easily customize your own desktop to adjust scripts and tailor your offering easily and quickly depending on campaign. Cloud based Interaction Analytics can provide a quick win to an organization as it leverages large volumes of recorded conversations to gain actionable business intelligence. Speech analytics makes it possible to quickly analyze call recordings to spot trends, identify underlying reasons for customer calls, improve your quality assurance programs, measure script adherence and determine training needs. Interaction analytics can help reduce operating expenses, improve quality, enhance the customer experience, increase revenue and reduce corporate liability. The quickest wins from cloud often come from new business initiatives for example testing the value of an outbound calling campaign or trialing a new service to current clients. As the cloud service provider delivers quick access to infrastructure telephone lines, internet services, servers and network equipment start-up cost and time is shortened and business results are returned quickly. I d advise against focusing just on quick wins: the real business benefits of cloud will prove themselves over the months and years. However, in the short term, cloud technology has the immediate impact of enabling some advanced, interactive features and functions that are just not possible with premises-based solutions. Our campaign-monitoring service and new answering machine detection solution (AMD+) are good examples of innovations only made possible with the cloud. Allow customers to contact you by their channel of choice to improve engagement. This can be achieved by integrating the ACD with your existing CRM to enhance intelligence and improve cross channel communications. Leverage the data from past interactions stored in the CRM to route calls by agent skill, time of day, agent language, etc. 81

82 END-USER QUESTION #4: HOW CAN WE GET THE QUICKEST WIN FROM THE CLOUD? Quick wins and the cloud are a bit of an oxymoron. Any transition to the cloud requires planning and should to be able to demonstrate efficiencies and longer term cost savings. Some customers do find that moving certain IT applications and services do deliver a faster return than others. An example of this would be replacing Microsoft Exchange and Outlook with Googl . We would be counsel caution if a customer s only driver is to get a quick win by moving to the cloud. Transitioning to the cloud of Block or Object storage to free up existing storage is one of the easiest things to do for Backup or Tier II non-critical storage, but quick wins based on application transitions have to be judged on a case by case basis. The best way is to identify business problem areas that need to be addressed rapidly. The next step is to define which pieces of ICT infrastructure need to be involved in the solution. Cloud then fills the gaps and glues together the other disparate components. This then produces a concrete outcome very quickly. At a later stage, back-end ICT components can then be integrated or replaced behind the scenes. But the key is to have the main business objective delivered as early as possible. Expanding your current capabilities and optimizing your customer interactions through advanced features and functionalities without needing to invest in new infrastructure or people themselves. Cost savings, combined with the latest modern capabilities that enable a great customer experience, help you remain competitive and serve your customers across all touchpoints delivering the quick win. Business agility, time-to-value and financial flexibility are the biggest reasons why firms switch to the Cloud. New capabilities are brought to market faster, seasonal variances are handled more cost effectively, and a wider distribution of skilled resources may be implemented more successfully, to reach across sites, specialized workers, and home workers. 82

83 END-USER QUESTION #4: HOW CAN WE GET THE QUICKEST WIN FROM THE CLOUD? This will depend on how you define win, but a common definition is Return on Investment. The fast way to an ROI win is by transitioning your core contact center operations, which are commonly your most expensive functions. Moving these operations to a cloud platform will enable you to take advantage of the pay-as-you-go model and realize a quicker Return on Investment. Look for areas that can have the biggest impact in the shortest period of time and start experimenting immediately. Just get started. Look for existing technologies that need to be upgraded and use this as a catalyst to research and begin using cloud-based providers. The quicker you are able to achieve real-world experience working with a cloudbased vendor, the quicker you will see the benefits of doing so. 83

84 EVOLUTION OR REVOLUTION? There is no correct answer as to whether moving to the cloud in stages or in a single step is the better option: solution providers state that there is likely to be only a minor difference in overall cost at the end of the overall process. Vendors indicate that most customers will move to the cloud application by application, although it is important to ensure that there is a long-term strategy and timescale in place. Implementing cloud-based solutions for most businesses is often an evolutionary journey, driven by a combination of decisions made elsewhere in the organization, the need to upgrade equipment or improve functionality, and to avoid the financial pressures that come with capital investments. The contact center industry is moving inexorably to a state where cloud-based functionality is the norm, and with every successful trial, proof of ROI or high-profile success, this becomes more of a reality. From the practical viewpoint, the benefits to migrating in small steps mean that allows users to build confidence of familiarity with the new system, as well as allowing more time for customization and calibration. Businesses running a very large telephony system already are obviously much less likely to do rip-and-replace, rather moving to the cloud department by department, and piece by piece. For organizations where the telephony infrastructure is still not at the end of life, adding functionality for cloud-based deployments on an as-needed basis may be a good option, allowing the usage of new tools and techniques. For new, smaller or rapidly growing contact centers, it would seem to make sense to use a fully integrated cloud-based solution with rich functionality and benefit from the Opex/pay-asyou-go model. Some factors influencing organizations movement to the cloud include: the requirement for a department or discrete part of the contact center to have new functionality up and running quickly (for example, for the collections department to implement an outbound dialer) the level of depreciation that the current telephony infrastructure has experienced whether there is a suitable new campaign or new client (for outsourcers) where a cloud-based solution would be appropriate to trial, allowing the establishment of a template for success that can be repeated throughout the organization at a wider scale at a later date. While the need for internal IT resource to manage the contact center platform is much lower once the business has migrated to the cloud platform, in practice it rarely means that the IT department is cut in size. Many, if not most businesses have a backlog of IT maintenance and improvement projects, as well as more strategic implementations that they would like to carry out if only they had the resources. Freeing up the IT department from the day-to-day running of the contact center environment allows the redeployment of resource to more valuable projects. Some solution providers report that some cloud users IT departments have been restructured to have fewer full-time employees, using consultants for any network/firewall, PBX or PC desktop issues. 84

85 The Golden Rules of Reducing Customer Effort The concept of the golden rule can be found in many cultures and traditions, but one common principal shared is that people should treat others in a manner in which they themselves would like to be treated. This concept can be applied to customer engagement. Consider how your service organization handles inquiries and compare it to how you would want to be treated. You may find that your organization is not following the golden rule principle. Many organizations are reluctant to upgrade legacy contact center systems to effectively address the golden rule of customer care because their existing contact center infrastructure continues to accomplish fundamental tasks. The problem is that the market and customer expectations have changed. As a result, many customer care groups naively delay upgrades and ignore warning signs that customers are not satisfied with their experience. Take a closer look at your customer care strategy if any of the following conditions are eroding the golden rule of customer care, which involves minimizing customer effort and maximizing satisfaction. 1. You are making customers repeat information The annoyance meter is raised when customers are asked to repeat information after being transferred from an IVR to an agent, or between agents. Cost-effective technology will address this issue. For example, WhisperTel provides agents with a voice recording of what happened in the voice self-service channel prior to taking the call. 2. Agents are not informed Knowing and anticipating why a customer is contacting you provides the foundation for reducing customer effort. An integrated CRM and ACD solution can make this happen. The ACD routes calls and some even route other channels such as , chat, and social media. The CRM manages data associated with each customer by consolidating information and acting as a central repository for data that can be used across many departments. 3. You are always in reactive mode Being proactive will help to reduce customer effort and even salvage what may be turning into a bad customer experience. Take for example, one online retailer that has agents proactively making calls to people who abandon their shopping cart during the checkout process. Another example is that one Human Resource outsourcer realized there were many questions regarding a benefits package that was mailed to their client s employees. To rectify miscommunication, they immediately launched an outbound calling campaign to all subscribers to head off questions and complaints. 4. You are losing loyalty even before customers talk to an agent Customers are increasingly reaching out to agents when other channels have failed. Frequently, a website search has failed and a frustrated customer reluctantly calls a service number. This situation is especially common for the millennial generation who tend to make a phone call as a last course of action. Focus on improving the self-service channel with more efficient routing to agents rather than trying to automate all tasks. Also, take advantage of data captured within an integrated ACD/CRM environment, which can provide agents with the knowledge that a caller recently communicated via another channel. 5. You are using static call routing Are you able to easily change your IVR menu based on the availability and skill of your agents? If not, that is usually a good indicator that your customer care front door is failing. Cloud contact center vendors have a range of capabilities you can use to optimize call routing. For example, routing rules can be set up for language, agent availability, queue times and more. More sophisticated ACD cloud providers use complex formulas to calculate the best route to an agent based multiple aspects such as both queue wait time and agent skill. Conclusion According to a survey by the Customer Contact Council, 59% of respondents reported expending moderate-to high effort to resolve an issue. 62% of the respondents reported having to repeatedly contact a company to resolve an issue. These results clearly show that organizations need to continuously evaluate the effort their customers must use to resolve a problem or get a question answered. It is vital to implement process improvements that reflect the golden rule of making your customers experience as positive and helpful as you yourself would like to experience. About VoltDelta VoltDelta is a global cloud-based contact center provider with 35 years of experience. We rapidly tailor and integrate our multichannel contact center solutions to enable you to increase revenue, boost retention and reduce operating costs with proven scalability and reliability. Learn more at

86 END-USER QUESTION #5: IS IT BEST TO WAIT UNTIL WE CAN MOVE EVERYTHING TO THE CLOUD, OR DO IT BIT- BY-BIT? WHICH SORTS OF FUNCTIONALITY WORK BEST IN THE CLOUD? Today most applications and functionality are available and work well in the cloud. The extent and order in which one moves applications to the cloud depends on an organization s specific needs and preferences. Companies certainly aren t required to move to the cloud all at once. In fact, a phased approach is often encouraged to minimize risk and ensure solutions are fined tuned and validated prior to a broader rollout. Depending on the organization and the state of its IT infrastructure, most companies choose to move bit by bit as certain systems and technologies are in need of upgrade. This provides a lower risk way for companies to gain working experience with cloud-based providers. There really is no limit to which applications and functionality can be considered for cloud deployment. The beauty of the cloud is just how flexible it is. Many customers choose to pilot a cloud system in one area and then roll-out to the rest of the business. All functionality that may be desired for a contact center can now be based in the cloud, but the ability for cloud infrastructure to route any call or contact across offices and even countries is particularly flexible and powerful. This is especially true when combined with a cloud contact center solution which seamless integrates with your chosen CRM so you can route all contacts on what matters to you, i.e. VIPs to the Gold team or French customers to the French-speaking agents. Depending on your organizational needs and type of operation, with a cloud solution you have a choice of moving everything at once or bit by bit. Migrating to a cloud solution in steps allows an organization to transition their agents gradually, and allows for customization to be tested on a small group prior to rolling out to all agents. If functionality is a priority, then look for a vendor that provides the same functionality as their premise based offering (if they have one), therefore all areas of the solution should work as well as their premise based offering and have the same look and feel, eliminating the need for additional training time to learn a new product. Some vendors allow a hybrid solution that enables their customers to try out the cloud offering which includes an integrated CPE (customer premise equipment) and CaaS environment, where a subset of work can be shifted to the cloud while the main workload remains on the premise system during the trial period. 86

87 END-USER QUESTION #5: IS IT BEST TO WAIT UNTIL WE CAN MOVE EVERYTHING TO THE CLOUD, OR DO IT BIT- BY-BIT? WHICH SORTS OF FUNCTIONALITY WORK BEST IN THE CLOUD? Most contact centers are complex so moving everything to the cloud in one go could be risky. We recommend a step-by-step migration. All functionality works well in the cloud with rostrvm everything available on-site can be put there instead. We suggest starting small with one business function and building from there. There is no one-size-fits all strategy for cloud implementation, because there are various factors to consider that will vary according to each organization s circumstances. Issues to consider include: impact on existing CRM, billing and other systems, what internal resources exist, any requirements for additional software, hardware or phone lines. Installations are typically a few weeks but we ve helped clients make the change from onpremise to cloud in just a weekend that s exceptional, but it s possible, in the right circumstances. Cloud contact center technology is typically flexible enough to migrate part or all of your applications to a hosted solution. It will vary by your specific contact center requirements as to which deployment strategy works best for your organization. Typically, the core components of a contact center including IVR, ACD, and call recording, works best as a consolidated resource in the cloud due in large part to how callers can more easily be transferred when required. 87

88 END-USER QUESTION #5: IS IT BEST TO WAIT UNTIL WE CAN MOVE EVERYTHING TO THE CLOUD, OR DO IT BIT- BY-BIT? WHICH SORTS OF FUNCTIONALITY WORK BEST IN THE CLOUD? If you wait until you can move everything to the cloud in one go then it will never happen as you need to converge so many different aspects of the business to do it in one step. Customers ideally should transition to the cloud in stages, using a tried and tested methodology that accounts includes quality assurance measures, user acceptance testing and monitoring for a few months to ensure stability before moving on to another application block and its dependencies. Risk mitigation are the key words in any cloud move. The market is seeing a gradual increase in Cloud Native Applications, which are specifically coded and optimized to operate in a cloud architecture (e.g. Hadoop for BIG DATA, Docker for Containerization, Mongo DB for Database). The challenge has been bridging the traditional applications such as SAP, Exchange, Oracle etc. with cloud native applications and delivering the mainstream traditional applications on a cloud platform. The Ormuco Connected Cloud and HP Helion provides that bridge through Hybrid connectivity. The aspiration of every cloud vendor will be to service ALL applications in a cloud native format to optimize performance. The key factors to remember in application transitions are security, availability, compliance, data sovereignty, performance and cost savings. Moving to cloud for cloud s sake is never the best idea, and it definitely pays to migrate in phases. Cloud can add value to existing deployments and gradually replace them out as they go end-of-life, rather than forcing organizations to move everything across at once. Importantly, cloud can also enable businesses to continue using existing cloud deployments as well as systems that need to be maintained on-premise for reasons such as security, meaning an organization can take the best features of cloud and combine these with the best features of their existing technologies. Communications itself is inherently a cloud activity; nobody owns the entire network from end-to-end, but rather different pieces, such as connections, devices and technology, work together to deliver an effective holistic service. 88

89 END-USER QUESTION #5: IS IT BEST TO WAIT UNTIL WE CAN MOVE EVERYTHING TO THE CLOUD, OR DO IT BIT- BY-BIT? WHICH SORTS OF FUNCTIONALITY WORK BEST IN THE CLOUD? A phased approach would be the lower risk factor and give control over the transition to cloud based services whilst protecting current investments. So when logical points in the lifecycle of existing infrastructure are reached and large investments required to move forward these are the right points in time to consider replacement with cloud based offerings. Sometimes it works best to start with gaining new capabilities and features from a cloud provider when these cannot be provided from a current solution, e.g. adding multimedia routing or e.g. an expansion in number of new locations. From a functionality point of view any capability could be delivered from the cloud, but especially flexible routing over multiple locations or with variable demands would benefit from a cloud solution. It is certainly possible to move certain elements first such as Interactive Voice Response (IVR), or upgrade to new channels like web chat or social analytics that are especially well suited for the cloud. IVR, routing, reporting, journey analytics and Work Force Optimization (WFO) are all well suited functions for cloud delivery. To fully realize benefits of an Omnichannel Desktop, with integrated knowledge and journey capabilities, it is best to have a complete cloud multimodal solution enabling the synchronization of multiple channels within a single interaction a across all self and assisted service modes and touchpoints. Going back to the agile nature of a cloud platform; migrating all at once or bitby-bit is possible. Whether one is better or worse varies greatly on a case-bycase basis because we do not make cookie-cutter solutions; they are customized to each customer. 89

90 Using Cloud to develop your business For those wondering what cloud could do for them, what should be considered? Firstly, don t just jump on the bandwagon but be sure that cloud is the right answer - some organisations may find an on-site deployment more appropriate. Successful cloud contact centres have a clear vision of their business aims and a strong idea of their desired business outcome. Cloud may be a long-term strategic vision for IT delivery or a tactical approach to testing the business value of a new contact activity. The beauty of cloud is that success can be seen quickly as there s no expensive outlay and no sizeable maintenance and upgrade costs. So don t mess up this benefit by selecting a vendor with a 'one size fits all' product, which won t evolve with you; look for a company that can accommodate your unique business with sufficient flexibility Don t focus on operational silos. Think about the client who is calling you or the person you are trying to reach. We ve seen that contact centres get into a mess when they try and silo themselves into being purely inbound or solely inbound. It s extremely rare for customer contact to be exclusively in one direction; there s usually around 40% of inbound calls that result in outbound activity. Choose a cloud solution that can service both. And if you re using outbound such as predictive dialling ensure the service is set to maximise connection rates whilst maintaining Ofcom and ICO compliance. Consider Precision dialling, which involves using intelligence gained about a contact to optimise dialling activities: At the right time In the right place With the right message and medium to catch the contact s attention With Precision dialling there are no more endless re-dials to the same person with the associated risks, wasted time and money. Another great advantage of cloud is it allows the contact centre to react to unforeseen events or seasonal variations rapidly and make changes. It s scalable up or down as circumstances dictate, so check that the product capitalises on it does it facilitate blending and permit the addition/subtraction of users? Can the team work from home if appropriate or from another remote site? Next, does the product provide staff with the right tools to do the job? Cloud should work effortlessly with your agents to delight customers everything should be accessible quickly so customers aren t kept waiting or having to repeat themselves. Part of this is having desktops that are set up to provide the user with the information they need fast without having to wade through multiple screens and programmes. So be in the cloud but ensure the service is agile and responsive. Rostrvm Solutions provides both cloud and on-site services. Contact us to find out how we can add real value to your business: or

91 POST-IMPLEMENTATION: THE RESULTS OF USING CLOUD Those contact center respondents who have actually implemented a cloud or hosted solution have generally found that it has delivered significant advantages in most cases. 78% of respondents stated that cloud-based solutions had given a cheaper overall cost of ownership of their contact center technology. 64% experienced more powerful extended functionality in a cloudbased environment, with only 2% disagreeing that this was the case. 53% of respondents stated that cloud made it easier to make changes to the system, with 12% disagreeing. These research findings have been extremely consistent for some years despite different companies taking part each year, and readers can treat these findings with considerable confidence. In fact, this year s results have shown significant increases in the proportion of contact centers reporting that they strongly agree that cloud has brought them cheaper cost of ownership and more powerful functionality. Figure 9: Have cloud-based solutions made any difference? (US respondents) 100% 90% 80% Have cloud-based solutions made any difference to your contact center? 4% 2% 4% 4% 8% 13% 33% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 51% 35% 27% 29% 35% 31% 22% Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree 0% Cheaper overall cost of ownership More powerful or extended functionality Easier to make changes to the system 91

92 How we provide UK Power Networks with cutting-edge cloud contact centre and communications integration services CASE STUDY UK Power Networks is the UK s largest electricity distributor, delivering power to over 8 million business and residential properties which equates to more than 20 million people. It generates over 1.1 billion in revenue every year, and employs 5,000 people. 500 of these operate in its customer-facing contact centres, distributed across geographically disparate offices. Its 160,000km of cabling serves London, the UK s most heavily populated area, the South East, the largest per-capita consumer of power in the UK, and the East of England. UK Power Networks has migrated its communications estate to Content Guru s storm platform in a series of phases, enabling it to address its pressing communications requirements, and then to leverage the platform s rich depth of features to improve other areas of its infrastructure. The Challenge Initially we looked to Content Guru to address a point requirement; protecting our contact centres from the overwhelming volumes of traffic during periods of service disruption. In this, storm exceeded our expectations. The platform not only keeps our frontline communications live, even when we hit our peaks, but it also allows us to make substantial operational savings. After addressing our core customer-facing issues, we were so impressed with the platform that we began to use it to address other areas of the business. storm enabled us to start engaging with customers pro-actively, across different channels, without needing to hire more agents in fact, because we now automate most of our enquiries through the platform, we re able to free up our agents to deal with higher-value customer enquiries. Beyond external communications, storm enables us to optimise our own internal management with its real-time analytics, which helped us massively reduce response times. And because storm lets us introduce new features as and when we need them, we re able to continually optimise every aspect of how we communicate; there s already a roadmap for further improvements! Romolo Falcucci, Technical Architect, UK Power Networks

93 END-USER QUESTION #6 : WHAT THINGS DO THE MOST SUCCESSFUL CLOUD CUSTOMERS HAVE IN COMMON? WHAT PITFALLS SHOULD WE AVOID? Successful cloud customers generally have a visionary or champion that drives the organization to the Cloud. Since there may be pockets of resistance in an organization, it helps to have someone who sees the big picture and clear benefits to lead the organization to an end goal. A pitfall may occur when customers have a herd mentality as it relates to moving to the Cloud and they pick the wrong partner in the rush to join in. Always remember that you are outsourcing a critical business function so it is important to choose your partner wisely. A good supplier will be transparent with their uptime, security measures and will supply plenty of references. Due to the inherent agile & flexible nature of the cloud platform, it really does match up well with virtually any contact center structure because it can be customized in so many ways. Having said that; those customers with a non-traditional configuration tend to benefit the most from a cloud platform. Some examples include companies with a mix of in-office and remote agents that experience significant seasonal traffic fluctuations who wish to unify several contact center locations with the need for a pay-as-you-go business arrangement Pitfalls to avoid: Long-term and/or inflexible contracts Additional costs for upgrades Unproven solutions at a significantly reduced rate you get what you pay for! 93

94 END-USER QUESTION #6 : WHAT THINGS DO THE MOST SUCCESSFUL CLOUD CUSTOMERS HAVE IN COMMON? WHAT PITFALLS SHOULD WE AVOID? Customers who are successful with cloud contact centers do have several things in common. One is agility or flexibility to better adapt to changing business needs. A second is the ability to benefit from new applications faster, with the faster deployment cloud services offer. That actually leads to a third characteristic of having IT available for more strategic and revenue-generating activity, since they spend less time on burdensome administrative functions. One major pitfall to avoid would be a scenario where the architecture is not actually the right one for your business. There are a variety of cloud architecture models available now; weighing each option (private cloud, single tenant public cloud, multitenant public cloud, a distributed multitenant public cloud, or even a hybrid architecture mixing private and public) is critical. Other pitfalls to avoid might include sacrificing functionality for the convenience of the cloud ideally, the same depth and breadth of applications should be available regardless of deployment model. When transitioning from on-premise to cloud-based solutions, customers should look to work with cloud providers that can assist them at every step in the transition, through such things as familiar metrics, easy to use portals, shared reports, etc. They should also have a clear understanding of their internal strengths and weaknesses and specifically look for cloud providers who can address internally weak areas. Customers should also establish clear and transparent pricing standards as well as clear support models and mediums by which support will be delivered. This will make for a smoother transition that isn t impeded by non-technical roadblocks. 94

95 END-USER QUESTION #6 : WHAT THINGS DO THE MOST SUCCESSFUL CLOUD CUSTOMERS HAVE IN COMMON? WHAT PITFALLS SHOULD WE AVOID? Cloud contact center solutions were designed to sustain extreme connectivity and flexibility and enable the ready-made, frictionless, on-demand interaction that customers expect today. Those who get the most out of cloud contact center solutions are able to choose a solution in which it is easy to identify and propagate best practice. Is the solution easy to use, and does it enable agents to focus on delivering excellence (whether in customer service or sales and marketing) and not get distracted with managing technology? You want your system to encourage best practice and not have your users battling against it. Cloud contact center solutions give organizations much more flexibility. They easily accommodate new locations, homeworking and third-party resources and they automatically stay up-to-date with new features and readily accept plug-in capabilities. There are many aspects of cloud infrastructure that can bring savings or efficiencies to organizations, but not all aspects need to apply to be able realize them. Capital expenditure costs are obviously reduced, but if this isn t business-critical, the ease of use, flexibility and scalability of a solution may well be. Successful cloud customers are those that utilize the flexibility options that the cloud provides. If organizations don t need the flexibility to expand and contract their agent numbers, then over 5-10 years, the cloud might not be the most cost effective solution for them. The pitfalls that should be avoided are sourcing a vendor with limited functionality in their CaaS products. Some vendors use a stripped down version of their solution and customers can end up being disappointed with functionality and reporting capabilities. Your solution should enable you to monitor and modify your programs in real-time, such as moving agents between different skills-based routing groups, as well as retrieving call recordings and reports at the click of a button, without requiring vendor assistance. The platform should also be integrated and work seamlessly with all your telephony and communications for single-supplier end-to-end support kept constantly up to date with new releases driven by multiple users of the system. Ensure that your chosen cloud-based solution can easily integrate not only with your contact center s existing technology, but also with third-party applications such as Salesforce.com, SAP, Oracle CRM etc. If you buy a solution that is not able to do this quickly and effectively, valuable time and resources can be spent configuring a solution turning something that should offer convenience into a needless complication. 95

96 END-USER QUESTION #6 : WHAT THINGS DO THE MOST SUCCESSFUL CLOUD CUSTOMERS HAVE IN COMMON? WHAT PITFALLS SHOULD WE AVOID? Successful cloud customers set clear aims and have a strong vision of their required business outcomes. Cloud may be a long-term strategic vision for IT delivery or a tactical approach to testing the value of a new contact activity for example. The most successful customers spend time sharing their business objectives and then this allows the supplier to review the current technology platform and perform a gap analysis. They then make sure that they choose a supplier who really understands their business and has a proven track-record in the cloud. Look for real-time monitoring and support options (for instance, to look out for patterns or issues, or to ensure compliance). Other factors to consider are how securely will confidential data be held and also consider business continuity plans. Most contact centers support multiple channels such as agent, voice self service, chat and . These channels can be integrated in the cloud in order to personalize their service by knowing the customers names and why they may be calling regardless of how they contact you. Avoid taking on too many channels at once. The benefit of the cloud is that you can add one channel at a time as your service evolves. 96

97 END-USER QUESTION #6 : WHAT THINGS DO THE MOST SUCCESSFUL CLOUD CUSTOMERS HAVE IN COMMON? WHAT PITFALLS SHOULD WE AVOID? The things successful cloud customers have in common? Don t: A willingness from the board level down to be agile in IT to meet growth plans A clear roadmap and blueprint of how cloud helps that customer achieve their business goals (you can rely on a good service provider / cloud partner / cloud enabler to assist and guide you through this process as part of the initial engagement) A clear understanding of cloud technology and what services within those clouds are core to their operational service delivery Have engaged a service provider that is agile and flexible in its approach to contractual requirements, and able to provide a cloud platform that is not rigid but customizable. Attempt to move to the cloud without a fallback plan to ensure continuation of operations Take the most business critical applications and move them first on the promise from a service provider that this will save you money from day one Assume that the ROI on moving to the cloud is short term it can be but it varies from company to company! The initial transition costs can cancel out the initial monthly savings, but after this has been amortized over a longer period the ROI is significant. In summary it s a long game move not a short term win Forget if you fail to plan, plan to fail. 90% of the success in moving to the cloud is careful planning. The most successful cloud customers think in a more agile way. The lifecycle of a service is often months rather than years, so they need to be able to both set up and modify services rapidly, and then make decisions accordingly. Furthermore, these customers also focus strongly on their desired organizational outcomes. They are able to think more clearly on the reasons they want to deploy, and then make deployments happen rapidly to achieve these objectives. Clearly understanding their requirements and usage scenarios and matching this to the different offerings in the cloud, how well does it match with what they need and understanding that in a cloud offering they would have a dependency on the provider to deliver a reliable service and the speed and responsiveness for adaptation of new capabilities. The pitfalls to avoid is to purely approach this from a cost savings perspective and go shopping for the lowest price, ensure that the service would meet the current requirements and has the flexibility to grow in future, as well as the reliability and trustworthiness of the service provider taking the service from. 97

98 STRATEGY & MARKET LANDSCAPE THE VENDOR COMMUNITY CONTENT GURU Founded in 2005, with offices in the UK, US and Netherlands and presence in Germany and Malaysia, Content Guru delivers Communications Integration services through a cloud-based delivery model. Content Guru s clients include large enterprise and government organizations across a range of sectors including utilities, travel, public sector, online, retail and financial services. The company has achieved ISO 9001 the international quality standard, and ISO accreditation the international data security standard. Content Guru s Communications Integration portfolio covers three key areas: Cloud Contact Center as-a-service (CCaaS): Omni-channel intelligent Automated Contact Distribution (iacd ) routing logic, leveraging Mediated Interaction Matching (MIM), ensures every contact is serviced by the best available resource, regardless of device, medium, skills or personality traits. Integration with CRM systems enhances contact handling and enables mass automation of enquiries Machine-to-Machine: a range of flexible APIs enables disparate systems to communicate, supporting services such as real-time telehealth monitoring through to historical energy performance Payment services: multichannel, secure payment services, backed by Level 1 PCI DSS compliance. Content Guru delivers cloud services through storm, the world s largest communications integration platform, which has thousands of applications and services available. Unique solutions or turnkey products can be rapidly constructed and deployed, through the four key building blocks of storm: FLOW : a rapid, multichannel drag-and-drop service creation tool VIEW : real-time and historical reporting across any communications channel or source of data COMMUNICATE : multichannel applications store INTEGRATE : a huge range of APIs, connecting communications channels and information systems, including leading CRM, ERP and WFM packages. 98

99 storm powers a range of off-the-shelf products for the end-user, which leverage the functionality of the platform to provide all-in-one packages with specific business applications. Products consist of predefined sets of storm features, such as: storm CONTACT : a hosted, virtualized multichannel contact center solution storm DIAL : a cloud-hosted predictive dialer solution that can be integrated with existing contact center infrastructure and CRM systems storm PBX: provides a unified telephony estate in the cloud, with no need to own infrastructure storm INBOUND : a solution for cloud-based number management, removing the restrictions of geographic numbers or delays while service providers re-route numbers SIP Trunking: provides an IP connection between existing PBX infrastructure and the storm platform storm RECORDER : a platform for converged recording of every channel of communication storm RESPONSE : provides callers with interactive cloud-based solutions capable of responding to many types of enquiry without requiring agent intervention. Content Guru s customers include Scottish Power, UK Power Networks, Chubb, Tata Consultancy Services, Northgate Public Services, Rightmove, National Rail Enquiries, Ryanair and Children in Need. 99

100 ENGHOUSE INTERACTIVE Founded in 1984 and employing over 950+ staff worldwide, Enghouse Interactive s integrated suite of solutions includes multi-channel call center, CTI integration, IVR, operator attendant consoles, call recording and quality monitoring, predictive dialers, and knowledge base product offerings, offering customers and partners a complete, fully-featured solution from a single vendor. Solutions scale from a single site call reception console to multi-tenanted, multimedia contact centers with users in excess of 10,000. Enghouse interactive has more than 1 million agent seats handling over 1 billion interactions through its systems daily. Enghouse Interactive s solutions support deployment methods ranging from premise-based, through to private, public or community cloud and hybrid requirements. Around 800 customers are using cloudbased solutions from Enghouse Interactive, with 80,000 concurrent agent licenses worldwide. The company provides multi-channel contact center technology to enterprises around the globe, both directly and via many of the world s top telcos and service providers who use Enghouse Interactive s multi-tenant platforms at the core of their cloud contact center offerings. Enghouse Interactive's cloud solution offers a multichannel suite of contact center functionality including voice, , video, web chat, co-browsing, fax, SMS; IVR/IVM; ACD functionality; fully-blended outbound; real-time and historical reporting & recording and quality monitoring. There are four contact center solutions offered by Enghouse Interactive, covering organizations of different sizes and functional requirements: For Helpdesk (5+ seats): On Premise Ideal for helpdesks looking to reduce costs and leverage Unified Communications Highly cost-effective solution to extend UC with call center functionality For Business (20 + seats): Cloud/On Premise Ideal for mid-size organizations looking for an out-the-box cost-effective all-in-one multimedia contact center Wizard-driven solution which is easy to use and is rapidly deployed For Enterprise (100+ seats): Cloud/Hybrid/On Premise For organizations requiring advanced capability and customization, which is highly available and can be used within distributed environments Enterprise level solution with extensive integration and resilience 100

101 For Service Providers (unlimited seats): Cloud For service providers and shared service centers, looking for a complete multi-tenant contact center solution, which is highly scalable with shared architecture Create your own cloud contact center offering from one platform. Enghouse has a number of different deployment models for its cloud-based solutions: Private Cloud: an on-premise deployment with the flexibility to either centralize or distribute components across geographically-distributed sites Virtual Private Cloud: leverages a public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS, i.e. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud / EC2) environment to create a reserved, isolated and private section of the cloud, replacing the need for on-premise servers Hybrid Cloud: a blending of on-premise, Private Cloud and Public Cloud infrastructure to connect on-premise applications and/or Contact Center: Enterprise components Community Cloud: a shared cloud infrastructure across several organizations or departments within a community, often tailored to a vertical industry Public Cloud: a contact center as a service offering from service providers that make resources (infrastructure, platform, applications) available on a pay-per-usage model. Cloud customers come in all shapes and sizes: typical customers have multi-locations, peaks in demands, and multi-language requirements. Enghouse Interactive's customer base includes organizations with anything from five to thousands of agents

102 GENESYS Formed in 1990, Genesys has over 4,500 customers in 80 countries, with its solutions handling more than 100 million interactions each day. The Genesys Customer Experience Platform offers three platform editions to address the requirements of contact centres, based on size and functional requirements: Premier Edition: for smaller contact centres of up to around 250 seats Business Edition: for mid-sized contact centres (around 250 to 1,000 seats) Enterprise Edition: for large operations of over 1,000 seats, with greater levels of complexity, requirements for customization and the in-house IT staff to support them. Each edition offers an omnichannel agent desktop, IVR, ACD/skills-based routing, and chat capabilities, automated outbound, call recording and workforce management. Business Edition further offers co-browsing, social media support, contextual routing and quality management capabilities. Enterprise Edition further offers speech, text and social analytics, mobile engagement and work item routing. Each edition is available in Cloud or CPE and in some cases hybrid deployment, depending upon the level of functionality required and the geography of the customer. Designed for smaller organizations, Premier Edition is cloud only. Genesys Editions have commonality for example the desktop s look and feel and they share the Genesys Customer Experience Platform as a foundation. Genesys offers mid-size and larger customers their choice of three cloud deployment options: the pure cloud deployment model (where components and functionality are located entirely in the cloud); hybrid cloud deployment (which allows cloud deployment of new channels of functionality, or scaling on demand while keeping required components on-premise); and Local Connect Cloud (where Genesys cloud services are used but existing telephony connections and carrier relationships are kept onpremise, minimizing complexity, bandwidth requirements and other disruptions). For customers who prefer to maintain their own environment, the company offers on-premises implementations for both Business Edition and Enterprise Edition. Cloud sales are growing at over 100% year-on-year from Genesys, at a much higher rate than CPE, reflecting the high interest in cloud for the contact center. The company estimates that by 2020, half of its new sales will be cloud-based. Currently, Genesys estimates that it has around 2,400 cloud customers, which includes users of its solutions via third-party partners that have offered Genesys solutions through hosted environments for many years. Genesys started offering its SaaS solution through its own data centres in

103 Genesys cloud solutions are powered by highly scalable architecture offered at a % service level availability. The solutions have achieved PCI-DSS Level 1 certification, Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 certification and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPAA) compliance. Genesys data centres comply with rigorous industry security standards for physical security, and employ security features such as multi-stage authentication and constant CCTV monitoring to ensure only authorized staff have access. The Genesys network is constantly monitored by a signature-based Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS) to monitor potential attacks. At the network level, Genesys has deployed adaptive security appliances to provide firewall capabilities along with a two-way authentication process to limit access. For logical security, Genesys virtualization architecture ensures separation and security of customerspecific data, along with role-based permissions to control access. Genesys continues to work in partnership with cloud providers globally in order to expand its multinational reach. Third party partners may add various elements of Genesys capabilities to the solution, or white-label Genesys solution and offer it as a local brand. Cloud customers include RedHat, CarTrawler, Procter & Gamble, Deutsche Telekom and Etisalat. Visit the Genesys website. 103

104 INCONTACT incontact began in 1997 as a reseller of network connectivity, and in 2005 offered cloud software solutions to the contact center market. incontact has deployed over 2,000 cloud contact center instances, and is used by 85,000+ agents globally, with over one billion calls handled per year. In 2014, it acquired Uptivity, which provides a complete mid-market workforce optimization suite of software products and services to call centers comprised of speech and desktop analytics, agent coaching, call and desktop recording, as well as quality, performance, workforce management and satisfaction surveys. incontact s Cloud Contact Center software capabilities include: incontact ACD: advanced contact handling and routing functionality along with the management services required for customers to monitor and manage the process. Functionality includes skills-based routing, universal contact queues, automatic call back, inbound/outbound call blending and multi-site reporting and management incontact IVR: has a drag-and-drop utility that is used to create specialized call flows that are unique to each customer, retaining control and developing the call flows for themselves incontact Personal Connection Outbound: a patented technology which eliminates dialers awkward delays in greeting the caller, with the tell-tale pause and delayed greeting avoided incontact ECHO: gathers the opinion of the user and presents the analysis of the feedback directly to supervisors and agents to identify gaps in service and processes incontact Workforce Management: helps customers forecast demand, workforce scheduling, analyze and optimize staffing and report real-time adherence in their contact centers as well as predicting service levels, abandon rates and queue times incontact Quality Monitoring: scores agent performance against objectives that a customer can define and monitor, guiding training and coaching programs incontact Screen Recording: provides compliance-level screen recording functionality for all voice channel interactions incontact Discover: an all-in-one cloud contact center platform designed for the midmarket. Discover combines ACD/IVR and workforce optimization in one package, providing smaller contact centers with cost-effective and intuitive customer service tools incontact Analytics-Drive Quality: this speech analytics solution examines unstructured audio files and automatically surfaces customer behavior indicators, helping increase revenue, and manage performance, processes and costs incontact inview: an optimization solution that aggregates performance data from disparate systems and acts on the data with proven business improvement processes. 104

105 incontact s key target markets include mid-sized to small enterprise contact centers in growth companies; those operations with between 20 and 500 seats; businesses with multiple, geographicallydispersed contact center locations and contact centers with strong requirements to scale up and down. Key verticals include: BPOs / outsourcers; Retail and Direct Response; Healthcare Providers; Utilities and Government / Public Sector

106 INTERACTIVE INTELLIGENCE Interactive Intelligence was founded in 1994, and has more than 35 offices worldwide, employing over 2,000 staff. With approximately 4,500 customers worldwide, it increased revenues by 7% in 2014 to $341.3m. Referenced customers include AIG, American Red Cross, Angie s List, ASPCA, B&H Photo, BMW, CarMax, Caesars Entertainment, Coca Cola, Crutchfield, Eli Lilly and Company, Finish Line, GROUPON, Harvard University, Honda, Hydro-Québec, IKEA, John Deere, Kohl s, Motorola, Nationwide, Random House, Rolex, Sony, Trader Joe s, UNUM, US Airways, Volvo, Walgreens. The company is particularly strong in the finance, government, insurance, outsourcing and utilities sectors. In 2009, building on their successful on-premises model, Customer Interaction Center (CIC) was introduced as a cloud product with ACD multichannel capabilities at its core, and the company has grown its cloud customer base rapidly. Interactive Intelligence offers a complete premises-based solution, a cloud-based solution at a fixed monthly cost Communications as a Service (CaaS) or a managed service where Interactive Intelligence does it all. Businesses can also migrate their cloud-based solution to their own site at any time. The company notes that for the first time, a greater proportion of worldwide business was cloud rather than CPE in Interactive Intelligence CaaS is a secure, single-instance cloud contact center service offering for operations with more than 50 seats, which Interactive Intelligence states offers customers the breadth of functionality as CIC, with the benefits of cloud such as Opex-funded payment, ease of administration and security of platform. Functionality includes multichannel ACD (voice, , web chat, SMS and social media routing), reporting and MIS, IVR, speech recognition, call-back, workforce optimization, outbound, and integration with CRM and unified communications. Interactive intelligence states that CaaS allows organizations to keep applications and data isolated, with the option to maintain voice path, recordings, and other sensitive customer data within the company s own network. With multiple data centers and geo-redundancy, CaaS offers businesses an option to scale up or down rapidly, meet seasonal and growth needs, customize applications and deploy on a global basis. CaaS is offered in three different editions (Standard, Preferred and Premium), depending on the number of agents and type of functionality required, as well as the level of customization. Interactive intelligence also offers CaaS Small Center, for contact centers with agents, which is built on the same platform as CaaS so allows easy upgrading when required. Functionality includes ACD, IVR, unified communications, multichannel, and contact recording, with additional functionality available if required. 106

107 In the middle of 2015, the company will launch PureCloud Engage, a multitenant, highly-distributed solution using Amazon Web Services, which will offer agility and flexibility as well as being quicker to implement

108 INTRADIEM Intradiem is a provider of intraday management solutions for multi-channel contact centers, with more than 300,000 contact center, field service, retail, bank branch, and back-office employees around the world using Intradiem s solutions. Customers include Afni, The General Insurance, Rogers, Sprint and Vivint, and the company states that it is experiencing 30%+ year-on-year growth. Intradiem s Intraday Automation is a SaaS-based solution that enables frontline workforces, including contact center, back office, retail and mobile, to react in real-time to optimize opportunities such as periods of lower or higher call volumes, imbalance across interaction channels, overstaffing, understaffing, and individual adherence issues. The result is a more agile frontline workforce that can adjust in real-time throughout the day to deliver a more consistent customer experience at reduced cost. Intraday Automation uses a rules-based decision engine to enhance intra-day management capabilities in six areas: Task management: leverages idle time by prompting agents to work on meaningful off-phone work when call volumes allow Real-time adherence: creates automatic updates to employee schedules throughout the day, using real-time information from ACD and workforce management systems Intra-day staffing creates business rules based on agent profile and staffing data to trigger voluntary time off or voluntary overtime offers Channel balancing as customer demand fluctuates across channels, service levels are monitored and agents can be directed to work where they are most needed Alerts and notifications identifies trends in real time, setting up alerts that will impact service levels and performance metrics, informing the relevant people immediately Reskilling as agents complete training assignments and certifications, skill sets used by performance management and ACD skill assignment processes can be amended automatically. Intradiem s solution integrates to ACD and workforce management solutions already in place, monitoring interaction volumes every 15 seconds. The solution calculates whether these can be aggregated into blocks large enough to be used for training or other off-call work, whether agents should be moved between multichannel queues to maintain service levels, or even whether the agent will be needed at all for the rest of their shift. 108

109 Intradiem has been able to deliver value to organizations ranging from 250 seats to over 50,000 seats, and is applicable to any multinational business regardless of industry. Once a full business assessment is complete and initial set-up is completed for business rules, standard implementation requires only about 30 days. Intradiem states that businesses can expect to see results within days, and that typically, 2 to 6 hours are gained per agent per month. The employees that use the solution typically consist of the frontline workforce and their respective managers, as well as teams and work groups that support the frontline organization directly. Due to demand and marketplace focus, Intradiem will soon be rolling out mobile apps, including support for ios, which further expands capabilities for the solution into Retail and Field Services areas. Intradiem also expects businesses to have a much greater focus on improving the visibility and productivity of the back office in the near future, with similar metrics to the contact center being applied to it. Intradiem is based in Atlanta, Georgia, with additional offices in London

110 NEWVOICEMEDIA NewVoiceMedia powers customer engagement that transforms businesses globally. The leading vendor's award-winning cloud customer contact platform revolutionizes the way organizations connect with their customers worldwide, enabling them to sell more, serve better and grow faster. With a true cloud environment and proven % platform availability. Built entirely in-house, NewVoiceMedia s technology is available, secure, flexible and scalable, and now serves over 400 customers in 128 countries, including PhotoBox, DPD, Qlik and Wowcher. As a true cloud platform, NewVoiceMedia s core solution ContactWorld doesn t require any hardware, plug-ins or expensive system integrations to work for clients. It offers innovations in terms of ease of use for the contact center advisors, real-time dynamic call routing and reporting for managers and lower costs for financial managers. The technology can be managed by end-users rather than IT departments, is browser and phone agnostic and integrates seamlessly with Salesforce. NewVoiceMedia s channel agnostic solution intelligently deals with the technology of the channel and all of the metrics that go with it, leaving representatives free to focus on the conversation at hand. Omni-channel customer contact solutions can greatly improve the service team s efficiency, boost productivity and remove silos. Since 2011, NewVoiceMedia has pursued a mission to become the global leader in the provision of enterprise-class cloud contact center technology. Its vision is to continue innovating ahead of the competition, further increase international adoption of its solutions, and continue to attract and retain the best talent. The transformation of the company has been led by CEO Jonathan Gale who brought together a team of leading IT architects, sales and marketing directors and financiers to create the 'salesforce.com of contact centers'. With license revenue growth at over 100 percent year-on-year, NewVoiceMedia is outpacing the rapidly expanding cloud contact center market fivefold and has doubled its number of staff over the last year to meet increased demand for its technology. Over the last two years, NewVoiceMedia has also expanded internationally, with new offices in North America, EMEA and APAC. As the contact center industry transitions rapidly to the cloud, the company s technology leadership, global infrastructure and superior sales and marketing will allow NewVoiceMedia to continue its growth trajectory ahead of the market. The company will continue driving this change as more and more businesses realize that cloud solutions provide a superior alternative to on-premise technology. Cloud contact centers are an attractive option for businesses of all sizes as there is no capital expenditure requirement. Instead, you pay a monthly license to access a multi-tenant cloud environment which offers up-to-date functionality and disaster recovery. Customers can also be up and running quickly and easily cope with fluctuating demand. NewVoiceMedia believes it s important to have a system that can grow, change and contract in response to your needs, while only paying for what you need

111 NOBLE SYSTEMS Established in 1985, Noble Systems is a global leader in the customer communications industry, providing innovative solutions for unified communications, business process management and analytics. Tens of thousands of agents at 4,000+ client installations worldwide use Noble platforms to manage millions of customer contacts each day. Noble offers a unified suite of multi-channel inbound, outbound and blended contact processing, strategy planning, and resource management tools for companies of all sizes. Its premise-based, cloud and hybrid platforms include ACD, predictive dialing, blended processing, recording and monitoring, IVR, messaging, interaction analytics and workforce management. Client confidentiality agreements prohibit Noble Systems from providing all client names, but it includes 5 of the top 10 banks in the world. Within EMEA, clients include permanent tsb, Stellar UK, and dlc (Direct Legal and Collections). Noble s typical cloud customers range from 30 to over 1,000 seats, many with multiple sites. Customers are from varied sectors that include financial services, outsourcers, inside sales, fundraising and healthcare, and use the solution for collections, telemarketing/sales, appointment setting, customer care and quality assurance. While some vendors offer limited functionality of their CaaS products, or make customers pay extra for add-ons, Noble Enterprise Cloud is a complete contact center solution with all of the functionality of the Noble Enterprise premise solution in a unified platform, offered as a single instance. Noble Enterprise Cloud offers outbound dialing, inbound ACD, blending, skills-based routing, IVR, call recording, agent and system monitoring, customizable agent workstations, CRM/collection software integration, workforce management (WFM), legislative compliance, results reporting, and analytics and decisioning. Noble Enterprise Cloud allows customers to access broader bandwidth to expand their contact center capacity on demand, wherever agents are located. The elastic capacity' architecture provides a hybrid CPE and CaaS environment that breaks down traditional barriers to support seasonal volume spikes, peak periods, new campaigns and work-from-home agents. In 2014, Noble s Cloud users surpassed a 1 billion call run rate and experienced % uptime. The Noble Cloud solution has a base per agent per month cost and a per supervisor license per month, which can vary dependent on functionality required, and a Platform Usage Fee billed monthly for every per logged in agent minute. Any outbound telephony or SMS used will be billed at agreed rates. The company reports that customers can be up and running within a matter of weeks: a typical implementation takes 3 weeks from signature of the Functional Design Specification. 111

112 Some areas of development currently in progress, or planned for the future, include (but are not limited to): IP/VoIP and Cloud-based Platform Expansion, Mobile and Web-based Applications, Expanded Reporting, Enhanced User Interface, Enhanced CTI, Enhanced IVR & ASR, Data Security/Encryption, Enhanced Workforce Management and Interaction Analytics, Call Targeting and Campaign Strategy Management

113 ROSTRVM SOLUTIONS Rostrvm Solutions offers the rostrvm suite of software applications that delivers multichannel contact center facilities such as inbound contact routing (via multichannel ACD) and outbound contact management (via multichannel dialer). rostrvm also supports other transactional business environments, for example the back office, to operate more effectively. Functionality includes ACD, IVR, call-back, predictive dialer, outbound SMS and , desktop optimization, management information and reporting and call recording. rostrvm also offers multichannel capabilities. rostrvm is provided either through Cloud or CPE, and the company sees that the real drive from the market is to be able to benefit from multichannel technology without large capital outlay in advance. Often, the Cloud is seen as the way to do this, but it is also possible with CPE leasing. As such many deployments are CPE, but under a cloud-like pay-as-you-go commercial package. The company s Cloud offering is called poweredbyrostrvm, which provides functionality such as ACD, skills-based routing, scripting, screen popping, predictive dialing, call blending, after call surveys and voice recording for a fixed monthly price, which may also include the cost of phone calls. Customers can scale up and down as demand requires and handle diverse call flows; the performance management system enables discovery of peaks and troughs in demand as well as displaying real-time performance. The solution s per agent per month pricing is based on the maximum number of agents who are using the service concurrently, rather than paying on a named agent basis. Rostrvm Solutions data center has a permanent manned security presence with multi-layered physical security. The connection between agents and the poweredbyrostrvm servers employs an encrypted, compressed tunnel for traffic and uses data compression to get the best performance from the available bandwidth. The dialer supports predictive, progressive and preview modes simultaneously, and supports Ofcom and ICO compliant processes including automated management of abandoned call rates, CLI presentation, ring time, abandoned call messages and Do-Not-Call. While poweredbyrostrvm uses a secure, shared infrastructure in its data centers to deliver costeffective contact center functionality, customers can choose to receive a service that delivers dedicated equipment for their operation as an alternative option. / 113

114 ULTRACOMMS Established in 2004, Ultracomms provides a portfolio of cloud-based contact center services, with the Ultra Call Management System (UCMS) as the core platform. Functionality includes the Ultra Dialer which is configurable in a variety of calling modes for predictive, progressive, power, preview or manual dialing; call blending; ACD/intelligent call routing; call-back; IVR; DTMF masking and call recording. Ultracomms has an on-going roadmap, with new features continually being added, including AMD+, a patent-pending breakthrough in the avoidance of abandoned calls. Utilizing multiple Points of Presence (PoPs) co-located at secure telco facilities, UCMS offers a resilient platform ensuring business continuity even in the event of equipment or network failure. The architecture also protects outbound campaigns from over-capacity situations arising as a result of unforeseen traffic peaks. Disaster recovery planning is simplified due to server co-location across multiple, geographically separate sites, with three separate data centers being used. Customers include ITC Legal Services, Blake Morgan (previously Blake Lapthorn), Grant Thornton, Katann, The Volunteer Call Center and QiComm Ltd. Ultracomm s pricing structure is based on a per concurrent seat license and minutes utilization, and it also provides professional services to assist with project management and integration. The typical implementation will usually take around 2 to 4 weeks. Ultra points out that with the over-dialing and queuing capacity already in place within their infrastructure, customers are able to access significant reserves as needed, which provides significant cost benefits compared with renting additional lines. As part of its contractual arrangement with customers, Ultracomms provides on-going support as part of the subscription, at no extra cost and with no limits. This includes 24/7 support and proactive campaign monitoring. While Ultracomms states that there isn t a typical Cloud customer as such, it notes that it is seeing particularly strong interest from businesses that require both a flexible, cost-effective approach to contact centers but who are demanding advanced functionality that they would not otherwise be able to afford or maintain. It notes that many operations in the size band between 25 and several hundred seats are particularly interested in investigating cloud, but that it is not cloud in itself that is attractive, rather than the possibility of achieving real outcomes around industry compliance, improved productivity and better campaign performance. 114

115 Ultracomms has recently launched AMD+, a patent-pending cloud-based innovation in answering machine detection (AMD), which is designed to increase contact center agent productivity, with up to 9% improvement identified through the company s own research. AMD+ will also reduce the administration required in monitoring abandoned outbound calls, helping to simplify Ofcom compliance and reduce the risk of fines for breaching acceptable levels of abandoned or silent calls. The solution improves productivity by using advanced algorithms to analyze previous call data, excluding outbound calls when the system is 100% sure an answering machine is present, and is said to be completely undetectable by agents and consumers

116 VOLTDELTA VoltDelta is part of NewNet Communications Technologies, with an international presence in over 90 countries and more than 25 years of experience. The VoltDelta cloud contact center platform, including ACD, call recording, outbound and IVR/speech recognition, has evolved from its beginnings of supporting large-scale directory assistance for global telcos, with this architected scalability and ability to handle extreme volume spikes being a key part of the solution today. The telco-grade DeltaTouch platform handles over 2 billion calls and 2 billion SMS messages per year in North America, with 99.99% reliability. The platform s TDM, SIP-based IP, and SS7 connectivity is extended to telecommunication services to allow customers to select their carrier of choice. An MPLS backbone creates a virtual IP-based resource between two hosting facilities in North America and data centers in the UK and Germany. The internationally virtualized DeltaTouch platform offers a consolidated resource for multi-national organizations with customers or employees throughout the world, with 99.99% reliability ensured with high performance gateways and redundant systems. VoltDelta s referenced customers include Rx Outreach, Giftcards.com, Parkmobile and AccountNow. VoltDelta has data centers in North America, UK and Germany which support multinational organizations, and its entire cloud platform has been granted Service Provider Level 1 Attestation of Compliance (AOC) for PCI-DSS. This AOC certifies, through independent audit by a Quality Security Assessing (QSA) company, that the contact center environment meets the highest security standards required for payment card processing, meaning VoltDelta is a fully-compliant service provider for contact centers processing transactions at any volume. The company s security uses a layers of defense model, using security measures spanning physical access, voice and data transport and the encryption of call recording and other sensitive information, in order to cover the security of people, process and data. Core components of the DeltaTouch cloud platform include ACD functionality and skills-based routing; multichannel handling (phone, , chat, social media); VoltDelta s own agent desktop or integration to Oracle RightNow, Salesforce.com or Microsoft Dynamics CRM applications; IVR and automated speech recognition; call and screen recording; automated customer surveys; quality management and automated outbound functionality. The company provides support to its clients through a large team of highly experienced professionals under the VoltDelta Entourage banner. Support managers are assigned to each customer, and provide 24x7 monitoring and proactive optimization within VoltDelta s Network Operations Centers. (US) / (UK) 116

117 ORMUCO Ormuco is a leading global cloud, managed services and telecommunications provider. Established in Montreal in 2008, Ormuco has expanded with a newly opened London office to fulfil client demand in EMEA, offering a range of solutions and services designed to allow customers to make independent choices. The company provides IT services supporting over 3 million users globally. Ormuco provides cloud based solutions via its Connected Cloud, combining the latest OpenStack technology with HP Helion, delivering an end to end solution to include IaaS, PaaS, DevaaS, DBaaS, BaaS, LBaaS and DRaaS, as Private/Public/Hybrid offerings. Ormuco s enterprise hybrid cloud solution allows customers to have a private secure cloud off-premise, backed up with public cloud that is scalable on demand. Ormuco has recently joined the HP PartnerOne Service Provider Program, which has increased its offering with a broad portfolio of OpenStack-based cloud services for enterprise customers, allowing it to meet geographically-dispersed customer s requirements based on any in country or cross-border requirements and regulations. Ormuco also offers telecommunications solutions including high speed fiber networking, MPLS, VOIP, SIP, and telephony. Managed service solutions including traditional data center hosting services are also offered with full management capabilities in over 140 data center locations worldwide. Contact center functionality includes: PBX/IP-PBX predictive dialer skill-based routing multi-site routing employee scoring ACD/multimedia queuing multisite management through a single command platform. Ormuco notes that pricing models should move away from price per agent, and become price per minute or hour, mirroring outsourcers billing methodology. The company notes that the outsourcing sector is very sensitive to profit and loss, and is looking to reduce IT operating costs by as much as possible, and Ormuco expects that the outsourcing and BPO sector will be especially amenable to this type of offering. One of the challenges for all existing organizations who have created a traditional IT data center infrastructure is the cost to change in terms of hardware & software. The Ormuco Connected Cloud on HP Helion removes that challenge. HP Helion is vendor-agnostic so a customer can create a private cloud on premise and then have seamless workload portability into a HP Helion Public Cloud

118 THE FUTURE OF CLOUD-BASED CONTACT CENTER SOLUTIONS The general view from the vendor community is that cloud-based contact center solutions are an evolution in the industry, rather than being revolutionary. At the top end of the market, the sunk costs, complex processes and in-house expertise held by the largest and most-established contact centers have held back a wholesale early move to cloud at enterprise-level, but at the technology end-of-life stage, cloud is now a credible option to take even for these mission-critical operations. The power that switch providers used to have over the contact center industry has been long broken, and even the most risk-averse and conservative companies are exploring other options to the traditional on-premise model. For many established operations, cloud-based functionality is an addition to their armory, not a complete substitution. It is thought that the majority of current new implementations have at least some element of cloud-based solutions involved and most vendors report very significant growth in cloud deployments, certainly compared to their premise-based offerings, although the proportion of contact centers using solely cloud technology is still small. In terms of functionality, the core contact center functionality is well-entrenched in the solutions studied in this report and has been added to significantly in the past couple of years, bringing it to parity with the existing CPE solutions in many cases. There is a great deal of focus upon adding real-time analytics, social media management as part of a wider multimedia functionality set, and in improving the reporting capabilities offered. Large enterprises in particular are demanding the delivery of calls via MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching, an initiative that integrates information about network links - bandwidth and latency - into IP in order to improve IP-packet exchange and thus call quality), guaranteeing the reliability of the core service. A major driver for cloud-based contact center solutions has been that more and more of the CRM and other enterprise and personal software markets has moved to the cloud. As ingrained cultural and technical inhibitors to outsourcing enterprise IT have been broken, it has dragged contact center functionality along with it, with the presence of tight integration between contact center and CRM functionality evidence for this. Despite cloud-based contact center solutions offering smaller operations the biggest potential jump in functionality and performance, there had been a reluctance to engage with vendors to understand the reality of what cloud can bring. This has changed somewhat, especially as these businesses have seen a great growth in cloud-based CRM and contact management solutions, with call routing and automated outbound functionality being popular options as well. 118

119 To some extent, cloud-based solution providers have had their advantage over their CPE rivals watered down somewhat, as the latter have reacted to the pay-as-you-go/opex model of pricing by offering something along similar lines through monthly rentals and leasing arrangements. This usually flexible and scalable nature of cloud-based solutions however will mean that future providers will offer increasingly innovative pricing arrangements, going down to per hour or even per minute billing that directly reflects the resources being used. This model is particularly interesting for outsourcers, as well as those businesses with highly variable and seasonal revenues and those for whom a need to reduce IT resource costs is greatest. A number of the solution providers interviewed within this report that offer multiple deployment models indicated that the cloud accounted for almost as much new business as CPE (or had even reached that point already); others that they could foresee a time in the next two or three years when this would be the case. In most cases, solution providers offering multiple deployment methods indicated that the interest in, and implementation of cloud was significantly outpacing that of their CPE solutions, but that the market as a whole was very much still moving towards maturity. Many solution providers are starting to look seriously outside the contact center environment, trying to widen their appeal within the enterprise. Many have been looking at the field service and content expert areas for many years, creating a virtual pool of knowledge that can be drawn upon as required, regardless of location. More recently, the back office has become an area of interest: like the contact center, it is task-oriented and theoretically suitable for similar types of efficiency improvement and management techniques, with similar metrics possible. Some solution providers are extremely enthusiastic about WebRTC (a communications standard that allows application developers to write applications, without requiring additional plug-ins, downloads or installations to use. It allows audio and video conferencing applications to run on browsers via JavaScript APIs, supporting voice, chat and video), stating that these will simplify cloud deployments. WebRTC means that there is no on-premise hardware, software, and telephony infrastructure at all, as the web browser becomes a fully-featured agent desktop with a phone, greatly reducing the cost of ownership. For solution providers, the move towards cloud has been a calculated risk: the initial cost of setting up data centers and altering existing solutions or building new ones to fit this deployment model has cost a great deal of time and money. In the longer-term, once a critical mass of customers is achieved, and the longevity of contracts gives a certain amount of confidence and reassurance in the future, we can expect to see a burgeoning of new functionality and features. While the depth of functionality offered through the cloud will certainly increase in the future, just as important is the improved ability for business users to modify functionality such as routing and IVR. There is no sense from talking with solution providers that the cloud market is slowing or even reaching maturity yet. Neither is there an unrealistic expectation that the logical progression is towards an industry entirely provisioned by cloud-based solutions. Solution providers are deliberately answering each question that the market has about the security, control, functionality and risk associated with cloud-based contact centers, but while the solutions available spread ever more widely into the market, there is an understanding that CPE will still be preferable for some. 119

120 ABOUT CONTACTBABEL ContactBabel is the contact center industry expert. If you have a question about how the industry works, or where it s heading, the chances are we have the answer. The coverage provided by our massive and ongoing primary research projects is matched by our experience analyzing the contact center industry. We understand how technology, people and process best fit together, and how they will work collectively in the future. We help the biggest and most successful vendors develop their contact center strategies and talk to the right prospects. We have shown the UK government how the global contact center industry will develop and change. We help contact centers compare themselves to their closest competitors so they can understand what they are doing well and what needs to improve. If you have a question about your company s place in the contact center industry, perhaps we can help you. info@contactbabel.com Website: Telephone: +44 (0)

121 SUPPLIER DIRECTORY 121

122 Content Guru connects people and devices to information systems through its award-winning cloudbased platform storm, providing communications services across its core areas of Cloud Contact Center, Unified Communications, Communications Integration and PCI compliant payments. The company was founded in 2005 in Bracknell (UK), at the heart of Europe s Tech Valley, and has offices in Germany, the Netherlands and the US. It is one of the world s largest cloud contact center providers, delivering services to some of the world s largest organizations across sectors such as utilities, travel, finance and government. storm handles tens of millions of person-to-person, person-to-machine and machine-to-machine interactions each day for well-known brands including Vodafone, National Rail Enquiries and UK Power Networks. Services can be integrated with any CRM, back office system (including Skype for Business) or custom resource (such as electricity monitoring system), with bespoke web, SMS and social media services rapidly and easily created. Contact: a: North America Regional Office: Pruneyard Tower I, 1901 South Bascom Avenue, Suite 1100, Campbell, CA 95008, USA t: +[1] f: +[1] e: info@contentguru.com w: Enghouse Interactive is a global leader in providing solutions that deliver differentiated customer experience and maximize the value of every customer interaction. Enghouse Interactive s comprehensive portfolio of interaction management solutions span multi-channel call centers, Computer Telephony Integration (CTI), self-service Interactive Voice Response (IVR), knowledge management, operator consoles, call recording and quality monitoring, media voice services, and outbound dialers. These solutions support any telephony environment and flexible deployment options, on premise or in the cloud. With Enghouse Interactive solutions, your customers can reach you anytime, anywhere, and anyhow. With a worldwide ecosystem of contact center service providers, system integrators, channel partners, and tens of thousands of customers handling millions of daily customer interactions worldwide, Enghouse Interactive s solutions are preferred by mid to large enterprises, telecom carriers, business process outsourcers, and contact center service providers. Andtek, Arc, CosmoCom, Datapulse, IAT Smartdial, IT Sonix, Safeharbor, Syntellect, Telrex, Trio, and Zeacom are trademarks of Enghouse Interactive. Learn more at Contact: e: info.ei@enghouse.com a: Enghouse Interactive North America Headquarters 2095 W. Pinnacle Peak Rd., Phoenix, Arizona USA t: w: II

123 Genesys is the global omnichannel customer experience and contact center solution leader. Our customer experience platform and solutions help companies engage effortlessly with their customers, across all touchpoints, channels and interactions to deliver differentiated customer journeys, while maximizing revenue and loyalty. Over 4,500 successful customers tell the story best. Here are a few. Organizations looking to modernize and expand the capabilities of their contact centers have three major architectural options to consider: pure cloud, on-premises, or a hybrid deployment. Genesys cloud offerings provide scalability, agility and security. Genesys cloud contact center solutions can improve your customer's journey by increasing personalization and by delivering consistent, connected customer experiences across touchpoints. Powered by the Genesys Customer Experience Platform, our solutions enable businesses to intelligently manage interactions and improve customer satisfaction. That makes it easier than ever to align customer experiences with the perceived value they deliver greater loyalty to the brand and higher revenue to the business. Contact: For more information visit us at or call Genesys. incontact's cloud contact center software and contact center agent optimization tools help organizations around the globe create high quality customer experiences. incontact is 100% focused on the cloud and is the only provider to combine cloud software with an enterprise-class telecommunications network for a complete customer interaction solution. Our cloud platform reduces IT maintenance costs, does not require hardware or software investment, and delivers the ability to scale service up or down as you need it. incontact's complete, multi-channel solution is designed to enhance personalized service experiences, delivering more 1-to-1 connections with customers while providing game-changing contact center effectiveness. Contact: Lisa Kelly Director of Sales Development w: t: (US) SaaS / III

124 Deliberate Innovation. Interactive Intelligence is a global provider of collaboration, communications and customer engagement software and services designed to improve the customer experience. The company s standards-based all-in-one IP communications software suite, which can be deployed in the cloud or on-premises, is backed by more than 6,000 customer deployments worldwide. In addition to software, the Interactive Intelligence solution set includes hardware, implementation, consulting, support and education. Founded in 1994, our company is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, with offices throughout North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. At Interactive Intelligence, it s what we do. Contact: a: World Headquarters, 7601 Interactive Way, Indianapolis, IN USA t: w: Intradiem is the only complete Intraday Automation solution provider for frontline workforces including Contact Center, Back Office, Retail and Mobile. The SaaS-based solution automates intraday management and real-time processes and turns frontline workforces into real-time workforces that can adapt and respond to changing conditions and events throughout the day. The result is a more agile frontline workforce that can adjust in real-time to deliver a dramatically better and more consistent customer experience at reduced cost. Over 300,000 frontline workers use Intradiem's solution every day. Contact: Debbie Dockery, Business Development Manager a: 3650 Mansell Road, Suite 500, Alpharetta, GA USA t: (main): (678) t: (toll-free): (888) w: IV

125 Over 80% of consumers require some degree of support when making purchases online. Moxie Concierge transforms the digital experience, delivering targeted, contextual engagements that anticipate and meet your customers needs. Concierge helps boost conversion and customer loyalty across devices: mobile, tablet, laptop, desktop. Intelligent decisioning enables an individualized experience. Proactive chat, knowledge and response combine for improved digital engagement and performance analytics founds smarter business decisions. More than 600 of the world s leading brands in financial services, healthcare, high-tech, retail, and travel rely on Moxie to drive revenue, increase conversion and realize the full value of their customers. Contact: a: 1250 Bayhill Drive, Suite 200, San Bruno, CA USA NewVoiceMedia powers customer engagement that transforms businesses globally. The leading vendor's award-winning cloud customer contact platform revolutionizes the way organizations connect with their customers worldwide, enabling them to sell more, serve better and grow faster. With a true cloud environment and proven % platform availability, NewVoiceMedia ensures complete flexibility, scalability and reliability. Spanning 128 countries and six continents, NewVoiceMedia's 400+ customers include Topcon, PhotoBox, MobileIron, TNT, Lumesse, Qlik, JustGiving, Canadian Cancer Society and Wowcher. Contact: w: t: (toll-free): t: (direct): V

126 Noble Systems is a global leader in the customer communications industry, providing innovative solutions for Unified Communications, Business Process Management and Analytics. Tens of thousands of agents at 4,000+ client installations worldwide use Noble platforms to manage millions of customer contacts each day. Noble offers a unified suite of multi-channel inbound, outbound and blended contact processing, strategy planning, and resource management tools for companies of all sizes. Our premise, cloud and innovative premise/cloud hybrid platforms include ACD, predictive dialing, blended processing, recording and monitoring, IVR, messaging, interaction analytics and workforce management. Contact: Lee Allum t: +1 (404) e: lallum@noblesystems.com w: poweredbyrostrvm is a modular suite of applications in the cloud for managing and blending all of your inbound and outbound communications, with clear and accurate reporting, available on any device. Inbound: intelligent, data driven, skills-based routing for your contact center, and social media. From simple call queuing to multi-site, multi-skilled contact handling, delivered to the right person at the right time. Outbound: powerful predictive, progressive and preview dialers for effective outbound contact management. Use Precision Dialing for successful, compliant campaigns. Desktop optimization and process management for the call center and back office. Remote working as required and scalable capability to suit your needs. Rostrvm listens to your needs and has nearly 30 years experience of implementing customer contact solutions. Our flexible, robust applications allow our customers to work profitably, productively, efficiently and with accountability. Visit to read our case studies and learn more about our products, services and customers. Contact: Peter Brown, Sales & Marketing Director e: enquiries@poweredbyrostrvm.com w: t: +44 (0) a: Rostrvm Solutions Limited, Dukes Court, Dukes Street, Woking, Surrey GU21 5RT (UK) VI

127 As the first cloud-based contact center solution provider in Europe, Ultracomms provides customers across the UK with outbound, inbound and blended contact center services. From inception in 2004, our unique approach has been based on continual collaboration with customers and partners to develop feature-rich platforms, ensuring clients remain at the forefront of the rapidly evolving contact center market, as well as helping them comply with industry standards and regulations. From our offices on the south coast of England, our in-house R&D and support teams provide clients with access to the very latest technology and the highest levels of support, to ensure they get the best possible results. Our healthy financial track record has enabled us to invest in a robust cloud infrastructure across three geographical locations, ensuring the customers receive a reliable and consistent experience with ultracomms. Contact: w: t: +44 (0) e: Sales@UltraComms.com a: The Granary, Cams Hall Estate, Fareham, Hampshire PO16 8UT (UK) VoltDelta is a global cloud-based contact center provider with 35 years of experience. We perform intelligent, data driven contact management to optimize your customer's journey. VoltDelta rapidly tailors and integrates our multi-channel contact center solutions to enable you to increase revenue, boost retention and reduce operating costs with proven scalability and reliability. Our inbound and outbound offerings support virtual and geographically distributed contact centers and remote agents within a highly secure and compliant environment. VoltDelta's service guarantee is backed by contact center and carrier experts who are dedicated to your success. Contact: w: t: e: info@voltdelta.com Linkedin / Twitter VII

128 Ormuco is a leading global cloud, managed services and telecommunications provider. First established in Montreal in 2008, Ormuco has expanded with a newly opened London office to fulfil client demand in EMEA. We offer a range of solutions and services designed to allow our customers to make independent choices. Ormuco strives to understand our customer s business requirements in order to deliver industry leading solutions that can provide our clients with real business value and commercial advantage. Ormuco provides cloud based solutions via our Connected Cloud, combining the latest Openstack technology with HP Helion. With our connected cloud Ormuco can deliver an end to end solution to include: IaaS, PaaS, DevaaS, DBaaS, BaaS, LBaaS, DRaaS, as Private/Public/Hybrid offerings. Ormuco also offers telecommunications solutions including: High speed fiber networking, MPLS, VOIP, SIP, Telephony. Managed Service solutions including traditional Data Center Hosting services with full management capabilities in over 140 Data Center locations worldwide. Contact: Ny Kahn (t: / m: ) e: ny.kahn@ormuco.com a: Ormuco Communications 1100 René-Lévesque O., #1313, Montréal, Québec H3B 4N4 w: Twitter / LinkedIn / YouTube / Facebook VIII