Stephen R. Kowarsky
COSMOCOM WHITEPAPER SERIES
CONTACT CENTER ON-DEMAND FOR ENTERPRISES
BUSINESS IS CHANGING. CAN YOUR CONTACT CENTER CHANGE WITH IT?
Stephen R. Kowarsky, EVP CosmoCom, Inc.
February 2006
USA · UK · France · Germany · Japan · Hong Kong · Netherlands · Israel · India · Brazil · Taiwan · Singapore
Worldwide office locations and contact information at :
http://www.cosmocom.com/Company/ContactUs/contact.htm CosmoCom Headquarters 121 Broad Hollow Rd. Melville, NY 11747 Tel: +1 631-940-4200 Fax:+1 631-940-4500 [email protected]
contact center
solutions
CONTACT CENTER ON-DEMAND
FOR ENTERPRISES
Business is Changing.
Can Your Contact Center Change With It?
Business used to be slower, and it used to move in steadier, more predictable rhythms. But the days of unvarying activities yielding predictable outcomes are rapidly going the way of the big iron business systems that made them possible.
The business world is adopting an on-demand model, and for a very good reason: the business environment is changing faster and becoming more unpredictable. That gives every business two choices: embrace change by building it into the core of the business, or waste time and money chasing yesterday’s trends.
And if the contact center is an important part of your business, it will have to fit the on-demand model of design for change. Whatever challenge you face: reorganization, spin-off, M&A, outsourcing or off-shoring, you need to build flexibility into your call center infrastructure. You need Contact Center On-Demand, or “CCOD” as we’ll describe it in this paper.
Two Routes to CCOD
Before we further explain what CCOD is and how it works, let’s acknowledge that there are two fundamental ways to enjoy its benefits:
• Service Provider CCOD. The first way is to source your contact center as a hosted service
offered by a service provider, such as a telco. On a pay-as-you-go basis, they’ll make available all the call center technology infrastructure you need, but hosted in the network rather than built on your premises. You won’t need to buy, deploy or manage call center hardware or software. You only need a PC with a headset (or optionally an IP or circuit phone) for each agent. You’ll then be in a position to add and subtract capacity, features,
applications, agent locations, and more according to the changing needs of your business. A list of service providers offering CCOD can be found here:
http://www.cosmocom.com/Company/ServiceProviders.htm. If you are interested in this option, there is another white paper from CosmoCom devoted to the subject. The remainder of this paper will focus on CCOD for Enterprises, also known as self-hosted CCOD.
• Self-Hosted CCOD. The second way is for you to self-host your own CCOD platform. The
technology infrastructure is located on your premises like a traditional contact center, but it is set up according to the CCOD model to serve your call center needs on an enterprise-wide basis from one platform. You manage the hardware and software yourself. You benefit from the ability to add and subtract capacity, features, applications, and agent locations in sync with your changing business needs. On-Demand. For some enterprises, self-hosted CCOD is the approach that combines the best of both worlds: the flexibility and financial benefits of Service Provider CCOD, and the control of a traditional premise-based approach. Self-hosted CCOD, or CCOD for Enterprises, is the focus of this white paper.
Basic Benefits of Self-Hosted CCOD
You’ve probably wondered in the past just how much call center technology you need. How many seats, which applications, which features, which media, …? It’s a simple question, but it’s a difficult one to answer. Overestimate and you’ll blow your budget on call center investments you can’t use. Underestimate and you’ll be running to play catch-up when business heats up. Because it’s so difficult to accurately anticipate what you’ll need tomorrow, next month or next year in the call center, what you really need is a solution that allows you to “dial up” or “dial down” your call center power as needed, without interrupting your operations. This is the essence of self-hosted CCOD – a flexible framework that can help your organization free itself from the rigidity of legacy call center technology, where any change is expensive, and change at the speed of business – i.e. On-Demand – is prohibitively expensive. Self-hosted CCOD transforms the way you acquire and manage your call center infrastructure by providing:
• A Flexible Delivery Model that gives you new ways to distribute and use call center power,
functionally, divisionally, and geographically.
• A Flexible Financial Model that redefines the way your company pays for its call center
power.
Flexible Delivery Model
Unlike traditional call center technology, self-hosted CCOD is based on a flexible delivery model (FDM), one that allows you to assign the right call center infrastructure resources to any part of your organization at any time, and instantly redeploy those resources as your business needs dictate. But how is this possible? FDM starts with the call center platform itself being multi-tenant in nature and virtual by design.
Multi-tenancy means that there no longer needs to be a one-to-one relationship between a call center platform and a company, division or business unit. Virtualization means that there no longer needs to be a one-to-one relationship between a call center platform and a physical location. CCOD is the combination of these two factors, which gives you the power to:
1. Deploy a single, centrally managed call center platform that will serve all of your
company’s business units. Each business unit may appear as a separate tenant with its own virtual call center on the platform.
2. Use that platform to serve agents wherever they are located, whether that be in one location or many, nationally, internationally or even agents working from home. Each business unit uses its own agents, wherever those agents may be.
3. Use that platform to extend your call center beyond traditional organization boundaries. Rather than have your outsourcers use their own technology platforms, have their agents log in to your central platform and become integral components of each business unit’s virtual call center.
Figure 1: The Flexible Delivery Model means a single CCOD platform can support multiple business units, and each of those business unit can
enjoy a virtual call center staffed by agents across multiple locations and fully integrated with outsourced operations.
Benefits of the Flexible Delivery Model
By now, I’m sure you’re starting to picture how this approach could dramatically streamline your call center operations. Here’s what else the Flexible Delivery Model will do for you:
Case Study: Before and After Self-Hosting
This CosmoCom customer replaced four legacy call center platforms – one was their own, the other three were owned and operated by outsourcers, one of which was offshore – with a self-hosted CCOD solution that spanned all four sites.
Before self-hosting, the company ran four largely disconnected call centers. After self-hosting, they had a single, virtual system that not only solved their immediate
needs, but better positioned them for future change.
Before Self-Hosting:
• Four separate call centers with four separate systems • Administration was inefficient, and different for each system • Routing was inflexible, and based only on the dialed number
(DNIS)
• There were significant limitations in transferring calls from one center to another
• There were some screen pops in some locations, none in others, and never any on a call transferred from site to site
• There was no visibility into what their outsourcers were doing • The entire solution was complex and rigid, and changes were
virtually impossible
After Self-Hosting:
• They replaced the four call centers with a single self-hosted CCOD solution covering all four sites
• Administration was centralized and uniform across all locations • Routing was intelligent, based on multiple criteria to ensure each
call got to the most qualified agent, wherever that agent might be • Transfers from site to site were seamless and transparent • Screen pops were enabled everywhere, and each transfer now
arrives with a screen pop, even if from another location • They achieved full visibility into their outsourcers’ operations,
including the ability to see data in real time, monitor agents on live calls, and more
• The overall result was elegance and flexibility, and now, they are in a much stronger position to handle future changes
• Reduce Your Capex
By centralizing and streamlining your technology, company-wide capital expenditures are reduced.
• Reduce Your IT Budget
It’s easier to manage a single system in one place than multiple systems in far flung locales.
• Consolidate Your Teams
With a single platform, you only need a single team to manage it. That means you can hire the best, train them only once, and enjoy the efficiencies of a top team that can become deeply
knowledgeable about a single skill-set.
• Host Your Outsourcers
Why lose visibility into what your outsourcers are doing? Put their agents on your central platform. This gives you more control while improving quality.
• Be Ready For Change
Most important of all, now you’re ready for anything they throw at you. o Organization re-engineering o Merger o Spin-off o Acquisition o New Outsourcer o Going Offshore
o Pulling Back From Offshore o New Business Plan
o Last Minute Campaign Whatever comes your way, now you’re ready for it.
Flexible Financial Model
Since self-hosted CCOD is, like traditional solutions, purchased for and deployed on your premises, you’re probably wondering how much flexibility there could be in the way you pay for it. The answer is: much more flexibility than you have now, and probably more than you thought possible.
Let’s start with the hardware. Hardware is hardware, and you’ll need it on your premises. Not much flexibility there. But since self-hosted CCOD is based on inexpensive, commodity hardware, this cost is minimized, and the potential for repurposing is maximized. Also, since most of the core servers can be located centrally, additional savings are realized.
CCOD software brings much more financial flexibility. This flexibility takes several forms. We begin by taking up the subject of software license terms.
From Here to Eternity
You’re probably used to buying software by paying for a perpetual license up-front, depreciated over several years, and paying annual or quarterly maintenance fees. For some companies, the perpetual use software purchase model is less than ideal. Software can easily last 5 years, 10 years, and longer given the availability of maintenance packages that keep it “ever green.” But accounting policies may require you to depreciate the whole amount in just three years. In addition to the upfront capital outlay, you’ll have three years of artificially inflated expenses. What if you could purchase a 3-year software license instead of a perpetual one? That would not only lower the initial startup cost and make it easier to get your project approved, but also reduce your annual depreciation expense.
…
Y1 Y2 Y3 Y4 Y5 Y6 Y7 Y8 PE R P E T UA L LICEN S E Y1 Y2 Y3 T HREE Y E AR LIC E N S E MAINT MAINT MAINT MAINTFigure 2: The Flexible Financial Model lets you choose between perpetual licensing and three year licensing. Perpetual is usually cheaper in the long run, but means a larger
overall commitment, both up-front and in terms of ongoing maintenance payments. Three year licensing requires less of a commitment, so it could be easier to get approved, and the added flexibility it brings could be of real value to your business.
Peaks and Valleys
The 3-year software license is just one of several components of the Flexible Financial Model (FFM) of CCOD. Financial flexibility is also important in relation to capacity. It’s a classical problem: You purchase technology based on your peak usage. You need 300 seats in June, but only 200 seats average the rest of the year. So what do you do? You buy 300 seats for the whole year.
The problem is compounded by the fact that you have multiple sites and business units to contend with. At a second location, you might have a peak of 200 additional seats and an average of only 100. And at a third, 400 more seats peak, 300 average. And even though the peaks are all at different times of the year, you wind up having to invest in a total of 900 seats, even though your average is only 600, and the maximum you ever need at one time is 700. Did we lose you on this? The charts below should clarify the point.
Figure 3: Each of these sites has its own peaks and valleys. What if you could leverage that fact to minimize your spending?
These charts also illustrate the additional financial flexibility of the CCOD model. If all three locations are hosted on one platform, the price can be based on the number of concurrent users across all locations. Looking at the above example, the most seats we’ll ever need concurrently is 700. That’s 200 fewer seats to pay for, right off the bat. Sure, you’re still going to deploy 900 physical seats. But with self-hosted CCOD, that’s not what you’re paying for. You can install as many seats as you need in each location. You pay only the for maximum concurrent agents across all locations.
200 400 J 100 300 F M A M J J A S O N D SITE 1 200 400 J 100 300 F M A M J J A S O N D SITE 1 SITE 2 200 400 J 100 300 F M A M J J A S O N D SITE 2 200 400 J 100 300 F M A M J J A S O N D 200 400 J 100 300 F M A M J J A S O N D SITE 3 200 400 J 100 300 F M A M J J A S O N D SITE 3 200 400 600 800 J 900 100 300 500 700 F M A M J J A S O N D TOTAL ACROSS ALL SITES 200 400 600 800 J 900 100 300 500 700 F M A M J J A S O N D TOTAL ACROSS ALL SITES
This example illustrates another potential source of cost savings from the financial flexibility of CCOD. The CCOD platform lets you route calls wherever agents are available. If you can cross-train agents in different call centers, you can cover the load with fewer total employees. This approach would be unimaginable in the legacy environment. With CCOD, it’s more than
imaginable. It’s a simple reality. Instead of going outside of the enterprise, let your own business units outsource for each other. Try to imagine the new cost-saving opportunities this flexibility could open up for you.
Now, as the pictures clearly show, most of the time we only need 600 seats, and only in certain peak months are 700 seats needed. With the flexibility of CCOD, you could go a step farther – invest in only 600 seats, and use outsourcers in the peak months. Let the outsourcers use your self-hosted system, and pay for those extra 100 agents only in the months they’re needed. Then revert back to the baseline of 600 agents.
Paying for Usage Instead of Seats
It’s a fact of life that an ACD seat costs much more, up to 10 times more, than a PBX seat. This does make sense, because an ACD seat delivers far more functionality than a PBX seat, and it is typically in use much more of the time.
We’ve all thought about equipping employees beyond the call center with the same kind of information-rich experience we give our call center agents. This would enable our key experts to better handle those calls that are sometimes escalated from the call center. Or, in times of unusually heavy load, it would let us clear out log jams in the call center by temporarily assigning additional staff to pitch in. More important, it would allow many more people to be the destination of the kind of highly intelligent automatic routing that ACDs can do today. But there is one big problem: at a cost per seat of 5 to 10 times more, the expense of equipping all of the potential agents with enough concurrent seats to make them available for occasional calls is prohibitive. With the Flexible Financial Model of self-hosted CCOD, “the company is the call center” can become reality, because CCOD allows for licensing by peak overall monthly usage rather than by peak concurrent seats. For the price of one concurrent seat license, you can instead purchase a Flex100 license that allows any number of agents to have a total of 100 in-call hours per month. All of the occasional agents can always be logged in and available for occasional calls at the cost of their total in-call usage. With that pricing scheme, everyone in the organization can be
configured as a call center agent! Does that open new ideas and possibilities for you?
Standard Licenses for Contact Center Agents
Flex100 Licenses for Office Workers
Figure 4: It’s no longer “the company AND the call center,” now it’s “the company IS the call center.” FFM means that you can extend the same great functionality that you give the agents in your call centers to every employee in the organization, without breaking the bank.
The Value of Being Prepared for Change
While it’s certainly possible to draw up an ROI case to show how a self-hosted CCOD solution could positively impact your business, the real cost savings come from change preparedness. How many times has it happened in the
past? You made your cost analysis, the savings looked terrific, the solution got implemented, and life was good. Then the reorg happened, the planning went out the window, and now you’re saddled with a system doesn’t fit the new situation you now face.
Figure 5: Imagine being able to add or reduce call center capacity, features, applications, agent locations, and
more, by turning the dial of a rheostat!
That’s business today. Even the list of things that are changing is changing. What you need is a solution that’s designed for change. What you need is an on-demand call center.
You need to be able to change with change. To be able to dial up and dial down your agents, to add sites here, get rid of them there, add and subtract features, functions and applications with the ebb and flow of the powerful currents
of commerce. In short, you need a “rheostat” for your call center. And that’s exactly what self-hosted CCOD enables.
Next Step: Invest Your Savings
After completing your self-hosted CCOD project, the next step would be to take the money you save and invest it into a second project. Maybe you can finally invest in improving the call center’s physical facilities. It’s been shown that things like better lighting, improved acoustics and more comfortable seating for agents can go a long way to improving the health and happiness of your agents, and, in turn, the efficiency and productivity of your call center operation. Or maybe you can take the savings and invest them in a new call center project, such as video. Video in the call center is just around the corner. Or perhaps now’s the time to create that integration with a certain legacy backend system, or to upgrade that backend system altogether.
Whatever your goal, the savings you’ll see from investing in a self-hosted CCOD project will help you make it happen.
Benefit Summary
The flexible delivery model and flexible financial model of self-hosted CCOD are designed to be much more than just another one-time infrastructure decision. Rather, these models can deeply transform the way you operate the call center component of your business. They don’t just streamline your current operations. They position your company for continued growth and ongoing competitiveness over the long term. Here’s what your organization will gain:
Focus – With the flexibility gained with self-hosted CCOD, you’ll reduce overhead significantly.
Your call center infrastructure will simply do what you need it to do. With more options open to you, you will be able to focus more on strategy than on tactics. You’ll eliminate wasted time, effort and headaches, to focus on work that builds business value.
Change-Readiness – With change at the heart of these models, your call center infrastructure will
stay aligned with your changing business goals. You’ll be able to scale up, scale down, launch new services or clamp down on spending—quickly and easily enough to handle whatever comes next.
Control – In a changing business environment, managers too often find themselves in the
uncomfortable position of knowing what they’d like to do, but recognizing that it just isn’t economically feasible. Control doesn’t just mean meeting your budgetary objectives. It means being able to make the operational changes you want and need to make within the limits of your budget. This is the essence of the on-demand model and of how you will benefit by creating a Contact Center On-Demand in your enterprise.
Tech Corner: What to Look for in a Self-Hosted CCOD Solution
Your self-hosted CCOD solution is going to serve several business units across multiple geographies, and be able to host your outsourcers as well. You’ll need a platform that’s up to the task, one that’s versatile and built for change, one that includes the following:
• Virtual, all-IP Design – only IP allows you the flexibility to sever the bonds of physical location.
• Multi-tenancy – You want to build and operate the whole platform as a single entity, yet still provide each individual business units with its own virtual call center.
• Broad Suite of Functionality that’s Pre-Integrated and Unified – Your call center needs the functions of ACD, IVR, predictive dialing, interaction history, monitoring, recording, reporting and more.
• All Media Channels – You’ll need to support phone calls, videophone calls (that’s right, 3G video calling has arrived!), email, chat, voicemail, web collaboration, and all of these channels must be pre-integrated and unified across all the above functional components.
• Geographic Independence – In addition to an architecture that enables the technology and agents to be wherever they need to be, your solution may also need to support multiple languages.
• Easy Integration – Likely you’ll need to integrate to more than one CRM, workforce management or home grown back-office application. You’ll need a system strong in this area.
• Easy Customization – For sure you’ll face some unique challenges. Flexibility is key to meet them head on.
• Easy to Learn – This proposition only makes sense if the agents, supervisors, administrators and support personnel can learn their jobs quickly.
