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Moving the Contact Center to the Cloud?
Consider the Options
DMG Consulting LLC, a leading provider of contact center, back-office and real-time analytics - market research and consulting services, predicts that “the cloud-based contact center infrastructure market will continue to build momentum, growing by 45%, 40%, 40% and 35%, each year, respectively, between 2012 and 2015. DMG estimates that a minimum of 18.1% of all contact center seats will be in the cloud by the end of 2015.” DMG also notes that the inflection point in hosted contact center infrastructure adoption was driven by the recession of 2008, which motivated enterprises to explore more cost effective ways of upgrading their core call distribution
systems and associated technology.1
It’s clear that the allure of lower operational costs for a cloud based call center is a major consideration for IT and call center leaders. Cloud vendors promise to greatly minimize upfront capital expenditures (CapEx) as well as lower the cost of in-house maintenance, software upgrade and equipment replacement. However, as with most emergent technology trends, it is critical that IT and call center leaders exercise sound judgment in separating fact from marketing promises.
In this briefing, the ProPSS Managed Service option is presented to IT and call center leaders who are considering a cloud based contact center solution. While there is no doubt that cloud solutions are maturing and can present a very viable solution for some enterprises, this briefing presents an alternative and cost effective solution from PSS.
ProPSS Managed Services is a full service, outsourced support option designed to lower costs, improve customer service, meet business objectives and enhance overall efficiency. The ProPSS Managed Services offering is a unique service option that provides enterprises with a private cloud solution to outsource both reactive and proactive operational support while also providing continuous optimization of any customer interaction solution.
There are a myriad of factors to consider when moving call center operations to a cloud based solution, including understanding the real costs, the risks, timeframes, IT staffing issues and of course, the customer experience.
Cloud vendors promise to greatly minimize upfront capital expenditures as well as
lower the cost of in-house maintenance, software upgrade and equipment replacement. However, as with
most emergent technology trends, it is critical that IT and
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Understanding the cost
In an article titled, “Don't Buy Into the Cloud-Based Call Center—Yet” published by The CIO Collaboration Network website, Tony Zmudzin, director for outsourcing consultancy TPI says "The initial entry into cloud services is about freeing an enterprise from resourcing the technical solution. The basic goal is to match your cost to your need. However, a buyer needs to think beyond this basic idea to the overall strategy objective and how the cloud solution supports it."2
The true cost of a cloud solution must take into account all of the cost drivers, not merely the monthly subscription for people, processes and technology. Financial experts point to cost drivers such as potential write-offs of IT assets, penalties for existing contract termination, additional (sometimes significant) consulting fees and time for integration of custom IVR and other applications. Another factor to take into account is the expected life of current systems. If there is
substantial life left with the current solution, moving to a cloud solution might dramatically increase long-term cost. In a recent interview, Todd Funk, the CEO of PSS noted that in deploying their ProPSS Managed Services option to enterprises, he works with
customers “to help them understand that there is often a lot more life in their existing solutions than they may have realized”.
In an interview published in CFO magazine, Kerry Kane, principal at Software Contract Solutions noted “Companies underestimate switching costs in the subscription model. They’ll pay a premium for the perceived ability to drop the subscription if they’re not happy, but in reality, once they’ve developed data, process, and infrastructure tied to the product, they can’t switch in practice as easily as they can in principle.” 3
The ProPSS Cost Advantage
ProPSS offers all the advantages of a cloud-based model without any of the disruption and costs associated with moving to the cloud. PSS manages the entire call center IT infrastructure in a private cloud model with the infrastructure remaining on premise. Enterprises can realize substantial cost savings in several ways. PSS can provide expert recommendations for reducing cost with existing vendor support and maintenance agreements.
As a specialized contact center systems integration vendor and IVR expert, PSS is able to fully
understand the business and technology needs of call center managers. Working in close collaboration with customers, PSS helps reduce costs by providing both technology and financial analysis to optimize business agility, leverage technology and create efficiencies. PSS can craft customized business solutions using existing IT infrastructure, which may have already been paid for, without the need for expensive upgrades or new OEM supplied solutions.
3 | P a g e As previously mentioned, the expected life of IT systems is a key cost consideration. With ProPSS, not only can an enterprise realize the full value of IT systems, but PSS can drive significant cost savings by extending, maintaining and even optimizing end of life IVR systems.
Understanding the risk
The multi-layered security controls typically employed by a large data center do not necessarily apply when a company’s data is moved to a cloud platform. The cloud provider takes on this responsibility. However, the enterprise is still responsible for regulatory compliance and all the issues that might impact data security and integrity. Cloud providers mitigate risk through an audit process that seeks to ensure compliance with various standards such as SAS 70 Type II and others. Enterprises must still balance the risk of securing sensitive customer information against the controls and procedures that a cloud provider may have in place.
Other risk factors to consider are data loss and recovery processes. Since most data in a cloud environment is encrypted, it is far more difficult to recover. Enterprises need to fully understand from their potential cloud providers, exactly how long data recovery will take in a disaster scenario and weigh this as a risk factor. Another risk scenario is if the cloud provider is acquired. Not all mergers and acquisitions go smoothly and the end result may be unacceptable for the enterprise. While experts advise that this scenario be addressed contractually, if it is necessary to move to another cloud provider there is significant risk for business disruption. In addition, there may be significant bandwidth costs for moving large amounts of data as well as labor costs in making such a move.
The ProPSS solution minimizes risk
Unlike cloud solutions providers, PSS provides proactive system monitoring through their purpose built FlexxView tool set. Indeed, the heart of the ProPSS Managed Service option is 24/7/365 proactive and reactive support and monitoring to ensure continuous availability of customer service solutions. A key focus of the option is managing production system health through continuous monitoring,
measurement and systems improvement.
Combining data from customer reporting tools with PSS’s proactive monitoring FlexxView system allows vastly deeper insights into systems health. The result is dramatically greater uptime reliability, better outcomes and a more agile business. The ProPSS Managed Service option has been designed to go beyond support, risk mitigation and maintenance from an operational perspective, but also to improve customer service, increase income or reduce cost.
“From a proactive perspective, we’re sitting down with the customer every month to see what the future looks like, anticipating changes and understanding their business needs. We monitor the customer’s reporting tools and carefully analyze that data.
Concurrently, PSS will utilize our FlexxView proactive monitoring appliance and our other purpose built
monitoring tools.
As we analyze the customer data and review the data from our tools, we’re really trying to “marry” that
information to create deeper, more valuable insights into our customer’s business issues. Reactively, PSS will be more responsive, and
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Timeframes and labor in moving to the cloud
Some cloud solutions vendors understate the amount of time and labor required for moving a call center operation to the cloud. Comparison charts tout that it can happen in “hours or days”. While this may be true for very basic applications, for call centers who have invested in highly customized IVR solutions to meet business needs or provide a competitive advantage, there will be significant
integration costs in moving to a cloud solution. In addition, after completing the integrations, there may be additional software testing costs.
Depending on the software, there may be performance issues in a cloud environment that can require performance tuning and optimization. Even after accounting for multiple integrations, potentially with multiple providers there is still complexity, time and cost associated with moving and securely storing large volumes of data. Other unexpected costs can arise from the need to keep both systems running until all the technical issues are resolved and a full cutover can be safely executed.
The ProPSS Solution
For large enterprises with sophisticated, complex call center IT infrastructures, the ProPSS Managed Services option can be a more efficient and cost effective solution than moving to a cloud environment. While waiting for call center cloud solutions to more thoroughly evolve and mature, the ProPSS solution offers all of the benefits of a private cloud model with on premise control combined with the unrivalled support and development skills of a global call center technology leader. ProPSS Managed Services give enterprises the ability to outsource
proactive and reactive operational support, as well as continuous optimization of their customer
interaction solutions without the challenge and expense of moving everything to a hosted environment. “Successful business
5 | P a g e The ProPSS Managed Services offering has been developed and refined to provide business benefits and cost savings that extend well beyond today’s hosted solutions. In summary, ProPSS was designed to:
Increase customer retention Realize cost efficiencies Increase the quality of delivery Maintain system uptime targets
Drive measurable productivity increases Increase revenue per customer
Improve production system health through continuous monitoring and optimization
Provide enterprises with a dedicated account team composed of technical experts with many years of call center experience
Offer call center and IT leaders a complete range of dedicated, highly experienced consultants who can provide expert recommendations on call center business issues as well as technology planning, strategy, implementation and support
About PSS Help
As a highly specialized systems integrator and IVR solutions expert, PSS can design and deliver fully integrated communication solutions. The solutions help contact centers become true multi-media centers, meeting the rapidly accelerating customer demand for a superior customer experience across all channels. The company can also optimize and support both the platform and applications until the time comes to move to next gen solutions.
PSS is the choice of some of the world’s most admired enterprises. PSS works with 150 corporations, across 5 continents, in 19 countries.
We solve problems that matter to our customers, keep our promises and make it easy to renew service contracts. Our commitment to customer satisfaction and customer success is reflected by our repeat business rate of 99%.
