An upshot of this rapid transition to hosted/cloud contact centre services is the emergence of dozens of market entrants and offerings from legacy systems providers. The profusion of options often overwhelms buyers, as they need to evaluate service providers and solutions based on a comprehensive set of criteria including features and functionality, ease of use and management, reliability and security, total cost of ownership, integration capabilities, and service provider track record, vision, and financial viability.
Moreover, due to the multinational nature of the Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) market, a cookie-cutter approach to delivering products and services is bound to fail. According to Frost & Sullivan buyers must assess suppliers’ ability to offer region-specific support for their products.
New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, 2015 EMEA Hosted/Cloud Contact Centre Buyers Guide (http://www.frost.com/mb2a), finds that a structured approach is essential to navigate the sea of established and emerging cloud contact centre providers.
“Not all cloud providers are equal,” remarked Frost & Sullivan Information & Communication Technologies Principal Analyst Nancy Jamison. “Business decision-makers need to evaluate the provider’s ability to cater to their specific size or industry vertical.”
“Businesses considering the move to hosted contact centres must first assess their existing infrastructure, IT staff skill sets, and end-user needs in order to align their technology roadmap with broader business objectives,” noted Jamison. “The next step is to develop a short list of hosted contact centre providers that most closely match their requirements after a thorough analysis of their capabilities and solution functionality.”