In these days of scary economic news (and 2009 budget planning that often reflects that uncertainty), many contact centers are considering a question that has been bubbling under the surface for a couple of years now. That is: Is it a good idea to offload some of the technological infrastructure to a hosted provider? Every contact center is unique, so there are no set rules that govern the answer to that question. The issues that bear on that decision reflect corporate culture, budgets, internal purchasing dynamics and specific technology needs.
To make matters more complex, what we define as a “hosted” solution can take several forms, each with its own distinct pros and cons. And the range of technologies that it’s feasible to offload has expanded — it is possible to move almost everything from switching to CRM to some forms of workforce optimization into the cloud. Should you? That depends.
Factoring the Decision
The answers to all of these questions can be found by isolating and weighing some of the distinct factors that bear on your particular situation. Each contact center is a unique and beautiful snowflake; what makes sense in one case may be completely off-base in another. Here are some of the variables that you need to come to terms with.
The time horizon. This is perhaps the most important element to contend with, and is tied up with the question of which specific tool you are looking to acquire. For example, say you are at facing the end of life for your switch and are weighing different options for your routing fabric. It will be important to consider future growth scenarios in call volume, in customer expectations, in agent headcount — all of these things change the calculation of total cost of ownership of a system. Will you be…