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Contact Center And IP Communications Predictions For 2011
Published Nov 29, 2010
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It's that time of year again to see where the technology directions will take enterprises into 2011 and beyond. Shaheen Haque – Territory Manager, Middle East & Turkey, Interactive Intelligence discusses his thoughts about the trends and possibilities of 2011 in the Contact Center & IP Communications industry
1. Cloud Computing will still dominate discussions globally on the viability, uptake and securability! 2011 should see a shift in customers, at least initially looking at a CaaS (Communications as a Service) model rather than a premised based solution! CaaS enables low/no upfront costs, reduced IT requirements, shorter implementation times for communications and contact center solution services!
2. Real-time contact center analytics or intelligence with high resolution graphics and visual impacting charts will drive organizations towards a greater understanding of the operation and with the ability to offer real-time analytics back to their customers both internal and external.
3. Smart mobile/ Blackberry/ i-Phone and iPAD application requirements will become prominent with the greater uptake of these devices both socially as well as in business in order to make decisions faster, differentiate against competition and ultimately grow the business top-line revenue. There will also be many new manufacturers coming out with their own version of Apple’s iPad, which I hear they have already sold 60 million units worldwide! We will see more functionality and features becoming available on these devices to empower the ever-growing mobile workforce.
4. As data/ information exchange keeps getting pushed up against and beyond the enterprise limits, security requirements within all aspects of communications will reach an all-time high. Both customers and vendors alike will request and promote these essential security features respectively!
5. Communications vendors will be forced to differentiate and create deeper, more sustainable value to the customers. This will fuel the transformation of project delivery models towards greener and rapid delivery, allowing enabling technologies such as our pre-integrated suite of applications to become more attractive as the costs are driven down even further. Vendors will also need to specialize their offering in order to enter niche markets and to enable competitive differentiation in a growingly commoditized world e.g. Vertical/industry specific cloud based solutions.
6. Speech will become reality in terms of contact center analysis of interactions. Analysis of the unstructured data in call recordings and attempting to derive insight from this data will happen. The technology has been around since 2005 but I believe 2011 will be the year supervisors will have access to such technology and data analysis techniques.
At Interactive intelligence, 2011 is the year, we will look to remove the traditional barriers of cost and complexity which has until now shrouded this technology.
7. Social technology adopters - Social networking collaboration/technologies, such Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging and alike will continue to grow in popularity and will assist business communities in pooling customer content into a usable and accessible customer awareness repository in order to service and provide a greater customer experiences. Social technologies will most likely become integrated with both, business and communication applications. We are seeing the start of this phenomenon already. Going forward, any organization engaged with providing/servicing a contact center or communications service will need to consider the uptake and impact of social media technologies if they are to stay ahead off the curve. 2011 will see a surge of experimentation by the business communities on how to tame and focus this tremendous power!!
8. Increased in uptake of Process Automation solutions. Customers will see increased productivity, improvement in business processes and a fundamental upscale in competitive advantage.
9. Video is not new, but with immense exposure of this technology in the Web, social software applications, unified communications and internet-based kiosk applications, video will no doubt look to enter the contact center requested feature list in the main stream. Over the next few years, we will see video will become a common interaction mode between customers and contact center agents. One thing though, the agents will also have to think twice about their appearance, unless they are able to select avatars to stand in for them visually?
10. Finally I see the number market players potentially dwindling in numbers, with the ever increasing trend of take-overs and buy outs within the software and technology space. The smaller niche players may feel it’s their time to merge with the larger vendors to assist them in completing their feature vision and broadening their go-to-market strategies!
So, that's my predictions/ thoughts for 2011 and further. Do you see a different future ahead of us?
About Interactive Intelligence
Interactive Intelligence Inc. (Nasdaq: ININ) is a global provider of unified business communications solutions for contact center automation, enterprise IP telephony, and business process automation. The company was founded in 1994 and has more than 3,500 customers worldwide. Interactive Intelligence is among Software Magazine’s 2010 Top 500 Global Software and Services Suppliers, and Forbes Magazine’s 2010 Best Small Companies in America. The company is also positioned in the leaders’ quadrant of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure, Worldwide report (Feb. 22, 2010). Interactive Intelligence employs approximately 800 people and is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. It has 16 offices throughout North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. Interactive Intelligence can be reached at +1 317.872.3000 or info@inin.com; on the Net: www.inin.com
This release may contain certain forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are described in the company's SEC filings.
Interactive Intelligence Inc. is the owner of the marks INTERACTIVE INTELLIGENCE, its associated LOGO and numerous other marks. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.
Product Information Contact:
Mr. Shaheen Haque
Turkey & Middle East Territory Manager
Interactive Intelligence Middle East
Dubai, UAE
Direct phone: +971(4) 4347217
Mobile: +971 (50) 4573186
Email: shaheen.haque@inin.com
Posted by
VMD - [Virtual Marketing Department]
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