Michael MaozI am on the prowl for a large, complex contact center that has its GUI and core functionality delivered in the cloud using Software as a Service. I have looked across Europe, Australia, and North America. Every time a client or a SaaS solution provider tempts me with a reference, I’m on the case. But invariably I am disappointed. Customer Service organizations that have to pull up real time information from multiple back end legacy systems, and run business rules against the information, with hundreds of agents potentially hitting that same rules engine, shy away from SaaS. Maybe it is the processing requirements. Often it is because the SaaS solution lacks the industry-specific capabilities. Another issue is the complexity of modelling the business process prior to launching a system (or, creating a sandbox or test environment).
In telecommunications the issue is tapping into the OSS/BSS layers. In retail banking there are data access restrictions and the need to tap into fraud systems, perform straight-through processing, or credit card activities. Federal governments have data privacy reservations.
If you do run a ‘heads-down’ contact center with 300 or more agents with real time integration into systems as described above, and handle high call volumes with large data volumes, and you do it using SaaS as your software solution, leave your contact information – I’ll be emailing you. Until then, the search goes on. The few companies that have done the evaluations have been surprised to find that the integration costs, custom industry extensions, and software costs for SaaS, together with the absence of production references, pose too high a risk barrier to climb over. I am a bit skeptical, but willing to wait for proofs of concept to show up. So far, the large system integrators have been unable or unwilling to lead the way, as I’ve written in my published research. Does that mean ‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread?”
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