Workforce Management Featured Article
February 07, 2008
2008: The Year of Workforce Optimization
As anybody who manages a contact center knows, the seemingly impossible task that needs to be accomplished every day is, "Make More With Less." While budgets and headcounts get cut, expectations of better sales, better service, greater customer retention and satisfaction rise.
Most contact center technologies, when chosen well and implemented properly, can help companies make more out of less. But few of them can do it so dramatically as workforce optimization solutions: specifically, workforce management and quality monitoring.
Anyone who has watched the workforce management and quality monitoring markets grow in the last five to 10 years cannot help being impressed. These two elements of the greater workforce optimization market continued to grow even during the dismal years around 2000 after the dot-com crash seriously depressed tech markets. Recent research suggests, however, that we ain't seen nothing yet.
Contact center research company DMG Consulting LLC recently announced the publication of its 2008 Contact Center Workforce Management Market Report, a comprehensive guide to the essential and evolving contact center workforce management market, products and vendors.
The report reveals some interesting and revealing stats. DMG reports that the contact center workforce management (WFM) market grew at a rapid rate of 15 percent in 2007, primarily driven by technical and functional innovations, as well as increased investments in sales and marketing initiatives that drove workforce management upgrades and replacements in complex multisite, multichannel contact centers. The market has also seen increasing amounts of activity in the traditionally under-penetrated and under-served small to mid-sized contact center segment ? businesses that in the past could not afford to purchase or administer workforce management. Based on the study results, DMG Consulting has forecast that 2008 will be the best year in the history of the WFM market, with an expected 20 percent growth rate.
“Workforce management is one of the most important productivity tools in the contact center,” said Donna Fluss, founder and president of DMG Consulting. “The requirement to provide a better customer experience while improving productivity and controlling costs is paramount in contact centers. The new generation of WFM solutions can help contact centers address these goals effectively, and we believe that vendors need to continue to invest significantly in sales and marketing to increase awareness of WFM’s benefits. Ongoing and strong R&D will also help the market continue to grow, as it will speed up the pace of innovation, product enhancements and the product replacement cycle.”
Another DMG report, the 2007-2008 Quality Monitoring/Liability Recording Product and Market Report, revealed similarly healthy growth for the quality monitoring sector. It is expected that once the numbers are tallied for 2007, the QM/Liability Recording Market will have grown by 10 percent, exceeding $2.3 billion in sales. This comes on the heels of a 106 percent increase in 2006. This market, according to the report, is being fueled by customer-driven vendor innovation, the continued growth of VoIP
recording, acquisitions and consolidations, and organic growth. In addition, as with workforce management, the SMB market continues to see growth and new attention.
As always, we'll keep you posted on new trends.
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For all the latest enterprise IP communications, unified communications, and contact center news, please click here.
Don’t forget to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users.
Today’s featured White Paper (News - Alert) is titled Security Considerations for an IP PBX and Contact Center, brought to you by Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert).
Most contact center technologies, when chosen well and implemented properly, can help companies make more out of less. But few of them can do it so dramatically as workforce optimization solutions: specifically, workforce management and quality monitoring.
Anyone who has watched the workforce management and quality monitoring markets grow in the last five to 10 years cannot help being impressed. These two elements of the greater workforce optimization market continued to grow even during the dismal years around 2000 after the dot-com crash seriously depressed tech markets. Recent research suggests, however, that we ain't seen nothing yet.
Contact center research company DMG Consulting LLC recently announced the publication of its 2008 Contact Center Workforce Management Market Report, a comprehensive guide to the essential and evolving contact center workforce management market, products and vendors.
The report reveals some interesting and revealing stats. DMG reports that the contact center workforce management (WFM) market grew at a rapid rate of 15 percent in 2007, primarily driven by technical and functional innovations, as well as increased investments in sales and marketing initiatives that drove workforce management upgrades and replacements in complex multisite, multichannel contact centers. The market has also seen increasing amounts of activity in the traditionally under-penetrated and under-served small to mid-sized contact center segment ? businesses that in the past could not afford to purchase or administer workforce management. Based on the study results, DMG Consulting has forecast that 2008 will be the best year in the history of the WFM market, with an expected 20 percent growth rate.
“Workforce management is one of the most important productivity tools in the contact center,” said Donna Fluss, founder and president of DMG Consulting. “The requirement to provide a better customer experience while improving productivity and controlling costs is paramount in contact centers. The new generation of WFM solutions can help contact centers address these goals effectively, and we believe that vendors need to continue to invest significantly in sales and marketing to increase awareness of WFM’s benefits. Ongoing and strong R&D will also help the market continue to grow, as it will speed up the pace of innovation, product enhancements and the product replacement cycle.”
Another DMG report, the 2007-2008 Quality Monitoring/Liability Recording Product and Market Report, revealed similarly healthy growth for the quality monitoring sector. It is expected that once the numbers are tallied for 2007, the QM/Liability Recording Market will have grown by 10 percent, exceeding $2.3 billion in sales. This comes on the heels of a 106 percent increase in 2006. This market, according to the report, is being fueled by customer-driven vendor innovation, the continued growth of VoIP
recording, acquisitions and consolidations, and organic growth. In addition, as with workforce management, the SMB market continues to see growth and new attention.As always, we'll keep you posted on new trends.
----------
For all the latest enterprise IP
communications, unified communications, and contact center news, please click here.Don’t forget to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users.
Today’s featured White Paper (News - Alert) is titled Security Considerations for an IP PBX and Contact Center, brought to you by Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert).
