Hosted Solutions for contact centers have been well established in the market - they are here to stay. The reasons for this are compelling: changing the cost structure from a capital expense to an operation expense; having the hosted provider manage the hardware, software, licensing and maintenance; leveraging the experience and expertise of the hosted provider as opposed to hiring personnel - and more.

When implementing hosted solutions, there typically appears to be two levels of hosted offerings: pre-prepared "shrink wrap" applications and completely customized "built from scratch" solutions. Each of these has their own distinct pros and cons that the contact center needs to evaluate before making a decision on a hosted solution service provider.

"Shrink-wrap" Applications

These pre-prepared applications are somewhat generic but are typically easily implemented; examples include store locators, survey applications and CTI integrations to common CRM packages. These applications are rapidly deployed and easily integrated with the basic contact center infrastructure. They can cover most of the common needs - but rarely satisfy all requirements and are not easily (or in some cases not at all) customizable. Smaller centers are more likely to use these applications as they are better suited to their needs.

Customized Solutions

Solutions that are built from the ground up and tailored to the exact needs of the contact center are perfect fits and address all current and most future requirements. They typically involve a discovery and requirements definition phase, a development and a testing phase, and then a rollout. Solution development will include selecting multiple technologies and integrating them into the provider's platform. While these solutions are perfect fits the implementation time is long and the process is expensive; typically only larger and more sophisticated centers can have completely customized solutions developed and deployed for them.

Bringing Together the Best of Both Worlds

Fortunately contact centers don't have to choose just between "shrink wrap" applications and completely customized solutions; there is a way to get the best of both of these and to get it without their negative aspects.

The answer is hosted solutions that use a proven telephony platform that already has a complete suite of applications integrated into it. The key is that these applications must be easily customizable by the hosted solution provider to exacdy fit the current needs of the contact center and to accept future modifications to handle future requirements. This allows for the exact requirement fulfillment of the completely customized solution but with the implementation time and expense of the "shrink wrap" application. This type of hosted solution provider has the experience to not only perform the rapid deployment but also to bring the expertise in customization to address all the center's requirements. The cost, while typically greater than that of the "shrink wrap' application, is much less than that of the customized solution and provide an excellent value considering the costs versus requirement satisfaction.

This hybrid approach bringing together the best elements of both "shrink wrap" applications and completely customized solutions enables contact centers of any size and complexity to gain access to solutions that are rapidly deployed, meet their requirements and to provide all of the benefits of the hosted, on-demand, model.

About VoltDelta Hosted Solutions

VoltDelta Hosted Solutions has announced our new product suites: OASIS On-Call, the complete hosted telephony platform; OASIS Voice Self-Service, the suite of speech automated solutions, and OASIS Web Client, the solution set for agent virtualization, productivity and management. Our new General Manager is Terry Saeger: TSaeger@Voltdelta.com

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