Tech Investments Buoy Workforce Optimization
In a new report on the world workforce optimization (WFO) solutions market, DMG Consulting concludes that it’s “a pretty exciting time.”
DMG’s seventh annual Quality Management/Liability Recording WFO Product and Market Report forecasts that contact centers will continue to make substantial technology investments in 2011 and 2012. The WFO suite market, mostly powered by speech analytics, is expected to grow by 7 percent in 2011, 6 percent in 2012, and 5.5 percent in 2013.
With a stronger market and increasing options, it is even more important now for end users to select vendors that would cater to their individual contact center and IT needs, DMG President Donna Fluss says. “Looking beyond the salesman” and prioritizing price, product functionality, future direction, and customer satisfaction rankings should factor into the end user’s ultimate vendor decision, she says.
The report took about three months and more than 1,000 manpower-hours to compile, Fluss says. “The report makes it easy to see what’s in the marketplace,” she says. “I’ve been in this market for awhile, and this is a pretty exciting time. A high amount of innovation and products continue to be introduced. It’s a buyer’s market.”
Other trends highlighted include:
• The WFO market has recovered from the recession, and 2011 has gotten off to a strong start.
• Research and development spending on WFO suites is high and is expected to rise as vendors invest in innovation and building suite synergies.
• Vendors are embedding workflow into their applications to make results easier and more actionable for end users seeking to apply the findings.
• End users are demanding Payment Card Industry-compliant applications from WFO vendors.
• Desktop analytics is gaining traction and should pick up momentum.
• An increasing number of contact center infrastructure vendors have entered the market with their WFO suites.
• Vendors are offering more feature-rich WFO solutions for small to mid-sized companies.
• End users in both large and small contact centers are pushing vendors to deliver hosted WFO and stand-alone applications.
• End users are increasingly interested in buying multiple applications from a single suite provider.
Associate/Web Editor Brittany Farb can be reached at bfarb@destinationCRM.com.