Small and Medium Contact Centre Markets Present New Growth Opportunities for ACD System Vendors

Small and Medium Contact Centre Markets Present New Growth Opportunities for ACD System Vendors

LONDON, Jan. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Saturation in the large contact centre market of over 400 agent seats in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region is compelling automatic call distributor (ACD) system vendors to explore growth opportunities in the small and medium call centre market of under 250 seats.

Despite Asia's reputation as a popular cost-cutting region, outsourcing is emerging as one of the fastest growing verticals in EMEA. The under-60 seat market segment in particular is expected to present the maximum growth opportunities accounting for more than half of EMEA's call centres in the next few years.

"Countries in the central and eastern European regions are experiencing increased levels of outsourcing, especially in the under-60 seat market segment due to low cost of labour, inexpensive real estate and a multilingual labour force," explains Frost & Sullivan (http://www.telecom.frost.com/) Industry Analyst S. V. Purushothaman.

As opportunities in under-60 seat market segment materialise, Frost & Sullivan estimates revenues in the EMEA ACD systems market to increase from $456.1 million in 2004 to $731.7 million in 2010 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.2 per cent.

However, ACD system vendors must customise product development and marketing strategies to accurately target the needs of the small and medium contact centre markets. Vendors, therefore, need to offer lower price points or roll out products with reduced functionality for easier access to these markets.

Also, with EMEA being a large geographical region, strengthening partnerships with distributors, resellers and system integrators would enable ACD system vendors to gain the reach and credibility required for success in smaller local markets.

With Internet protocol (IP) ACD agents comprising approximately 8 per cent to 10 per cent of all ACD shipments in EMEA, products that comply with the IP contact centres must also be on the priority list of ACD system vendors.

IP agent seats are expected to account for approximately 35 per cent of the seats shipped by 2007 and rise to 50 per cent by 2008. IP contact centres are particularly popular in eastern European regions such as Czech Republic, Poland and the Russian Federation where Greenfield opportunities abound.

"Most of the call centres in eastern Europe are Greenfield locations, and are hence, able to deploy and run IP without any significant capital expenditure," says Mr. Purushothaman. "IP technology in contact centres also enables advanced routing functions, productivity enhancing applications and virtualisation benefits, thus aiding call centre operators to tap a larger labour pool."

In the future, IP contact centres are expected to find increasing traction in countries that do not have fully developed voice networks. This is dependent upon the level of quality of service (QOS), infrastructure reliability and network security that vendors can provide for mission critical call centre operations.

Vendors are addressing these issues and the reliability and scalability of IP networks have increased in the past few years with IP networks providing close to 99.999 per cent reliability.

Session initiation protocol (SIP) is gaining in popularity over the existing H.323 standard as the signalling protocol of choice for IP-based technology in contact centres.

The open standards nature of SIP enables end users to lower the total cost of ownership by commoditising end points. It also facilitates presence-enabled communications across diverse devices and multiple modes of communications.

Overall, the future for ACD systems in the EMEA region looks comparatively bright with the increased adoption of IP contact centres, growth of the outsourcing, cultural acceptance of telecommuting and the release of capital expenditure for technology purchases.

While services, communications and industries are the largest call centre verticals in EMEA, ACD system vendors must keep a watch on healthcare and government, which are expected to be the upcoming verticals through 2008.

If you are interested in a summary of this research service providing an introduction to Frost & Sullivan's analysis of the European Automatic Call Distributor Systems Market, please send an email to Kristina Menzefricke, Corporate Communications at kristina.menzefricke@frost.com with the following information: full name, company name, title, contact telephone number, email. Upon receipt of the above information, the summary will be emailed to you.

Background

Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company founded in 1961, partners with clients to create value through innovative growth strategies. The foundation of this partnership approach is our Growth Partnership Services platform, whereby we provide industry research, marketing strategies, consulting and training to our clients to help grow their business. A key benefit that Frost & Sullivan brings to its clients is a global perspective on a broad range of industries, markets, technologies, econometrics, and demographics. With a client list that includes Global 1000 companies, emerging companies, as well as the investment community, Frost & Sullivan has evolved into one of the premier growth consulting companies in the world.

For further information, please contact:

Kristina Menzefricke,
Frost & Sullivan,
Corporate Communications,
P: +44-(0)-20-7343-8376,
E: kristina.menzefricke@frost.com


Source: Frost & Sullivan

CONTACT: Kristina Menzefricke, Frost & Sullivan, Corporate
Communications, +44-20-7343-8376, kristina.menzefricke@frost.com

Web site: http://www.telecom.frost.com/


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