CRM Service Awards: Service Leaders

Workforce Optimization Suite

The Market

This was another high-performing year for the contact center workforce optimization solutions market, which showed 9.2 percent revenue gains, from $563.4 million to $615.4 million, according to DMG Consulting's "WFO Mid-Year Market Share Report." "WFO solutions sell well in both challenging and good economic times because they deliver quantifiable benefits to organizations," explains DMG President Donna Fluss.

Though revenue was expected to slow in the latter half of 2012 as economies in Europe and Asia struggled, the longer-range forecast is optimistic, with growth projected at up to 9 percent this year and next and by at least 10 percent in 2015. A large part of this growth will be due to acquisitions by leading WFO vendors that are expected to continue to acquire companies from other IT sectors. This will help grow the WFO revenue base, even if organic growth is not as robust.

DMG sees cross-functional benefits, including emerging capabilities such as cross-channel analytics, real-time guidance, and real-time speech analytics, playing an increasing role in this market. It is also looking for WFO vendors to push their solutions more strongly to the back office, which is more than three times larger than the front-office segment.

The Leaders

Aspect Software, an early market leader and last year's one to watch, this year returns to the leaderboard on the strength of its company direction, highlighted by a management shakeup at the end of 2012, a 32 percent increase in R&D spending for WFO solutions, and a realignment of its product development processes. This, coupled with the release of version 7.5 of Aspect Workforce Management—which boasts streamlined interfaces and more capabilities for managing remote workers—and a strengthened partnership with Microsoft, is expected to position the company well in 2013. The company posted better-than-average scores of 3.6 in company direction, depth of functionality, and customer satisfaction as well.

Though WFO isn't a strong suit for Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, the company, which made our leaderboard last year, posted impressive results in depth of functionality (3.7) and company direction (3.9), as a result of its partnership with Zoom. This has been a mixed blessing, analysts say. "Genesys' strength is in the tight integration with its overall portfolio," says Sheila McGee-Smith, president and principal analyst at McGee-Smith Analytics. "Its weakness comes from the use of some [licensed] WFO components."

NICE Systems, with the largest single share of the WFO market (at 31.2 percent, reports DMG), continues to impress with a complete, well-integrated product line, helping land it on our leaderboard again. With scores of 4.6 for depth of functionality, 4.0 for company direction, and 4.1 in customer satisfaction, Dick Bucci, founder and president of Pelorus Associates, sees NICE moving from the contact center market "in favor of deeper integration into the enterprise space with its analytics solutions." McGee-Smith says, "Big data has an opportunity to become important for the contact center market. NICE is [an] early leader."

The Winner

Verint Systems takes the top spot again this year. It was propelled to the lead with scores of 4.6 in depth of functionality and 4.4 in company direction, but its standing is based on far more than that. Through its Impact 360 suite, it offers "best-in-class solutions," according to John Ragsdale, vice president of technology research at the Technology Services Industry Association, "and is able to create dashboards for multiple contact centers using any number of telephone systems."

Paul Stockford, chief analyst at Saddletree Research, calls Verint "the complete package," with "a sharp industry focus" and "a proven ability to execute quickly and effectively on changes in the company's strategy or…in industry demand."

Among those changes, Stockford elaborates, the company has taken an early lead in bringing big data into the WFO equation.

One to Watch

Calabrio fell off the leaderboard this year, but continues to be a company to watch. In addition to a market-leading 3.8 score on cost, it had an outstanding year in 2012, making it "one of the fastest-growing vendors in the WFO space," according to Bucci. The company, he adds, "is one of the better marketing companies, and does a good job of supporting its customers." Stockford says the small company has big aspirations. "Their understanding of what the future of the contact center will look like is unsurpassed."

Contact Center Search

The Market

The demand for solutions that enable contact center agents to access customer information across a myriad of channels, applications, and databases continues to drive developments in the contact center search (CCS) market. "The agent needs to be able to support the customer, whether the customer is on a Web site or a mobile device, at a kiosk or in a vehicle," writes Michael Maoz, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, in a recent Gartner Magic Quadrant report. Being able to provide clients with the tools to quickly and efficiently find the data they need is a crucial component in this market, according to Rebecca Wettemann, vice president at Nucleus Research. "Productivity," she comments, "is going to be key moving forward in the contact center."

The Leaders

Coveo, a mainstay on the CCS leaderboard, pulled in healthy scores with a 3.9 in depth of functionality, a 3.8 in company direction, and a 3.6 in customer satisfaction. The company offers "excellent search [capabilities] across structured and unstructured sources," according to Kate Leggett, a principal analyst at Forrester, who notes that it also has "strong visualization and dashboarding tools to present search results in very consumable ways." What's more, John Ragsdale, vice president of technology research at the Technology Services Industry Association, calls Coveo his "top recommended search platform," due to its "faceted search and dynamic integrations" with external systems. In 2012, Coveo introduced Coveo for Salesforce, giving Salesforce.com users access to its indexing engine and extending Coveo's reach even further. Coveo renewed its partnership with Sitecore to continue providing more personalized Web site searches, allowing it to power customer self-service Web sites, resulting in reduced support costs and increased loyalty.

Oracle RightNow saw an uptick in its company direction score, rising from last year's 2.9 to 3.5 as Oracle further integrated the cloud-based customer service solution with its other products. In its "Best Practices for Customer Service with Oracle RightNow" report, Nucleus Research notes that "significant" investments have been made in integrating RightNow with Oracle's Smart Integration Hub, the ATG Engagement Engine, and InQuira. Oracle RightNow's weakness is its search function, according to Mitch Kramer, senior vice president at the Patricia Seybold Group. "Oracle has continued to improve the [RightNow] product since the acquisition," Kramer observes, "but search is not an area where they've made any improvements."

New category addition Salesforce.com's search capabilities are not as extensive as those of its competitors, but that could soon change, analysts say. "Salesforce.com has an aggressive road map for the Service Cloud [which includes search capabilities]," Leggett observes. "They are aware of their shortcomings and have robust plans in place to fill them." Wettemann notes that Salesforce.com has put in "a lot of work around bringing different sources of information into a centralized place, ultimately making it more productive for the end user." Analysts gave the company a whopping 4.3 in company direction, a 3.6 in customer satisfaction, and a 3.3 in depth of functionality.

The Winner

Last year's one to watch, InQuira, which has since been rebranded as Oracle Knowledge Management, zoomed forward as this year's CCS winner with an impressive 4.8 in depth of functionality, a 3.6 in customer satisfaction, and a 3.3 in company direction. Compared with last year's scores, in which analysts had taken a "wait and see" approach in response to Oracle's acquisition, giving InQuira a low 2.7 in company direction, the analysts are more confident about the company's future. "InQuira is a crown jewel for Oracle in [combining] a knowledge base with customer experience," comments Ray Wang, CEO and principal analyst at Constellation Research.

One to Watch

While eGain received respectable scores, with a 3.8 in depth of functionality and a 3.5 in both customer satisfaction and company direction, the company faced stiff competition from other vendors, causing it to slide into this year's one to watch position. "As one of the last few standalone, best-of-breed providers standing, eGain has done a great job of delivering feature functionality," Wang notes. "The longer-term challenge will be the integration with other players and upgrading its cloud technologies for a world of big data."

Related Articles

LiveOps Integrates with Microsoft Dynamics' New Unified Service Desk

Integration will begin with voice and chat channels.

Clarabridge Launches Partner Program

The Clarabridge Partner Program will help ISVs, integrators, consultants, and VARs with their projects.

Moxie Software Enhances Its Spaces by Moxie Suite

New features in Spaces by Moxie include simpler user interfaces, tighter security, a chat translation function, and easier content management.

SugarCRM Looks to Tackle CRM Usage Hurdles

Planned summer launch of Sugar 7 emphasizes user, customer engagement.

Microsoft Wants to Take CRM Everywhere

The company's stated goal is to support business users wherever they are and on whatever devices they're using.

Avaya Unveils New Customer Experience Management Tools

New solutions provide integrated Web, social media, text, and email customer interaction options.