'The new paradigm will be the shift to IP telephony'

Terming the small call center segment as the fastest growing in the region,
contact center solution provider Concerto Software is targeting this segment in
the Indian region for its solutions. With a turnover of $184 mn last year, the
company is targeting a turnover of $270 mn in the current fiscal. Steve Michaud,
Asia-Pacific director for business development, Concerto Software, shares his
vision of the contact center solutions industry and the SME contact center
market.

What is the current scenario in the worldwide contact center solutions
industry and the SME contact center market?

The contact center industry has seen many changes in the last couple of
years. During 2004, the leaders and some of the smaller contact centers in the
market made significant investments in their infrastructure and applications.
There are a number of trends driving change and investment in contact center
solutions, including migration of contact centers from cost centers to strategic
profit centers, legislation and compliance, growth of VoIP, investment in speech
analytics, replacing old and outdated Point solutions, and growing interest in
unified solutions.

Steve Michaud

Nowadays contact centers managers are interested in solutions that can be
grown into suites. Also, contact centers are interested in solutions that are
open and standards-based. In order to reduce TCO, even IP is becoming more
mainstream and the network-based IP contact center is universally expected to be
one of the fastest growing technology trends of today, and within this, the
delivery of hosted IP contact center (HIPCC) applications, is the fastest
growing sub-segment.

What is the present scenario in India in these spaces?

In the recent time, contact centers have become the largest job providers in
India due to the technology and cheap infrastructure. The earlier paradigm for
India was the shift from analog to digital technology. The new paradigm will be
the shift to IP telephony, especially because of the high growth in the contact
center industry here.

India has witnessed tremendous growth in the numbers of small and medium
sized contact centers over the last couple of years. These contact centers need
quality solutions not only to ensure quality services to their clients but also
to maintain competitiveness against the larger players.

Can you throw some light on Concerto's investment in India?

In India, we have already invested $10 mn and are planning to invest a
further $10 mn in the coming years. We have opened another sales and services
office in Mumbai. Our aim is to penetrate more verticals and also look at more
alliances with large system integrators.