‘We’ve a Growing Share in a Growing Market’

A provider of customer interaction management (CIM) solutions, Concerto
Software was created after the merger of Davox and Cellit Corporation in January
2002. James D Foy, president and CEO, joined Concerto in September 2001 after
more than 30 years in the software industry. Foy spoke to Dataquest on Concerto’s
plans in the Indian market. Excerpts:

l On Concerto
Software’s reach in the Indian market...

According to a Frost & Sullivan report, Concerto has a dominant 74% market
share for outbound call center systems. Our clients include GE, Spectramind, GTL,
iSeva, Customer Asset and Bharti, among others. Our software is used by 6,000
agent seats across 40 centers. As for partners, we have allied with six of them
over the last two years.

A development center in India is round the corner James D Foy

l On expansion
plans in India...

Concerto Software has 10 employees operating out of New Delhi, apart from a
sales of support staff of over 100 in the channels. We’ll be announcing plans
to set up a software development center by the year-end.

l On future
prospects for Indian market...

In 2001, our end-user product revenues from India were in the range of was
$8-10 million. In May 2002, we exceeded the revenues of last year. There’s a
huge untapped domestic market scaling at a 24% CAGR. We have a growing share in
a growing market.

l On the role
of a SW solution in operating a contact center...

Concerto Software’s unified contact center solution manages customer
interactions across all communications channels including voice, fax, email and
the Web. The product incorporates universal queuing, automatic inbound call
distribution, etc. The solution enables supervisors to manage all functions from
a single administration point.

l On how to
measure the effectiveness of a SW solution...

The Concerto CIM solution aims at ensuring optimal use of the call center
agents’ time. The quality of the transaction is as important as the number of
calls answered. Here, central reporting is crucial. With central reporting,
every time a repeat customer interacts with an agent, the agent can view the
customer’s history of interactions at the contact center.

Manjiri Kalghatgi in New Delhi