This research study looks at market trends, drivers, and restraints for the North American contact center outsourcing market. It also provides market size, market share, forecasts and breakdown of the North American contact center outsourcing market by vendor tiers and market share for major market participants. Tier I vendors are profiled along with smaller work-at-home agent (WAHA) providers. Analyst recommendations for market penetration and growth are proposed.

This research service titled North American Contact Center Outsourcing Markets provides an overview of this subset of the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry. It includes a complete analysis of key industry challenges, market drivers, market restraints, and current trends that are affecting market penetration as well as growth. In this research service, expert analysis offers an in-depth examination of market size, market segmentation, market forecasts, service pricing, and market share of major providers of outsourced customer care services.

Greater Acceptance of Outsourcing across Business Verticals in North America Aids Growth of Outsourced Customer Care Services

Spurred by strategic, financial, and technological forces, the North American contact center outsourcing market continues to experience slow, but steady growth. Buoyed by growing demand, an uncertain economy and stable prices, market participants reported sound organic revenue growth in 2008 and 2009. We expect this to continue for the next three to five years. However, outsourcing firms need to contain costs in the face of accelerating customer demands and the trend towards vendor consolidation.

“Outsourcers offer a multitude of benefits to their client base, including eliminating capital expenses, flexibility, access to qualified labor, reduced costs, advanced management techniques, and the opportunity to gain access to state-of-the-art technology without massive financial outlays,” notes Senior Research Analyst Michael DeSalles.

Providers Offering Blended Solutions have an Edge in the Market

Clients continue to show a great deal of interest in ‘blended’ delivery models – a combination of domestic, off shore, near shore, home agents, and automated solutions. Those providers offering multiple solutions and agent models are in a favorable position to take advantage of market growth.

“Another important development in the market is that several market participants report that they have moved to better align their sales forces with client demand for vertical expertise. This is especially true in the dominant financial services vertical and others such as telecomm, travel, and healthcare,” notes DeSalles. North American providers also report dealing with complex industry legislation and regulatory compliance issues.

The most evident challenge in call centers currently is that of complexity. This includes increased diversity and complexity of products and services, the need for agents’ multi-lingual skills, consumer demand for speed and multi-channel media touches, and increased emphasis on cross selling and up selling. We believe that outsourcing firms that have CEO support to execute a solid security strategy, with an established internal security practice, will be well prepared to meet these important client demands for data privacy, security certifications, and regulatory compliance.

Source:http://www.officialwire.com/main.php?action=posted_news&rid=228156

The first is just a way of getting somebody else to wield an axe you should wield yourself. If the service isn’t adding value, don’t provide it. If you need the service, you can cut costs yourself instead of paying an outsourcer to make a profit.

The latter is dangerous. Narrowing your areas of specialisation increases the risk of your company’s obsolescence as technologies, vendors, or even your own customer markets shift. Focusing on core technologies or applications leaves you highly vulnerable to threats from competitors who adopt new technologies. What happens to your IT department when a core application becomes obsolete? Or if your business has to shift into new markets that need very different applications, or different implementations of those you have?

Too many IT departments focus on optimising performance, forgetting that their real objective is to make the business perform better. What most of them need is more room to experiment, try new technologies, try new applications, try new solutions, seek out new customer market opportunities and find ways to grow the business.

Use outsourcing to free up your resources for these tasks. Active sunsetting of old systems is critical, so use outsourcers to complete end-of-life projects cheaply and quickly. Press your IT shop into setting up white space projects-an approach to innovation in which people have permission to experiment in search of new value-added solutions and are given resources to prove the viability of such solutions.

Know which new technologies you need to deploy before you have to and get out of spending on legacy systems so you can be ready. Always keep your attention on doing the next big thing.

Source:http://www.sourcingfocus.com/index.php/site/newsitem/2717/