FOR APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT & DELIVERY PROFESSIONALS
The Forrester Wave
The Eight Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up
Why Read This Report
Connecting customers to the right agents over the right channel is key to an excellent, differentiated customer experience. In our 40-criteria evaluation of midsize contact center interaction management (CCIM) providers, we identified the eight most significant ones — Aspect Software, Avaya, Cisco Systems, Enghouse Interactive, Genesys, Interactive Intelligence, Mitel Networks, and Unify — and researched, analyzed, and scored them. This report shows how each provider measures up and helps application development and delivery (AD&D) professionals make the right choice.
Key Takeaways
Genesys And Mitel Networks Lead The Pack
Forrester's research uncovered a market in which Genesys and Mitel Networks lead the pack. Enghouse Interactive, Cisco Systems, Aspect Software, and Avaya offer competitive options. Unify and Interactive Intelligence lag closely behind.
AD&D Pros Are Looking For SaaS Delivery And Comprehensive, Integrated CCIM Suites
The CCIM market is transforming because more AD&D professionals see CCIM as a way to address the need for differentiated customer experiences with more agile contact centers.
SaaS And Depth Of Suite Integration Are Key Differentiators
Providing seamless access to customer service agents across all channels is harder to accomplish on legacy, voice-based on-premises systems. Midsize contact centers need an easy-to-manage CCIM system to accomplish this goal.
MIDSIZE CONTACT CENTERS REQUIRE SIMPLER CCIM SAAS SUITES
A common software suite for interactions across all channels. The CCIM market is slowly evolving away from best-of-breed solutions devoted to one or two channels and toward integrated software suites that span all channels and manage the real-time status of agents, guide customer contact flow, and facilitate interaction analytics. This is especially important for midsize contact centers that wish to offer seamless customer journeys across all channels. Key components include a solidly designed, modern user interface across the system for all roles; out-of-the-box CRM integration; integrated interactive voice response (IVR); and outbound dialing.
The simplicity of software-as-a-service (SaaS) deployment and pricing. Procuring, installing, and maintaining multiple components, even with the assistance of a channel partner, impede the ability of midsize contact centers to operate as agile businesses. (see endnote 3) Companies with seasonal traffic must purchase and maintain a system designed for peak periods. SaaS delivery allows for more agility to design and manage differentiated customer journeys and be responsive to market changes. Midmarket CCIM suites delivered via SaaS support these requirements, and vendors are continuing to simplify their bundles — including options that deliver integrated workforce optimization (WFO) as well.
Standardized reporting and analytics along with more WFO bundling. Midsize contact center managers largely lack the resources to design and construct custom reports. The CCIM market has always supported a common library of standardized reports coupled with business intelligence tools for customization. These standard report packages now include activity across all channels. We also see a trend of vendors bundling WFO reporting along with speech and text analytics, allowing midsize contact centers to alleviate the integration and customization required in the past.
Sales, service, and support from an extensive channel of partners. The technology management model for small and midsize businesses leans more heavily to local and specialized service providers than direct support from CCIM vendors themselves. SaaS disrupts this partner network, so CCIM vendors have to transform their channel partners' business models to subscription-based revenues while still serving customers who choose an on-premises deployment. Adding in customer success consulting aligns with the growing trend of tying midsize contact center performance to technology investments.
The Market Is Buffeted By Acquisitions And Varying Product And Channel Maturity
The path to SaaS is varied, wide, and tortured. SaaS is not just retooling or creating a new, multi-tenant CCIM software suite. The subscription model cuts across all elements of sales, marketing, and service within a technology company. (see endnote 5) Cisco Systems has engaged mostly carrier partners to host its existing system as a service. Interactive Intelligence chose to create a new product that runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Avaya's IP Office is not multi-tenant, but some partners will host it. Cloud-only vendors like Five9 and inContact inherently have solved these challenges but cannot serve the customer who wants an on-premises solution.
CCIM suites are maturing and starting to include "fries with that" WFO. Every vendor in this evaluation has the ability to support the common channels: voice, email, and web chat. But their depth of support varies (e.g., support for multiple simultaneous web chat sessions and the ability to transfer them). This will improve as vendors acquire more nonvoice channel experience in the market. Midsize contact center purchases are now increasingly including WFO, as CCIM vendors supply either native or OEM versions in their packaging. In fact, many vendors now include call recording in their base, voice-only packages.
The lines between CCIM, WFO, and CRM are blurring. CRM vendors have added nonvoice channels like social and web chat, and this is creating a "digital divide" in contact centers between voice and digital interactions. Creating more overlap, some CRM vendors, like Zendesk, are adding voice capabilities as well. Inquiries with Forrester clients indicate an increasing level of confusion as to which vendors to choose for which capabilities. (see endnote 6) CCIM vendors in this evaluation are anchored in voice, but they need to ensure that they are proactively positioning themselves for nonvoice channels.
Mergers and acquisitions are on the rise. The move to suite and cloud models stresses the financial health and market position of the CCIM vendors, which creates a ripe opportunity for consolidation, mergers, and acquisitions. NICE purchased the cloud-only vendor inContact; Genesys announced the acquisition of Interactive Intelligence (which is still covered separately in this analysis); and the industry continues to speculate about the sale of the Avaya contact center business to help restructure its debt.
CCIM FOR MIDSIZE CONTACT CENTERS EVALUATION OVERVIEW
Current offering. All of the CCIM vendors we've included in this evaluation come from a strong legacy of handling voice communications. We looked closely at how they have applied the same queueing, routing, and reporting strengths to nonvoice channels in a fully integrated manner. We interviewed customer references and reviewed specific screen shot sequences to see how they have modernized the user interface for agents, supervisors, business analysts, system administrators, and individuals defining contact flows. In addition, we evaluated out-of-the-box CRM integrations, outbound notifications and dialing, IVR, rich APIs, and software development kits (SDKs). Finally, we heavily weighted the vendors' capabilities and experience with SaaS deployments.
Strategy. The midsize CCIM market will see further consolidation and maturation of suites. To score well, the firms we evaluated needed a clear vision and road map focused on deepening the capabilities of their suites and more deeply embedding WFO. We also checked to see if vendors have a broad, geographically widespread channel that is able to readily support SaaS delivery. Finally, as more bundling and consolidation into suites occurs, our evaluation includes vendors' pricing models to assess their level of simplicity and competitiveness.
Market presence. The vendors we've evaluated primarily have large installed bases of both systems and agent positions. This is the classic way to measure the market, but the new twist is to add SaaS customers and the number of existing subscriptions. In this evaluation, we used all deployment models to compute installed base, so there is more weight and presence for the legacy on-premises vendors that have had years to establish larger bases. Forrester will continue to monitor the market growth of cloud-only vendors for potential inclusion in future midsize CCIM Wave evaluations.
Evaluated Vendors And Inclusion Criteria
An installed base of greater than 500 customers. The midsize CCIM market is comprised of well-established vendors that have a track record and base upon which to draw maintenance and upgrade revenues. A robust sales and support channel is necessary to support higher volumes of sales around the globe. Cloud-only vendors are gaining share in this segment, but not at the level to meet this criteria.
A top eight installed base rank. There is a sharp drop in installed base after the top eight in this analysis of midsize CCIM vendors. A larger base also attracts more support from channel partners, which are critical to sustain global coverage for sales and support.
Agent seat count over 65,000 and support for 100 to 500 active agent positions. The midsize CCIM market is defined as companies supporting systems with 100 to 500 seats. Avaya and Cisco Systems reported seat counts greater than 1 million due to the large volume of midsize systems they ship.
Substantial interest from Forrester clients in the form of questions or mentions. Forrester clients are an important, but not exclusive, source for assessing a vendor's importance in a market. All of the vendors we included in this midsize CCIM Wave have been topics of multiple inquiries during the past two years.
Figure 1: Evaluated Vendors: Product Information And Selection Criteria
VENDOR PROFILES
Figure 2: Forrester Wave™: Contact Center Interaction Management For Midsize Contact Centers, Q3 '16
Leaders
Genesys provides extensive capabilities and deployment options. Genesys Business Edition support for nonvoice channels like email, chat, and SMS approaches that of best-of-breed vendors. Genesys does not provide its own private branch exchange (PBX) or unified communications (UC) solution, but it utilizes its SIP Server for out-of-the-box integrations with a wide array of systems, including Microsoft Skype for Business. Proactive notifications, predictive dialing, and native WFO round out the system. Genesys' extensive library of G+ adapters provides out-of-the-box integrations with CRM and other WFO packages.
Along with capability comes complexity, so Business Edition requires more training and resources to operate. As a market leader, Genesys also commands a price premium. While Genesys offers Business Edition in the cloud, it is not yet fully multi-tenant, so Genesys offers Premier Edition for smaller configurations. Clients looking for longer-term planning find that Genesys' road map varies. While that is an indication of market responsiveness, it places some pressure on customers' planning. Customers who want a system that approaches "best of suite," a broad global support partner network, and integration with other UC and telephony systems should consider Business Edition.
Mitel Networks integrates key acquisitions for omnichannel and WFO. Mitel Networks acquired long-term contact center software partner prairieFyre and WFO provider Oaisys to round out its contact center portfolio. Over the past two years, the company has integrated these two acquisitions into a solid CCIM solution for midsize contact centers. Mitel Networks was one of the first vendors to virtualize its software, and this gave the firm a head start on the path to cloud-based offerings. Mitel Networks has a strong channel and position in some vertical markets such as the public sector and hotels.
The depth of integration across Mitel Networks' MiContact Center Business is still a work in progress. Clients' feedback indicates managing across the system on top of the MiVoice PBX is harder than they anticipated. The company has a strong focus on mergers and acquisitions in order to gain scale in the market. This is helping grow the company from a scale and reach perspective, and integration of the companies it has acquired is going well. But any changes can be disruptive, so clients considering this product should monitor the impact on staffing, product road maps, and channel relationships. Customers using Mitel Networks for UC and telephony should consider MiContact Center Business — either hosted or on-premises.
Strong Performers
Enghouse Interactive provides extensive integrations and omnichannel capabilities. Geared to the lower end of the midsize market (up to 250 agents), Enghouse Interactive's Communications Center has very strong integration capabilities with a wide array of CRM and PBX systems, including Microsoft Skype for Business. The company added a new interface two years ago that spans all user roles in the system. The system supports proactive notifications across channels along with voice, email, and chat.
Enghouse Interactive is not as much of a known name in the market, so it struggles with brand recognition. At the same time, it has a solid reseller network for Communications Center and is competitive with its pricing. Communications Center is not multi-tenant, so Enghouse Interactive sells a competing SaaS-based product through carriers for the small and midsize market. The company supplies its own broad library of integrations, but it does not offer a broad API or SDK publicly. Communications Center can provide a smaller contact center on-premises that requires integration with existing PBX systems and a number of CRM applications on the agent desktop.
Cisco Systems benefits from customers that are "Cisco shops." Cisco Systems' dominance of unified communications and data networking gives customers volume purchasing advantages when they add Contact Center Express (CCX) for midsize contact centers. CCX supports voice, email, and chat as well as the ability to capture contextual data in the bundled Context Service in the cloud. The company's extensive partner ecosystem uses the Finesse agent desktop to integrate multiple functions and systems into an agent portal. Cisco Systems provides a workforce optimization suite as a part of its CCX offering, while integration and technology partners flesh out the CRM capabilities.
CCX is not multi-tenant and is largely sold on-premises. Cisco Systems' broad partner ecosystem adds capabilities — but those add complexity. For integrations, CCX provides a number of different APIs and SDKs (e.g., Finesse for desktop, but a separate one for MediaSense-based recording). Customer feedback from our reference calls indicated that the CCX reporting has limitations, such as the inability to see agent activity across channels in one report. CCX is a natural choice to add to a Cisco Systems-supported data network along with Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CallManager) for telephony.
Aspect Software leverages strong outbound and WFO integration in the cloud. Long-term acquisitions of WFO and dialer companies coupled with a cloud-only omnichannel system provide Aspect Software's Zipwire with a full breadth of capabilities for midsize contact centers. The product supports inbound voice, email, chat, and social, and outbound dialing is set up and managed in the same system. Aspect Software used design firm frog design to redesign its WFO user interface and carried that across to all roles in Zipwire. Out-of-the-box integrations with leading CRM vendors are part of the system.
As a newer product (introduced in 2014), Zipwire has a more limited base and level of maturity. Incremental nonvoice capabilities typical of best-of-breed point solutions are lacking — along with breadth and depth of reporting and analytics. Customer Experience Platform provides strong proactive notification, self-service, and contextual data-capture capabilities, but it is a separate system from Zipwire. Aspect Software is still ramping up broader channel and developer support for Zipwire as it gains more market traction. Zipwire is best suited for companies that want a standalone, cloud-based, integrated, omnichannel system that also includes WFO from the same vendor.
Avaya offers broad channel capabilities. The acquisition of Nortel Networks combined with its own extensive midmarket base provides Avaya channel partners with the entrée to migrate customers to Avaya IP Office and its associated contact center package Avaya IP Office Contact Center (IPOCC). A single-configuration environment and agent desktop provide voice, email, and chat interactions. Avaya sells its own WFO package, Avaya Workforce Optimization Select, with IPOCC. A future release will provide deeper reporting and analysis integration. Avaya has broad global sales, distribution, and support channels for IP Office and IPOCC.
Avaya IP Office has less integration capabilities because its API is limited to agent desktop functions. The company's road map includes an update to a modern web-based interface across all roles. More advanced IVR, self-service, and proactive outbound notifications require Avaya's Aura Experience Portal. The system is limited to preview, progressive, and power dialing. Salesforce is the only CRM integration that Avaya provides out of the box, while partners do others. Partners can host IP Office, but it is not a multi-tenant system. A large majority of IP Office Contact Center is sold on-premises. Choose Avaya IP Office if you're looking for local partner support for an on-premises telephony, UC, contact center, and WFO solution — all from one vendor.
Contenders
Unify's OpenScape Contact Center adopts Circuit. Unify led the market two years ago by bringing mobile team messaging capabilities to Unified Communications. Design firm frog design defined the Circuit user interface, and now, that approach is being migrated across OpenScape Contact Center. Unify has provided OpenScape Voice and OpenScape Contact Center as hosted solutions for a number of years, and some deployments support global enterprises with over 50,000 stations. Atos' purchase of Unify provides the company with additional global reach into large, multinational accounts. OpenScape Contact Center has a good library of off-the-shelf CRM integrations and provides omnichannel agent capabilities.
During the past few years, OpenScape Contact Center fell behind in the race to add channel support, analytics, and notifications. The acquisition by Atos throws another overlapping cloud-based contact center solution (Atos Worldline) into the mix. Clients considering OpenScape Contact Center need to investigate the Unify road map not only for omnichannel enhancements and deeper WFO integration but also for the positioning versus Worldline. Customers who are using OpenScape for Unified Communications or Circuit should consider OpenScape Contact Center. Unify is price-competitive and has won a number of public sector contracts, leveraging its global systems integration capabilities.
Interactive Intelligence makes the leap to AWS. Over the past year, Interactive Intelligence has led the dialogue in the CCIM market about moving to a microservices architecture based on AWS — not simply using AWS as a hosting service, but leveraging it as a global distributed operating system. Interactive Intelligence PureCloud has a clean, modern, and well-organized interface across all roles, and, along with native WFO capabilities, provides a full omnichannel system for clients from midsize to large. PureCloud pricing is straightforward, published openly, and aggressive. PureCloud also has its own seamlessly integrated UC capabilities that help connect agents to experts outside the contact center.
PureCloud is in its early stages of market growth, so it comes with some limitations. The product is still new to sales and support partners, so many of them lack the years of experience they have with the older Customer Interaction Center. Reporting is limited, but it will grow over time with the addition of new reports such as supervisor dashboards. Cobrowsing is on the product road map for a future release. As a SaaS-based product, it supports a modern architecture, but the API and SDK are in their early stages. PureCloud is SaaS-only, so on-premises deployment is not an option. PureCloud is suited to clients who want the agility of SaaS from an established and experienced contact center vendor as well as optional native unified communications capabilities.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
Online Resource
Data Sources Used In This Forrester Wave
Vendor surveys. Forrester surveyed vendors on their capabilities as they relate to the evaluation criteria. Once we analyzed the completed vendor surveys, we conducted vendor calls where necessary to gather details of vendor qualifications.
Product demo screen shots. We asked vendors to conduct screen shot demonstrations of their products' functionality. We used findings from these product screen shot demos to validate details of each vendor's product capabilities.
Customer reference calls and surveys. To validate product and vendor qualifications, Forrester also conducted reference calls with three of each vendor's current customers.
The Forrester Wave Methodology
Integrity Policy
ENDNOTES
Customers are increasingly using web and mobile self-service as the first point of contact with customer service, and then they escalate harder questions to agents. See the " Your Customers Don't Want To Call You " Forrester report. For more information on the technology management capacity of small and medium-size businesses, see the " Demand Insights: The SMB Software Market 2015 " Forrester report. CCIM software continues to evolve into integrated suites that vendors offer as a service. The need to connect consumers with contact center agents on their channel of choice is rapidly becoming a requirement to compete in the age of the customer. For AD&D pros, cloud delivery can provide an Agile platform so that they can focus their energy on customer journeys, not technology. See the "Increase Customer Service Agility With Cloud Contact Centers " Forrester report. Customer service executives face the constant challenge of simultaneously meeting customer expectations and business cost goals. This report outlines the four steps for AD&D professionals to optimize and innovate customer service operations: 1) discover: establish the value of customer service; 2) plan: set the right strategy; 3) act: execute the strategy with precision; and 4) optimize: measure and improve operations. See the " Transform The Contact Center For Customer Service Excellence " Forrester report. Source: J.B. Wood, Todd Hewlin, and Thomas Lah, Consumption Economics: The New Rules of Tech, Point B, 2011. The heart of the contact center is comprised of a set of complex, unintegrated technologies, which firms must leverage to deliver quality service. But AD&D pros supporting customer service operations need cloud-ready, deeply integrated technology suites. For more information on the market dynamics and buyer requirements for contact center technologies, see the " Vendors Battle For The Heart Of The Contact Center " Forrester report.
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