The unified messaging market could grow into a $60 million industry by 2013 and the key driver would be the contact centre industry. This was the sentiment of industry representatives at Aspect Software Unified Communications for the Contact Centre Forum, hosted by ITWeb, in Sandton.
Frost & Sullivan analyst Corrie Froehlich said that the contact centre is the key area for early adoption of unified communications, because the time savings can be measured and valued in seconds. Froehlich said unified communications (UC) applications are expected to be embedded and integrated into enterprise applications such as those used in contact centres.
Froehlich added that currently companies deploy unified messaging to select employees, based on location and job description. The market will eventually grow when Microsoft and IBM start encouraging their customers to upgrade their basic e-mail and instant messaging (IM) applications to unified messaging.
"Contact centres will be the litmus test that decides how well the convergence will take place," says Froehlich.
The Frost & Sullivan analyst was confident that the market would grow to around $60 million by 2013 due to market drivers such as larger workforces, where increased productivity would push the sales of unified messaging.
ContactInGauteng CEO Karyn House shared Froehlich`s optimism about the importance of contact centres in the growth of UC. She pointed out the number of people employed in the BPO sector in SA, more than 100 000 as estimated by the National BPO Quantification Survey for 2007/8, as evidence of the growth of BPOs in the country.
Aspect Software senior vice-president Roger Sumner was also confident about the future of UC in contact centres. "Contact centres have been able to increase their customer loyalty by using unified communications."
Sumner explained that UC benefited from allowing consumers to be connected to the relevant experts with regards to their queries, thus streamlining the process of communication.
Froehlich added that contact centers could enhance their UC by incorporating Web 2.0 tools, such as IM, to confirm payments and MMS technology to send documents instead of traditional fax. Essentially this would be a move from operator-centric strategies to customer-centric strategies.
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