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In this two part series we look at the inefficiencies of installing and maintaining an on-premises call center.
On-premises contact center solutions are not only expensive to install but also cumbersome to maintain. It requires large capital expenditure and ongoing operational costs. The architecture for a typical 100 seat call center resembles this:
Deployment
Deployment of components such as IVR, CTI and Recording require significant amount of investments in terms of time and resources. Typically these costs amount to 60% of the total setup cost. In the traditional architecture agents require multiple client software components, thus adding to the software costs.
Maintenance
In addition to all the hardware costs each component (IVR, CTI, Recording etc.) requires recurring hardware annual maintenance costs. An on-premises call center also needs multiple IT specialists for maintenance and support. Although server count can be reduced using virtualization the integration complexities remain constant.
Reliability
It is cost-prohibitive to include full redundancy and disaster recovery options. In most cases it involves duplicating components of the existing infrastructure thus not benefiting from economies of scale. Traditional call centers typically budget and plan for upgrade and maintenance projects that involve considerable system downtime.
Total Costs
When you add all these costs, the cost to setup and deploy a traditional 100 seat call center exceed $700K. Depending on the dynamics of the environment, annual support and maintenance costs quickly add up to $200K or more. For a mid-sized call center this cost is extremely difficult to justify and in most cases is a major barrier to entry.
In our next post we will compare the architecture of on-premises call center with a Hosted Call Center.
As always we are keen on hearing your thoughts.