Frost & Sullivan: Need to Minimize Total Cost of Ownership Encourages Uptake of Hosted Contact Centre Solutions in EMEA

LONDON, Nov. 7, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Demand for hosted contact centre solutions in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) is on the rise. Companies seek to reduce the total ownership costs of their contact centre IT systems and divert spending from heavy capital to manageable operational expenditure. The economic slowdown also compels cash-starved small, medium and large organizations, particularly in Europe, to optimise contact centre IT costs and stay flexible to meet current and future needs. Apart from this, the decreasing deployment times of contact centre solutions will give a thrust to the market.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.contactcenter.frost.com), EMEA Hosted Contact Centre Market, projects that the market will earn revenues of more than 1,066 billion EUR by 2017, from 644.3 million EUR in 2012. The study covers the hosted interactive voice response (IVR), hosted automatic call distributor (ACD), hosted customer chat, hosted outbound contact, and hosted agent performance optimization (APO) segments. While hosted IVR services currently constitute an overwhelming 45 percent of the market with a healthy compound annual growth rate of 7.8 percent for the 2012-2017 period, hosted APO will be the fastest growing segment.

The research also reveals that although the United Kingdom accounts for the highest revenue market share of 26.2 percent, Africa and the Middle-East are the fastest-growing regions.

"Till recently, hosted contact centre solutions were developed just for basic contact centre applications such as IVR call direction, business continuity, and directory assistance," remarked Frost & Sullivan Information & Communication Technologies Senior Industry Analyst Suvradeep Bhattacharjee. "Now, with the inclusion of advanced applications like ICR, IVR, outbound, and APO technologies that allow companies to receive the latest applications without incurring high capital costs, hosted contact centre solutions are rapidly gaining traction in EMEA."

However, key purchasing decision-makers in large companies are reluctant to migrate from premise-based systems to cloud-based systems due to the wide-scale customization efforts required to facilitate this process. Concerns regarding the complexity of managing a hybrid (on-premise and cloud-based) infrastructure, along with a lack of channel partners and value-added resellers to promote and support cloud-based contact centres further hold the market back.

"Nevertheless, under-penetrated markets in the region, including Russia and Eastern Europe, are expected to see an influx of service providers offering new, feature-rich solutions over the next few years, enabling the juggernaut of cloud-based contact centers to continue marching forward in EMEA," noted Bhattacharjee.

If you are interested in more information on this research, please send an email to Joanna Lewandowska, Corporate Communications, at [email protected], with your full contact details.

EMEA Hosted Contact Centre Market (NCF0-76) is part of the Contact Centres & CRM Growth Partnership Service program. Frost & Sullivan's related research services include: Asia-Pacific Hosted Contact Centre Market, North America Contact Centre Systems Market, and Latin American Contact Centre Systems Market 2013. All research services included in subscriptions provide detailed market opportunities and industry trends evaluated following extensive interviews with market participants.

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SOURCE Frost & Sullivan