Analyst Perspectives


Extract from the “The Evolution of BPO in India” report from PWC based on the survey conducted among the BPO service providers in India .

A key input provided to the PMO (Project Management Office) is MIS reports and dashboards, containing summaries of performances and adherence to SLA targets. Respondents stated that the typical areas highlighted in MIS reports include volumes, accuracies, employee attendance and exception reporting. In addition, a large number of service-providers stated that clients were becoming increasingly demanding with respect to the information provided in MIS reports. For instance in a specific case, a client stipulated that the MIS report contain details on the number of errors per day segregated by the nature of error viz. typographical errors, casual errors etc.


Agent Performance Optimization Market Sees Strong Growth

A key trend seen in this market is the increasing bundling of performance management with workforce management applications to maximize agent and contact center functioning. However, similar to quality monitoring, workforce management solutions are also evolving beyond their core applications of forecasting and scheduling in response to the growing needs of enterprises. "Newer releases of this software contain several features that enable the optimization of people, process, and technology associated with the workforce management cycle, thereby further enhancing contact center performance," says the analyst. "Workforce management products are increasingly being viewed as optimization enabling tools rather than as just a means of managing personnel." These applications enable contact centers to achieve their critical goals of improved agent effectiveness and customer service at reduced costs.

Vendors are now looking to expand the scope of traditional applications even further to enhance performance not only at the agent, but also at the contact center levels. "Extending the benefits of Agent Performance Optimization (APO) applications to other areas of the enterprise is a common focal point for vendors in this space," observes the analyst of this research service.


Performance Management Software

Performance management systems in the contact center integrate the enterprise's in-place contact center technologies, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and other data sources to provide a transparent picture of performance across sites, functions and levels, while aligning targets with business objectives. The goal is to define detailed metrics, and capture and communicate performance measures.

The most-commonly-cited benefits from implementing a packaged contact center performance management solution include improvements in average call handle time, increases in quality scores, reductions in staff attrition and absenteeism, improvements in productivity, increases in sales, and reductions in administration costs.


"The contact center environment shares many of its operational problems with other production-based arenas. Therefore, in Butler Group's opinion it is no longer appropriate to rely on a fixed set of reporting tools to deliver key performance information. Where operational environments are complex, and real-time management responses are required, then analytical performance monitoring and management information solutions are needed."

In our opinion, the real value that is delivered by such solutions come from their ability to convey appropriate decision critical Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to staff at all levels within the contact center."