The Intro | |
Choosing Your Vendors By choosing a vendor for a technology, you are, broadly speaking, selecting two things: the technology that they sell and who they are. This is not a discussion of technologies per se, so we assume that you have done due diligence on the technology selection – you have evaluated solutions against competitors and have determined that this vendor's technology has all the features that you want, is compatible with your technology environment and fits in with the future vision of your organization. You now need to evaluate the suitability of the vendor as a services provider and partner/vendor for your business. Call center industry statistics are pretty clear – if you are not careful, you have a significant chance of having an unsuccessful project, and an even larger chance of having costs that are up to 2 times what you expected them to be. When you choose your vendors you are taking the first step in determining whether you are going to keep your project within budget or you are going to take your place on the losing side of the equation. You need to choose someone who is motivated to make you succeed because they also succeed. You need to create a win–win situation, and you can best do that by keeping things above board. Make the effort to ensure that everyone understands the complete scope of the work involved and your vendors are on board for a fair price. Energy spent in beating your chosen vendor down to the lowest possible price will be balanced by the vendor ensuring that they deliver exactly what you have purchased and only what you have purchased. Lost margins will be made up in other ways -– unspecified changes, additional features from 'scope creep' and charges at every turn. Be sure when you negotiate that you outline clearly what you want from a vendor and how you expect it to be delivered. The solution is complex, so you need to be careful. If you can create a win-win situation with your vendor – one where fair goods are delivered at fair price, there should be no reason for ongoing pricing issues. Of course, it takes two to tango. Many vendors will lowball the up front price to win the business and make the money up later. Beware of this tactic – as indicated above, industry dogma says you'll pay two times what you thought you were going to pay. If any one price looks suspiciously lower than the others, review it skeptically and get a doubly clear statement of work to ensure that your vendor is committing themselves to delivering success. Some Specifics To Look For:
The point is not to make sure that your vendor is doing everything listed here, but rather to make sure that, going in, everyone understands who is doing what so that everyone can work together successfully in a mutually satisfactory arrangement. Project Management What characteristics should you be looking for in a project manager? First and foremost technical project management experience in the call center field. Someone who has already guided successful call center solutions to implementation is far more able to get the job done for you than someone with a general knowledge of project management. A call center is a beast of a very particular kind and you need someone with experience who knows it well. So where do you find that person – do you use someone internal, have a vendor provide one, or bring in someone external? Internal PM Vendor PM Consultant PM A lot of focus has been placed on the technical aspects of the PM role. Does this suggest that a project manager has to be technically versed in all the technologies involved in a project? The quick answer is no – you are looking for someone who has a solid view of the overall project technology, and has the ability to understand the technical details as they are presented and explained. To illustrate this more clearly, let's look at a fictional case study. Let's create an imaginary call center integration project. Our imaginary company is called Growth Corp. It has three existing call centers in 3 different time zones. Two of them are more or less identical from a technology perspective, having the same IVR and PBX but no CTI automation of the agent desktop. The third center is the product of a recent acquisition. It has a different PBX and IVR platform but it has a first class SmartCall CTI integration into its GreatService CRM. Currently there is no networking amongst the three call centers. GrowthCorp has decided that it wants a single virtual call center. Corporately it has also decided to adopt GreatService as its CRM system. After examining many different solutions GrowthCorp decides (leaving aside the various business drivers) on the following: It's going to network the three centers on the same PBX platform for a single virtual call center with good geographical redundancy across the three time zones. For the PBX platform it's going to stick with PBX A used by its two historical centers because it has a solid networking capability and a great story for future migration into the VOIP world. However it wants to use the IVR and CTI combo from center C, both of which support PBX A. In a nutshell, the overall projects looks like this:
Representatives of the following groups will participate in the project:
The chances that you will find a project manager with expertise in all these areas are pretty slim. But what you are looking for is someone who has managed similar integrations. It is not your project manager's job to understand the technical minutiae of such an extended project – it is the PM's job to coordinate the tasks and make sure it happens. So while your project manager doesn't have to understand the configuration details for each piece, he or she should understand the dependencies among all parts of the system. Your PM should understand how everything fits together and be able to weed through the various 'excuses' that will arise to determine what is real and what is not. Above all, your PM must be able to create a team environment in which the dependencies are discussed, evaluated and added to the project plan. As far as the technical details go that is your PM's most important role -- he or she is an expeditor, making sure that all the details get aired and added to a comprehensive plan. |
About Upstream Works:
Upstream Works provides Omnichannel Contact Center software. We are passionate about creating solutions that help organizations exceed their customer experience goals. . We bring the omnichannel customer journey together across all applications and platforms with a single, integrated agent desktop with management simplicity. For over 15 years, organizations around the world and across all industries have benefited from Upstream Works’ experience and expertise, gaining operational efficiencies and transforming the customer journey.
Published: Monday, October 31, 2005
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