In August of 2003 Positive Software Systems launched ContactQ, a customer interaction data warehouse solution for optimizing sales and collections activities for telemarketing companies, service bureaus and enterprise contact centers. In this interview, Ed Mandel, Positive Software Systems President and CEO, speaks candidly about the drivers for ContactQ's success, the imperative to integrate inbound and outbound contact center operations, and the payoff of bringing outbound operations into the CRM fold.

Ed Mandel,
President and CEO, Positive Software

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RealMarket: You talk with CEOs from leading companies. What do they see as the number one challenge or opportunity facing the contact center today?
 
Mandel: The biggest challenge and greatest opportunity for today’s contact centers is one and the same - how best to continue the transformation from “cost center” to “profit center.” For the past decade, outbound sales and collections operations have spearheaded this transformation providing much needed revenue for what traditionally had been a cost-intensive area of business. But the success and subsequent growth of contact centers has created some formidable challenges.
 
Contact centers have evolved from stand-alone, regional entities into globally dispersed, multi-channel enterprises. As a result of this growth, the ability to create enterprise-level contact strategies from a single, centralized server and dynamically execute them across the entire organization has become a foremost business imperative. “Centralized campaign management” is the mantra we’re hearing as contact centers work to maximize agent productivity, improve the effectiveness of each customer interaction, and most importantly, bring strategic focus and real-time adaptability to geographically dispersed operations.
 
Another major issue is technology optimization. Many of the global contact center enterprises we talk with have become veritable hodgepodges of technology. They’ve invested in everything from sophisticated CIM (Customer Information Management) systems and tools such as ACDs, IVRs, and auto or predictive dialers to numerous and disparate CRM and data host systems. What these businesses now need is a way to tie all of these expensive technology components together in a manner that makes the value of the whole greater than the sum of the parts. More specifically, contact centers of today are striving for real-time, bi-directional connectivity between a myriad of front-end and backend systems to take business to the next level in terms of cohesion, real-time responsiveness and revenue generation.
 
Finally, the need has never been greater and the opportunity never more readily available for integrating inbound and outbound operations. Industry pundits have preached the value of blended operations for some time now, but by and large, truly integrated inbound/outbound operations have yet to materialize. What’s needed to enable this integration is precisely what ContactQ brings to the table: a customer interaction data warehouse for keeping real-time, historical intelligence on all customer interactions, and a bullet-proof engine for automating records distribution across the complete contact center enterprise – be it a facet of inbound routing, or part of an outbound contact strategy, or ideally, a 360-degree, closed-loop inbound-outbound strategy. Inbound and outbound channels have operated as silos for too long. Integration is inevitable, and will affect a sea of change by killing off the last vestiges of cost-containment thinking and holding open a new perspective on the contact center as a wellspring of rich new revenue streams.

"In many ways, the increased focus on ROI we’re seeing today is a corrective response to a decade’s worth of piecemeal technology build out."

 
 
RealMarket: Today, more than ever, ROI justification is paramount. Has the pendulum swung too far to the side of measuring success based on ROI?
 
Mandel: Not at all. In many ways, the increased focus on ROI we’re seeing today is a corrective response to a decade’s worth of piecemeal technology build out. Having invested heavily in CIM and CRM systems that don’t work very well together, contact centers are a bit disillusioned with pie-in-the-sky paybacks that failed to materialize. There’s a good deal of skepticism today when it comes to new technology purchases, and rightfully so. Because it delivers the measurable, real-world business benefits of technology optimization, centralized campaign management, continuity of business assurance and DNC and data security compliance, ContactQ shines forth as gold against ROI scrutiny.

"The more licenses and fewer integrations, the lower the services as a percentage of the total implementation."

 
 
RealMarket: What is the average size implementation? What is the range and what percent are implementation services?
 
Mandel: Our implementations range from 300 to several thousand seats. Average services are about 20% –30%. However that number can vary based upon the number of licenses, integrations, and whether we are building custom agent screens or simply delivering data to an existing agent desktop. The more licenses and fewer integrations, the lower the services as a percentage of the total implementation.
 
RealMarket: In a crowded market, how does your company differentiate its product offering?
 
Mandel: ContactQ’s foremost differentiator is its ability to provide a secure, single-server solution that addresses multiple contact center challenges, such as centralized list and campaign management and technology integration discussed earlier. ContactQ also resolves issues such as business continuity and compliance with DNC and data security regulations. All of these capabilities resonate favorably today and help to differentiate ContactQ in a market increasingly cluttered with ‘point’ solutions.
 
Our recent success with high-profile companies in the mortgage banking, financial services, and telecommunications industries also distinguishes us. ContactQ has proven its ability to optimize outbound sales and collections operations – areas of rich potential for contact center enterprises – and this is generating strong interest among leading global contact centers and Fortune 1000 companies.
 
Lastly, ContactQ’s records delivery engine and tight integration with dialers and other CIM components also is a major differentiator. With ContactQ, records are delivered just in time as needed to multiple locations and delivery channels based on the client’s business rules and agent skills. Individual record dispositions are updated in real time, allowing for automated, dynamic campaign changes. For outbound telemarketing campaigns, dialers are automatically “load balanced,” and because ContactQ handles all filtering and exclusions, dialers are optimized to increase call transactions, which at bottom, is the dialer’s sole raison d'etre. The net gain of this unique capability is a 20 – 30 percent increase in agent productivity – an unprecedented industry metric.

"Our biggest competitor is the build versus buy mentality.""

 
 
RealMarket: Who are your main competitors?
 
Mandel: There are several players out there selling point solutions that in some cases overlap with certain aspects of ContactQ functionality, but as far as we can tell, no one today offers an advanced customer interaction data warehouse and no one has the proven integration with CIM components – dialers, IVRs, ACDs, etc. Having said that, our biggest competitor is the build versus buy mentality.
 
RealMarket: What are your thoughts on the consolidation in the CRM industry and how do you see it effecting Positive Software?
 
Mandel: The recent spate of M&A activity clearly demonstrates that consolidation is well under way, and we fully expect this to continue over the next several years. It’s very interesting to look at how this consolidation is playing out today specific to the contact center industry. On the one hand, CRM vendors are extending beyond inbound operations and aggressively targeting outbound operations – collections in particular. On the other hand, CIM vendors, who are traditionally well established in outbound operations in general and collections in particular, are evolving their offerings, organically and via acquisition, to include more CRM-like functionality. We believe Positive is ideally positioned against this dynamic backdrop. After all, ContactQ was built from the ground up to bring the CRM and CIM worlds together, and we have a strong heritage in the collections industry. In addition to direct customers, we’re aggressively marketing ContactQ to both CIM and CRM vendors. We clearly bring value to both sides of the equation. Who can say for sure how things will play out in the long term? But for right now, it certainly makes for interesting times.
 
RealMarket: You see quite a few contact centers implementations. What best practices can you share that would help other contact centers achieve higher levels of ROI?
 
Mandel: It’s very important to analyze the history of a contact center’s implementations and where they were successful and where they were not. It’s also important to segment their data. And finally, it is important to have the ability to analyze and execute in a real-time fashion and report on the enterprise activities that happen in a real-time fashion. This is not something that I see done today mostly because of management being on a local level.
 

"A big key is for companies to focus on their business as a whole versus how to implement little pieces of technology."

 
 
RealMarket: What mistakes do companies make with CRM implementations?
 
Mandel: Companies are focusing on technology versus on business rules. A big key is for companies to focus on their business as a whole versus how to implement little pieces of technology.
 

RealMarket: Looking to the future, what is the biggest change you see on the CRM and contact center horizon?
 
Mandel: Many of the companies that have made large-scale investments in CRM have yet to see the payoff. They’ve spent millions to collect data generated across channels (operational CRM), and then millions on predictive modeling tools (analytical CRM) to make sense of all this data. What has been missing is what we at Positive like to call ‘actionable CRM,’ or the ability to execute on the valuable information CRM systems provide in a way that directly drives revenue. For this to happen, contact center outbound operations must be brought into the CRM fold. Today, CRM is a fairly well established component of inbound, customer-service operations. But for ‘actionable CRM’ to come to fruition, integration with outbound sales and collections activities – and the technologies that drive these activities – is vital. Only by connecting CRM directly to revenue-generating contact center operations will companies finally realize the as yet untapped potential of this technology. We believe the market is quickly moving in this direction, and that contact center outbound operations will be ground zero for an ‘actionable CRM’ explosion.
 
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