Operating Contact Centres is an increasingly specialized and complex business, feeding the growing trend towards outsourcing this corporate function.  A number of leading worldwide and regional CRM service providers gathered recently in Brussels at Altitude Software’s Workout’07 - CRM Outsourcers User Group Conference, to discuss industry trends and map the future. This unique event in the contact center industry specifically gathered CRM outsourcers from MENA.

At the three day event, Contact Center corporate leaders described a complex industry landscape. Among the biggest trends affecting contact center’s industry future:

- Highly diversified organizational solutions, as the need for sophisticated skills and a diverse population demand for flexible solutions such as agents at home, “nearshoring” and shared remote experts;

- The need for effective, reliable operational technology solutions in order to deal with new legal requirements and regulation.

- The need for technology that supports “Virtualised” contact centers, enabling centralised hosting, fast multiple site deployments, home based agents, the extension of the contact center into the whole enterprise, shared remote experts and delocalisation.

- The need for agent front-office applications to support all languages. In the Middle East & North Africa region for instance, it is essential to support Arabic, Farsi and Urdu.

Innovative business approaches and the best use of Altitude Software technology solutions were high on the participant’s agenda, promoting knowledge sharing and best practice identification among top managers from major global and regional service providers and key partners and vendors. One of the highlights of the event was the speech by Tom Rocca, president of the KPI Group. With more than 25 years’ experience in client services and sales technology re-engineering for contact centers, Tom Rocca has been an active member of the ATA (American Teleservices Association) since 1987.

Gastão Taveira, CEO of Altitude Software, closed the two day conference with an outline of Altitude’s technology road map for the customer interaction management industry and a glimpse of Altitude’s next generation solutions. “This was a great opportunity to enhance our strategy for the outsourcing market, were Altitude Software has been steadily increasing its market share” said Mr. Taveira. “The event was again very well received by our customers, partners and industry leaders, who enjoyed the chance to share a few days of hard work and some entertainment.”

Meeting the unique needs of the Middle East contact center outsourcing market

Altitude Software has been serving the MENA region since 1999 and is today a leading contact center provider with a market share approaching 90% within the outsourcing segment in some GCC countries such as Saudi Arabia. The European company has built a solid reputation in MENA as a contact center provider of specialized products and proven methodologies designed to drive sound return on investment. Successful CRM Outsourcers powered by Altitude in the region include: The Etisalat Contact Center (UAE), Advancia (Tunisia), Atento (Morocco), Infocall (bahrain), I-Vision (UAE), CRM Middle East (UAE), Perfect Presentation (KSA), Etisal (KSA), Smartlink (KSA), CIC (Tunisia), Saudi Directline (KSA), Mellon Egypt, B2S (Morocco), Atlas On Line (Morocco), AnswerPlus (Mauritius), Inana Call Center (Syria), C3 / Raya (Egypt), Frontliners (KSA), InfoSpan (Pakistan), Batelco Jeraisy (KSA), etc.

“The contact center outsourcing market has specifically grown very fast over the past three years in the Middle East and the expansion of business campaigns such as outbound telemarketing activities looks set to further fuel that growth,“ said Riadh Boukhris, Altitude Software vice president Middle East and North Africa.

“Our users in the Middle East and North Africa region have seen rapid results by powering their operations with Altitude Software and the success of this unique user event totally focused on contact center outsourcing trends further validates that we are fulfilling a market need,” concluded Boukhris.

© 2007 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)