Contact Center Workforce Optimization Grew by 14 Percent to $2.7 Billion in 2008, Outperforming Most IT Sectors

DMG Consulting LLC, a provider of contact center and real-time analytics market research and consulting services, has published the 2009 Quality Management/Liability Recording (WFO) Market Share Report.

The Quality Management/Liability Recording (Workforce Optimization) market grew by 14 percent, from $2,389.1 million in 2007 to $2,724.3 million in 2008. The contact center segment contributed 4.3 percent, growing from $1,019.3 million to $1,062.8 million. While this growth rate is more modest than in prior years, the WFO market is outperforming many other IT software markets. DMG Consulting attributes this growth to increased spending on security, risk and liability avoidance, and cost reduction.

Contact centers use recording to capture agent/customer call and screen activities for liability, verification, quality assurance, and to feed into analytics applications. Enterprise use of recording is growing; the traditional uses are for contact centers, trading floors, first responders and air traffic control. In recent years, recording has expanded to address video surveillance solutions (video-based recording and analytics) to protect buildings and infrastructure and branch/back-office communications and activities. Enterprise use of recording will broaden as companies discover more ways to use it to minimize their exposure to risk and reduce operating expenses.

"One of the more interesting things in 2008 is that the growth of the QM/recording (WFO) market was largely organic. We didn't have any large-scale acquisitions or anything that really shook up the market. What we did have are vendors who continue to provide high-value applications that help end users solve the problems that plague them -- security, risk, liability, quality and cost reduction," said Donna Fluss, president of DMG Consulting. "Also interesting is that the market hit the tipping point for IP-based solutions, as these sales accounted for 61.4 percent of the market. This is a significant change from 2007 when the mix was close to 50/50."

DMG does not expect 2009 to be a great year for sales of WFO solutions because many banks and investment firms are still trying to recover from the impact of the recession and, as a result, are making only essential investments. Despite the trying times, DMG expects the WFO market to grow by 2 percent to 4 percent.