BenchmarkPortal (News - Alert), a national research firm specializing in contact center best practices, has published a report based on survey results showing lower total cost of ownership for "all-in-one" versus "multi-point" contact center communications products.

The BenchmarkPortal survey was sponsored by global business communications products provider, Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert).

The report, titled "A Cost Comparison of All-in-One versus Multi-Point Solutions in the Contact Center Sector," shows that the total annualized cost per agent for all-in-one products averages less than half that of multi-point products.

The BenchmarkPortal report also shows that "the total cost of installation and integration for all-in-one products is 15 percent lower compared to multi-point products," company officials say: "In addition, the average annualized system administration cost per agent for all-in-one products is 60 percent lower compared to multi-point products."

"Our study shows that, when taking into account contact center costs associated with selecting, installing, integrating, administering and upgrading communications technology, all-in-one products are measurably less expensive than multi-point products," said Dr. Jon Anton, one of the report authors and adjunct professor at Purdue University (News - Alert).

"Contributing to the all-in-one product's lower cost model was the need for fewer servers to install, integrate, administer and maintain, and the provision of a single platform for simplified management and upgrades."

"An important point uncovered by our study is that many contact center managers do not have visibility into their technology costs," said Bruce Belfiore, senior research executive at the Center for Customer-Driven Quality at Purdue University, and co-author of the report with Anton. "Perhaps not surprisingly those managers who had the greatest visibility into costs also showed a much lower total cost of ownership for all-in-one versus multi-point products."

The survey was conducted via the Web by polling BenchmarkPortal's contact center performance database, a research repository with more than 25,000 global members representing 43 different industry sectors. Of those polled, BenchmarkPortal qualified 178 contact center management respondents based on a roughly equal sampling of companies that used all-in-one and multi-point products.

To download a complimentary copy of the BenchmarkPortal report, visit: http://www.inin.com/BenchmarkPortal/.

In late October Interactive Intelligence, a vendor of business communications products, reported "record results" for the quarter and nine-month period ended Sept. 30, 2007.

For the third quarter, revenues in 2007 were a record $28.7 million, up 29 percent over revenues of $22.2 million in 2006. Operating income for the third quarter increased 23 percent to $2.1 million in 2007 from $1.7 million in 2006, which included stock-based compensation expense of $812,000 in 2007 and $451,000 in 2006.

Diluted earnings per share for the third quarter were $0.13 in 2007. EPS in the same quarter last year were $0.36, including a non-cash income tax benefit of $5.0 million, or $0.26 per share, recorded to reduce the valuation allowance for deferred tax assets.

For the third quarter, non-GAAP net income was $3.3 million in 2007, or EPS of $0.17, compared to non-GAAP net income of $2.2 million in 2006, or EPS of $0.12. Cash and short-term investments as of Sept. 30, 2007 totaled $34.4 million.

Earlier in October the Indiana-based vendor moved up 21 places to rank 209th among the world's 500 largest software and services suppliers. The CRM vendor increased its position in Software magazine's 2007 Software 500 ranking by posting 2006 revenues of $83.2 million, up 32 percent from revenues in 2005.

Interactive Intelligence founder and CEO Donald E. Brown said the company's growth last year was "fueled by our voice over IP components, which helped us attract many more large enterprise customers."

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David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.