Singapore's Contact Center Apps Market Grew 24 Percent Last Year: Report
May 27, 2009
A study by Frost & Sullivan has revealed that the contact center applications market in Singapore grew a robust 23.8 percent to $20.2 million in 2008 despite the economic recession.
Frost’s Industry Manager, Shivanu Shukla, said the growth involved replacement deals rather than Greenfield installations, which are few and far between. The report says that the Singapore contact center applications market is expected to grow by only around 4.7 percent until 2015, to $27.9 million. As a developed market, analysts expect more growth in advanced application areas like speech technology and multimedia systems.
Singapore’s contact center market has benefitted from excellent infrastructure and strategic location. The contact center applications market comprises a portfolio of applications and tools that are used to improve customer interface and assist in the better integration of the contact center with other business applications and customer databases of enterprises.
The report also suggests that TDM-based (time division multiplexing) telephony will soon be replaced by advanced Internet Protocol based telephony – or VoIP – and this is also expected to be a main driver of growth in this area. However, with margins coming down everywhere and operating costs increasing, growth might be affected. Additionally, opportunities are being lost to neighboring regions because of high cost and dearth of skilled labor and hence, there will be loss of pure outsourcing opportunities.
Banking, Financial and Insurance sectors will continue to be the main patrons of the contact center industry because of Singapore’s standing as a financial epicenter. Shortage of real estate stock will grow more mid-size centers and larger ones are expected to decline as clients cut down on costs.
The Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) saw growth of 14.8 percent in 2008 and is expected to grow around 8 percent this year despite the recession with strong customer demand and drive towards self-service. With Unified Communications emerging, contact centers can extend to larger enterprises and deliver improved call resolution rates.
According to Shukla: “Enterprises across the region are looking to consolidate their contact center infrastructure and virtualize multiple sites into a single virtual contact center. This would enable better utilization of resources, hence reducing operational costs. This trend has been driving IP migration in the contact center market, and Frost & Sullivan expects the trend of contact center consolidation to continue this year.”
With the downturn, emphasis will be placed on hosted offerings, with a renewed interest from global service providers which are expected to drive growth. However, overall, the impact on technology budgets due to recession cannot be understated.
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Calvin Azuri is a contributing editor for ContactCenterSolutions. To read more of Calvin’s articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by
Michael Dinan
