OnviSource Opens Up Workforce Optimization for Contact Center Excellence

OnviSource is a 10-year-old vendor of workforce optimization software whose core product, OnviCenter 7, includes interaction capture, quality monitoring, workforce management, coaching and training, and workforce analytics. The company is rated a Hot vendor in our 2015 Workforce Optimization Value Index.

OnviSource is a 10-year-old vendor of workforce optimization software whose core product, OnviCenter 7, includes interaction capture, quality monitoring, workforce management, coaching and training, and workforce analytics. The company is rated a Hot vendor in our 2015 Workforce Optimization Value Index. It scored highly in the Manageability, Usability and Reliability categories but was held back by lack of compensation management (for which it provides input to third-party products) and some analytics capabilities. The 2015 Workforce Optimization Value Index shows how competitive the workforce optimization market is: The top seven vendors are separated by fewer than three percentage points, OnviSource ranking fourth.

OnviCenter has three main components, OnviCom, OnviForce and OnVision, all of which sit on a common network infrastructure called Onvify.OnviCom includes capabilities that support connection with communication technologies – PBX, IVR, email, chat, fax and social media – and transaction systems such as messaging, social media applications and CRM. OnviForce receives data from these systems, and a suite of analytics tools – speech, desktop, text, social media and data – provide analysis of interactions and employees’ handling of those interactions. OnviForce also includes quality assurance capabilities that enable users to monitor how well individual employees handle interactions. This in turn allows the system to calculate key metrics. OnVision produces a series of reports that show what actions are needed to improve performance and to improve alignment across all customer-related activities. The final three capabilities – multichannel, predictive and prescriptive analytics – produce automatic alerts and actions, or analysis that can be used to drive actions and thus optimize performance. Together the OnviSource modules enable understanding of current performance, identify changes required to align actions and enable automation of some of those actions. They run on Onvify, which provides a single, scalable, networked-enabled architecture that can be deployed across multiple locations while still administering and operating the system as one. OnviCenter also includes centralized management and administration capabilities that for example allow users to set up a single set of filters and rules that govern how the system works.

To differentiate its offerings, OnviSource has developed a comprehensive set of supply and support options. OnviCloud is a SaaS-based version of its products that includes hosted PBX services. OnviServ is to my knowledge a unique service that offers customers outsourcing based on OnviSource’s own products, thus enabling companies without the skills or resources to take advantage of its capabilities. All these options, including the standard on-premises version, are backed up by professional services that run from presales analysis of the customer company’s current situation and configuration of the system to meet those requirements and a business case to justify purchasing the systems to post-sales support for deployment, operations and optimization of the system. OnviSource is working to maximize its market potential with the new architecture enabling it to scale from small and midsize centers to very large centers.

Our benchmark research into next-generation workforce optimization shows that companies with very large centers most often have deployed advanced workforce optimization systems. Companies that have deployed such systems reported that they have realized a variety of benefits, most often improved agent coaching (44%), improved customer satisfaction (52%) and improved adoption of best practices (45%). The capabilities of OnviCenter 7 and the supply and support options offered by OnviSource open up benefits to a wider range of centers that may lack the skills, resources and finances to follow a more conventional approach. I recommend any companies seeking to improve handling of customer interactions evaluate how OnviSource can help.