Information Systems Projects in Contact Centers - Enterprise Information Systems Design, Implementation and Management: Organizational Applications - page 386

tegrated with the back-end through a set of
transactions; and built a new system from
scratch. The evaluation of the integration
complexity must consider, among oth-
ers factors the number, the diversity and
the integration level of existing systems;
technology details of each system (propri-
etary systems, standard, open source, oth-
ers); performance of the systems; interface
complexity; decision about synchronous
or asynchronous integration; number of
transactions to support. Inbound services
require, most of the times, a high level of
integration;

both, growth forecast for the contact center
is important for dimensioning;

• Way to obtain the service. An organiza-

tion has four main ways to set up a con-
tact center service: fully in-house; first line
outsourcing, second line in-house; first line
outsourcing, second line insourcing (orga-
nization owns systems and infrastructure,
workforce come from a third party); every-
thing outsourced. The outsourcer solution
transforms the initial infrastructure invest-
ment (usually high) into operational costs,
reduces setup-time and avoids a long learn-
ing curve. An outsourcer adds experience
but also adds the complexity of managing
a third party. Confidentiality, control, and
operation of internal resources are main
reasons to implement in-house operations.
An interesting solution is the mixed model,
in-house and outsourcing at the same time.
With this solution, it is possible to have
the best of both worlds. The organization
uses its business knowledge, experience
and processes, and gets know-how from
the contact center from the outsourcer. All
these solutions have impact in the architec-
tural design of the project;

• Geography. Technology, net capacity and

cost have evolved in ways that allow geog-
raphy to become “transparent”. From the
information system viewpoint, geographic
dispersion is no longer a problem. Yet the
design of the information system must take
into account geography issues as culture,
maturity of the markets, legislation and
distributed project management;

• Dimensioning. Correct dimensioning is

critical because the workforce represents
about seventy percent of the operational
cost of a contact center (Gans et al., 2003).
Well-designed CCIS reduce the number
of necessary agents. On the other hand,
the number of agents influences tech-
nology, system architecture, processes,
among other relevant aspects. Inbound
dimensioning requires the estimation of
expected volume (number of expected in-
teractions), expected interaction durations,
expected distribution by day/month/year,
and target service level. This data allows
the use of Erlang statistical distributions to
calculate the number of necessary agents
(Gans et al., 2003). Outbound dimension-
ing requires definition of target volume,
forecast of average interaction duration,
and a goal for the percentage of successful
contacts. Either in inbound, outbound, or

• Actors. The number and the functions of

the actors in a contact center vary from one
organization to another. Two main func-
tions can be distinguished: production line
functions and support functions. Agents,
supervisors, and service project manage-
ment in production line functions are de-
cisive to success of contact center service
projects. Each supervisor works with ten or
fifteen agents. A service project manager is
the person that has the global vision of the
project. She/he understands the needs and
expectations of the customer, the organiza-
tion that requires the service. At the level of
support functions, there is an axis connect-
ing marketing with operational abilities.
Marketing abilities involve front-end cre-