FrontRange over IP: a talk with CEO Michael McCloskey.

This month, Tracey Schelmetic, editorial director of Customer Inter@ction Solutions[R], spoke with the CEO of FrontRange Solutions, Michael McCloskey, about his company's announcement of a new IP contact center product geared toward the small and mid-sized contact center market. In this interview, McCloskey discusses why the company has entered this market, how the product is intended to benefit the market and what it means to you.

TS: Back in the spring, you announced the introduction of your IP contact center product, aiming for the small to mid-sized market segment. What are the reasons you chose to target this smaller call center market?

MM: As more enterprises embrace a distributed model, business processes are being driven by departments and divisions, and that is allowing an agile enterprise. As a result, we see a lot of enterprises forming smaller call centers of size 25 to 75 agents, so there is viable market opportunity. Yet most of the established vendors in VoIP are targeting larger call centers, and neither their business model nor their products are well adapted to smaller call centers. The investment in PBX and ACD hardware is simply too costly for a small call center and, as a result, no company has a clear foothold in this market. By contrast, the FrontRange strategy uses existing IP networks as leverage and is designed to accelerate the time to benefit, lower the total cost of ownership and integrate well with application software.

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TS: Some say the "IP contact-center-in-a-box" market is getting a little crowded. Assuming this is the case, why would FrontRange choose to enter this market?

MM: You're correct that a lot of vendors are trying to enter the market, but none has attained leadership in the small and medium-sized call center space. Most vendors are struggling with effective ways to serve this market. At FrontRange, we have been focused on serving the needs of distributed enterprises, with call centers employing 10 to 75 agents. Our VoIP technology is tied closely to the business needs these centers are facing. This is especially true of call centers that are providing customer service or help desk and want to use VoIP to queue and route calls directly into our HEAT software.

TS: How does the IP contact center product fit in with both HEAT and GoldMine?

MM: FrontRange IP Contact Center is highly integrated with both HEAT and GoldMine on a common platform. When an agent answers a call, the screen is automatically populated with caller data, including any prompts the user may have entered in the IVR. This improves efficiencies and takes customer service to the next level. In fact, we see the overall market growth for VoIP to be application driven, as enterprises test the technology on specific business processes and seek to gain a competitive advantage in customer service.

TS: What plans are afoot to offer the IP contact center product on a hosted basis? What experience has FrontRange had with offering hosted solutions?

MM: Two key elements of our IP Contact Center offering are low total cost of owner ship and minimal hardware investment. Couple that with our pricing strategy and there is less interest in an ASP solution. Despite this fact, FrontRange is planning to offer an ASP version of IP Contact Center early in 2005. The benefit is that a contact center can be moved to a central location or ISP, and all the call routing can be done from there. This is part of our emphasis on serving the distributed enterprise. We've been making significant investment in our hosting capabilities. Key acquisitions this past year are part of that strategy.

TS: Considering a hosted offering, how, specifically, do you plan to compete against, say, Salesforce.com?

MM: GoldMine competes directly with Salesforce.com, and we are preparing to offer a hosted version of GoldMine later this year. The big differentiator is that FrontRange will provide the option for our customers to migrate between hosted and on-site versions of GoldMine, all built on a common platform with the same code base and same features. This allows a customer to seamlessly move along the path that offers the best ROI. Currently, a lot of customers using ASP services are finding that monthly charges add up, and they may wish for an alternative with lower cost of ownership. At FrontRange, those customers have the choice to bring GoldMine software in-house or even adopt a hybrid approach. The same choices will be available on our IP Contact Center product, and we believe customers will respond favorably to the flexibility.

TS: So ... I have to ask. Considering the proliferation of complicated, clever and mostly unpronounceable product names that abound today, what made FrontRange choose the name "IP Contact Center" for its IP contact center product? It's a little like naming a dog "Dog," isn't it?

MM: Thanks for noticing. As FrontRange diversifies and fortifies its product families, we are moving the emphasis away from the individual product brand level, to the company itself. Our existing customers trust FrontRange products because they deploy rapidly, are easily integrated and offer low total cost of ownership. In that light, the product name is less important; we're not selling on product awareness, we're selling on leadership.

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