Concerto sets up SDC in B'lore

Pragati Simlote

NEW DELHI: After settling down well in the Indian contact center solutions industry for the outbound systems, the Massachusetts-based Concerto Software, Inc has now set its sight on the inbound call center market.

The company, which was recently adjudged No.1 in the outbound systems market in India by Frost & Sullivan is now targeting 10 percent of the total inbound systems market in India. According to Frost & Sullivan, the company holds 66.7 percent of the market share for outbound contact center systems in the country.

According to Concerto marketing VP, Steve Herlosher, the company is looking at growing both inorganically and organically and is opening its development and support center in Bangalore to cater to the APAC and US clients.

To be set up with an investment of $5 million, the center is expected to go live on October 5, 2004. The company would be hiring around 70 people to start with and is targeting employee strength of over 150 by the end of Q1, 2005. "The center would also work on the company's LYRICall agent desktop solution," he added.

LYRICall provides an easy-to-use tool for rapid deployment of agent screens and scripts. It is a browser-based application and scripting tool that can be integrated with Unison, Ensemble, ContactPro and EnsemblePro solutions to maximize agent productivity.

The company has also expanded its relationship with systems and network integrator 3D Networks to better target the Indian market. 3D Networks will distribute and service Concerto's customer interaction management (CIM) and performance optimization solutions in India.

Herlosher also informed that the company would be focusing on the banking sector in India with its solutions targeted at credit collections, reducing bad debt and increasing their efficiency. "Our solutions will help banks in collecting more dollars per hour by helping the bank put in place strategy to manage the customer life cycle. Also, best practices in collections can also be formed," he said claiming that banks can increase their collection by 300 percent on using Concerto solutions.

The company recently acquired Rockwell FirstPoint Contact from Rockwell Automation with which the company expects to expand its geographic reach, intellectual capital and position itself to deliver increase value to customers. This is company's fourth acquisition in 2004 after Melita International, CenterForce Technology and Positive Software Systems. The company's first unified product, a combination of all solutions acquired by it recently, will be out by the end of next year.

Concerto is a privately held company with 75 customers in India. According to Herlosher, India's contribution to the company's APAC revenue is around 40 percent, whereas the APAC revenue share in the company global revenue is around 20 percent.

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