Focus on Business Process Improvements | SOFTWARE IMPLEMENTATION

We have all heard the horror stories where a company has spent $50 million on implementing new software and only realized $10 million in benefits. As stated previously, most of the implementation costs are typically in the deployment, not the technology. Similarly, you realize 75 percent of the benefits in the deployment, not the technology as shown in Figure 1. In implementing new software, many companies focus on the software and hardware when focus should be on the business process improvement and redesign, as that is where you realize the true benefits. Companies that have focused on the process and people benefits have realized exponential payback from software implementations. For example, when implementing new software, one company initiated a vendor certification program whereby vendors who achieve exceptional levels of reliability, timeliness, completeness, and quality begin managing the product's inventory levels at the distribution center and the stores. Eventually the inventory is all vendor consigned and paid without a vendor invoice based on the store sell-through reports, which results in tremendous cost savings for the business.

 

Figure 1: Sample implementation benefits

The following are examples of ways that companies have redesigned business processes to realize true cost savings:

• Faster cycle times
• Fewer handoffs
• Fewer steps in the process
• Fewer decisions
• Less duplication
• Minimize delays
• Minimize discrepancies
• Allow fewer exceptions
• Automate manual forms and activities
• Automate workflows by using conditional rules to drive different processes
• Capture data at the source
• Take advantage of real-time processing and information
• Centralize control, effort, responsibilities for speed, and efficiency

When you are finished implementing new software, you are never really done, as the business process improvement must continue. Always raise the bar for cost improvements.

Minimize Customizations | SOFTWARE IMPLEMENTATION

As any CIO knows all too well, companies should minimize customizations to any vendor package software not supported by the vendor, but the real question is how to do that. The total cost of ownership of custom modifications is significant over the life of the software package as you need to remake and test modifications on all future software releases. A software vendor package riddled with customization is a challenge to support and keep operational. Every customization translates to real on-going costs to the organization.

Unfortunately for many companies, software customizations are like eating just one potato chip; it is difficult to stop once you start. The following are tips on how other organizations have gotten out of the expensive customized culture and reduced the appetite for customizations:

• Use the software configuration options rather than customizing software vendors have designed software for tailoring the product as a wide range of industries typically use the software. Learn the various ways you are able to configure and change the software behavior with tables, workflow, and user-defined fields, etc. These changes oftentimes migrate from release to release so they are not as expensive to maintain over the life of the software. This option requires the least confrontation with business partners and eliminates most of the need for true customization.
• Use trained and qualified consultants that are knowledgeable in the software and in industry best practice business processes. Having an extremely experienced individual guide your use and implementation of the software is well worth the expense over the life of the software as you will be able to take advantage of more efficient business processes. Ensure you have a software guru who knows the application extremely well and knows how to make it jump through hoops by using existing functionality, features, and configuration techniques.
• Use bolt-ons rather than customizing software if configuration tools will not do the job. A bolt-on is a separate chunk of code that typically moves forward to new releases relatively easy for upgrades, rather than doing pure code changes that can be difficult to reapply to new releases.
• Implement a strong steering committee with the top-level executives to screen any submitted customization. Make the business user requesting the change prove they cannot do business with the standard business process assumed in the software. One manufacturing company had a culture of customizing every aspect of the software because they felt they had a unique business process. After escalating IT maintenance and support costs, they decided to implement new software as delivered without customization. They were able to transform from a culture of modifications by using a strong steering committee that included the president of the organization to approve any potential customization. They were able to implement the new software package without any customizations, which was an incredible surprise to the vendor. Of course, the vendor wanted to publicize the implementation as it was a tremendous success and transformation testament.
• Communicate the true cost of ownership of maintaining customizations over the life of the software. Over customizing is typically a business issue, not an IT issue. IT needs support from the top of the business to get out of the customization habit. This is where an IT expense chargeback approach is valuable because it is one thing to make a department aware of the cost and quite another to make them pay for it.
• Track and report the cost of your custom applications or heavily customized packages contrasted to the cost of vanilla vendor packages. Be sure to include all support resources, upgrade costs, and maintenance costs.
• Document, track, and measure the number of software modifications. Customizations just happen and often seep into the software without visibility or management. Report the number of modifications as a key metric on the IT balanced scorecard. Reduce the amount over time with planned actions. Obtain commitment from the business that it is a key metric to manage and drive down.
• Train the business users in the software; train them well; and train them often. Once business users understand fully the software and industry best practices, the need for customization often diminishes. Employees that have been with the company for many years often have difficulty seeing how to do business differently. Get them exposure to industry associations, industry best practices, and other companies.
• Delay customizations. Wait to customize packaged software until after you go live. Customizations often delay implementation resulting in a delay of benefits and missed opportunity costs. Typically, after a company implemented and became experienced with a software package, they would customize the software differently or not at all. Delaying customization eliminates costly rework and can entirely eliminate the need for the customization. Start with simple things. Reduce the number of exceptions or process deviations. You are always able to add complexity into the process, but it is far more difficult to take it out.

SOFTWARE IMPLEMENTATION

Readiness to Implement

Before launching into any software implementation, make sure the business is ready to implement the change. Just because IT is ready (and a change is necessary) does not mean the organization is ready and it is the right thing to do. For example, one company had a culture of customizing all software as it was far easier than forcing business changes. In fact, IT did pretty much anything and everything that the business requested. The business was not accustomed to making process changes and they did not have improvement teams, did not understand the concept of business process improvement, nor did they understand the costs of customization. The company also did not have exposure to industry best practices. If the company proceeded with a new implementation, it would have recreated the customized spaghetti applications in new and more expensive software. Until the organization matured with business process improvement, it was not wise to implement new software. An independent and unbiased assessment of your organization helps to determine if you are truly ready for a change. Just make sure the assessor does not have a stake in your implementation (e.g., a consulting organization specializing in implementing the software).

Accelerators

Evaluate using vendor specific tools to accelerate the implementation (may be called fast-path implementation, implementation accelerators, industry versions, or rapid implementation methodology). Accelerators can take different forms, such as previously configured software packages or process flow and software configuration templates for a particular industry. You typically obtain the accelerators through the software vendor, an implementation partner, or a Value Added Reseller (VAR). Sometimes these accelerators are free while others are available for purchase. Make sure the accelerators are built on the current release, or the software release you want to implement. Often, they are a release behind the vendor for obvious reasons. If the accelerator is a good fit, it is a great deal and significantly reduces your implementation time and costs. However, if you need to change the templates, it is challenging and usually not worth the additional cost.

Time is Money

There is such a thing as an ideal implementation pace. Too fast and you may make mistakes that require two to three times the effort and costs to clean-up later. If the implementation is too slow, you waste time rethinking previous decisions or waiting for others to complete interdependent tasks. You may also have missed business opportunity costs of a delayed implementation. You need to pace the implementation aggressively, but realistically.

PURCHASING APPLICATION SOFTWARE LICENSES

Initial software license costs are a huge expense for a company. Many companies have paid more than they should for software license costs due to poor negotiating, lack of awareness, incorrect sizing, or poor contract management. When purchasing software, companies are in the driver's seat, yet they often sign a vendor's standard contract that leaves them with no leverage or control. This section outlines specific tactics that could save you a considerable amount of money on initial and future software costs.

Negotiation Strategy

There is much at stake with the negotiation of application licenses. Be sure you begin the negotiation process by developing a clear negotiation strategy. Identify your targets. For example, one company starts vendor discussions by saying they want three-thirds off. Although vendors laugh at this as a joke, it does set the tone for the negotiations. Prioritize your needs. Never concede on a term or condition without trading for something else. Also, document the negotiation process and the results of discussions as it is easy to forget who agreed to what

Start Negotiations Early

Do not wait until you have selected a finalist to start negotiating the price and terms. After eliminating competitors, the only valid option left is to do nothing. Keeping competing products in the evaluation strengthens your negotiation position.

Discounts

Do not be afraid to negotiate aggressively on software prices. As any seasoned CIO realizes, initially quoted prices are not the bottom price. Actual prices paid for software licenses for any given product vary greatly. In competitive software evaluations, vendors have lowered prices 40 to 75 percent, and companies have even received discounts up to 90 percent off list. Of course, each type of software has a different discount structure depending on its marketplace and competitive situation at the time. If you lower your license fee, your lifetime percentage maintenance fees are lower.

Top Tip: Hire experienced help for negotiating

---

"The best advice for renegotiating with vendors is to not do it yourself. Hire a company that does contract negotiation as a core competency. We engaged a company that gets a portion of the savings so there is no up-front investment."

—VP IT
Energy Company

---

Top Tip: Manage the contracts

---

"We manage the contracts rather than the contracts managing us. We try not to sign vendor's contracts and terms, but use our own. We try to have contracts that scale for good times and bad."

—Mark Brewer
Seagate

---

Use negotiating advantages such as the timing of the vendor's quarter or year-end, the desire for competitive positioning, publicity, and the desire for references in an industry or geography. For example, Oracle's fiscal year ends May 31 so buyers have the highest advantage and best prices as they approach the fourth quarter of Oracle's fiscal year. Some vendor's revenue cycle peaks in the fourth quarter due to increased year-end aggressiveness and the push to meet sales quotas.

Be sure to ask for the published list of prices rather than taking a vendor's word on the applied discounts. The vendor's desire for your business makes a huge difference. For example, you have minimal leverage with Microsoft when it comes to MS Office pricing and terms, but you have more leverage when it comes to your choice of all the other software categories in which it has to compete heavily.

In addition to negotiating price reductions, consider discounts for business continuity licenses, incentives for new licenses, free or discounted training, free or discounted consulting, and vendor-led financing. Consider negotiating add-on services when discussing the initial software contract as you have more leverage. For example, if you need the vendor to make critical custom software modifications or you want a support agreement, you will have much more bargaining power if you negotiate when the software licenses are negotiated.

It is also well worth the money to employ a consultant specializing in contract negotiations as they are aware of current vendor negotiating practices and prices that the vendor has agreed to with other customers. It can save the cost of services plus a tremendous amount of money through the life of the software.

License Timing

Purchase software that aligns with your actual needs relative to timing. Do not pay for software years before you will use the software in production. Consider your implementation phases and timing. Until you are using the software for production transactions, the software is not of value to your company.

Although it is not always possible, have the agreed-upon price written in the contract for the scheduled implementation time frame. For example, one company purchased complete ERP licenses and began the implementation project; however, it took two years to implement the software. They paid for two years for users who did not use the software when they could have saved a tremendous amount of money by purchasing only the necessary licenses when they needed them and the remainder of licenses coordinated at the time of implementation.

Top Tip: Tiered pricing for additional users

---

"When negotiating with a vendor, you will typically get better rates at the time of initial purchase. Look at tiered pricing for additional users, or enterprise licenses, so you can negotiate up-front rather than later."

—Haseen Alam
Johnson Brothers Liquor Company

---

Be aware that software is nonrefundable and vendors rarely give refunds for a change in your plans unless you add this provision to the contract. If you delay or cancel the project for any reason, you do not want the vendors holding your cash. As is common with any transaction, when a vendor has the cash, you lose some of your control to get attention and to get problems fixed. Time it to pay for initial software licenses about a month or so before the go-live date with acceptance language that gives you control over whether the software meets the specifications. If you are not able to proceed with the go-live, you do not want the vendor holding license fee money for software that you cannot implement. Be aware that many vendors require a good faith advance payment of 5 to 10 percent, which is normal, and reasonable.

Software Footprint

Only buy the software footprint, modules, business processes, and business functionality that you need at the time. The more precise and accurate you define the software footprint to your needs, the less your costs will be. If you will likely add other modules in the future, build that into the negotiated price and agreement, but do not pay for it until you need it. For example, if you plan to implement Customer Relationship Management (CRM) after you implement ERP, you should negotiate the price of CRM in the agreement to save a significant amount of money rather than negotiating it in the future. However, make sure in the terms that you cover an exchange clause. If down the road you decide you need a different module than CRM, such as Demand Planning, you will be able to exchange it. Not every vendor will consider an exchange clause, but it has saved many companies a significant amount of money. Be aware that vendors often make significant profit by fragmenting or starting small and up selling later, so be sure to have the negotiated future price in the contract.

Top Tip: Right-size cost of annual maintenance

---

"Validate and right-size the cost of annual maintenance against the needs of the company. We found we were paying for modules never implemented. Consider response time to make sure you are not paying for a greater SLA than you need."

—Trent Buness
3 Wire

---

Know the precise modules of functionality the vendor includes in its core software. If you do not need some functionality, try to negotiate some modules out, or if you need to pay for it anyway, consider using the functionality in the future. Be aware of middleware or structural components that you need to identify or purchase as well.

Enterprise applications morph over time. New functionality that you need is often bundled or repackaged with modules you already own, but access is limited unless you upgrade to the next version. The result is that you end up repurchasing functionality, unless you take the time to understand how the vendor is repackaging or rebranding its software. Consider breaking apart an offering or negotiating concessions for functionality that you already own. For example, a leading vendor offers over 160 modules to its enterprise software application that are bundled into suites of functionality. One company bought a Work In Process (WIP) module over ten years ago and later needed to increase its capability to manage capacity. Now the vendor packages the capacity module together with other applications in a new suite called Supply Chain. The vendor was happy to offer the new suite and bragged about its capability. However, after drilling down into the functionality within the new Supply Chain module, the company discovered that this new suite actually included WIP. After lengthy discussions with the vendor, the company was able to negotiate out the expenses for this duplicate offering. Understanding the vendors repackaging and rebranding of software functionality was important to saving considerable costs.

User Count

Ensure you have an accurate user count for software licenses. Right size your software purchase for your exact needs. Only purchase software licenses for the number of users you have today. Although most vendors have implemented a named user model in which you provide the number of distinct users, some software vendors or old agreements use the concurrent user license model in which you have a set number of people that are able to access the software at any time. Whether using the named or concurrent model, if you need additional licenses in the future due to projected growth or additional implementations, negotiate that in the contract as it could save a considerable amount of money rather than negotiating in the future. You may be able to negotiate a fixed per-user cost on licenses for some established period like two to three years from the initial implementation go-live date. At a minimum, lock licensing fees for the duration of the implementation project in case additions are necessary. As you would expect, the costs-per-user goes down as the number of users goes up.

The vendor often claims that you have to buy licenses in blocks of five users, but it is preferable to have more control, and the ability to purchase in units of one if necessary. After the fixed cost time frame, the vendor charges what they see fit and switching implemented software is difficult. The vendor has you as a captive audience.

One company purchased 300 licenses of ERP as the company was on an aggressive growth curve. The company did not grow as anticipated, and they paid for excess software license capacity for years rather than right sizing the contract for the right number of users. Be sure you have a trade-in clause and price in the event you buy too many licenses. Although the vendor is often reluctant to give money for trade-in purposes, perhaps they would be receptive to a trade-in for users in other software modules. You have significantly more leverage for adding creative options before the contract is signed.

Be aware that the software vendor is often not supportive of the concept to buy only the amount of licenses you need and when you need it. This is because incentives for the vendor are often based on large up-front payments at the signing of a purchase contract, or vendors may require a certain volume to give you the discounts they have stated. The vendor is often pressured by competitive positioning at critical quarter or year-ends, and they are not able to recognize the revenue on future negotiated licenses. Although the vendors initially resist this approach, it is possible to get agreement, and it saves you a significant amount of money.

Software Compliance

Although you want to minimize costs, always make sure you are compliant relative to any software licenses and user count. Particularly in an economic downturn, some vendors actually increase license audits. Although you might want to save a little in license costs, penalties for insufficient licensing are huge and quickly wipe out any savings you thought you were getting by cutting it short. Fines for software piracy and insufficient licensing can cost up to $250,000 and/or up to five years in jail in addition to bad publicity for the company. Track and manage usage closely to avoid these fines.

Many software distribution tools can provide software usage information. When considering various contract options, always include the cost of administrative overhead and software to comply with the terms of the contract. If there is a unit cost, consider what it is going to cost in labor to track the unit utilization.

User Type and Mix

Ensure the specific type and mix of users on licenses. Many software vendors calculate license fees based upon the type of estimated users. The way that you define users for your organization makes a tremendous difference in your total software license cost. For example, some vendors have different prices for:

• A full user. A full user is someone who accesses main functions within the software footprint and has defined access tied to job duties.
• Informational user. An informational user is a user participating in workflow tasks and obtains metrics, information, and reports from the systems.
• Shop floor transactional user. This type of user does transactions often through bar coding of basic data entry information.
• Conditional user. These are special users for a particular project.
• Development user. This is someone in IT that configures the software and manages the database or programs.
• Nonemployee user. This could be a partner, supplier, customer, or web user access. Do not forget to consider web users as that drives up costs and vendors classify them differently.
• Interfacing user. An interfacing user accesses the software by using a system that you may interface to the software.

Vendors have the ability to monitor the usage pattern to determine when a user grows from an informational user to a full user. Monitoring and reporting the type of users also helps you recognize the value of the application as it grows over time. If your software agreement only specifies full user licenses, negotiate partial licenses as it substantially reduces costs. Again, if your needs or mix changes in the future relative to type of users, build that into the contract with an agreed-upon price.

Enterprise Licenses

Enterprise agreements are more common for databases and middleware, but they also relate to applications. One example is a large manufacturer that saved a significant amount of software license costs by purchasing a large software footprint. They were concerned that they would need additional modules in the future so they negotiated an enterprise license suite that entitled them to all the software vendors' modules for one price. Vendors typically estimate usage for about three to four years to determine the appropriate price. At the end of the term, many vendors do not recalculate a support number. Typically, customers choose to end the agreement, receive perpetual licenses, and true up.

Enterprise licenses are a good tactic to review as long as you do not overbuy significantly. Be aware of any metrics that the vendor may link to enterprise licenses costs, such as annual revenue. Consider enterprise licenses if you:

• Do not want to track usage
• Do not want to buy modules piecemeal
• Do not want to constantly negotiate contracts with the vendor
• Anticipate greater usage in the future
• Want to lock in discounts for expected growth
• Will likely want to expand the footprint to additional modules in the future
• Are committed to the vendor for a large portion of your portfolio and are not afraid of locking in with a particular vendor
• Have a high spend amount (e.g., $3 million)

Application and Process Design

Keep in mind that many vendors define a user as anyone using or accessing the software. Some vendors even require a user license for any interfaced application, in which case you need to document any known interfaces in the contract. However, if your vendor does not count interfacing users or interfacing systems but only direct users of the system, consider using portals or front-end applications to reduce direct users and your license costs. You need to know and understand your software license and terms and operate accordingly. For example, if you base your license on number and type of users, and you are able to decrease the number or type of full users by having infrequent queries going to a data warehouse or front-end system, you can reduce your vendor license costs. If the vendor charges you for interfacing users or applications, carefully consider business process design, roles, and responsibilities to minimize the number of individuals needing the information or application.

If you need to interface the information to subsidiaries or a parent company, ensure they have the right to use the software. Many times, vendors consider access by other organizations a totally new and expensive contract.

Processors, Cores, or Virtual Machines

Be sure to look at your hardware configuration relative to software licenses and consider changes to lower license costs. The price for some software is based on the number of CPU processors or number of core processors. If so, look at reconfiguring your hardware to have a lower processor count. In these cases, often you need to pay for licenses for a warm disaster recovery site as well as cold sites. Make sure you also understand the impact of virtualization on your application licenses. For example, one major vendor requires that if you use a software product in one VMware virtual machine, you must pay license fees as if you had deployed it to all of the cores in that server. The vendor will base your license fee on the number of CPUs in the box and not on the number of virtual machines that you have deployed.

Number of Instances

Be aware of how many copies or instances of the software you need as it costs you a considerable amount of money if you need to buy it in the future. Again, only buy the number you need currently, with clauses for future purchase, if needed. For example, typically you require an instance for testing, development, training, reporting, disaster recovery, and perhaps additional instances for other countries or divisions. Keep in mind that some vendors have flexibility in licenses for testing environments as the environment does not support any operational processes.

Beta Software

If the software product or release is new to market and has a small number of users, negotiate additional discounts to offset your risks. Implementing unproven software is very painful and costs you a tremendous amount of money working with the vendor to solve new software bugs and issues. If you are a beta site, be aware of it, be able to absorb the risk, and possibly be financially remunerated for it in some way. Be sure to include warranty and delivery specifications in the contract terms and conditions. Identify all of your projected costs to determine them for the entire effort.

Top Tip: New product

---

"At one company, we had a shortage of cash. We worked with a vendor and became a test case for one of their new products. We went to forums and told their story. We were able to secure a new solution at a very low cost. Both of us benefited."

—Randy Witt
Restaurant Technologies

---

Acquisitions and Divestitures

If you acquire a company or sell a part of your company, be aware that the vendor could charge you with significant software license costs. Typically, licensees cannot resell, reuse, or share the license. Several companies have had to purchase back the software which was an unplanned expense of the acquisition. Know your contract and be aware of the terms. At a minimum, negotiate terms for the transferability of the license to another entity at no cost.

Terms and Conditions

It is well worth your time and money to engage an experienced professional in the negotiation of software license terms and conditions, particularly as this is a significant expense in the event that you overlook critical items. As many CIOs have personally experienced, an oversight in simple terms and conditions can cost a company millions of dollars down the road. Examples of protections or simple terms and conditions that translate to saved money in the future include the following:

• The software meets specific defined performance and acceptance criteria.
• If the product is sunset (e.g., no longer supported by the vendor) while you are still using it, outline financial relief, such as five years of maintenance at no charge after the new product is implemented.
• Include protection for vendor acquisition, merger, or bankruptcy. If this is a mission-critical application, subscribe to source code in escrow to mitigate the risk if the vendor goes out of business. This saves you replacing the software in the future.
• Include protection for misrepresentation, lack of performance of functionality, or future capability not proven in the sales or demonstration process. Companies often include request for proposal (RFP) responses as part of the contract to warrant the promised functionality. This provides tremendous assurance and warranty and is a strong argument for detailed requirements in an RFP. Some companies also obtain conditions that new releases will not diminish functionality or they will get a refund of the initial buying decision. At a minimum, get proper notice if the vendor no longer supports software, underlying databases, or operating systems.
• Include protection for damage limitations and warranties.

Top Tip: Two-year extension

---

"We were able to negotiate with our ERP vendor by adding a two-year extension at the back end. In exchange, we received cash back upfront and reduced rates. Even if it appears your influence is limited, sometimes just asking with the right offer results in significant savings."

—Scott Simerlein
North American
Membership Group, Inc.

So Predictive Dialers Head For Software... | Outdialing Systems

I found one company that put together a custom installation, using their own programmers, with a software-based predictive dialing system and Dialogic boards. It may not be the best system for everybody, but it is definitely possible to get predictive dialing for less than you expect.

Dialing is by definition software. It always has been. For years, the predictive dialing vendors (rightly) competed with one another on features — answering machine detect, speed of answer, and fundamental algorithm — that were software. The boxes were of secondary importance. They were proprietary because you needed lots of processing horsepower to drive those software applications.

Nowadays you want to have more flexibility with your agents, inbound or outbound. You want to link your hardware systems together: switches and computers, dialers and voice systems.

The logic behind it is overwhelming: if dialing features are mainly software, and powerful generic processors are available to run them, there’s no reason why they can’t be part of an overall inbound and outbound call routing system on a client/server platform.

So what should you be thinking about when buying your predictive dialer? Integration — with every other piece of hardware and software in your call center. Mostly software.

What’s happening in the call center now is the marriage of voice and data. Call centers are using open dialing platforms to take advantage of other niche technologies in the call center. It’s a powerful means of taking the benefits of predictive dialers even further.

Why is integration important to call centers? Primarily because of the increased control call center managers have over their technology. Essential call center equipment like ACDs, PBXs and predictive dialers now work in concert, allowing for greater efficiency and productivity.

Companies are driven to make better use of their resources. There are so many technology directions that companies can easily fritter away resources and not really improve the service they provide or the bottom line that they protect.

Smaller centers have basically three options:

1. Buy a turnkey system (which may be proprietary) and build a telecom and computer system around it. This is good for companies that want to dump older equipment.

2. Go for an integrated solution, combining the power of PCs and LANs with software or hardware dialing processors and a phone system.

   Using off-the-shelf parts, you can put together inexpensive solutions. You can grow into it slowly, without sacrificing the dialing features you need: swift answer detection and screen transfer.

3. Or lay a dialing solution on top of the existing telecom and data infrastructure. Your best option here: talk to the vendors who make your existing equipment and software. Chances are you might find a dialer maker among the vendors of your ACD, VRU or call management software.

Software-driven predictive dialers integrate into the call center environment because they’re based on multipurpose minicomputers that let users run other software and because they employ industry standard computer-telephone devices to perform predictive dialing.

Besides predictive dialing, many dialing systems let call center agents perform preview dialing where agents call up data and review it before the call is placed. Preview dialing mostly benefits small call centers making business to business calls.

As for the future of predictive dialers, most agree about the importance of integration. For some call centers, integration means less dependency on mainframes, while others see it as a way to tie dialers into a national database of people who don’t want calls. Even more adventurous is the theory that full function predictive dialing will be possible from an agent’s home phone.

Regardless of what happens in the future, one thing is true: forward thinking has turned a once limited piece of hardware into a versatile and vital piece of technology. As long as that persists, its value in today’s (and tomorrow’s) call center remains undiminished.