June 6, 2018 by Siobhan Climer
The release of Gartner’s 2018 Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure (CCI) is here. Gartner’s thorough analysis of the specific contact center market positions leaders, challengers, visionaries, and niche players in a visually representative format. As part of a larger market analysis, the Gartner Magic Quadrant is the first step in understanding the top contact center technology providers and how well they are performing.
It’s important to remember the Gartner Magic Quadrant is just the first step in analyzing which technologies might align best with your business goals. Here at Mindsight, we recognize that context can be everything. The 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant is part of a larger report that includes critical capabilities, the hype cycle, the IT market clock, the market guide, vendor ratings, IT scores, market share and forecast information. Before making a final decision about cloud providers, use the full reach of the report and the expert eye of a Mindsight roadmap architect to ensure you have the full, contextualized picture.
Get our free eBook Customers Drive, You Navigate: Your Contact Center Roadmap to Customer Care Success today to learn how to create and implement a roadmap strategy.
2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant Report Analysis
Although there weren’t any big surprises in this report, there were some nuanced movements that are important to note. First, let’s define the categories according to Gartner’s methodology:
Leaders – These enterprises have a vision for tomorrow and execute on their current vision.
Challengers – The organizations currently execute well, but they lack a vision for upcoming market changes.
Visionaries – Enterprises that have a vision but do not yet execute it well.
Niche Players – These are enterprises that do not “out-innovate or outperform others”, but specialize well in a small segment. They may also be unfocused and simply play a smaller role in market direction.
Genesys and Cisco continue to dominate the leader category. Their position relative to each other shifted slightly, with Cisco’s ability to execute viewed as improved. Genesys continues to move forward as a visionary leader in the CCI space.
The other big change this year was Avaya, which moved from a visionary to a leader. Otherwise, the categories remain unchanged except for Unify Communications. Previously listed as a niche player in 2017, Unify is no longer on Gartner’s magic quadrant map.
Small Shifts, Big Changes For Contact Centers
Genesys
Genesys was recently named Frost and Sullivan’s 2018 North American Contact Center of the Year for both its visionary innovation and performance, as well as its customer impact. How has Genesys continued to out-perform competitors? As a Genesys partner, we can speak to these distinguished qualities.
- Reputation: Since its inception, Genesys has dominated leadership categories, due in part, to its role as a visionary that identifies and solves unmet customer needs first.
- Teamwork: Part of being a leader is recognizing the talent in the room. Acquiring Interactive Intelligence put Genesys in a position to innovate and deliver more to their customers.
- Superior Technology: Blended AI, predictive routing, workforce optimization AI, consumer messaging aps are just some of the areas where Genesys excels, providing enhanced agent performance, superior customer experience, and creating new tools for contact centers to better meet the needs of their customers.
- PureSuccess: Blending software and service with the planning enabled by Cases and PureSuccess means Genesys reduces risk and achieves better outcomes.
Cisco
Mindsight teams up with the best. As a Cisco Gold partner, we can vouch for the enterprise-class service provided by Cisco. It’s true that Cisco placed as a leader in the 2018 Gartner CCI Magic Quadrant. It makes sense because last year Cisco was named a leader in not two or three, but five Gartner Magic Quadrants:
- Unified Communications
- Web Conferencing
- Group Video Systems
- Unified Communications for Midsize Enterprises, North America
- Contact Center Infrastructure
Cisco’s “ability to execute” in 2018 comes from its worldwide network that centers on an improved customer experiences for businesses of any size to succeed.
2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant Report: How To Use It
The 2018 report uses interactive features. You can create a version of the Magic Quadrant that changes the weight given to certain variables, enabling you to customize the data to display a client-specific graphic useful for internal analysis. In addition, you can segment insight by industry, company size, or geography. The Critical Capabilities tool also enables users to drill deep into the products and services offered by the different vendors.
The most important part of using the 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant report is to recognize that it is a first step in determining how providers might influence your business. The Contact Center Infrastructure Magic Quadrant shows top industry players, but it is still up to business leaders to determine how best to use that information to shape decisions in strategy and partnership.
2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant Validity And Value
As we stated earlier, it’s important to view the report contextually. Gartner’s report plays a role in the conversation as contact centers look for data on what solution is best for them. The Gartner report is not without criticism, though. In 2009, Gartner was the subject of a suit brought by ZL Technologies’ that sought to force Gartner to provide a fair disclosure of conflicts of interest, a fair disclosure of evaluation scores, and independent oversight. Even though the suit was eventually dismissed, it is a part of the controversy around the Magic Quadrants and the role they have in deciding market direction and company success.
Gartner cautions against using the Magic Quadrant alone to shape decisions:
“Keep in mind that focusing on the leaders’ quadrant isn’t always the best course of action. There are good reasons to consider market challengers. And a niche player may support your needs better than a market leader. It all depends on how the provider aligns with your business goals.”
Despite the controversy, directors and leaders affected by the Gartner Magic Quadrant note its value time and time again.
“Customers making strategic technology decisions want to invest in the best technology for their organization and look to the Gartner Magic Quadrant to identify the vendors with the market-leading technologies they need,” Sean McCarry, the former senior director of CA Technologies.
Choose Wisely
Regardless of your individual business needs, the 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant report is a tool you can use to determine the best step forward in your contact center journey. Mindsight partners with enterprises seeking to develop their contact center strategy and infrastructure. Over 90% of our engineers have advanced certifications in these tools. Use the expert eyes of our solutions architects to assess your current technologies and plan a roadmap for the future today.
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About Mindsight
Mindsight, a Chicago IT services provider, is an extension of your team. Our culture is built on transparency and trust, and our team is made up of extraordinary people – the kinds of people you would hire. We have one of the largest expert-level engineering teams delivering the full spectrum of IT services and solutions, from cloud to infrastructure, collaboration to contact center. Our highly-certified engineers and process-oriented excellence have certainly been key to our success. But what really sets us apart is our straightforward and honest approach to every conversation, whether it is for an emerging business or global enterprise. Our customers rely on our thought leadership, responsiveness, and dedication to solving their toughest technology challenges.
Contact us at GoMindsight.com.
About The Author
Siobhan Climer, Science and Technology Writer for Mindsight, writes about technology trends in education, healthcare, and business. She previously taught STEM programs in elementary classrooms and museums, and writes extensively about cybersecurity, disaster recovery, cloud services, backups, data storage, network infrastructure, and the contact center. When she’s not writing tech, she’s writing fantasy, gardening, and exploring the world with her twin two-year old daughters. Find her on twitter @techtalksio.
