Analyst Perspectives

I am happy to share some insight on Aspect Software drawn from our latest research. The Ventana Research Value Index: Contact Center in the Cloud in 2018 is the distillation of a year of market and product research efforts by Ventana Research. We utilized a structured research methodology that includes evaluation categories designed to reflect the breadth of the real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal (RFP) and vendor selection process for contact centers in the cloud. We evaluated Aspect Software and 12 other vendors in seven categories, five relevant to the product (adaptability, capability, manageability, reliability and usability) and two related to the vendor (TCO/ROI and vendor validation). To arrive at the Value Index rating for a given vendor, we weighted each category to reflect its relative importance in an RFP process, with the weightings based on our experience and data derived from our benchmark research on contact centers in the cloud.

The Value Index assessed Aspect’s Via 17.1, which was released in November 2017. A global vendor of contact center platforms, Aspect ranks second overall in the 2018 Contact Center in the Cloud Value Index. It is a Value Index Leader as it ranks among the top three vendors in four of the seven evaluation categories and places first in TCO/ROI.

The company has a longstanding commitment to contact center software through what it calls its customer engagement cloud platform, which operates on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Aspect Via brings together a suite of applications from customer self-service to omnichannel support that enables agents and customers to interact efficiently. Its flexibility in configuration and operations are reflected in its high ratings in Adaptability, where it ranks second, and Manageability, where it ranks third. Aspect’s highest rating is in TCO/ROI, earned because it provides useful information and services to help organizations realize the full potential of the product. The company’s new offering Aspect Via also has been designed to deliver a quality user experience, which contributes to its high Usability rating.

Aspect does have some room for improvement in the Reliability category, where it did not provide enough detail on its product’s performance and scalability parameters. While the platform offers a dashboard and reports, the depth of the underlying cloud computing operations of its platform were not clear. The company also needs some improvement in the application of analytics to optimize interactions.

Aspect has been in the contact center market for some time. Now that its cloud computing operates on AWS it must intensify its efforts to help transition existing on-premises customers and engage new ones to realize its full market potential. Despite needing improvement in some areas, Aspect is an overall Value Index Leader for Contact Center in the Cloud for its quality efforts across product and customer assurance areas.

Since the completion of our value index research, Aspect Software has released Aspect CXP 18, which complements Aspect VIA contact center to help improve the product’s intelligence in interactions across IVR and digital self-service channels.

This research-based index is the first such industry undertaking to assess the value of software designed specifically for enabling a contact center in the cloud. You can learn more about Aspect Software and others in our Value Index as an effective vendor selection and RFI/RFP tool and can read the whole Value Index report.

Regards,
Mark Smith
CEO & Chief Research Officer

*Since the release of this Value Index, Aspect Software and Noble Systems merged to form Alvaria in 2021.