Mark Smith's Analyst Perspectives

I am happy to share some insight on BroadSoft 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 BroadSoft 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 BroadSoft CC-One 9.9, released in July 2017, and UC-One and Team-One, released in October 2017. During the Value Index assessment process, BroadSoft was acquired by Cisco Systems, which plans to retain the company name and products. BroadSoft ranks third overall in the 2018 Contact Center in the Cloud Value Index. It is a Value Index Leader, ranking among the top three vendors in two of the seven evaluation categories, taken together weighted at 40 percent of the overall Value Index score.

BroadSoft has a robust offering that includes the contact center (in CC-One), unified communications (in UC-One) and collaboration (in Team-One). Together they help provide organizations with a complete offering. BroadSoft ranks third in Usability, largely because of the accessible simplicity of the user experience it provides across roles. It also ranks third in Capability as we found its overall functionality well-balanced, providing depth in its analytic range and interaction handling and also easy collaboration and communications, both internally and to customers.

There are several areas in which BroadSoft can improve; its lowest rankings were eighth in both Adaptability and Manageability. For Adaptability, while it is able to support a range of user and application integrations, BroadSoft should address requirements at the process, platform and data levels. For Manageability, the company could provide more support for audit and compliance and further evidence of its investments. But the main challenge for BroadSoft is gaining Cisco’s commitment to a continuing investment in customer and product development. This is a market where the networking giant has historically played in through partnering rather than operated in directly.

Nonetheless, though it has some areas to address, BroadSoft is an overall Value Index Leader for Contact Center in the Cloud for its excellent work in customer assurance areas and for its Value Index Leader ratings in Capability and Usability.

Since the completion of this value index research, BroadSoft has officially become part of Cisco and has announced its UC-One to support the interactions across desktop and mobile devices.

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 BroadSoft 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