3.75 Stages of Reporting Actualization

Whether it’s CCaaS, legacy Contact Center, WFM, QA, AI, etc. - a vendor’s specific reporting strategy almost always follows the same trajectory, and ends up in the same destination.

We, as a collective and open community, are about to change the game for how data, reporting and analytics happens for CX and put you in control of your own AI strategy.

But first, we need to understand the typical market cycles so we can know where to plug-in.

Heres what I call the “3.75 stages of vendor Reporting Actualization”. I’ve lived each of these firsthand.

Whether it’s CCaaS, legacy Contact Center, WFM, QA, AI, etc. - a vendor’s specific reporting strategy almost always follows the same trajectory, and ends up in the same destination.

Phase 1 - The core product is early, but they’re capturing and generating data as function of the product, and you want to see it. So the vendor builds some quasi-hardcoded “dashboards” that display the high-level stuff and sprinkle in some charts throughout the product.

Often, these are defined by product managers and engineers that have never used the data before, so there is a gap between what they think you need vs. what you actually need. Ergo, phase 2.

Phase 2 - As the product matures, reporting will need to get its own home. So you get some more dashboards with the ability to do basic filtering and maybe manipulate the chart types.

But, here is where it starts to get tricky. Because the more data that’s in the vendor platform, the more you want at it . The vendor thinks you just want better reporting, but what you’re really after is the functionality of a full BI product that’s pointed at the vendor’s data, and perhaps the ability to start getting the data into your own data warehouse.

At some point, the opportunity cost between building new reporting features comes into conflict with building the new features you want from the core product, and reporting generally starts to take a backseat.

Phase 3 - Somewhere along the way vendors figure out that maybe reporting just isn’t their thing, so they’re now open to working with third-party BI tools just to get you off their back. This could be enterprise tools like Power BI or tableau, or if they have enough traction then specialist analytics vendors and systems integrators will enter the fold.

Phase 3.5 - If the vendor gets enough scale, and reporting is considered a sales blocker or a strategic way to take out competitors, then they might make an acquisition. [Cisco/Latigent, Genesys/Informiam, NICE/Performix, Zendesk/BIME, Five9/Aceyus].

Phase 3.75 - If the niche reporting/analytics vendor you’re using gets acquired by a company that you’re not a customer of, there is a high probability they’re going to cut you off at some point, because it’s just not worth supporting competitors’ or 3rd party data.

Caveat, there is an emerging trend where vendors can short-circuit this cycle by opening-up their data firehose and APIs early in the product lifecycle. I absolutely love this approach but it comes with a steep learning curve for customers and partners.