By 2020, many small and medium-sized businesses will exist only virtually, with most of their essential operational functions supplied by outsourced managed services and hosted applications. That’s according to one leading social research think tank.

Yes, this is the brave new world that’s brought into sharp focus in a recent report by the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC)*, commissioned by UK managed hosting provider Rackspace. Taking a broad overview of how people will be capitalising on the Web a decade or so hence, the report presents a vision of a sophisticated ‘Generation C’: where everyone’s personal and working lives will centre on the availability of always-on ‘content’, ‘connectivity’, ‘creativity’, ‘collaboration’ and ‘communication’.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR ‘CONNECTED’ PROVIDERS

For the average business being part of Generation C is likely to mean looking to Communications Providers and other technology suppliers, not only for internet connections but also for ‘Software as a Service’ solutions or ‘SaaS’: the new buzzword for on-demand or hosted applications.

The future norm will be for organisations to subscribe to what they need and access it remotely, rather than buying and installing software locally. Everything from Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and financial services to supply chain management and IT services could potentially be available this way.

Indeed, there are already pioneering providers in the UK marketplace – including BT with its offer of outsourced, multiple channel customer contact centres. There are also pioneering adopters out there. In surveying their own customer base, Rackspace found that 50% were already using some form of SaaS.

All this may beg the question: what exactly will be the purpose of SMEs by 2020? The answer lies in ‘adding value’, according to the report. For Generation C will continue to look to the intelligence and entrepreneurial spirit of small and medium-sized companies to create and supply the services and applications they access, buy and use online, even if they too are only ‘virtual’.

* Source: "Life online: the Web in 2020": Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC)

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BT Wholesale can offer you solutions both to assist you in enhancing your own CRM processes and also to help you meet your customers’ growing demands for outsourced managed services.

BT Wholesale’s Next Generation Contact Centre (NGCC) is the new totally managed, on-demand solution that can provide your customers with multi-channel access into your organisation, with the emphasis on a high quality of ‘customer experience’. It is extremely flexible – and scalable – with solutions for the smallest to the largest organisations.

NGCC is an out-of-the-box, multi-channel contact centre service that can be seamlessly integrated into your existing call centre infrastructure. It is an enhancement of our current CRM portfolio, bundling the best features into a single, powerful centre, which can be hosted by BT as either a dedicated service (On Net) or a shared service (On Demand).

BT Wholesale also provides effective CRM solutions for you to offer your customers. Our equipment portfolio offers a single source for a wide choice of hosted and managed CRM options from leading suppliers such as Avaya, Siebel and Nortel. While for companies looking to outsource their IT needs, you could supply a range of fully integrated and managed services that includes desktop security, IT support and online data storage and back-up: again from our equipment portfolio.