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I am hearing from vendors that their on-premise CRM sales in the early part of this year are pretty good. No one has briefed me ahead of their earnings calls, but the results from late last year and Q1 seem to be pretty good. I should probably wait until the numbers for the last quarter come out from the vendors, but I've seen enough to call an obvious trend. Despite the robust growth we see in SaaS software, the market in conventional on-premise CRM software is still very good -- at least from the revenue perspective.
I think you're spot on with the upcoming trend in call centers, especially those of the smaller variety, in that there will be a shift towards those that allow agents to work from home. With new virtual call center software that is SaaS-based, agents can log on to the call center from anywhere they can access the Internet (like home), or really even from anywhere they can use a desk phone, home phone, or mobile phone. Managers can then monitor and report on the calls being taken/made, and communicate using multi-modal approaches (like video, chat, and barge-in) so that it becomes like the agent is sitting on premise. And as you state, not having real estate saves a company a ton of investment, not to mention associated overhead, and it makes the employee's life easier. In short, this is the way a lot of business will go in the short future, call centers especially.
