ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the key tools for ensuring that the contact centre is robust in terms of its financial planning and financial performance, together with how to build a business case. For a contact centre manager the budget process generally focuses on costs, that is, identifying the centre's funding requirements for the budget period, which is usually a year's duration. Financial planning creates a context for the budget process where it is agreed in what direction the contact centre wants to go over a longer period and identifying funding requirements over that period. A budget is an itemized listing of the amount of all estimated revenue and costs for a particular period, usually a year. The focus is solely on the cost side of the equation and, more specifically, on the revenue costs, that is excluding capital expenditure. The chapter discusses the return on investment (ROI) is the benefit derived from an investment.
