Why the Time is Right to Migrate Away from an On-Premises Contact Center

If you have an on-premises CCaaS solution, you may be considering migrating to the cloud. Whether you’re worried about security or costs, moving your system to a cloud provider can be a big decision. It’s important to choose the right partner and make sure that your migration is seamless and secure.

Below are some of the key considerations when making this decision.

Three approaches

When it comes to enabling your call center environment, there are three unique service options:

• Legacy on-premises/hybrid players: These providers offer traditional contact center features and have largely remained unchanged for years, but they also have limitations in key components like security and data governance.
• Traditional cloud CCaaS providers: While these providers offer flexible, cost-effective solutions meant to replace on-premises solutions and can help you scale faster, they don’t necessarily provide all of the functionality needed to meet the current demands of customer-facing teams.
• New breed of Customer Engagement Platforms (CEPs): These platforms leverage AI to not only enable communication with customers but also provide a suite of tools to manage customer data and oversee many phases of the customer journey and even intelligently manage staffing demands.

Why the time is now

If you’re not considering your migration strategy now, you’re putting yourself at risk of being left behind. Here’s why:

Traditional players are dying and fast. The market is shifting quickly with new customer expectations. The contact center hiring market is in flux with staffing and hiring challenges. Big data is changing the way we look at customer experiences. 

If your organization isn’t already on top of these trends, there is still time to survive and even thrive, in this new world of high customer demands, hybrid work environments, and new business continuity challenges.

We’ve seen a huge surge in migrations over recent years as organizations seek out cost savings associated with moving workloads from legacy environments onto cloud platforms. This trend has also been driven by changes in vendor relationships that have made it easier than ever to get started without major capital outlays or complex procurement processes. 

As businesses begin taking advantage of these new technologies where they exist, the most advanced teams are also preparing for a future where demands are far less certain. 

Improvements

Why should you move from on-premises to a cloud or CEP solution? Below are a few of the key reasons why businesses are shifting their critical customer engagement tools to a modern solution. 

• Cost/ROI: The cost is often a driving factor for organizations moving to the cloud. You pay for the capacity that you use. Costs may vary, depending on your organization’s needs and requirements.
• Employee performance: On-premise systems can be complex, especially if they’ve been in place for a while. They’re also more likely to be outdated, which means they’ll take longer to access and process information. If your employees struggle with their current solution, they may not perform at their best and could even end up costing the company money. Lost productivity and wasted time in legacy systems carry a very real cost.
• Continuity Planning: Moving data center operations into the cloud eases concerns about business continuity. Employees can still get work done because their solutions will be accessible from anywhere, as long as there’s an internet connection available to their device.

What to consider when migrating

Migrating solutions can be a challenging proposition. The good news is that, with a cloud solution, it is easier than ever. 

There are still a number of questions you should consider before making a decision. 

• When should I start my migration process? Will doing so affect other aspects of my business in any way—for instance, by slowing down work performance during peak periods like holidays/vacations or sales seasons?
• Are there any specific tasks that I will have to perform or processes that will take a long time in preparation for the migration?
• How am I going to migrate to the new service? Is it possible for me to do so internally or do I need help from third parties, such as service providers or consultants?

One additional question to consider is what else in the contact center stack is considered dated, close to or beyond its end of life? There’s little sense in keeping other historic enterprise or even SaaS plug-ins that are not designed to work as an entire system. Imagine the impact of just one plug-in breaking.  How might finding the root cause of the problem, and identifying the original vendor that made it, impact your business if you’re at a full system standstill?

These are just some of the factors you need to consider when making decisions on whether and how much time should be spent migrating your on-premises CCaaS solution to a cloud solution. 

What factors are critical to your decision-making? Reach out and speak with a member of our team to learn whether a modern CEP platform is the right approach for your organization.