Facing executive mandates to migrate applications to the cloud, many organizations’ leaders are faced with the challenge of determining what cloud communications & customer contact services are best for them. This is no easy decision – new CaaS (Communication as a Service) options regularly enter an already crowded market, existing providers merge and ally, legacy technology manufacturers launch new offers, and customer expectations continue to change.
A bad choice means serious consequences, including loss of competitive advantage, diminished customer experience and loyalty, increased operational cost and risk, reduction in revenue, and career impacts for those involved in making the choice.
Making a great choice is critical – here is how to do it:
Understand your current state.
The first step in a successful journey is understanding the starting point. Before evaluating CaaS options, it is critical to understand:
- What technologies and solutions are in place now? This ecosys- tem includes the core communications technologies and platforms themselves, adjacent platforms (e.g., IVR, Call Recording), any hardware, carrier con- nections, and the other applications that have integration into these systems (e.g. CRM, ERP). All of these need to be documented to ensure that they are accommodated in the migration.
- What are the Business and User Requirements? Adopting new technologies provides a timely and critical opportunity to engage with the busi- ness to identify what improvements are key to improving business performance and sustaining competitive advantage. Making technology work better and harder for users will increase efficiency and improve CX.
- What risks and issues exist? Identify any critical issues with the current ecosystem, both to ensure that they are corrected, and also to justify the need to migrate to a CaaS solution.
- What is working well? Ask those who use the technology what they like about the current platform and what they need from it in the future. Today’s world of CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) means being able to layer individual capabili ties on top of existing platforms. Rather than replacing what is working, build new capability on strength and vastly simplify the migra- tion process.
Document key requirements.
There are three essential elements to this:
- Business Requirements – what functionality does the business need to compete and thrive? What metrics and analytics does the business require to function, and are the systems in place to deliver those?
- Financial Requirements – what budget exists, how will financial benefit be delivered, and ROI calculated and what financial model makes the most sense (OpEx, CapEx, hybrid)?
- Operational Requirements – what can current staff handle? Organizations must consider their ability to deliver day-to-day operations, support, configuration & provisioning, integration into existing platforms, ongoing customization, and training
With the above in hand, the organization must then choose the best options from a crowded marketplace of CCaaS, UCaaS, and CPaaS solutions. Axim’s key strength is helping organizations to select the solution that is best able to integrate with existing enterprise platforms and applications, presents a clear financial return, and addresses each client’s specific business and operational require- ments. Axim helps organizations make the right technology and business decisions to ensure benefits are optimized, risks mitigated and migrations delivered successfully.
How Axim Helps
Axim’s Enterprise Roadmap & Architecture Services Portfolio documents the current technology ecosystem, identifies & assesses risks, creates a bespoke roadmap that meets current and future business and operational needs, designs a migration path aligned with each client’s requirements, budget and appetites for risk & change, and provides thorough enterprise documentation that stays current as clients continue to evolve.
Axim’s Cloud Readiness Assessment & Cloud Advisory Services enable our clients to understand if cloud (public, private, hybrid) is a fit for their specific situation, clearly identify which CaaS/PaaS solutions best address their business, technology, and operations require- ments while providing the strongest ROI, and include active governance during the selection & migration process to ensure successful adoption.
New technology requires new skills. Axim’s Team Extension Services give organizations flexible, predictable access to the expertise they require to derive maximum value and performance from current and new solutions alike. Our service portfolio includes Dedicated & Designated Team Augmentation, Managed Services, Platform Support, and solution-specific development and operations talent – everything needed to make a diverse and modern technology portfolio deliver its promise.
