Hybrid vs. Full Cloud Migration – Which Should You Choose?
by David Murashige
Managing a complex on-premises IT contact center ecosystem — especially an aging one — on a fixed budget is an all-too-familiar challenge for many organizations. In fact, 32% of contact center leaders in one CCW Market Survey cited lack of budgetary support as the steepest challenge facing the long-term success of their contact center IT strategy. For most organizations, moving to the cloud is the logical remedy to the IT management headache. But for a handful of reasons, it doesn’t always make sense for an organization to drop their on-premises solution overnight and immediately begin investing in a cloud contact center.
Here are a few factors that might make you think twice about a contact center cloud migration:
In contact center environments where one or more of these factors are present, a jump to the cloud may need to be delayed or even pushed off indefinitely.
So, what is an organization to do? The benefits of cloud contact center platforms — such as automatic software updates and solution support, as well as continuous platform innovation — make them a particularly alluring option for organizations who are feeling the weight of IT and platform management.
In situations where cloud is not immediately a viable option, contact center managed services can help you strike the right balance between cost containment and IT efficiency.
The managed services model is the practice of contracting a partner to monitor and support functions related to the IT technology ecosystem. In the contact center, this approach can help address a number of challenges, including IT staffing costs, platform and hardware updates and issues, and effectively planning for the future state of your contact center.
Fortunately, many of the features that draw organizations to the cloud can be achieved in on-prem environments by handing off day-to-day management to a third-party provider with the right experience and vision to drive your contact center operation.
For example, here are a few of the “cloud-like” benefits our clients tend to see from a custom managed services solution from TTEC Digital:
Check out our Cisco contact center managed services offer designed especially for you.
If you’ve been keeping score at home, you might already have enough boxes checked in the list above to justify making the move to managed contact center services. But if you’re looking to take a more diagnostic approach to the managed services question, here are a few of the questions we like to help our clients work through during an initial strategy session.
Question #1: Are you missing out on an opportunity to increase employee productivity in the contact center?
Automation and AI are the next frontier in the contact center. While certainly not always the case, many on-prem contact centers struggle to execute the latest automation tools and AI-driven employee experience solutions. Even in cases where these features are included in routine on-premises system updates, few organizations have the strategic muscle to build them into the customer engagement workflow. A proven partner, who has experience with the ins and outs of your contact center platform, will bring many of the extra strategic and implementation advantages you need to make sure your contact center remains innovative in the long-term. Of course, better platform uptime certainly helps with productivity too.
Question #2: Will managed services allow you to reduce IT staff or avoid increasing your annual budget?
If IT staff or platform management create unexpected costs you can’t afford, managed services offers an opportunity to level out your spend. Especially for organizations who already have an economy of scale in their contact center IT environment, adding new seats can actually be cheaper on-prem than in the cloud—but only if your organization is in command of its hardware and software costs.
Question #3: Is your contact center environment complex—with reason to believe it could become more complex in the future?
One of the biggest draws to the cloud is the ability to integrate third-party solutions that expand your contact center strategy by empowering agents and customers, alike. On-prem, these integrations become more complicated, but not impossible. By working with a contact center managed services provider who knows all the leading platforms in the contact center space, organizations can rest easy knowing their on-prem strategy doesn’t have to lock them out from the benefits of emerging solutions designed to improve productivity, efficiency, and customer satisfaction.
With nearly 50 years under our belt serving the contact center market, TTEC Digital offers both the strategic expertise and a breadth of platform experience across all the leading contact center platforms. When you team up with TTEC Digital, you get an innovation-minded partner who is focused on helping organizations rethink their contact center platform and its capabilities. The result? Contact centers that help employees to thrive, costs to fall, and customers to smile.
See what TTEC Digital can do to help streamline your contact center operation. Contact one of our managed services experts to get started.