How managed services can replicate benefits of the cloud in your on-premises contact center

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:

• Significant contact center capital expenditure requires additional years to fully depreciate.
• The organization already has achieved an economy of scale in its IT environment.
• Security compliance requirements mandate an organization steer clear of multi-tenant clouds.

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 that are feeling the weight of IT and platform management.

In situations where the cloud is not immediately a viable option, contact center managed services can help you strike the right balance between cost containment and IT efficiency.

What do managed services look like in the contact center?

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 several challenges, including IT staffing costs, platform and hardware updates and issues, and effective planning for the future state of your contact center.

Unlock similar IT and cost benefits to the cloud with contact center managed services.

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:

• Fixed monthly costs: With managed services, there are no unforeseen expenses like you might find in a self-managed on-prem environment. For organizations operating on a fixed IT budget, or those planning for a large long-term expenditure (such as an impending cloud migration), this can be particularly useful.
• Reduced operating expenses: Organizations can minimize their need for a large, highly skilled IT team.
• Reduced risk of downtime: An experienced provider can help you keep up with important updates and eliminate patching issues or other critical errors.
• Streamlined license management: Across the largest IT ecosystems, managing a multitude of licenses can create opportunities for major system errors, especially if an internal IT team doesn’t have the bandwidth to manage it effectively.
• Enhanced security: Most leading-edge managed services solutions take the weight of maintaining security by providing systems monitoring, disaster recovery, and data backup.

How to decide if contact center managed services make sense 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 creates unexpected costs you can’t afford, managed services offer an opportunity to level out your spending. Especially for organizations who already have an economy of scale in their contact center IT environment, adding new seats can 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.

Why TTEC Digital is the right play for contact center managed services

With nearly 50 years under our belt serving the contact center market, TTEC Digital offers both 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.