When it comes to contact center innovation, one thing is clear: the future is in the cloud. But that’s where the easy decisions stop. Choosing the right partner for a cloud migration in the modern cloud era comes with greater nuance and more powerful platforms to choose from than ever before. That’s great news for organizations looking to establish a solution that meets their exact needs, but it also means that due diligence up front is crucial.
There are several important considerations to keep in mind during this initial decision-making phase, especially if you’re looking for a platform that meets both your short-term and long-term goals. We sat down with Chris Condon, our Chief Revenue Officer, who has over 20 years of cloud solutioning experience, to learn the most important factors in evaluating and selecting a cloud migration partner.
On Choosing the Right Partner
Q: How does an organization make sure they’re choosing the right partner – not just for the technology’s potential, but also ensuring they have the support to maximize its value.
A: Because organizations will be evaluating multiple platforms for use in their cloud migration, they know that they're facing a transition regardless. It's important that they start with a strategic partner whose implementation experience spans the leading platforms in the marketplace. A strong cloud migration partner can not only help them on the practical comparisons of the pros and cons specific to their business, and comparative pros and cons specific to their business needs, but then can also be with them through the implementation because they have the experience – no matter which platform they choose, rather than having to choose a new implementation partner for each set of new technologies implemented.
On Narrowing Down Your Best Options for a Cloud Migration Partner
Q: What challenges do most organizations face when they're trying to narrow down their options for choosing the right cloud migration partner?
A: One of the things that's always a consideration is if there are any preexisting enterprise relationships with GSIs (Global Systems Integrators). So, one of the first things that they'll face is possibly a proclivity to try and consolidate services to an enterprise GSI relationship they have. While GSIs have deep practices around systems like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and other enterprise infrastructure systems, in the case of CX systems and particularly Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS), it's imperative that a business selects a services partner that has deep experience in that space that's informed with the practical realities about the technologies and operational delivery for CX.
On Creating a List of Questions for Potential Partners
Q: What are some of the questions an organization should ask when contemplating partners for cloud migration?
A: I would recommend asking questions like:
- What is your experience integrating with other platforms we have in our environment,
- including things like WFO platforms and CRM experience with the CCaaS platform itself?
- Do you have a few reference clients who went through similar implementations that we can talk to?
- What certifications do you have in the platform we’re looking to migrate to?
- What other relevant experience can you bring to help us with the migration?
- How long has your company been in business?
- What is the average tenure of your employees?
- How many cloud migrations have you completed, and in what timeframe were they finished?
On Being Proactive with Your Cloud Migration
Q: So how can you plan to be more proactive rather than reactive with a cloud migration?
A: For the most part, the cloud has solutions that are going to continually evolve at a much faster pace than a legacy platform. The legacy perpetual license buyers have been used to much larger significant groupings of functionality updates and much further spread-out version updates. With the cloud, they're going to have agility they didn't have previously, and they will continually benefit from that agility as that cloud platform enhances instead of being beholden to large-scale version increases. They'll be able to focus their IT resources on innovation and capability versus infrastructure management. That's a huge shift in terms of their IT expenses. In the past, there was a disproportionate amount of IT investment focused on managing data centers and infrastructure. The organizations that do invest with a partner, but also invest in their own internal IT organizations and services organizations, need to have an innovation and capability mindset versus an infrastructure management mindset.