If you’re planning to migrate your contact center to the cloud, don’t just move what you already have. Instead, take advantage of new applications and functions that could improve both your employee and customer experience.
“Don’t cut yourself short,” said Melissa Swartz, founder, Swartz Consulting, who moderated an
Enterprise Connect panel discussion, “UCaaS Case Studies: How Your Peers Made the Migration,” with five IT leaders. Here are their tips on moving from on-prem to the cloud.
Understand your network
Look at closely at your current network to be sure it can support the move, said Brian Harrison, CTO, Broward College in Fort Lauderdale. “Don’t migrate without partnering with your network team, as proper bandwidth, switches and firewalls are essential from a support perspective,” he said. “If you move all your SIP trunks to the cloud, you depend on Internet circuits. Be sure you have network resiliency and good quality of service (QoS), as you want to protect your voice traffic.”
Get leadership buy-in
To boost user acceptance, the president of Broward College led an organizational town hall focusing on the importance of new technology. “Presenting this migration from the top down, and sharing the project with the entire college, made a big difference,” said Harrison.
Find cost savings
Look for cost savings, advised Wasi Ahmed, CIO, Foundation Building Materials. “This was a big surprise for us, since people didn’t know who was billing for what services,” he said. “When moved to our cloud provider, we would up with $2 million annual savings, with an improved ability to support our company’s acquisitions and new facilities.”
Compare venders
Compare multiple vendors, said Lewis Papaleo, senior manager, global collaborative services, Tapestry, a luxury multinational fashion company. “Remember, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, so talk to vendors, peers and partners before making a decision.”
Know your users
Knowing your users and what’s important to them will help you make a smoother migration, according to Karen Gordon, telecom supervisor, King & Spaulding, a law firm with 24 offices worldwide. “We did a lot of preparatory work, reaching out to our offices to verify whether or not people were still there,” she said. “We also took time to understand what our end users needed, since usually it’s not the attorneys who answer the phone. Without that advance work, we couldn’t have completed the project in our short time frame.”
Deliver multimodal training
Provide multiple training modes, advised Steve Panton, enterprise infrastructure and operations senior director, Gannett Fleming, an architectural engineering company. “It’s always a challenge to get on someone’s schedule, so we offered video, in-person and webinar training,” he said. “We also spent time with administrative staffers so they could be subject matter experts.” In response to a question, he added that the training modalities were equally accepted by users.
Focus on the benefits
When planning your migration, don’t take features and functions away from people, said Papaleo. Instead, focus on the benefits of the move for your users. If you can simplify and standardize your go-forward platform, you will be on the right path.