The cloud’s numerous business benefits, including reduced costs, increased agility, enhanced scalability, and improved efficiency continue to disrupt nearly every industry. As a result, cloud-based services are being seen and embedded within a growing number of business processes. As customers continue to demand flexible and global interactions, businesses are realizing the benefits of these modern communication offerings over traditional legacy telecom services.
Despite the growing popularity of cloud-based communication services, some businesses are still reluctant to make the switch because of investments made in current infrastructure and staff. It can be understandably unnerving for a business to make the move from utilizing traditional telecom services to leveraging a new cloud-based service provider. However, if done with thoughtful and strategic planning to understand available migration options, the transition from traditional telecom to cloud-based communications services can be smooth and well worth the numerous benefits and improvements.
Below are three tips for businesses considering transitioning calling and messaging services to the cloud.
1. Create realistic objectives and anticipate challenges. Before starting the migration process, work with the selected cloud-based communications services provider to develop a comprehensive plan that will guide the process and provide structure.
Having a plan in place will provide oversight and help the IT team stay on track during migration. The plan should include phased steps of the migration and address questions such as:
- What features should be migrated first and why?
- How and when should the migration be communicated internally to employees?
- What type of training will be provided to employees?
- How will service changes be communicated externally to customers and partners, ensuring transparency on any sort of changes or delays?
2. Pilot and test solutions. To ensure migration to the cloud is successful, it is essential to pilot and test services before going live. Testing enables the business to familiarize itself with new features at its own pace to ensure the new offering is fully operational before going live to customers and employees. Further, testing services within a sandbox or other controlled environment creates a safe atmosphere for any errors. After testing has been successfully completed, it is a best practice to provide trial offerings to select customers, letting them know the parameters of the pilot and new features.
If a business takes a hybrid approach, implementing cloud migration on a step-by-step process, it can also test features independently. This phased approach can help the business hone in and become familiar with the workings of each type of communication feature throughout the migration process.
3. Evaluate customer needs and be proactive. In today’s competitive and customer-focused marketplace, a business must stay on top of its customers’ changing needs and preferences to remain successful and ensure brand loyalty. Customers expect instant and seamless voice and text services, anything less can negatively impact a company’s reputation, resulting in customers eyeing competitive solutions.
After making the switch to the cloud and migrating calling and messaging services, a business should make an active effort to continue evaluating its customers’ needs and anticipate any shift in preferences. Foreseeing customers’ preferences will help ensure the long-term success of the migration and the resulting offerings. Furthermore, given the scalability of cloud telecom services, once a company has migrated, it can easily integrate customer engagement capabilities into existing applications to foster better collaboration, creating a more tailored and unified customer experience.
To avoid common pitfalls and ensure a smooth migration from legacy telecom to a cloud-based communication solution, businesses need to develop and follow a well-planned strategy while also anticipating changes in the industry to stay ahead of competitors.
