In the unified communications world, enterprises spend considerable time and research trying to determine the ideal UCaaS and CCaaS solutions for their business. The discovery phase of that journey can take months or years to identify viable vendors that meet an organization’s specific needs. At the same time, stakeholders experience enormous pressure to make the correct decision.
It makes you wonder. How do business leaders get it wrong so often?
In our experience, it frequently comes down to the sales process and the many questions that are left unasked. While the big stuff like Microsoft Teams and Salesforce integrations receive plenty of attention, other essential functionality like IP paging or E911 can slip through the cracks. Then there are challenges like rolling out at scale, ensuring a high adoption rate, and company-wide training; any of these aspects can completely derail an otherwise successful migration.
Here are a few tips to keep your cloud communications project on track for a better chance of a successful migration:
Set Clear Project Expectations from the Start
A large-scale business operation may have hundreds of departments spread across dozens of sites in various geographic areas. While each of them may commonly use productivity features such as phone, file sharing, and chat, there’s a good chance these locations also have unique requirements.
Maybe one office location requires hot desking while another requires fax lines or other specialized integrations. For the UCaaS project to succeed, all these unique requirements must be presented early in the discovery process and accounted for in a final solution.
Insist on a Structured, Needs-Based Evaluation
Once project expectations are clearly defined, it’s essential for any evaluation process must center around those specific needs. As we all know, sales teams for large vendors are excellent at showing off product highlights while minimizing deficiencies within their products. Every part of the UCaaS sales process is designed to follow that narrative, even when it is not in the client’s best interests.
At Converged Technology Professionals, we reject those narratives completely by demanding vendors align calls and demonstrations with our clients’ needs-based assessments. An unbiased third-party advisor can expedite timelines and ensure conversations are focused on what matters while also pointing out potential challenges and other pitfalls.
Get Clarity on the Full Implementation Process
A UCaaS implementation primarily goes sideways after contract signing. While many of the leading UCaaS providers are based in the U.S., their implementation teams reside overseas. Implementation teams are given very little insight into what was promised in earlier phases. As a result, the final deliverable can have numerous oversights that require substantial effort to rectify.
The last thing anyone wants on a project of this caliber is to rely on overseas support.
The easiest way to avoid this problem is to clarify how the migration will happen, document timelines, and provide detailed information on the system design, programming, and testing phases. Which goes back full circle to being thorough in the initial discovery phase and understanding the unique challenges each business faces while keeping those clearly defined objectives throughout the sales and implementation processes.
