Don’t Lock Down Your Growth

In an all-too-familiar movie scenario, an unsuspecting jumbo-jet passenger—who may have flown a two-seater prop plane years ago—is tossed into the cockpit and must safely land a plane full of panicked, screaming passengers. While one of the engines is on fire.

For many IT leaders, this Hollywood situation feels all too real, having been burdened with the sudden responsibility of migrating business and contact centre communications to the cloud. In-house IT expertise is typically broad, not deep, and for good reason: many IT functions, like security and governance, are too important to trust in the hands of generalists. And IT leaders are learning overnight that communications and collaboration technology falls into this same category.

YouTube DIY videos and out-of-date PDFs are no safe way to land in the cloud. Your company’s business and contact centre communications are far too important to risk on maybe getting it right. After all, will your customers patiently wait while you work out the bugs? Are your competitors already in the cloud, waiting to take that business from you?

Evaluate your IT staff’s capabilities. Are you confident they can plan, execute, and optimise a cloud communications migration without business disruption, all while keeping up with day-to-day responsibilities? If you are unsure whether you and your team can do it on your own, it’s time to have a discussion with your prospective cloud communications provider.

Would you take a chance with your infrastructure or security? Why gamble on your company’s entire inbound and outbound communications? DIY is great when you have plenty of time. But we’re past the early bread baking, urban gardening days of lockdown. As businesses transition to long-term adaptation, being late to the game means not staying in business.

8×8 asked their Central Region Director of Professional Services Brian Myers why people use 8×8’s rapid deployment services. “The main reason clients want professional services is because they want their solution done right the first time. The risk of do-overs is too great, because you could lose ground to competitors or diminish your customer satisfaction rating.” Kind of simple, when you think of it that way.

What keeps you up at night? Is it the burden of keeping your whole organisation running? Is it staying ahead of your competitors? Is it being profitable? If you could confidently, cost-effectively hand off some of that burden, would you do it? Bringing in the experts is not a sign of weakness. In fact, partnering with specialists will make your business stronger—ensuring the job is done right, on time and on budget—and let you focus on leading. More restful sleep probably won’t hurt, either.

When speed is critical to project success, whether for saving money or lives, teaming up with cloud communications consultants can make a big difference. Qualifacts, a Tennessee-based electronic health records provider for behavioural health and human services, determined it needed a more resilient and flexible communications platform following a devastating tornado in its hometown of Nashville, in the midst of COVID-19. They partnered with experts from 8×8 to get it done right and fast.

In light of COVID-19 and the UK Government’s mandate to work from home where possible, the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham Council needed to take swift and unprecedented action to protect its contact centre staff, all while keeping vital services running for its residents. And its legacy, on-premises contact centre system wasn’t up to the task. The council selected 8×8 to rapidly transition its entire contact centre operation onto a cloud platform. In just two weeks, Barking and Dagenham Council had migrated all of its office-based agents to remote work. And while 8×8 rose to the short-term adjustment, it also prepared the organisation for long-term change. Read the whole Barking and Dagenham Council story.

Also in the UK, Activate Group Limited (AGL) fleet management services transitioned 200 contact centre agents to remote work in less than 24 hours. Read the full AGL story.

Deploying cloud communications and contact centres is not about cookie-cutter solutions that promise low price but sacrifice long-term value. These business-critical applications require a migration methodology with a personalised approach—one that won’t interrupt your business or your customer engagement. Getting it right means building a system that rapidly addresses what you need today, and then building a platform that can adapt to whatever the future might bring.