Everyone’s doing it!!! While peer pressure is never the answer, I would bet that every company has moved from a premise-based system to a cloud-based system for at least one if not many technologies. But why is everyone doing it? If you look across the board, email servers, security, data storage, CRM systems, accounting systems, phone systems, contact centers, etc. So why would you leave a tried and true on-premise system and move to a cloud-based contact center solution?
There are many reasons, some are based on the fear of the limitations or complexity of the premise-based system and why you want to leave that scenario. Other reasons are the lure of the benefits, the strengths of the cloud-based system, and the flexibility that it brings.
But First A Quick Dad Rant About The Cloud
A quick personal story to share as it relates to premise vs cloud. My college-aged daughter called me up the other day and asked about adding Parallels or Bootcamp to her Macbook so she could access and use some Windows programs she needed for some of her college classes. We talked about it for a little bit. She ended up taking her laptop to the University IT Computer lab for help and they loaded Bootcamp on her Mac.
She came back to pick it up a little later and went to use it and none of her files or documents or photos were there. All gone. The IT help desk had wiped her OS off and installed a new OS and Bootcamp on her laptop. Did they back it up? No. That would be too easy or obvious. They scrambled for a bit, but nothing was there. When asked if she had a backup of her stuff, she did, but it was on an external hard drive but it had been quite some time since it was backed up, so it was essentially not helpful at all.
She called me, almost in tears, not quite, but very near tears, and told me that all her work and projects for her classes and her program were gone. Looking back at past sent emails or talking to past professors asking for a copy of her work was not going to be effective and definitely was not going to recover much that way. Luckily, some other more creative folks or experienced folks in the IT department are trying to recover all or most of her files and revert back, so we are hopeful it will turn out OK.
So during this, my Dad DNA kicked in and I emphasized to her again about backing up to a cloud service (Dropbox, Google Drive, iDrive, Box and so many more options). That way it is automatic, it is accessible from anywhere, it gives you comfort.
OK, Dad rant over and back to our purpose. In particular, I wanted to focus on the reasons we are seeing our clients move from a Genesys premise-based Contact Center like PureConnect or PureEngage to Genesys Cloud. The first few examples below focus on the desire to leave the premise system while the other examples focus on the lure of the benefits of the cloud. There are many more reasons and you probably have some specific for your needs and based on your experiences, but here are some we have noticed.
#1 Avoiding Expensive On-Premise Upgrades
There comes a time in every IT person’s life that a server needs to be upgraded, or an appliance is end of life or end of support and that is not a great place to be. There is the expense of the hardware, there is the expense of time and effort to research and make a decision on what to get, there is the question, will this new piece of hardware be supported by the older software of the contact center, and finally there is the expense of the actual time and effort to replace that hardware. This is a drag for every IT person that has had to do this. This is a great motivator to ditch the premise-based systems.
#2 Getting Rid of the Baggage That Comes With An On-Premise Contact Center
With premise-based systems, there is so much baggage or complexity that has built up over the years. Clients are a little apprehensive honestly to move to the Cloud for this very reason, but at the same time, they look forward with the hope that the new solution will have less baggage and complexity. Over the years the configurations have changed, the call flows and the IVRs have been adjusted, tweaked, changed, and customized.
Custom integrations have taken many painstaking hours to test and deploy. But that fear is quickly alleviated or lessened as clients learn how easy RESTful API integrations are. Genesys Cloud is a fantastic all-in-one solution that checks the boxes for many organizations to simplify their lives and helps get rid of the baggage and customizations.
#3 Democratizing Day-to-Day Tasks In The Contact Center
Democratizing = make (something) accessible to everyone or others. One of the huge problems enterprise IT departments face today is supporting more technologies with fewer resources. Most IT staff wear many hats and are required to know and support so many different technologies. They are a necessity and a huge benefit to your organization. But with that comes lack of focus or lack of time or not being as nimble and quick as your contact center needs them to be. It’s not their fault, it’s just the way life is these days with cyber security, hacks, email, PCs, internet connections, WiFi, and so much more.
With your premise-based contact center, your day-to-day frontline supervisors and managers generally have to put in a request to IT to make a change to the flow or queue, or configuration. That takes time on the contact center managers part, but also on the IT folks. Then the back and forth and the evaluation of the potential risks or if it can even be done happens. Why not have a system that allows frontline staff to make changes on the fly that will benefit their team. This alone has been a blessing for everyone we have spoken to.
There are still processes to follow, but for many of the basic day-to-day tweaks and changes, our clients are really liking the simplicity of the Genesys Cloud solution that allows them to easily make a change without having to have a degree or certificate or IT background to do so. IT is loving it since they have so many hats to wear in a day anyway, if the frontline staff can make a change that benefits them right then and there, that is reason enough to help companies be more efficient and noble and agile to their customer.
#4 New Capabilities & Features With Genesys Cloud
Genesys Cloud has so many new and improved features and they continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in Research and Development to provide new features and new ways to do things each week. With your premise-based Contact Center, it takes major software updates, hardware upgrades, migrations, integrations, and lots of time and money to get new features and enhancements. As we learned from them on our podcast Genesy Cloud is releasing new features every week and you don’t even have to do a server upgrade or install new software. What a time saver this has been for companies to stay relevant and adapt quickly and offer better or faster customer service for your customers.
#5 Enhancing Workforce Management AND Quality Management AND Quality Assurance And 1,000 More Capabilities
As mentioned earlier, Genesys Cloud is an all-in-one solution and offers native WFM and QM/QA capabilities that are built right into the system and the flow. Wow, this is one less integration or a third party you need to manage. We all know that staffing is the number 1 (choose your adjective) expense/headache/challenge/opportunity every Contact Center manager has to deal with. With the current COVID-19 pandemic we are in, we are hearing a lot from our clients about the turnover of staff and trying to find and hire the right person to represent your company, as well as offering Work From Home to your staff.
This is a big challenge to maintain the quality of interactions with your customers. So the lure of the native WFM and QM/QA capabilities is huge. You can plan for and manage all your shift trades, schedules, busy times, slow times as well as listen in and evaluate your staff all within the same application. The user can listen to feedback and see comments about their calls. And no need to buy yet another solution to make your life any more difficult, it is built right in.
Helping Companies Migrate Their Contact Center To The Cloud Is What We Do
Well, there are many reasons to consider migrating from your Genesys PureConnect or PureEngage systems to Genesys Cloud, you are each unique and different in your experience and capabilities. Let us help you plan for this migration. Let’s talk about the potential risks but also the benefits to help ensure a successful migration. We have helped many make this transition already and will help you evaluate the path forward to the Cloud. Schedule some time with us today, and I promise you won’t hear any further Dad Rants!!
