Signs your premise software is about to become obsolete

Now, while we haven’t come as far as Michael J. Fox ripping through the streets on a hoverboard, most modern consumers expect a level of digital transformation across their customer experiences. And this is a demand that hits home for every call center leader.

So why, in 2019, is an estimated 70-80 percent of the market still rocking premise-based contact center platforms?

For many, they fail to see the warnings signaling a need for change, and sooner or later your C-level leadership is going to demand greater innovation to meet rising consumer service expectations.

Will your premise-based technology platform allow you to move forward with confidence? Here’s what to look for.

THE SIGNS YOUR PREMISE SOFTWARE IS OBSOLETE:

1) Unpredictable costs from your premise solution

A premise-based solution requires a huge commitment not only to your organization’s product vision but in your wallet, too. Companies must decide if they view technology as a capital investment to be renewed as needed, or as an ongoing operating cost, such as a cloud solution, which can be budgeted each year and refined along the way. 

One approach can be better than the other depending on the scenario, but if your organization invests in a physical system rather than the cloud, only to discover it fails to keep you competitive with industry standards, you’ve just taken a huge price tag and transformed it into a sunk cost. 

Assuming you or someone you know has already invested in the premise based solution, you are likely struggling with the reality that you have already bought your premise based licensing and to move to the cloud would be much more expensive then your current system support costs. We have this exact conversation with many companies so we know the struggle is real. But what is your current system truly costing you? 

Do you employ full time telephony experts? Do you pay for T1 charges? What are you paying for your telco services overall? Do you maintain dual licensing with automatic failovers, and is your IT staff fully prepared to handle systems going down during an outage? When was the last time you tested it? Assuming there is downtime for failover, which often there is, then what is an outage cost for your organization?

By subscribing to a service model rather than purchasing hardware, the overall cost of your investment becomes predictable and easier to control. You can maintain flexibility across industry changes without sacrificing overall quality, as cloud providers are more incentivized to upgrade with better features to retain your business year-over-year. Essentially, the vendors take on the costs for the infrastructure and you can repurpose your often overworked IT staff to focus on process improvement, customer experience improvement and revenue generating projects to move your company ahead.

2) Your call center technology stalls out 

Many organizations are forced into action once their legacy solution goes past the point of no return.

Many premise based call center systems are managed with ongoing development, middleware and architecture updates to keep them viable longer, often past recommended terms. These “band-aids” add to the system’s shelf life and can help organizations avoid investing in a new, more agile solution before they’re ready. But this strategy is a “bend-before-it-breaks” approach that offers only short-term resolution.

Just think of your premise system like any car you’ve ever owned — no matter how cool or well maintained a car may be, eventually all the premium oil changes and brake replacements won’t be enough. At some point, when the wheels fall off, you’ll need a call center solution that offers a flexible environment that you can trust long term. And unlike a classic car, the value of your premise based system will not increase as it becomes a collectors item.

These “band-aids” have an expiration date, as new platforms will eventually stop supporting your current form of integration patchwork. When this happens you will be left in firefighting mode, forced to rush the selection and roll out of a new platform. Reaching the point where a shift to the cloud becomes a necessity isn’t no longer a matter of “if” but of “when.” Your best defense is developing a transition plan sooner rather than later.

3) Your premise system is being passed up by modern innovation 

With more third-party vendors stepping into the market and adding efficiency across the enterprise, premise-based system managers have to make tough decisions when considering adding a new technology to elevate the customer experience. 

It’s time consuming and expensive to add new functionality to a physical call center system; and as a result, many call center leaders are left with two unenviable choices: 1) pick and choose new middleware features to bootstrap and integrate into your premise solution, so long as your budget and time permits, or 2) make huge capital investments in premise-based solutions and hope they stay competitive long enough to offer a significant return on investment. 

The wave of innovation is constantly rolling, and a premise-based system makes it harder to stay agile and modern along the way. Even if vendors commit to upgrades via your contract, there is no guarantee the latest product won’t be a separate chargeable module or that it will play well with your current implementations and integrations.

4) Call center security and redundancy is a huge internal challenge

Premise-based solutions require constant IT oversight to ensure disaster-recovery processes are in place, as well as consistent up time maintenance. Plus, the final responsibility of securing consumer data rests on the shoulders of your internal personnel. 

A cloud-based solution offers peace of mind in knowing that a dedicated vendor is in charge of your security procedures, allowing you more time to focus on agent productivity and the larger consumer experience across your call center.

Today’s software vendors know that the reliability and redundancy is a differentiator in the marketplace, so it’s viewed as a top priority with entire teams dedicated to this important task. In most cases, it’s unlikely that an internal IT staff will have the capacity to match this level of attention.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO PREPARE

Ultimately, you need to weigh the pros and cons of your current environment and where you want your technology to take you. Some organizations can make premise-based work for them, many focus exclusively on cloud-supported providers, while others rely on a hybridized model to stitch hardware and software environments together. 

Frankly, you might not know what course of action makes the most sense for your call center unless you have a proper resource to make sense of the marketplace. Let our cloud call center search agents help you make the right move to the cloud — at no charge!

With so many technology options to choose from, Cloud Call Center Search can work with your experienced agents and managers to select the right cloud software technology and vendor partner to drive amazing results — fast!

Work with an agent-focused partner that understands your industry and can identify the right vendors to bring out the best in your call center agents.