As contact centers evolved from call centers, the need to manage an increasing number of contact channels has driven the creation of a highly complex operating environment. In fact, it is this complexity that is now making cloud-based solutions a viable option for many businesses.
Now, with contact centers striving to remain agile and responsive to changing customer demands, an on-demand approach is seen as offering a focused, skilled operating environment.
Because complex contact center technology is the core competency of on-demand offerings, businesses can take advantage of these lower-cost, lower-risk alternatives as a way to implement new solutions. In addition, businesses operating at higher volumes and with more sophisticated needs are also turning to the cloud to expand the infrastructure capacity of their existing on-premise solutions.
Up-front planning always results in greater payoff. Hosted solutions are no exception.
Before developing an on-demand roadmap, businesses need to identify potential challenges and specific objectives such as the appropriate mix of premise-based and cloud-based solutions, the timeframe for transitioning and any concerns of department stakeholders that exist outside of the contact center, including IT and financial personnel.
At its core, the on-demand planning phase can be broken down into two fundamental steps.
Step One: Identify the key factors driving the business need
Understanding the triggers for the infrastructure or application refresh will help determine the scope of the new hosted deployment. For example, is it motivated by an existing product lifecycle event? Is it being prompted by the launch of new products or services? Is it part of a process optimization initiative?
In addition, consider asking yourself these five questions to determine whether a hosted solution is the right fit for your business.
Step Two: Explore the dependencies between contact center systems
As mentioned earlier, systems in the contact center environment are complex and frequently share complicated relationships and interdependencies. Once these have been mapped, perform a cost-benefit analysis of various applications that are candidates for cloud delivery. The applications with the strongest business case should be your first choice for cloud deployment.
If you’re interested in knowing more, please join us Tuesday, October 30 for the free webinar Strategic Considerations for On-Demand Contact Centers with special guest Brendan Read of Frost & Sullivan. Register now, and make plans to attend!
The post A Two-Step Process for Evaluating On-Demand Considerations appeared first on Aspect Blogs.