The Secret Behind Enterprises Rapidly Moving Communications To Cloud

"Cloud" – the most trending buzz word in the enterprise world today. It isn’t surprising to hear that some businesses are moving their files to the cloud. Everyone from individuals to the large ventures are doing it, starting from personal exchanges to the business transactions. This big movement of ventures has not only enhanced their development but also granted an unlimited space for storage. These aren’t the two reasons for companies’ rapid movement towards cloud but there are several benefits to add to the list.

Now, organizations have also started moving their communications over to the cloud. RingCentral, provider of cloud-based phone systems, researched that we are working more in locations other than offices, out of which 76% working while travelling and 93% working from home. It’s a past when ‘9 to 5’ work shift was the standard for all and so, cloud-based telephony is supporting enterprises to meet operation costs, productivity, employee satisfaction and customer service. 

There are several communications and collaboration tools available for enterprise communications. But use of multi-tools increases the cost too, making it complex for the IT to install and manage the infrastructure on the locations. As voice over the Internet protocol (VoIP) and cloud technologies have undergone changes, they provide IT with more exciting solution – cloud deployment.

In recent years, organizations have largely invested into cloud computing. As per the recent survey by IDG, a venture capital organization since 2012, around 20% increment was observed in cloud computing investment with the average for big ventures reaching $3.3 million in 2014.  In addition, budget for cloud services is increasing too. For 2015, around one-quarter of enterprise IT budgets have already decided to adopt cloud solutions. The top three factors that forced organizations to implement cloud solutions are reduced ownership costs, deployment speed and the requirement to replace on-premises legacy technology.

Among these, lower ownership and deployment of speed were found to be the common reasons for cloud adoption each with 39% of respondents. Further, 77% companies comment that cloud solutions enables them to support their mobile network. 74% say it gives faster access to advanced features and capabilities. According to 70% firms, cloud allows reassigning their IT/ telecom staff to more strategic tasks. About 66% ventures comment, it provides greater flexibility during the business growth or downsizing. 66% think, cloud eliminates the hassle of integrating products from multiple vendors. As per 61% ventures, cost of hosted communications is predictable via cloud.

 But when is the perfect time to move communications to cloud? Here are few points to help you understand when to move communications to cloud –

• Is your company growing speedily or are you moving to a new location?

This is the perfect time when you can move enterprise phone service to the cloud. Thanks to the scalability of cloud-based communication service, as you can future-proof growth and save at least thousand dollars on the requirement of a traditional onsite PBX system. 

• Falling Shortage of Staff, But is High on Demand

To maintain a quality service for voice, data and video is a significant trait for any organization and attrition, staff cuts and skills gaps in an IT department can have a great impact on it. If your enterprise is unable to manage multiple vendors, or is struggling to maintain multiple technology platforms or install distinct communication services then moving to cloud is the best solution. Cloud technology makes it easy for the IT staff to handle communications infrastructure services.

• Customer requires More Flexibility in Handling Incoming Calls

If your business is expanding and incoming call load is increasing, your customers may require handling calls in faster way then it’s time to move towards cloud. Adding call queues, departments, hunt groups and time-of-the-day rules becomes simple with the cloud platform. It will enable the customer to prioritize calls based on department, distribute calls to multiple staff and in general, keep its own customers satisfied by attending to them in proper time.

• Have you undergone a Recent Merge or Acquisition?

When a company undergoes merger, it faces a common problem in handling multiple communications and systems. To maintain these multiple communications networks, requires high expenditure and so, you need to decide on adopting cloud communication services.

• Is your Customer Staff Working from Different Time Zones?

If your customer has staff that is working from different locations like the overseas countries, cloud-based phones can be helpful to them. This can help easily setup business-hour rules to route calls to international staff based on specific time of day. For instance – staff located in Asia may answer calls that would be outside North American business hours.

• Improve your Call Center or Contact Centers

Often enterprises with legacy contact center systems face the problem of their bottom line being negatively impacted, call volume getting capped and their abandon rate getting high. Cloud-based services is the ultimate solution to resolve these problems.

Tips for moving business communications to cloud –

• Learn the reasons for change – The on-premise PBX have facilitated for a long time to businesses, but the environment around it has changed. It has become a painful job to support this aging technology. Keeping the hardware up-to-date has become expensive and complex, making it more of a responsibility than an asset. The PBX which is used currently may lack flexibility and enhanced features to keep up with a distributed workforce and mobile. Ventures that are growing at different locations require phone system that can connect together a dispersed workforce irrespective of their locations. If your firm is facing all these problems then it’s essential to move to cloud.

• Choose a well-established infrastructure – One should choose the cloud-based phone system depending on the business requirements. The major reasons behind firms moving to cloud can be IT and budget risks. Thinking about future risks is also significant since along with the cost cutting, cloud solutions can deduct the hidden future costs as the company expands – whether it is a telecom server at a new location, new features or the need to add new lines or cards when you hire new employees.

• Make use of implementation resources – Use of implementation resources is vital in order to ensure easiest transition possible. Getting a deep knowledge of the software is essential for enhanced user experience that results in business efficiency.

• Take the benefits of free trial – Complete usage of free trials will help you learn specifications that are most suitable for your venture from array of providers. While using free trial, you will understand what you really need from a cloud-based system to gain the best possible impact on the organization. If you are planning to expand your workforce or decline infrastructure management problems and expenses or looking to make multi-location management simple, cloud-based systems will best cater you.

• Expertise end users – To implement the cloud-based communications systems, you will need to get trained for entire business. In order to reap maximum benefits, you will be required to address different business functions that will be impacted by the cloud adoption. Once you get trained means, you have taken your workforce to higher level as well as authorized any user to make urgent changes to system through simple web interface. With cloud, employees will get direct access to the system, eliminating the headache of dealing with the third party or wait for them to make the changes.

As we are aware that working environment and employee habits have changed in recent years. Technology has always adapted to meet these changes and will continue in future. To experience the benefits of the new technology that can affect customers, workforce and costs, organizations need to take an initiative to move communications to the cloud.