Migrating your organization’s communications to the cloud can be a complex process. Cloud-based communications offer numerous benefits to a company and its users, including scalability, efficiency, and flexibility. Cloud adoption is rapidly growing, with end users spending more than $400 billion on the public cloud in 2021. We can expect migrations to rise in 2022 and beyond, with the demand for mobility driven by hybrid and remote employees.
It is essential to consider several factors when migrating communications to the cloud to ensure your organization can thrive. This blog will guide you through the forces driving companies toward digital transformation and the many benefits of cloud-based communications. We will also discuss how this can be advantageous over a traditional private branch exchange (PBX) and the primary factors to consider when migrating your organization’s communications.
Why Are Companies Moving Their Communications To the Cloud?
Since 2020, companies have been rapidly migrating their communications to the cloud. The pandemic was a wake-up call for many organizations that had most of their day-to-day operations and communications happening in a physical office space. These companies had to adapt by shifting their workforces to remote and hybrid work for several months.
For many businesses, remote or hybrid work is here to stay. Even as the need for remote work declines, employees still enjoy the flexibility it offers, and companies are open to adopting these new models because of their beneficial reduction in employee turnover rates.
That said, any organization that offers remote and hybrid opportunities to their employees requires a more flexible and mobile communication system. Migrating an organization’s communications to the cloud provides this and facilitates remote work by increasing accessibility. Cloud-based communications reduce the cost and time burden of maintaining an in-house PBX while offering the advantages of a scalable carrier-grade cloud telecom network.
Related: SIP Trunking: Optimizing Communications for the Hybrid Workforce
How To Leverage Cloud-Based Communications for Optimal Benefits
Cloud-based communications offer exceptional value to companies willing to reposition their communications for maximum benefits. Some of the benefits an organization can take advantage of include:
- Business Growth: Your organization can rapidly increase its user base through cloud communications, allowing it to scale quickly to accommodate product launches, campaigns, and seasonal growth, helping it capture a vast user base.
- Enhanced Customer Service: Operating from a cloud communications system allows your organization to support its users 24/7. Representatives from your company can have more effective conversations with users and gather vital analytics from calls and messages. Cloud communication services allow for integration into business applications or CRM software to improve efficiency and user experience.
- Improved Employee Productivity and Collaboration: Cloud-based communications have the mobility your organization needs to allow employees to work in a hybrid or virtual office setting. Since its business communications are not constrained to a physical office, its workforce can collaborate remotely. Cloud features like voice transcription and call screening can also assist employees and allow them to focus where they are most effective.
Related: Leveraging MSPs to Boost Cloud-Telecom Services
Advantages of Cloud-Based Communications Over an In-House PBX
Cloud-based communications provide several advantages over an in-house PBX. When an organization migrates to the cloud, it can get the reliability of a carrier-grade network without the in-house infrastructure. An ideal provider will have 24/7 uptime, reliability exceeding 99.99%, and a worldwide network to handle voice and message traffic between users. If an organization already has an in-house PBX, some providers allow a business to bring its own devices and carrier to enhance its current communications system.
With much of the maintenance responsibility shifted to the cloud provider, your or your client’s organization can allocate IT resources from maintaining in-house communications to other areas of interest. Cloud-based communications providers do most of the work maintaining and upgrading the equipment, troubleshooting network issues, maintaining the quality of service (QoS), securing the network, and updating software. Providers can also simplify functions like adding new users and phone numbers using a convenient management portal.
In addition, the cloud also offers nearly limitless scalability compared to a PBX. An organization can cost-effectively scale up or down without investing in equipment and resources. On a metered plan (pay-per-use), a company can scale up, only paying for the additional use, and scale back down, all without additional costs. Since many providers operate worldwide, companies can seamlessly reach users throughout the US, Canada, and other regions.
Three Factors to Consider for a Successful Migration to the Cloud
Successful migration to the cloud will depend on three primary factors. It is crucial to consider each aspect before beginning your company or client’s digital transformation. More than 60% of companies that migrate to the cloud still fail to achieve the value they expect, and many fail to migrate their entire system successfully. Your strategy and a good telecom partner are vital to a successful and valuable transition to the cloud.
Is Your Plan Suitable for Your Company’s Cloud Migration Needs?
Create a plan that guides your company’s migration to cloud-based communications from start to finish. Set realistic and achievable goals and leave flexibility in your budget for unexpected costs. Start developing your plan early and use available data to identify the benefits and challenges of your company’s digital transformation. Make a baseline of your key performance indicators (KPIs) and highlight why migrating to the cloud can help improve performance and benefit the business strategy.
Determine how your or your client’s company would benefit from unifying voice and messaging communications in the cloud. Consider the benefits of integrating communications into the organization’s existing app, CRM, or other software solutions, and determine what the company needs from these services. Create a plan that will help you integrate them successfully.
Planning should not only involve the organization’s IT department. Meet with leadership in the company and discuss the benefits of cloud migration and how it can drive operations by offering mobility, flexibility, efficiency, and scalability. This will help gain support, secure a budget, and assist users in the organization as they adapt to the new technology.
Do You Have the Resources to Implement Cloud-Based Communications?
Once you have a strategy to migrate your organization’s communications to the cloud, ensure that you have an adequate budget and IT resources to succeed. Do you have the resources you need, or will you need to provision more talent before you begin the migration? Hiring a consultant can be helpful if you do not have the specialized skills to migrate your organization’s communications to the cloud.
Your budget should be flexible to ensure you can overcome challenges and unexpected costs. Applications may need to be reworked or built from scratch to integrate cloud communication services, and you may need to reconfigure the infrastructure you have in place. However, choosing an excellent cloud-based communications platform can reduce the work required.
Select an Ideal Cloud Communications Platform
The cloud communications platform you select is a primary factor in a successful digital transformation. The platform should offer cost-effective pricing that adds value to the company’s operations. While many cloud communication platforms offer monthly flat-rate subscriptions for voice and messaging services, others allow you to pay for only what your company uses with a metered plan. It is also vital to consider additional fees, such as carrier fees, phone numbers, and porting over existing numbers.
Fortunately, migrating to the cloud saves your organization time and money. Cloud-based communication platforms can reduce infrastructure and maintenance costs by installing, maintaining, and updating the infrastructure on the provider’s side.
Reliability and scalability are crucial to providing high-quality communication throughout your organization’s geographic market locations. The right communications platform should avoid grey routes that may cause carriers to flag your company’s messages as spam and offer failover services to choose a new physical network when a user network is interrupted.
Finding a cloud communication platform with an easy-to-implement API allows you to seamlessly integrate call and voice services into your organization’s CRM or other business systems, or build the capabilities into a solution you offer your customers. Programmable APIs eliminate hours of time developing an API from scratch and provide an effective and valuable solution in a few lines of code.
Choosing a platform with a representational state transfer (REST) API provides improved compatibility with data types and coding languages. It uses fewer resources and conforms with standard HTTP commands like “PUT” and “DELETE.” The platform should also have SDKs, libraries, and other resources to help you implement the API in your preferred programming language and incorporate the services the organization needs.
Get More Value From Your Migration to a Cloud-Based Communication Platform
Migrating communications to the cloud is imperative for many organizations. It can improve flexibility and boost productivity, allowing employees to work in a hybrid or virtual office while still having access to business communications and allowing communications with customers to expand, offering the kind of customer service that has become standard in today’s businesses.
The organization can also grow and enhance its user support, but there are several keys to achieving the value you expect from a migration to the cloud. A successful digital transformation depends on adequate planning, resources, and partnering with the ideal cloud-based communications platform.
Flowroute is your partner for migrating to cloud-based communications. Our reliable and scalable network offers 99.999% uptime. Flowroute eliminates grey routes and provides failover services to ensure network interruptions failover to a new network within 30 seconds. Flowroute can unify your company’s voice, messaging, and fax services on a scalable and cost-efficient metered subscription plan. If your organization is ready to move its communications to the cloud, get started with Flowroute today.
