The Real Cost of Not Upgrading Your Communications

8×8 explores 8 reasons to leave legacy systems behind and upgrade to cloud-based communication solutions now, rather than later.

Deprioritizing your communications upgrades is a false economy. In the long run, it ends up costing you more.

Understanding the hidden costs of your on-premises solution, and the benefits of a cloud solution, can therefore combat the urge to delay and save you money on the total cost of ownership (TCO) of your system.

8 Reasons to Leave Legacy Systems Behind

1. Cost of Older IT Systems

Two-thirds of decision makers in tech and finance confess that spending on upkeep projects for older IT systems does not ‘move the needle’, according to report ‘The Real Costs of Doing Nothing’.

If you haven’t made the move away from your incumbent system, be honest with yourself and your finances. You know there’s a more cost-effective solution out there.

2. Return on Investment (ROI)

The return on investment for a cloud-based communications system is 4.01 times more than on-premises comms systems, Forbes reporting has highlighted. The cloud-based solution you are considering will almost certainly be more beneficial to your bottom line, and the ROI data shows that.

3. Increased Productivity

Sixty percent of businesses that migrated to a unified communications (UCaaS) solution said the increase in productivity was their main driver, we found in our ‘State of Business Communications’ report.

Meanwhile, 59% of businesses who switched to a contact center as a service (CCaaS) solution also said that productivity increase was their primary motivation for making the change. Productivity increases from cloud solutions will help save you money while increasing output.

4.  AI Automation

Companies with 25–500 employees could save between $1.3 and $6 million in agent compensation by using a cloud-based solution that is equipped with easily deployable AI, according to research from Metrigy.

AI automates many tasks. Cloud-based, AI-enabled platforms will stay cutting edge as AI capabilities rapidly grow too. The opportunity cost of not keeping up is significant.

5. Improved Customer Experience (CX)

Customers who have the best experience with a company return. They spend 140% more compared to those with negative experiences, a Harvard Business Review study found.

With on-premises solutions slow to upgrade, failing to keep up with customer experience (CX) expectations contributes to lost revenue.

Cloud-based solutions allow companies to create customer experiences that exceed expectations across many channels and boost your bottom line.

6. Cost Savings

Ongoing maintenance and personnel costs for on-premises solutions can be between 50–85% of the total cost of the system, according to Kenny and Company.

This large portion of the overall costs could be saved by using a cloud-based solution that does not require in-house expertise to manage, update, and maintain. You also don’t have physical assets that are depreciating in value.

7. Revenue Increase

Integrating all of your communications into one cloud-based provider can lead to an 99.6% revenue increase, compared to a 55.7% increase for on-premises architectures, according to Robin Gareiss, analyst at Metrigy research.

The cost of the older architecture inhibits revenue growth, whereas using UCaaS and CCaaS from a single provider can help to stimulate revenue growth.

8.  Reduce Total Cost of Ownership

Seventy-six percent of IT and contact centre leaders said that integrating their UCaaS and CCaaS also optimized their total cost of ownership and sped up their time to value (TTV), our State of Business Communications report reveals.

Many are already benefiting from the cost savings of moving away from on-premises, multi-vendor set ups.

Moving to the Cloud Is Best for Your Budget

Putting off migrating to the cloud will delay your productivity increases and keep you paying maintenance costs.

You’ll miss out on all the downstream benefits like improved collaboration, decision making, and transformed customer experience too.

And, given the AI wave that is helping to wash away waste and automate repetitive tasks, changing to a cloud-based solution can help you keep pace with competition from larger organisations.

This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of 8x8 – View the Original Article

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8x8 is transforming the future of business communications as a leading Software-as-a-Service provider of voice, video, chat, contact centre, and enterprise-class API solutions, powered by one global cloud communications platform.

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Call Centre Helper is not responsible for the content of these guest blog posts. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Call Centre Helper.

Author: 8x8