Traditionally, implementing a new phone system or contact center involves choosing between an onsite PBX or a cloud solution. If that's solely what your portfolio consists of, one of those options might suffice.
But in a digital age where flexibility is crucial, every business's unique requirements will require something in between.
For example, some will use the same vendor for cloud and on-prem solutions. In contrast, others will want to begin their digital transformation journey by only migrating the moving parts of the business to the cloud.
Many will also use an in-house PBX and a cloud solution in conjunction because they don't have the investment, resources, or desire to migrate all communication systems to the cloud at the same time.
What is Hybrid Unified Communications?
A hybrid communications system solves these problems by mixing and matching the best features of these tried and trusted approaches. Primarily, a hybrid strategy offers businesses the best of both worlds and can help minimize business disruption.
It also enables organizations to slowly transition to a much more powerful, feature-rich, and future-proof IP telephony platform as they outgrow their traditional PBX system.
A hybrid solution also enables a business to maintain control over its in-house infrastructure. But also offer greater flexibility by leveraging additional features in the cloud. However, companies can keep existing hardware and continue to manage their telephony and communications platform.
The good news is that your current PBX should no longer hold you back from moving all your communications to the cloud at once.
Hybrid solutions provide a viable option for utilizing the benefits of a cloud contact center for those who not willing to get rid of their onsite PBX. Hybrid environments help leaders build a halfway house solution that is suitable for both short- and long-term business goals.
The Argument for Hybrid Contact Centers
The combination of on-premise and cloud enables businesses to flex as requirements around computing needs and costs evolve as flexibility is becoming essential.
Businesses that recognize the importance of improving the CX but feel their onsite PBX is holding them back are obvious candidates for a hybrid solution. Equally, companies that want to deploy remote contact center agents from customer service teams without other parts of the business will also find value in having the best of both worlds at their fingertips.
The result should simplify how your customers seamlessly interact with you across an increasing number of communication platforms. Call center agents for example can also finally be location independent and have the same experience wherever they choose to log in.
Under a hybrid solution, contact centers can still be connected with the traditional pbx system, but the contact center application itself including advanced call routing, queues, IVR routing, internal communications and digital forms of customer engagement can all be through a hosted cloud contact center application.
A Halfway House
A hybrid PBX is often compared to a halfway house that enables you to enjoy the best of both worlds. It also removes the daunting prospect of diving headfirst into a new VoIP solution when your current phone system is working fine.
It's also important to remember that in some situations, a hybrid can make the process of transitioning to a full VoIP and hosted PBX solution much easier in the future.
Many businesses have complex security requirements and government regulations that require onsite control. Others will have a PBX platform that can continue to work for at least another five years, making it difficult to justify the cost of an expensive migration of everything.
Now more than ever, there needs to be a significant ROI on any tech upgrade. Although we believe the advancement of cloud solutions has leaped light years in technology and encourage businesses to plan for a eventual cloud migration, we’d be lying if we said this is the only option that makes sense for every business at this point.
That’s why we offer free cost-comparison analysis so, you can see the numbers for yourself and have a clear idea of the financial ROI on making that decision.
A phased approach can help businesses migrate from expiring solutions to new cloud ones over an extended period. Your migration to the cloud should be a journey rather than a destination. For a complete migration checklist, check out check out our migration guide here.
A hybrid solution can remove the pressure and enables your business to embark on that journey at your own pace.
Collaboration Tools Fit for A Digital Age
The average person uses around 36 cloud-based services every single day. Businesses that are serious about serving their customers with the digital experiences they expect need to explore new ways of working. The Hybrid approach offers the ability to leverage cloud-based services on an as and when basis.
A new range of communication and collaboration tools can empower your contact center agents to serve your customers more efficiently. Another massive benefit of a hybrid approach includes the utilizing of APIs to improve the customer experience. By integrating 3rd party APIs, your organization can deploy technology across all of its communication channels.
You should also remember that you can only improve what you can measure. If a hybrid approach won’t afford you these tools, then you may be better off looking at a whole cloud migration solution.
The introduction of sophisticated analytics will help you unlock the hidden value in your data by thinking bigger than manual observation and monitoring. It can also help you introduce a continuous service improvement mindset across your contact center with real-time statistical dashboards on customer experiences at your disposal.
Finding a Trusted Business Communications Provider
Before considering a hybrid strategy, you must accept that failing to plan is planning to fail. It's not a journey that you should ever take alone. You will need expert advice and guidance in pursuing the right option and the unique requirements of your business.
Before choosing the right contact center platform, it's crucial to find the right support partner with the experience to guide your businesses every step of the way from design to deployment. Your provider should also only work with vendors that offer the best products and customer service, or you could end up making a costly mistake.
For example, we pride ourselves on only working with premier partners such as RingCentral, Mitel, and other carefully selected partners that meet our standards of excellence. That's how we know they will meet yours too. If you would like any advice or request a free cost analysis and demo to explore a hybrid strategy is right for your business let us know.
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