Even in Communications Tech, Experience Is the Best Teacher

By Melissa Swartz

One of my favorite things about Enterprise Connect is the opportunity to hear from end users about what is really going on in the industry. While it’s great to hear announcements of new technological capabilities, I find that it’s even more valuable to hear about the “on the ground” challenges and experiences consultants and technologists have weathered.

This year, I’m privileged to participate in two sessions with end users who are willing to share their experiences and lessons learned from migration projects. The first session, “UCaaS Case Studies: How Your Peers Made the Migration,” has practitioners sharing what drove their migration and how they made their decisions; how their services and infrastructure have evolved; what the cost implications have been. The second session, “Enterprise Leaders Speak Out: Voice Migration--Critical Issues for a (Still) Critical Capability,” will be a free-ranging, open discussion on what makes a strong enterprise voice strategy, how companies are moving forward on voice, and how the future is evolving for voice.

As we prepared for the sessions, I found it interesting that both groups brought up two topics that they feel it’s important to cover.

The first topic that both groups cite is the importance of the end user adoption and training process. After all, there’s no point in migrating to a new technology if no one uses it. This comes up in every project that I work on, and I’ve found that there is a huge difference among organizations when it comes to in-house processes for supporting the process. Some companies have communication teams and procedures in place for this effort. At the other end of the spectrum, I have worked with organizations where we have had to create a plan and process as part of the project because there is no existing internal method or system.

The second topic everyone raised is the evolution of the current support model, services, and skill sets, and the changes needed to support a cloud-based infrastructure. A move to the cloud doesn’t mean that you can get by with less support staff. You must continue to manage costs and licensing, and to support your end users. Monitoring, management and troubleshooting are different and may require your team to develop new skills. You may have integrations or APIs to support. Managing the changes needed is essential, and it’s much better to have a plan instead of just muddling through.

The panelists have worked through these issues, and more. They offer insight and valuable advice as they share the lessons they have learned along the way. And they will be available after the sessions to continue the discussion and answer specific questions.