Effective communication solutions have always been a priority for every business, presenting an excellent opportunity for resellers and partners. However, in the last few years, the business communications landscape has evolved, driven by factors like transformative technology, changing workplaces, and increasing customer expectations.

Now, the cloud has become the key to remaining scalable, agile, and innovative in the modern world. This year, McKinsey expects enterprises to be dedicating 80% of their IT hosting budget to the cloud.

Telecommunications resellers have a unique chance to boost recurring revenue, enhance customer loyalty, and retain key clients, by transitioning to the cloud Managed Service Provider (MSP) model. The challenge is figuring out how to make the migration as seamless as possible.

How to Make the Move into the Cloud

Digital transformation is happening at a rapid pace across every industry. Companies need to evolve and adapt quickly to an ever-changing market, making the scalability of the cloud crucial.

At the same time, legacy phone systems, such as TDM, are falling out of favor, meaning traditional legacy resellers risk losing essential customers. By providing enterprise customers with the step-by-step support they need for a comprehensive migration plan, you can unlock new sources of revenue, retain customers, and boost your reputation with end-users.

What’s more, transitioning into the cloud gives you an opportunity to maintain your competitive edge, by ensuring you can adapt to market trends like the rise of AI, and the convergence of UCaaS and CCaaS, with a versatile ecosystem.

According to Yeastar’s Head of Global Sales, Arya Zhou:

“Transitioning to a cloud MSP model has become increasingly crucial for resellers who want to continue to compete in an evolving landscape. The cloud gives resellers the freedom and agility they need to adapt rapidly to changing market dynamics.”

So, how do you get started?

Step 1: Identify the Cloud Features You’ll Offer

Many companies making the transition to the cloud want to do more than simply replicate their current ecosystem in a more flexible environment. They want to be able to unify different aspects of their technology stack, such as their unified communication and contact center tools, and gain access to exciting new features.

Examine the requirements of your customer base, and ask yourself what crucial features will enhance your value offering, such as:

  • Unified communication and collaboration: Innovative solutions for business communications that support anywhere work, mobile apps, screen sharing, unified presence, file sharing, and instant chat.
  • Contact center capabilities: Access to tools for managing CX, from call queuing and routing to real-time performance dashboards and wallboards, omnichannel messaging, and ticket assignment.
  • Innovations and integrations: Opportunities to enhance your customer’s stack with AI-powered tools, CRM and productivity app integrations, and flexible customization options.

A comprehensive solution should equip an agile workforce for continuous productivity, with a wide range of UC tools, CX solutions, video conferencing services, and integrations.

Step 2: Find a Flexible Cloud Platform Provider

Once you know which features you’re going to offer your customers as a cloud MSP, the next step is finding a provider that can help you deliver the right results. The right solution should help you offload significant capital expenditures, with a turnkey offering, expedite your time to market with easy-to-use assets and ensure high availability. Look for solutions like:

  • A multi-instance architecture: Multi-instance infrastructure helps to reduce the risk of large numbers of customers being affected by system outages, boosting reliability. It can also offer greater flexibility and control over configuration, upgrades, and customization.
  • Centralized management platforms: A comprehensive customer management portal ensures you can quickly expedite time to market, by purchasing the hosting packages they need and customizing them according to customer requirements.
  • Remote management: With remote management solutions, you’ll be able to easily manage your customer’s PBX solution to address any technical solutions and maintain high levels of customer satisfaction.

Step 3: Ensure Scalability

As the business communications landscape continues to evolve, the needs of your customers will undoubtedly change. To ensure you can strengthen your relationships with clients, you need to be able to offer a service that grows with them.

The right cloud provider should provide a highly scalable experience, allowing you to create PBX instances in minutes. What’s more, choosing a provider with a global reach will allow you to select the preferred hosting services that are closest to your customers.

Some vendors, like Yeastar, even give you access to a comprehensive widget-based dashboard, where you can track real-time status insights into your customer’s PBX. This means you can easily schedule tasks for backups, restores, and upgrades, without disrupting your customers. Plus, Yeastar gives you the freedom to integrate their service with all the new tools and resources your customer adopts.

Step 4: Trial Your Technology

Testing your cloud-based technology before you complete your migration is crucial to ensure you can avoid any potential issues that might harm your reputation with customers. Leaders in the UCaaS market will offer resellers a chance to trial their solution, with a full tour of how the system works, and the features on offer.

Use this opportunity to test every aspect of your system, from internal and external calling features to audio quality, endpoint compatibility and integrations. Make sure your ecosystem is fully secured, with a multi-layer security design, support for two-factor authentication, and data encryption.

Additionally, take a moment to assess your network capabilities, as the quality of your calls will be highly dependent on connection reliability and data bandwidth. If you encounter any issues, reach out to your provider for guidance.

Step 5: Plan and Implement the Migration

Finally, you’re ready to implement the migration process. Think carefully about how you’re going to roll out your new cloud-based services. Are you going to replace all legacy solutions instantly, or gradually migrate various customers into the cloud based on their needs?

Take advantage of the assets your provider offers to resellers and partners, from provisioning templates to automated task scheduling, and training. Additionally, ensure you have a plan in place for monitoring the performance of your solution at all times. The right provider should allow you to set up alarms and notifications that inform you when issues occur.

Migrating to the Cloud MSP Model

The business communications market is packed with opportunities for resellers. However, to ensure you can attract new revenue, retain customers, and grow, you need to be willing to embrace the cloud.

As demand for “as-a-service” offerings continues to grow, shifting to the cloud MSP model gives you the opportunity to build a predictable, recurring revenue stream, with endless opportunities for innovation. A vendor like Yeastar can help you take full advantage of this market momentum.

With an award-winning cloud PBX portfolio, open ecosystem, and 100% channel-focused commitment, Yeastar helps partners thrive in the cloud.



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