Building a CCaaS business case

There is a growing momentum in the adoption of cloud-based Contact Centre as a Service  (CCaaS) solutions. However, at the same time, economic conditions are increasing pressure on contact center budgets. To get your CCaaS project and investment signed off you therefore need to create a compelling business case. Following these six steps maximizes your chances of getting your project approved:

1. Understand the cost benefits at a technology level

One of the key advantages of CCaaS is that it can reduce capital costs as you no longer need to buy servers and associated hardware to run your contact center. Similarly, it also removes the need to spend on support and maintenance for IT hardware and software as these costs are transferred to your CCaaS provider. So, make a point of collaborating with your IT team to understand potential savings. Consider the number of users, hardware and storage expenditure, IT time, and software maintenance to get a true picture of where you currently sit. Engaging your IT department in the process will help to secure their support for your plans.

2. Highlight the flexibility and scalability of CCaaS

A central part of the CCaaS business case relates to shifting away from up-front CAPEX investment to ongoing operational expenditure. Notably, the cloud allows you to only pay for what you use, which provides more flexibility in scaling your resources to match fluctuating demand. This could prove particularly crucial if you decide to expand or reduce your workforce. It’s also important to get a clear understanding of the per-user costs of moving to CCaaS. These insights will help you create a model to compare CCaaS with the on-premise solutions that you’re replacing.

3. Show productivity improvements

As well as saving time for your IT department, your new CCaaS solution should help increase agent productivity. The cloud provides easier access to a range of technologies such as AI-enabled chatbots and knowledge bases. These advancements deliver greater automation, meaning agents can resolve queries faster, thereby reducing average call handling time. It’s advisable to ask other users of the CCaaS solution you’re considering about their productivity gains. Also remember that the cloud is better at supporting hybrid working, producing cost savings in terms of office space. Ensure you incorporate these potential savings into your business case taking into account your current and anticipated call volumes.

4. Demonstrate potential customer service improvements

CCaaS delivers the foundation for better service. This translates into happier customers who are more loyal and spend more. For example, the cloud enables closer collaboration between teams, breaks down silos and enables automation. It also makes it easier to integrate new channels and provide agents with access to other business systems across the enterprise. While it can be difficult to quantify the impact of these benefits in monetary terms, look at other KPIs. Measuring changes in CSAT scores, NPS or Voice of the Customer surveys can help provide insights to justify CCaaS.

5. Align with wider business objectives

The more your business case supports your organization’s wider business objectives the greater chance of it being signed off. So, spend time understanding what these are and highlight how switching to the cloud can contribute to them. For example, do you have a goal to become more customer-centric, increase efficiency, or establish yourself as an innovator? Are you committed to hybrid working? All of these are areas where adopting CCaaS can have a significant positive impact.

6. Appeal to stakeholders

You may think that the benefits of switching to the cloud are crystal clear. However, you’ll need project sign-off by people from other departments. They may not see the benefits as relevant to them. So, make sure you talk in their language, and proactively overcome any potential objections they might have. In presenting your business case it’s essential to understand the concerns of different departments and to speak using terminology they’re familiar with. Finance will obviously want a robust monetary case for moving to the cloud, while sales/marketing will be interested in the flexibility to target new opportunities. Operations will want to know more about support for remote working and the IT team will want to understand the impact on its time and resources.

CCaaS delivers a wide range of business benefits from cost savings and greater efficiency to improved customer service. However, you need to make these benefits tangible and bring them to life for business leaders in the organization. Build a strong, watertight business case that appeals to all stakeholders and work to get their support and buy-in. This will help to ensure your CCaaS business case gets sign-off so that you can accelerate customer service success via the cloud.