As companies digitize their customer-facing processes, many consider the cloud as a critical asset.
Indeed, MarketsandMarkets estimates that the cloud-based contact center market will reach $54.6 billion by 2027, up from only $17.1 billion in 2022. This indicates a rapidly accelerating pace of change, with a CAGR of 26.1 percent.
By embracing cloud-enabled digital transformation, companies – both small and large – can overcome the limitations of on-premise infrastructure and look forward to faster value generation from their operations.
What Is Cloud-Enabled Digital Transformation?
In technical terms, digital transformation refers to the digitalization of day-to-day business activities, including updating legacy systems, incorporating predictive analytics, and using new technologies.
In terms of strategy, this relates to the ability of businesses to make their operations sustainable, robust, and flexible. Consequently, they can fulfil the varying demands of customers, keep up with evolving market dynamics, and provide exceptional services (and experiences) far ahead of their competition.
Outside of CX, its effects are felt in consumer activities (e.g., digital P2P payments), education (e.g., e-learning), citizen life (e.g., smart cities), and a variety of other areas.
Cloud-enabled digital transformation refers to this same process of systems modernization, where cloud-based technologies – i.e., technology services hosted on scalable remote servers owned by a company or a third-party cloud vendor – replace older, usually manual, practices.
How to Accelerate Digital Transformation Using the Cloud
To start on the cloud-based digital transformation journey, companies may consider:
- Updating Their Infrastructure – This could entail using containers, migrating to serverless systems, or leveraging the global network of the cloud platform of their choice.
- Optimizing Data Utilization – The cloud can aid in the management of vast quantities of customer data originating from multiple devices, locations, and processes. Thanks to the cloud, platforms like CRMs and CDPs can play a role here without needing heavy investments.
- Breaking Down Silos – Modern digital solutions may accelerate teamwork across all departments and geographies to provide customers with more value and speedier outcomes. This also includes the process of breaking down channel silos through cloud-based integrations.
- Identifying and Addressing Business Problems – Businesses should keep in mind that cloud-based technologies are solutions to a problem, and not adopt them for the sake of it. The ability to target a solution toward a specific business problem – without overhauling the entire system – is one of the key benefits of cloud-based digital transformation, among other gains.
The Benefits Cloud-Enabled Digital Transformation is Key
Using the cloud, organizations can realize the following benefits:
Scale to Meet Changing Customer Demand
Introducing just a few modern systems does not translate into a successful digital transformation. This requires companies to scale up or down to meet fluctuating demands. Since the cloud allows access to on-demand services anytime and at any location, organizations can meet needs without exceeding their budgets, while minimizing the risk of IT resource wastage. This also includes the flexibility to add new capabilities quickly through cloud APIs.
Make Data Driven CX Decisions
The ability to consolidate data from various units, business divisions, and teams is one of the most compelling reasons for using the cloud. Since all data is continuously aggregated and updated from many systems in one place, companies can center all their decisions on critical metrics and objective data.
Build a Reliable Backup System
The current CX environment necessitates that services and systems are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The cloud enables continuous data backup with infinite storage capacity to prevent data loss and service interruptions. Since any malfunction, disruption, or breakdown instantly activates the backup system, regular operations are resumed promptly. This plays a significant role during crisis periods, such as a pandemic or a natural disaster.
Pitfalls to Avoid
While cloud-enabled digital transformation has outsized benefits, experts like McKinsey warn that organizations should be wary of three pitfalls. This includes the inability to go beyond the first experimental implementation, conflicts between a public cloud and security/compliance needs, and challenges arising from “lifting and shifting” processes without adding value.
“Large companies host 10 to 15 percent of their applications in the cloud but continue to host the core of their technology environment in traditional data centers,” the firm writes in a report.
To avoid this, companies need to consider certain decisions carefully – i.e., which processes to transform, the cloud application partner of choice, deciding between public and private cloud, and integration with any legacy systems.
What Is Next for Cloud-Enabled Digital Transformation?
During the pandemic, organizations across industries and of varying capacities were compelled to accept and embrace digital transformations, regardless of their preparedness. Businesses that had not transferred their CX processes to the cloud hastened to do so, while others expedited their on-premise-to-cloud migrations.
Even with periodic difficulties, businesses may significantly streamline their cloud migration journey by focusing their investments on areas that offer the most significant commercial value and developing cloud-first operational models.
That is why CX providers are coming up with new and innovative solutions to support this change, such as UJET’s ‘industry-first’ cloud-to-cloud failover solution.
Read our Most Innovative Cloud CX Vendors list to Watch in 2022 to discover more.
