Thinking of moving to a new Voice Platform? Considering your options for the PSTN switch off in 2025? There’s lots to think about when it comes to choosing your voice platform. And the risk of problems, concerns, and changing something that’s working fine for now can be off-putting.
Having said that… your business needs to start considering its options for the future. We’ve put our 35 years of experience into 7 simple steps that you can take, to ensure ease and success for your voice transition.
Let’s break these down individually:
- Define Success:
Start by making an outline of the key business requirements for your cloud solution. This will help you get to grips with what you’re looking for in general.
Are you looking to enable great staff mobility and flexibility, or are you more focused on reducing complexity? Or perhaps you just need to provide new ways of communicating, both internally or externally. Knowing the reasons for your move will help you focus on the specific requirements for your business – every voice platform is different.
- Know Where You Are:
To transition to a new platform, you’ll need a comprehensive understanding of the platform you already have in place.
If you have multiple sites, does each one have individual systems? What data connectivity do you have in place? How does your contact centre work? What are your existing contractual situations and cancellation terms? Do you have old analogue or ISDN lines still in place (if so – the 2025 switch off is coming around quickly – you can read more about how to prepare for this here).
Getting your head around all of these things is essential to start building on that basis you made in Step 1 – and really start considering what you need, and how you can adjust what you already have.
- Evaluate Your Options
Research and look into all the solutions for your voice platform. Cloud might fit your requirements, or you might wish to utilise on-site hardware and opt for a hybrid, or hosted solution. You can read more about some of the advantages and disadvantages of an Internet based voice system here, or give us a call and one of our experts will talk through your exact requirements with you! Use your research to compare back to your outline, and consider which solution might best help you to achieve your successes.
- Consider the Interim State
Of course, it’s never going to be a straight-forward, one-step task to migrate to a new solution. Determine your personal process and timeline. What does the beginning, middle, and end look like? What’s the easiest way to move, and to hit your timescales. You may need to keep some users on your old systems while you migrate other users – or perhaps it’s best to move departments rather than sites one by one.
Knowing your timeline will mean you can plot key points to hit at certain times, and make sure you can keep the migration moving effectively at a planned pace.
- Understand Legal Requirements:
You may need to provide additional documentation. Let’s say you have sites overseas, that may require different emergency services notification or break out. You might have requirements to ensure call security, or payment security. You’ll need to make sure that your new voice platform adheres to all of these requirements.
- Engage an Experienced Team:
Whichever solution you choose, migrating your voice platform like this is a complex process. Do you have the skills in house to implement the changes? Or do you need training or engineering skills to put out handsets and trouble shoot on site? If you need to outsource it, make sure you choose a provider that can effectively assist with your voice platform requirements for success. Outsourcing to a company like Becketts can ensure you have expertise on hand to assist with your transition.
- Plan for the Long-Term:
Let’s say you choose Microsoft Teams for your voice solution. Think about how you can incorporate additional benefits in the future to get the maximum out of your new platform. How can you continue to improve your platform? With Teams, you might want to integrate things like Copilot, Power BI, and Dynamics, to help you maximise benefits (like call reporting, etc). The flexibility of Teams can help your voice platform grow and evolve into the long-term.
What now?
As you’ll have noticed (hopefully!), the key to success in migrating your voice platform is all about understanding your business’ individual, unique requirements. Once you’ve understood this, you’ll be able to start deciding how you can implement a voice platform that works for your business.
We’d be delighted to help you more in exploring your options for implementing the best voice platform for your business. To talk to one of our expert team, simply complete the form below, or give one of our team a call on 0118 940 9000.