Cloud communications are now a must-have for most businesses. In a world where companies are becoming more globally distributed, an old-fashioned telephony system isn’t enough to empower worldwide employees and teams. Cloud calling eliminates the stress of scaling your communication strategy as your business evolves and grows.
Bring Your Own Carrier, or “BYOC” services, help to take the flexibility of the cloud to the next level. With these solutions, companies can navigate their entry into the cloud according to their own specific needs. It’s possible to combine legacy and cloud solutions, tap into new technologies for collaboration and contact centre functionality, and preserve existing contracts.
The question is, how do you choose a BYOC solution for your business transformation? Here are some top tips to help you find the right vendors.
Step 1: Examine Your Cloud Strategy
Embracing BYOC technology is often one of the first steps a company needs to consider when planning a migration to the cloud. Most businesses today are moving more of their processes and tools into the cloud environment, not just for agility but for business continuity too.
However, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to cloud transformation. Some organisations will need to maintain some of their on-premises functionality, while others will want to transition into a cloud world as soon as possible completely. The right BYOC solution should allow you to manage a seamless transition into the cloud at a pace suitable for you.
Look for a vendor capable of helping you to plan your migration to make it as disruption-free as possible. You should be able to maintain complete control over all of your connectivity options, from call routing to emergency services dialling. It should also be easy to manage and control your communication options from a convenient online portal.
Step 2: Consider Your Global Needs
One of the biggest benefits of BYOC solutions is they allow you to create a completely flexible and global calling strategy without the restrictions imposed by packaged deals. BYOC solutions can allow you to work with carriers all over the globe, ensuring you remain completely compliant from one destination to the next.
A BYOC offering should give you the freedom to switch between carriers easily, depending on where your employees and customers are. At the same time, you should be able to monitor these connections everywhere in the world from a single user interface. A vendor with strong global coverage and knowledge of local compliance requirements in different areas can be very helpful.
Consider the relationship your vendor has with carriers around the globe and what kind of support they can offer to get your worldwide connections running as smoothly as possible. Talk to your vendor in advance about your global network before you dive in.
Step 3: Look for Flexible Controls
BYOC solutions are excellent for companies that have specific compliance and feature requirements. They allow you to choose specifically which carrier you want to work with in different parts of the world and how you want to route and manage calls according to certain circumstances.
The right vendor should make it easy for business leaders to preserve absolute control over all aspects of their communication strategy. You should be able to do everything from choosing between skills-based routing and direct routing to setting up specialist forwarding strategies.
