Migrations are always a complicated process in any business. There are numerous points to consider, from how businesses can reduce downtime, to what steps need to be taken to improve adoption among teams. Support to Win, one of the UK market leaders in strategic training and migration solutions, believes that now could be the ideal time for companies to take the leap.
Although migrations can indeed cause disruption in any environment, we’re currently dealing with a marketplace that’s already heavily disrupted. With COVID-19 causing countless organisations to send their employees home to work, Support to Win can assist businesses in getting critical connections switched over while the offices are bare.
I spoke to Tamsin Deutrom-Yue, Managing Director of Support to Win.
Why Is This Such a Crucial Time for Business Growth?
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Tamsin Deutrom-Yue[/caption]
Tamsin Deutrom-Yue is the Managing Director of Support to Win, and the leader of the company’s migration services projects. She told me that Support to Win has seen a rapid increase in companies undergoing supply chain re-evaluation from a strategic perspective, as a result of COVID-19. UC market players today are taking advantage of an opportunity to evolve and grow in a landscape that has been turned on its head by an unprecedented event.
“We’re hearing from a lot of channel partners who see now as a good time to get to grips with their UC platform choice. That’s partly down to most of the major UC platform providers – RingCentral, NFON, Gamma, Microsoft, to name just a few – reaching out with generous offers to help businesses cope with the upheaval of shifting to homeworking and use their services in the process. Channel partners are simply trying to anticipate the resulting shifts in demand. And as well as bringing in net new business to adopt UC for the first time, some churn will be inevitable; hence the spike in migrations. The bottom line is that most of these partners already know they need to migrate. They have teams in the back end saying that they need to consolidate their existing solutions or access new technology. However, it’s usually difficult to find the right time to disrupt the team.”
Now that the workplace is already disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, people are beginning to examine their back-end environments because they have more time and opportunity. “People are thinking that now they’re quiet, it’s the ideal time to make a change. The circumstances that we’re in today are providing a catalyst for migration services.”
Taking Advantage of Migration Opportunities
While a UK-wide lockdown might seem like a bad time to put a huge migration strategy into place, the opposite is actually true, according to Tamsin. While offices are quiet, companies like Support to Win can step in and get everything set up, with minimum disruption to the team.
“While any migration can be difficult, particularly if you’re moving from one environment to another, a time when there isn’t anyone in the office could be the perfect opportunity to migrate."
"We can go in now and get the work done, so that when people come back into the office, they can hit the ground running”
Because people aren’t in the office right now, the disruption is kept to a minimum. This is particularly true in the connectivity space. While everyone is at home and using their own connectivity, it’s a perfect time to go in and get the issues with connectivity solved.
The Motivations Pushing Migration
Migration strategies start with a lot of different motivating factors, according to Tamsin. Companies want to increase their profitability and reduce the level of risk that they’re taking with existing suppliers. These motivating factors aren’t always related to the COVID-19 issue. There will still be demands for migration in place when this problem ends. While there’s an inevitable degree of disruption in the marketplace, it’s better to take the plunge now.
