XaaS (Everything-as-a-Service) is a big deal in the IT world, and with good reason. In 2017, Deloitte Insights published “Everything-as-a-service: Modernizing the core through a services lens.”1
The point is made that modernizing a company’s legacy core IT systems using XaaS solutions, such as Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS), should be at the heart of a company’s business strategy:
“It involves shoring up the technical base to deliver efficiencies while rationalizing complex redundant footprints, reducing licensing commitments, and most importantly, allowing redeployment of IT operations resources. Ideally, those cost savings would then be used to fund innovation and business growth initiatives.”2
Within the IT department’s budget, one of the largest expenditures is the network tower spend. This is the ultimate legacy core IT system, a tangled web of systems, services, and tools that have often accumulated over decades.
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When you poll IT departments, you’ll find out something interesting. Many CIOs are unhappy with the services they are getting from their vendors. The customer contact center technology is old, and its inflexibility contributes toward the IT department often being seen as an obstacle to implementing new features in support of business initiatives. That network tower spend is also expensive—30% of the total IT budget for some companies—but trying to nail down the cost of individual services is difficult.
If determining the actual costs is tough, trying to negotiate contracts with more favorable terms is all but impossible. Are there multiple services covered under one contract? Will canceling one result in issues with others? In many cases, there’s no real relationship with the vendor, just a contract that automatically gets renewed. And the salesperson on the vendor team has zero interest in negotiating a reduced price. That means a lower commission.
Many companies don’t realize just how expensive their legacy vendors are until they make an effort to unbundle their network tower spend. Then there’s no hiding. That’s when it hits home that XaaS solutions will not only greatly simplify that network tower and eliminate hidden inefficiencies, modernizing will also save a great deal of money. Money that could be used to grow the business instead of enriching a vendor who is doing nothing but trying to preserve the status quo for another decade.
The problem is that unbundling the network tower spend is a huge project in itself, and few IT departments have the resources on staff with the experience to do so effectively. That’s why everything’s been left the way it is for as long as it has—despite the obvious advantages of modernization.
The solution is to partner with a trusted advisor who knows the ins and outs of legacy systems while also offering expertise on XaaS. ACLIVITI is a trusted advisor with a team that can sit down and unbundle that network tower spend, showing exactly how expensive each component is.
We are experts in SD-Wan, UCaaS, and CCaaS solutions and vendors, and show you exactly how much money is being thrown away by sticking with the legacy systems and vendors instead of going with a cloud-based call center platform. Those kinds of numbers get the attention of the CEO and CFO, making it much easier to gain approval to undertake a big upgrade project.
Implementing XaaS solutions pays off handsomely for your company, with lower IT costs, payment flexibility (no more being locked into fixed contracts), and operational agility. It all starts with unbundling that legacy network tower spend.
1. https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/tech-trends/2017/everything-as-a-service.html
