When discussing Laureate International University pandemic experiences, Kohlheim said its adoption of the 8×8 cloud platform “put us in a really good position to be ready for an event like this”. In fact, they were able to transition their professors and staff as well as their contact center specialists to remote work with zero impact to student/professor/staff interaction. Kohlheim emphasized that their adoption of a cloud platform was particularly beneficial from a student perspective. Recent research from Frost & Sullivan, Communications Platforms: Reaching the Next Innovation Front of Enterprise Communications compares the platform approach versus standalone applications, finding that “ultimately, a communications platform offers a centralized and complete view of how both people—employees, contact center specialists and customers—and machines (applications, bots, automated marketing campaigns, etc.) interact with customers, prospects, suppliers and partners.”

Now, Kohlheim is looking forward to other ways he can support the university and its 50,000+ students. For Kohlheim, that means focusing on experience, “getting [students] information as quickly as possible and being consistent across channels, whether it’s a phone call or chat. Providing that same level of service [across channels] is pretty exciting, and we’re fortunate that we’ve been able to stay on that path.” Kohlheim credits the communications platform choice with enabling his team to focus their time on “turning things on” to meet organizational needs rather than be mired in development work.

In reality, success was not universal. Riverbed’s recent Future of Work Survey found that most businesses lacked the appropriate technology, with 69% saying they were not completely prepared to support extensive remote work at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak. Even for those organizations where most employees were already remote, more than half said they were still not completely prepared. Gartner’s July 2020 Hype Cycle for Unified Communication and Collaboration Strategies recognized COVID-19’s impact on the digital workplace, saying “organizations must reassess their UCC strategies to support the growing importance of remote work and business continuity.”

For every successful organization, there’s another organization who survived the short-term transition but now recognizes it lacks the capabilities and technical agility to prepare it for the next phase.

Most organizations recognize the value of cloud communications and contact center solutions, but struggle with how to make the move. Legacy phone and contact center solutions can be complex, with no easy rip-and-replace solutions for those on-premises PBX systems.