A 2,000-seat BPO: twenty client operations moved from Cisco to Genesys Cloud CX

The outsourcer ran customer service for more than twenty household-name brands: global coffee chains, stock exchanges, insurers, credit card providers and telecoms companies in broadband, television and mobile among them. Each client was served by its own line of business, with its own contract, processes, reporting and integrations, all running on an on-premises Cisco contact centre with Cisco Unified Border Element session border controllers at the edge.

Buying expansions and upgrades for that estate was becoming harder over time, and every new channel meant new hardware, licences and specialist support. For an outsourcer that is more than an IT problem: the cost of adding digital channels had become a brake on innovation, limiting what it could offer existing clients and how it could compete for new contracts.

Although it was one platform change, it was really more than twenty distinct projects rolled into one, each tied to a client contract. QVCCS ran it from discovery to the final go-live event, starting with detailed requirements capture for every line of business: call flows, routing, reporting, data integrations, contractual obligations and the people affected. From that came a firm order of events, setting which lines of business would move together, in what sequence, and what had to be true before each wave could start.

Lines of business moved three or four at a time. Keeping waves small made change management, training and operational programme management achievable in short timeframes, and let each client's service be proven before the next group followed. Strong programme and project management, and constant communication with stakeholders across the outsourcer and its clients, held the plan together.

1. Requirements capture for each of the 20+ client lines of business
2. An agreed order of events and wave plan, three or four lines of business per wave
3. Design of one Genesys Cloud CX organisation with a division per line of business
4. Custom data integrations rebuilt for each client's CRM, billing and reporting
5. Training, change management and go-live support for every wave
6. Telephony moved to BYOC Cloud, freeing the on-premises estate for retirement

The outsourcer now runs one Genesys Cloud CX organisation in which each client operation is its own division. Divisions group and separate configuration and access inside one organisation, so each client team sees and manages only its own queues, flows and users, while the business runs a single platform, one subscription and one set of standards. Telephony moved to cloud SIP services under Bring Your Own Carrier Cloud, progressively taking load off the on-premises equipment until it could be retired.

Integration was the hardest part. Each line of business depended on proprietary and highly customised data integrations to local and cloud-hosted systems, including CRM, billing and reporting, each shaped by its own contract. Every one was rebuilt and tested against Genesys Cloud CX before its line of business moved, so that agents and clients saw the same information, the same reports and the same service on the first day.

The migration was successful across every line of business, nine months from discovery kick-off to the final go-live event. The legacy hardware, local IT overhead and support burden of an on-premises contact centre gave way to a single Genesys Cloud CX 3 subscription covering inbound and outbound voice with a dialler, email, SMS, web messaging, quality management, gamification and workforce management.

• More than twenty client operations moved to one Genesys Cloud CX organisation
• On-premises Cisco contact centre and session border controllers on the path to retirement
• Digital channels, quality and workforce management included in the subscription, not bought per project
• A platform the outsourcer can use to take existing contracts into new service areas

Above all, the programme succeeded because of excellent requirements capture, a very firm view on the order of events, strong programme and project management, and clear, constant communication with every stakeholder. For an outsourcer, the gain goes beyond the move itself: with digital channels and workforce engagement inherent in the subscription, it could show clients more of the art of the possible and win new kinds of work. The client kept up that pace of innovation after go-live through QVCCS Managed Professional Services.