How enterprises get ahead using hybrid cloud for innovation overlay

A 2022 survey of innovation and business strategy conducted by the International Monetary Fund found that 40% of innovation-oriented companies (SMBs to large enterprises) reduce costs as a result of new product innovations which, on average, account for 20% of all sales. How can your organization see similar benefits from its innovation pursuits?

Only so much ideation can be done before innovation gets down to brass tacks of technology. Advanced Customer Experience (CX) solutions like Artificial Intelligence (AI), automation, and Machine Learning (ML) are required to produce tangible benefits. For large, traditionally on-premises enterprises, hybrid cloud is a gateway to this innovation. You can retain your core service while introducing new value incrementally, laying the groundwork for next-phase evolution. You’ll begin immediately making inroads without abandoning what you already have in place.  

Why hybrid cloud now?

Hybrid cloud enables organizations to combine private, on-premises and public cloud apps and resources like those hosted by AWS, Microsoft, and Google. This offers businesses, particularly large enterprises, an innovation model that safeguards the stability of existing operations while overlaying innovation by tapping into cloud-powered tech like AI, automation, and ML.

With the promise of 2.5 times greater business value than a single cloud platform approach, IBM expects hybrid and multicloud spend to increase up to 17% this year across all industries. Research also shows that, on average, a hybrid cloud environment helps bring new products to market 15% faster and increases Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) savings by up to 40%. Hybrid cloud fast tracks innovation without business disruption, and now is the time to make the move. 

Deliberately innovate using hybrid cloud

Hybrid cloud is key for innovation, but where to start? Consider these four focus areas:

1.     Customer journey mapping: The average customer today is everywhere, on every device, and across every channel. Are you able to map each customer’s complete journey across these myriad touchpoints, including both self-service and assisted channels? How and where are you storing all the data related to these interactions? Customer journey mapping technology harnesses this data (wherever it is stored either on-premises or in the cloud) and visualizes each customer’s end-to-end brand experience, enabling agents to see the full picture quickly and accurately to work more intuitively. CX far exceeds individual interactions. Customers are journeying, and brands must always be ahead.  

2.     Mobile, hybrid, or “anywhere” work: How are you innovating internally in addition to externally? Experts predict the post-COVID contact center workforce will be 60-80% work-from-home as organizations look to modernize the agent experience and contain costs (keep in mind this has no bearing on customer satisfaction: research shows CSAT stayed the same or improved for 75% of contact centers in 2020 and 63% in 2021). Hybrid cloud provides access  to AI capabilities that can be applied to on-premises systems. For example,  AI noise removal. With voice from the cloud, AI noise removal enables remote agents to work better and everyone (including the customers) benefit from a more enjoyable and less strenuous experience. Call recordings are more accurate, creating more thorough analytics enabling supervisors to take action.  Other   workforce optimization capabilities allow supervisors to monitor service quality, capture customer interactions, balance staffing needs, and further reduce costs.

3.     Process optimization: Process improvement is a given with AI and automation. Consider customer authentication where databases can be located virtually anywhere: it takes about 30 seconds for an agent to verify a customer’s identity using traditional methods like knowledge-based authentication (ex: “What’s your mother’s maiden name?”). For a mid-size contact center, this becomes hundreds of hours each week. What if you used AI and automation to offer a more effective form of customer authentication like a real-time 3D photo scan? Calls would be processed faster, agents would avoid monotonous work, and customers would skip a pestering procedure. 

4.     Increased data protection and privacy: More enterprises are considering AI-powered zero trust security – an approach that validates customers continuously along their service journey – to increase data protection and privacy in the contact center without negatively affecting CX. Hybrid cloud opens the door to hundreds of cloud providers that specialize in niche areas like AI-powered zero trust, enabling you to integrate broad capabilities faster and speed time to innovation. This is a key strategic driver for 75% of executives moving to hybrid cloud, according to IBM. 

Organizations, especially large enterprises, have much to contend with on top of financial considerations in this challenging economic environment. The most successful will be those that learn to use what they have more wisely while integrating the innovations their customers demand on top using a hybrid cloud approach.  

As a global leader in customer experience and cloud solutions, innovation without disruption is Avaya’s specialty. Get started with our hybrid cloud offering: Avaya Enterprise Cloud.

And, don’t miss Avaya ENGAGE June 18-21 in Orlando, Florida. Register here.