The first day of Enterprise Connect was a busy one. The first session, UCaaS Migration Case Studies, was full of great information from four organizations that had migrated from on-premises to UCaaS. We heard firsthand accounts of the challenges they faced while migrating. One thing that all the organizations discussed was that they underestimated the time it took to migrate. The organizations ranged from 2,000 to 10,000 end users, all with multiple locations and business units. The average migration seemed to take around 18 months! The organizations migrated to these platforms: Vonage, Zoom Phone, Webex Calling, and RingCentral.

The second session I attended, which was similar to the first, was CCaaS Case Studies. This session was slightly different in that none of the panelists mentioned the platform they migrated from or what they migrated to. I was really curious to hear what the previous platform was and what they chose to replace it with, but I guess that’s a discussion for another day. One topic that stood out: What would the panelists do differently? They learned that you don’t have to have every new feature of the CCaaS platform ready on day one! I think oftentimes a solution has new “bells and whistles,” and business units feel the need to have ALL of them available from the get-go. This greatly extends the implementation time and training aspect of the new system.

Stay tuned for day 2 — three big keynotes tomorrow with Microsoft, Cisco, and RingCentral!