"A complete disappointment!"
"A waste of time!"
"Truly painful!"
These are the phrases customers often use when describing their experiences with upgrading or consolidating to a new, fluid enterprise system.
Perhaps you have had a similarly taxing experience with upgrading your organization's enterprise solutions. If so, how many work days and weekends did you invest to ensure that the upgrade would go smoothly, without impacting your organization's daily operations?
The common response: Too many.
Most organizations deal with these issues when aiming to implement the optimal method for upgrading their enterprise systems. Typically, these processes are highly complex and involve a large team that spends countless days, even months, to ensure the upgrade is a success.
Another aspect of this process is the need to consolidate systems from different lines of business, or those that, for historical reasons, were separated. These necessary consolidations require complex internal mergers fraught with risk and database manipulation. Thus, organizations frequently attempt to avoid the whole process, preferring to sustain isolated internal systems and incurring a startlingly high TCO (total cost of ownership) due to the significant resources required for each system's maintenance.
To top it all off, unconsolidated systems hassle users, who have to log in to separate systems, setting the stage for a management nightmare. From additional servers to personnel to management overhead, the internal cost of an unconsolidated company — not to mention the extra effort on the part of the user – is very high.
Yet, many organizations lag behind with outdated and fading technologies. A fear of endless complications and multiplying problems (common stereotypes associated with the average upgrade experience) prevents the organization from reaping the benefits of the latest and greatest product features and exciting new additions.
As Product Manager responsible for these domains at NICE, I have been tackling this dilemma for years. My work is focused on resolving it with a straightforward solution, which provides customers a quick and easy method to upgrade or consolidate their systems most effectively.
I established four basic requirements for any system upgrade or consolidation solution:
- Quick – For both an upgrade and a consolidation, the solution should provide speedy installation and configuration in order to mitigate delays in business operations.
- Simple – A simple solution will greatly assist the customer in managing day-to-day business activities.
- Fully Transparent – Full transparency eliminates any downtime for recording, and provides transparency for the source and target platforms. This allows the necessary upgrade or consolidation to be accomplished during normal workdays, without added weekend work.
- Scale – An effective solution should support the loading of multiple systems, either at one time or gradually, to provide customers with one final system capable of managing the entirety of the consolidated systems.
These four foundations are the essential requirements for your company's enterprise products. In the present technological era, a solution incorporating speed, simplicity, full transparency and multi-system scaling is crucial for ensuring continuity and reducing organizational load. With this "four pillar" solution, enjoying all the latest releases in technology is certainly feasible.
Upgrading your enterprise solutions to the latest product releases need not be painful ever again. Challenge your vendors and demand the best – it can be done.