I’ve been lucky enough time to spend a lot of time with Avi Greenfield, our VP of Product Management, during preparation for events like Inspire Days, Document Strategy Forum, Xplor, and our R15 launch. We often talk about the future of software in one-to-three-year increments—a good cadence for software releases. But lately, we’ve been talking well into the future. For good reason.
The impacts of CCM deployments span more than a decade from an enterprise implantation perspective. With 10-15 years between refreshes, there’s potential for missed opportunity in connecting yesterday’s needs to today’s. Rapid evolution means that it’s not enough to be 1 to 3 steps ahead; your strategic decisioning should be 10 to 12 steps ahead.
That’s why Avi and I talk so far into the future.
We know you get it. You’ve been proposing system improvement projects for years. Usually the proposal gets trimmed from next year’s plans. But things are different now. Triggered by the agility that 2020 and 2021 spurred, the number of communication modernization projects getting green-lit for evaluation in 2022 has increased. So, if your management team says, “Go” to starting the selection process, you’ll soon be on the hook for delivering the benefits you’ve long promised.
So we want to share the secret to long-term, sustainable CCM success.
Evaluate your present CCM process
Let’s start by looking at your present situation. How old is your current tech stack? Consider that average CCM systems last 10-15 years and add that figure to 2022. If your current system is 12 years old and you are implementing a replacement in 2022, then let’s dub the “future” 2034.
Now think about when you started the CCM implementation 12 years ago. When you started, you thought you had to solve the 2010’s problems. And you did. Did you also think of the people who’d be using your CCM system circa now – what their problems would be and if the system could meet them? Assessing still unknown needs of the future is critical to long-term success.
So, as you look to update systems in 2020, your real task is to design a system that accommodates people in 2034. How can you without knowing how demands will shift in the meantime? For year over year success, you need to design your system with the flexibility to ensure that it will run on the platforms of the future.
At Quadient, we see a lot of RFI, RFP, and RFQ requests from customers and prospects. So much so that we wrote an RFP guidebook. Many CCM RFPs request specific architectures. For example, some people ask for private clouds. Others request full SaaS solutions or on-prem solutions. Recently, a lot of businesses are scoping Hosted Managed Service (HMS) options. All for valid reasons, aligned to today’s business needs. But, this is an artificial choice and it removes options for your future.
Let’s consider the value of agnostic deployment options.
The power of any-premise CCM
Regulations, technology, and business requirements will certainly change in the coming 10-15 years. If you are locked into a CCM vendor relationship that only supports limited deployment options, you may find yourself in the position of having to make difficult (and hasty) choices in the future.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you implement a SaaS-only solution. A year later your vendor changes their SLA terms. Or maybe your CCM IP auditing requirements change. Or the requirements for data custody change. In any of these scenarios, you’ll likely need to quickly migrate work to a private cloud, HMS or on-prem solution that may, but likely will not, be offered by your SaaS-only vendor.
Similarly, opting for hosted managed services to initiate implementation and reduce IT strain might make sense at first. But eventually, you can successfully manage these capabilities in-house. Can you pivot for sustained success?
With an any-premise vendor, you can.
What is any-premise (aka any-prem) CCM
Full disclosure: Quadient is the only any-premise CCM solution in the world. Any-premise means that CCM implementations can happen starting in any environment – on-premise, cloud, HMS, or a hybrid of these – and allow you to migrate applications, content and infrastructure between them as needed. It gives you the exclusive flexibility to manage deployments that make sense for your business now and in the future.
The biggest advantage is that you eliminate the need for fortunetellers to gamble on what 2034 will demand. When you consider the innovation in private cloud hosting services, Kubernetes deployment flexibility, and other innovations-change is a constant variable.
Any-prem deployment gives you the freedom to commit to today’s most viable solution today without committing to an architecture that will tomorrow. It’s the long-game play for success. So, as you finally start running with the green light, choose a CCM provider that gives you flexibility and has a track record of rapidly incorporating new options into the solution.
