Wynand Smit, CEO of INOVO.

The cloud is more than hype, hyperscaler and hypothetical benefits. It’s evolved to provide organisations with an intelligent and customisable toolkit that they can leverage to enhance customer experiences, connect with new markets, and discover insights locked within data. This is reflected in the fact that organisations across all sectors are focusing on cloud-based vertical applications with an expected increase of 40% in spend between 2021-2024 annually, according to McKinsey. Why? Because they offer immense benefits when it comes to scale, custom development, cost, time to market and reducing inherent infrastructure complexity.

Gartner agrees with this sentiment. The research firm believes that cloud will drive digital experiences and that a cloud-first approach is likely to give organisations the extra boost they need in a complex operating environment. As Gartner puts it, without a cloud-first strategy, companies are unlikely to achieve the full remit of their digital strategies.

This theme is echoed by Deloitte. The company outlines the value of transformative human experiences for customers using the right channels, technologies and cloud-based toolkits. Deloitte also highlighted some of the benefits of taking cloud to the next level, not least of which being able to reduce response times and improve insights and analytics.

Cloud can become an invaluable ally to the organisation as it allows for companies to compete, in real-time, with rapid changes in customer engagement in communication. 

Customers are connecting with companies across email, contact centres, instant messaging and social media, often all at the same time. It’s a rolling tsunami of requests, complaints and problem resolution that has to be consistently managed to ensure that they are deftly handled at speed, and that they turn unhappy customers into satisfied ones. After all, it takes just one wrong move to make a customer leave.

What cloud offers is the ability to manage this tsunami effectively. Cloud provides the capability that the business needs to manage the influx of information across all the different touchpoints, and to analyse and interpret this information properly. Cloud allows for organisations to slip straight into the data stream and leverage analytics and business intelligence toolkits to gain a richer understanding of customer interactions with the business. This has long been recognised as a significant benefit – companies can discover bottlenecks in communication, resolve unnecessary complexities for customers and contact centre agents alike, and improve engagements considerably.

In addition to its ability to unwrap the insights locked within the data delivered by customer interactions, cloud is also a build-your-own functionality toolkit. Companies can add or remove features from their cloud implementation on demand, selecting those elements that best suit their strategic requirements at any point along their journey.

Cloud platforms are designed to provide organisations with the ability to eat the elephant one bite at a time – adapting the technology to suit the company and the lessons learned through its data and intelligence.

This of course aligns with the one question most asked about cloud – where is the best place to start? Is the business supposed to step into chatbots or contact centre cloud solutions? Is it supposed to invest into analytics? This is a complex question as implementation should be aligned to the organisation and both its market and strategic direction. 

No cloud platform can be a one size fits all solution, not if it’s going to achieve measurable value. So, to fully unpack the potential of cloud within the organisation, there has to be a comprehensive understanding of the business situation so that cloud architecture and platform are implemented and used correctly.

Organisations need to focus on cloud, it’s a proven foundation for sustainable growth and offers measurable benefits, but they need to implement solutions that go beyond capability and into customisation, scale, flexibility and strategic value. This is where cloud will truly shine in the future - when organisations create holistic customer experiences around data, insights, analytics and relevant interactions.