It is a well deliberated and planned move for any enterprise to get on the cloud. After taking that vital step, a lot of enterprises just get stagnated as they have not planned the next steps correctly. These next steps will be vital and important in the realization of the many benefits that the move to the cloud has to offer. Let us try and take a look at this today.
While a lot of thought and effort is invested into the actual cloud adoption. Many enterprises forget that the cloud is a gift that keeps giving and hence what you do next is key to cloud success. While the cost and effort benefits of moving to the cloud are extolled upon very elaborately, the ongoing process and planning after is something that is still a tad bit of a mystery. Here are a few key steps that are critical post the move to the cloud that will help enterprises. While these are important steps, they are more like broad guidelines and not rules of the thumb. So without much ado, here they are
Internal Process Optimization
Once your production and licensing model have moved to the cloud, it is imperative and vital that your internal processes change to reflect the change. Primarily the release cycle and bug-fixing processes will see a sea change. The traditional method of branched development and integration to roll out builds to test has to be able to handle the fact that every fix is now live and every branch of development gets rolled out instantly after certification. What this means is that testing needs to be tighter and turnaround times need to be more aggressive. The fact that every patch and every update in instantly in production merits more focus on fixes. The internal CCB needs to understand the move to SaaS and orient accordingly. The transition from use-case to test-case is also vital. This needs to be tuned to the fact that use-cases are inline with the practicality of network latency and also infrastructural dependencies. Enterprises will do well to keep this in their minds.
Customer Support Changes
CRM is the most important cog in the proverbial cloud wheel. Once you are a SaaS company on the cloud, it goes without saying that customers expect support to be always there and be to scale. Remember that there is no difference between the under 10 licenses customer and the larger customers with thousands of licenses when it comes to issues. Remember to factor in the API changes and infrastructural parameters into a proper re-orientation that is for the users of your service. There needs to be clear hand holding and a proper training so that when you move to the cloud, the change is seamless for the customer. There might be customers who need to save the security of their IP more tightly on-premise due to business reasons, in their cases a private cloud instance will be right. Then CRM needs to evolve to handle that. When a day comes when the same client needs to scale or even take a calculated burst into the public cloud, your CRM should be up and ready to handle that with the client in the driver’s seat.
Internal IT and Hardware Process Changes
When you move from traditional to Saas and embrace the cloud, your internal IT and Hardware process needs to ramp up to the challenge. The need to be never ever be wanting or lagging when there is need for resources like compute, storage or bandwidth. We need to remember that the client needs to get things on-demand and instantaneously. We previously discussed about CRM, it is IT support that forms a key partner for the resolution of many issues that CRM gets. Provisioning and allocation of resources with proportionate personnel to support anything that may arise on real-time. The gap between response and resolution needs to be managed carefully by IT support. At the end of the day, the perpetual nature of resources are key to billing and hence bottom lines as a business. So IT is your frontline holder along with CRM.
These are a few things that will affect how well you do after you move to the cloud and become a SaaS company. Let me know if there are other points that stood you in good stead post the cloud move.