When to Consider Migrating from Avaya to NICE Contact?

Avaya has been a reliable on-premise solution, but due to several disadvantages, it’s time to consider a cloud-based alternative, such as Nice CXone.

• Cloud-Native platform: If the requirements necessitate a cloud-native environment, it is better to transition to one. NICE CXone is a cloud platform that is designed for effortless scaling and flexibility, which allows your contact center to adapt to the changing demands.
• Omnichannel capabilities: The Avaya system is primarily voice-centric and doesn’t offer a seamless experience across all channels. But now in this modern world, customer interacts with your business in any of their preferred ways, like voice, chat, social media, and messaging apps. So if you are still dependent on the Avaya contact center, you are lagging.
• Lack of actionable insights: When there is a need for getting actionable insights from your reports, then a cloud solution with robust, real-time dashboards is a must.
• Advanced analytics and AI: AI is now everywhere. When there is a need to utilize AI-powered analytics, natural language processing (NLP), or workforce engagement management (WEM), Avaya does not support these new features. NICE CXone offers built-in AI for things like agent assist, intelligent routing, and predicting customer needs.
• Scalability Needs: If your business needs to scale up to support growth opportunities, then it is time to move to NICE CXone. The Avaya system requires purchasing, installing, and configuring new hardware, which is slow, expensive, and inflexible.
• End-of-Life or Limited Support: If it is time for any end of contract, the hardware or software version is approaching its end-of-life, or will no longer receive any security patches or support. Then it is time to consider moving to another contact center like NICE CXone.
• Future-proofing: Migrating to NICE CXone allows you to align with serving customer needs, sustaining a long-term partnership, and incorporating features like AI, automation, and enhanced integrations.

Benefits of Migrating from Avaya to NICE Contact Center

Migrating from an on-premises solution like Avaya to a cloud-native platform like NICE CXone can give us numerous benefits. Some of the key benefits of migrating from Avaya to NICE Contact Center are

• Cloud-Native Scalability and Flexibility: NICE CXone is built on a cloud-native platform, which can scale as the business grows. It supports remote work seamlessly, allowing agents and supervisors to work from anywhere in the world with secure internet access.
• AI-powered Innovation: NICE CXone is a cloud-native platform that gets continuously updated with the latest features, which uses AI-powered tools. It gives real-time feedback and hence makes the Contact Center stay ahead of customer needs without disruptive, large-scale upgrades.
• Omnichannel and Digital-First Experience: NICE CXone can support over 30 digital channels such as voice, chat, email, SMS, etc., whereas Avaya requires third-party add-ons for similar capabilities.
• Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): NICE is based on subscription-based pricing, eliminating hardware upgrades and ongoing IT maintenance required for Avaya’s legacy on-premise systems.
• Future-proofing: The platform’s architecture adopts new apps and advanced capabilities by ensuring the contact center remains competitive and prepared for future innovations.
• Security and Governance: Migrating to NICE enables easier compliance with standards such as HIPAA, PCI, and GDPR by utilizing advanced platform security and comprehensive data-handling capabilities. CCaaS vendors heavily invest in security, data encryption, and align with industry standards.

Step-by-Step Plan for Your Avaya to NICE Contact Center Migration

A successful migration requires careful planning, clear communication, and a phased approach. The steps for the Avaya to NICE contact center transition 

1. Assess the Avaya environment: Analyze the whole Avaya environment, identify and document all Avaya hardware, software licenses, and physical phones. Create a detailed list of every feature, like call flow, IVR script, hunt group, third-party integrations, and custom reports. This step is the most critical phase, as we will be able to recreate the logic in the NICE contact center. The reporting model will be changed from Avaya’s fixed model to a more flexible and event-based model in NICE. Determine the cause for your migration, whether it is for reducing costs and enhancing customer experience.
2. Migration plan: Create your migration plan, whether it is a big-bang migration or a phased approach. It is better to follow a phased rollout plan. Prioritize which channels, whether it is voice, chat, email, or social, are needed to be used for staged migration.
3. Data and Workflow mapping: This step involves building the logic in NICE CXone. Map existing features of Avaya to NICE CXone capabilities. Document current IVR, routing logic, queues, and integrations (CRM, workforce management, and reporting). Rebuild your documented Avaya call flows in NICE CXone. Set up integrations with your existing business applications using NICE’s APIs and out-of-the-box connectors.
4. NICE CXone Configuration: In this step, we are going to configure the new NICE CXone platform. Export user data from Avaya and import it into NICE CXone. This includes users, teams, skill groups, routing profiles, agent and supervisor profiles, skills, and teams. Rebuild IVR logic and user workflows wherever possible rather than replicating legacy designs.
5. Integration and Testing: Integrate NICE CXone with other business systems such as CRM, ERP, analytics, and 3rd-party tools. Plan secure transfer of call recordings, customer data, and historical metrics. Pilot the migrations with a small user group or business unit. Do functional testing to validate IVRs, routing logic, analytics, and reporting accuracy. Collect the feedback from the agent and supervisor before going over a full rollout.
6. Training users: Provide role-based training for the agents, supervisors, and admins on NICE CXone features. Provide quick guides, FAQs, and on-demand video training for the new NICE interfaces. Get a confirmation from the stakeholders by testing the new system. It should meet all business requirements and functions as expected.
7. Launch: Plan for number porting with your Telecom provider. This process is essential to coordinate the porting schedule with go-live data to minimize downtime. The calls are rerouted from the Avaya system to the new NICE platform. This is often done by re-pointing inbound numbers. As a fallback plan, keep Avaya as a backup temporarily until NICE gets stable.
8. Post-Migration Support and Optimization: Continuously monitor for issues and have a fallback plan to revert to Avaya. Monitor system performance and key metrics in real-time. Once the NICE system is stable and all users have been successfully migrated. Regularly review performance against your baseline KPIs to ensure the migration is delivering the expected business value.

Common Issues in an Avaya to NICE Contact Center Migration

Any migration will come with a lot of challenges. Most issues come from planning, integration, and adoption. Some of the common challenges in an Avaya to NICE Contact Center migration are

• Feature Mapping and Compatibility: Avaya hosts customized call flows, IVR setups, or hunt groups. Finding out the equivalent of Avaya’s features to NICE CXone features by careful assessment, redesign, or replacement. Some Vaya CMS reports may require mapping or redesign to match NICE dashboards. 
• Complexity of data migration: Since there is no direct equivalent to a cloud-native NICE CXone environment. This leads to unexpected technical hurdles and gaps in functionality. To overcome this, conduct a thorough audit of the existing AVaya environment. Document every call flow, IVR scripts, agent state, hunt group, and third-party integrations. 
• Voice Quality (QoS): Migrating to the cloud introduces new latency and packet loss issues that cause degradation in call quality. This causes a garbled call or a robot voice effect. To overcome this, run a formal network readiness to check for sufficient bandwidth and network latency. If there is poor connectivity, a hybrid solution that uses a local gateway can be a short-term solution to ensure call quality until network upgrades can be made.
• Reporting Discrepancies: Avaya’s reporting and data model is fixed and session-based, but NICE CXone is real-time and event-based. So we can’t move the reports directly. We might lose the historical data on the old system. This will cause major issues for performance tracking and historical trend analysis. 
• Training and change management: Backend programming and workflow changes in NICE CXone are not user-friendly and require substantial training for agents and supervisors. If the team shows a slow transition from Avaya, then it will lead to productivity.
• Integration with existing systems: Avaya depends on custom integrations with other applications like CRMs, Workforce Management (WFM), and Quality Management (QM) solutions. These need to be re-established in the NICE platform. To mitigate this, identify the most critical integrations and thoroughly test them in the pilot phase.

Partner with Entrans for Your Avaya to NICE Contact Center Migration

Enterprises need to modernize their contact centers in order to stay competitive. Moving on to NICE Contact Center will be cost-effective and unlock advanced capabilities. Partnering with Entrans will help you unlock all the benefits of NICE Contact Center from a cost center into a true engine of Customer satisfaction and business growth.

With the proven track record of successful migrations, we support teams from planning to post-migration optimization by ensuring the transition is not only successful but also sustainable.

Want to know more about? Book a consultation with us.