How Staying On-Premises (on-prem) is Costing You More Than Just Money

Published 06/08/25 under:

Many legacy contact centre solutions – like old Mitel and Avaya platforms – are now only supported by a handful of UK partners. When something breaks, it’s not just about financial cost.

It’s about whether someone even knows how to fix it and can easily lay their hands on spare parts. With less companies supporting old on-premise solutions, a quick fix is no longer an option. And that’s a risk that most organisations, particularly mid-market and small companies, can no longer afford to take.

With cloud platforms, AI-enabled features and solid reliability are automatically built-in. Discover how our clients have rolled business continuity and a conveyor belt of innovation into the same affordable solution.

Protecting frontline customer services

This year’s Genesys State of CX Report has once again revealed several eye-openers. While 64% of consumers believe AI will improve the quality and speed of customer service, only a third of contact centres have actually traded-up to a cloud solution and are in a position to deliver against those expectations.

The situation is compounded by marketplace shifts as Avaya restructures operations around serving its top 1,500 customers. The reality of which means further cuts to UK jobs and support, leaving Avaya small and mid-sized customers with sub-200 seat contact centres anxiously looking over their shoulders. With no clear future roadmap or way of continuing to sweat legacy platforms, the business case for cloud migration has become more compelling than ever.

Big business tech without the price tag or in-house burden

The contact centre industry has reached a natural tipping point where moving from on-prem to cloud isn’t just a tech upgrade – it’s a strategic imperative. Any sustainable business today is built on high-performing customer service.

Clients who have successfully made the move find they can easily add or remove new features, integrate with and manage more digital channels, and receive more frequent updates and security support. No more expensive and complex upgrades either. Often, all that’s involved is a licence change and they can try out AI-enabled solutions like voice and chatbots, agent Copilot tools, sentiment analysis and predictive routing.

Cloud benefits being realised include:

Getting Cloud strategy right

Like all major change programmes, moving your contact centre to the cloud needs careful planning and execution. For example, a lift-and-shift approach (just replicating your on-premise environment in the cloud) is unlikely to deliver significant improvements in efficiency and performance.

A better ROI-driven approach is to work with a specialist partner that understands the full capabilities of a modern, high-performing, AI-powered contact centre. One with leading experts that can help review your operations, identify the day one features offering the biggest impact and develop an ongoing innovation roadmap to drive continuous CX and EX improvement.

Avoiding tech obsolescence

Skipton Building Society are a good example. They required a swift on-prem migration to Genesys Cloud to minimise end-of-life risk and enhance service quality. Kerv Experience leveraged capabilities like Cyara automation tooling, quality assurance processes and home-grown products like CX Dynamics and CX Vizz.

1,700 users were fully trained and ready to go within three weeks. They now manage phone, email and chat conversations from a standard desktop, from any location – and rationalising 1,768 configured DDIs with 418 queues and 382 inbound call flows. Along with in-house customisations, Skipton successfully integrated an existing workforce management solution and data warehouse infrastructure.

Benefits include improved CX with higher first contact resolutionm lower average handling time and a clear innovation roadmap with Genesys weekly new releases. In addition, Skipton’s transformation efforts made them the proud winners of the Most Effective Strategic Transformation Programme at last years’ European Contact Centre and Customer Service Awards.

Managing peak demand

For PureGym Group rapid business growth exposed the limitations of on-prem technology. Their contact centre was predominately call-based and soon became stretched. In addition, agents were slowed down and couldn’t perform at their best because of different systems such as Mitel phones, Citrix virtual desktops and multiple third-party apps.

Guided and supported by Kerv specialists, the project was executed in four workstreams to enable effective channel migration and home working:

• Ensuring seamless experience for members and employees.
• Creating a knowledge library.
• Introducing a chatbot to alleviate advisors of repetitive tasks.
• Developing internal apps and tools to enhance service.

Shortly after, PureGym had a 72% monthly increase in demand. Despite this huge spike, they managed to grow their member base by 10% while reducing agent hours by 15%.

Other results include an 18% overall increase in contacts, a 4% decrease in those requiring agent assistance and a ~300% increase in call deflection.

To discuss options for migrating your on-premise contact centre to the cloud, or to register for forthcoming events, please contact us.

The longest standing Genesys Cloud partner in EMEA, Kerv has successfully deployed Genesys Cloud to over 25,000 agents in 100+ customers. Drawing on our unrivalled technical support, 24/7 managed services and customer success practice, we obsessively ensure Kerv customers always get the greatest benefit from their Genesys investment.