How WebHelp Nordic is positioning itself as a cloud-based business leader with NICE inContact

Webhelp Nordic started working with the cloud in 2013, and Per Valvic CIO/CTO at Webhelp Nordic explains why NICE inContacts’ CXone solution has enableled them to reach and preserve a leading position in their industry…

Can you provide more insight into the challenges you faced initially before upgrading to a cloud solution?

Many of the brands that we were working with had an installation which only had mail and voice functionality. Upgrading each of the nine servers would have been not only time-consuming, but also expensive. Choosing a cloud solution enabled us to minimise these issues and reduce the overall costs of managing and maintaining IT systems.

Do you have an estimation of what it would have cost you to stay on the previous platform?

It’s tough to say because we didn’t do the math. We had nine servers with teams to keep them running, that would have been a cost for sure, but it’s hard to say. We are early adopters; we started working with the cloud in 2013. Back them the on-premises system wasn’t as problematic as today. It’s hard to estimate in the short term how much we saved.

Do you have the name of competitors would didn’t choose the cloud and suffered from it? Or have all your competitors moved to the Cloud?

No, most of our competitors still use large, global on-premise systems, which has become a disadvantage for them. More and more companies have realised that they need to be more consumer-centric and customer oriented. They need to take an omnichannel approach. To achieve this, they need to integrate their CRM system – as well as other vital systems – into their cloud platform. They also need to do a lot of development work. If they have their platform, they will need to invest in a lock-in effect. They also need to invest in integrating the BPO into their on-prem solution. That’s a lot of investments, and of course, they will never give out their BPO.

What made you choose NICE inContact over other vendors? What made them stand out?

Before choosing NICE inContact, we decided to move to the cloud. Back in 2010, even when the competition wasn’t that fierce, we had strong requirements. We didn’t want local installations, and it had to be a one to many solutions, meaning it had to run from diversified cloud centres. When we looked at the different products, we saw that NICE inContact was the most reliable company. At that time, they weren’t in Europe, but we still worked with them and helped them to understand the European market and develop the product. We sent 100 bullet-point items over. We thought the platform was interesting; we liked the studio and the scripting and the comprehensive platform.

In the end, we chose NICE inContact because at that time it was the best possible platform. We evaluate the market every year and still find that our partnership with NICE makes us very strong in the market.

By how much were you able to reduce maintenance and upgrade costs?

Compared to the platform we had, we have no maintenance and upgrade costs. These are all covered in the monthly fee. Then you have to compare the cost of ownership of an on-premise platform with the CAPEX of the cloud, but we still come out as more competitive than other firms. Some firms will tend to hide the sunk cost related to an on-premise server and only show the maintenance and running costs, but having an on-premise server comes with a huge sunk cost. This isn’t an issue that we have.

What has been the impact of CXone on coaching? Employee satisfaction or efficiency as a whole?

The basic functionality of NICE inContact isn’t significantly better than the reporting we had. But now we can coach agents that are struggling with specific KPIs and avoid coaching agents that aren’t struggling. Instead, we can reward and encourage them. After all, there’s no point coaching people who don’t need it.

I don’t think the platform we use makes a big difference to the employee. What matters to them is gamification, that they get the right training and rewards when they deserve it and that it contains efficient tools.

As soon as you bring more channels into play, utilising different routing technologies, it becomes a huge advantage. You can let the platform find the right agent, the right skills at the right moment. I’m a firm believer in routing as being the foundation for efficiency. Also, NICE inContact provides an omnichannel experience. This is not only efficient, but also very popular with consumers.

Do you have any business growth attributable to CXone?

One customer win we managed with NICE inContact is an insurance company in the UK. We are also working with a railroad company, which is migrating to the cloud and digitalising. A third example is an online gambling website, which changed country and strategy but stayed with us thanks to NICE inContact.

One customer win that particularly stands out is a cancer welfare company. They have an in-house service that answers people who call for advice and information, and we are running the part that is collecting money. They now want us to support their medical service across Sweden.

Visit https://www.niceincontact.com/ and https://www.webhelp.com/en-gb/