How to Prepare for an Unplanned CCM Replacement
By Chris Murphy, VP of Product Marketing at Smart Communications
Regulated industries thrive on predictability — it enables strategic planning, resource alignment, and uninterrupted operations across critical business processes.
But recently, technology provider OpenText introduced an unwelcome element of volatility when it revealed its plan to “enhance shareholder value by growing revenue in our core Information Management for AI business and redeploying capital from the non-core assets.” The surprising ouster of its longtime CEO and subsequent media coverage only deepened uncertainty for existing customers who depend on its suite of CCM solutions (OpenText Exstream, xPression, Streamserve).
OpenText has yet to clarify what constitutes a "core asset" versus an expendable business unit. The ambiguity has left executives and business leaders posing questions about support continuity, roadmap commitments, and long-term viability.
As a result, many organizations in healthcare, financial services, and insurance are being forced to build supplier contingency plans for their document generation and customer communication systems, especially if OpenText supplies them with multiple technology components that it might yet classify as non-core.
In this post, we’ll outline the key steps you can take to ensure your organization has an airtight contingency plan for creating, managing, and delivering the communications that are critical to your customers’ experience. Because amidst the ongoing uncertainty, one thing is clear: CCM platforms are mission-critical enterprise technologies, powering everything from regulatory communications to customer onboarding, and being proactive now will ensure your company is positioned for continued success, regardless of how the OpenText situation unfolds.
“Everyone has a plan ‘till they get punched in the mouth.”
-Mike Tyson
When to Consider Changing Your CCM Strategy
Initiating a process for replacing a critical technology like a CCM platform is not an insignificant decision – it requires business case justification, substantial budget allocation, stakeholder alignment across multiple departments, and comprehensive project planning. The decision involves not just IT operations but also compliance, customer experience, and other line of business (LOB) departments. Companies typically make this strategic move for one or more of the following reasons:
- New core system implementation or major upgrade cycles that require tighter or more compatible integrations
- Lack of continued vendor support, security patches, or compliance updates that expose organizations to risk
- Reimagining customer engagement models to fundamentally alter the technology, processes, and culture to future-proof a business to changing consumer preferences and buying behaviors
- Strategic desire to bring communications in-house from external service providers for more control over corporate IP and cost management
- Merger and acquisition activities that necessitate platform consolidation
Vendor uncertainty dramatically raises risk profiles and may accelerate contingency planning timelines. Starting early provides the crucial advantage — earlier planning gives you greater project control, more vendor options, and better negotiating leverage.
Potential Business Impacts
If this news directly affects your organization, carefully consider the potential impacts on your ongoing operations:
- Operational threats: Progressive support degradation, delayed security patches, suspended feature development, and reduced technical expertise availability
- Forced migration scenarios: Unexpected asset sales triggering unbudgeted migrations with compressed timelines and limited vendor choices
- Contract vulnerability: New ownership has the potential to alter pricing structures, support policies, licensing terms, or fundamental business models
- Risk profile reassessment: Significantly increased business continuity and operational interruption risk requiring board-level attention
- Loss of strategic control: Dramatically limited influence over critical system ownership, roadmap direction, and investment priorities
- Stalled innovation: Non-core assets typically receive reduced budgets, slower development cycles, and deprioritized enhancement requests
- Compliance exposure: Potential gaps in regulatory update cycles that could impact audit readiness and legal obligations
Your Next Steps
To effectively mitigate these emerging uncertainties, implement these proactive strategic measures:
1. Plan comprehensively now: Establish detailed contingency plans, systematically assess alternative solutions, and identify specific risk reduction opportunities across your communication operations.
2. Define your operational timeline: Understanding your legacy solution's realistic limited lifespan provides crucial planning leverage and helps establish realistic migration schedules that align with business cycles.
3. Issue strategic RFI/RFPs early: Initiate serious conversations with leading CCM vendors, benchmark current market offerings, and force incumbent vendors to provide concrete clarity about their future strategy and commitments.
4. Establish viable commercial on/off ramps: Actively avoid the costly scenario of paying full licensing costs on both legacy and new solutions simultaneously. Seek vendors who offer flexible commercial arrangements that align cost with actual usage patterns, helping you maximize value during transition periods.
5. Leverage this as a comprehensive transformation opportunity: While many vendors (including us, to be transparent) focus their messaging on migration ease and compatibility, this disruption creates a rare transformation opportunity. Take time to examine your broader digital transformation goals, your strategic initiative to empower business users and transfer operational control away from IT dependencies, and your organizational goal to future-proof this next significant investment with a modern, cloud-native, extensible solution that seamlessly integrates with your most important enterprise systems.
Book a modernization consultation today
Change never comes easily, especially for mission-critical systems. The challenge becomes exponentially harder when external forces control your timelines and strategic decisions.
While OpenText’s ambiguous corporate statements create uncertainty, this situation presents an opportunity to re-evaluate your customer engagement strategy. Early movers have the most options available to strategically position themselves and their organizations with viable paths forward should worst-case scenarios materialize.
The window for proactive planning narrows with each passing quarter. Start now. Start early. We're here to help navigate this transition.