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Despite appearing to gain momentum, global enterprise telephony and Unified Communications (UC) taken as a whole lost four points last year, with the market closing at an estimated $8.7 billion valuation. The sub-par results are attributed to reluctance from business owners to ditch their aging PBX equipment which, ironically, causes more headaches than benefits.
Many of us know that cloud offers enhanced collaboration, disaster recovery, increased scalability, and smaller costs. But do you realize there’s also a connection between the use of cloud computing and increased business agility?
The highly experienced but less tech-savvy baby boomer generation has been dominating the global workforce for some time now, but that’s about to change. Before you know it, the soon-to-retire boomers will be replaced by the ambitious, technologically savvy and collaborative millennials, who don’t remember a time without computers and smartphones. Growing up with laptops, Wi-Fi, 3G and social media, the digital world circulates through their system as they expect immediate access to information at all hours of the day.
This week, Brazil takes a deep breath from the whirlwind days of the FIFA World Cup and returns to business. The fact is that businesses in Brazil, and in Latin America for that matter, are not going to be the same much longer. In short, business for a lot of people is no longer limited to the confines of an office. Research indicates that by 2015, there will be 1.3 billion mobile workers worldwide. Recognizing this shift, businesses across the globe are leveraging modern communications tools, those which enable workers who are on the go to remain connected in order to adapt to this changing landscape.
Unified Communications tools are becoming more popular than ever as they cater to a mobile workforce. Such tools that combine voice, data, presence, email, and video into a single interface provide employees with access to their critical communications from any Internet-connected device, no matter where they happen to find themselves.
Business collaboration is that elusive Holy Grail of corporate executives. Blamed whenever a project fails or derails (96% of executives blame workplace failures on lack of it), hailed as the key to success whenever somethings works, every business planning cycle takes into account how to improve the way employees collaborate. Yet, since collaboration software or enterprise social networks stepped into the world, improving how we work is closer to reality.
In fact, in a recent study by MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte, 86% of businesses indicated that online collaboration software was either “important” or “somewhat important”. Compared to 52% in 2012 and 75% in 2013, it’s fairly obvious that businesses are increasingly turning toward such solutions to bolster productivity, streamline business processes, and encourage collaboration as much as possible.
To keep up with this interest level and likely sales opportunities, service providers should consider adding collaboration software to their portfolios.
There is a common perception that collaboration is the universal solution to all issues that software companies encounter. A lot of effort is invested in improving collaboration between tech people, starting from tools that can be easily purchased and ending with programs that encourage collaborative behavior. The idea is quite simple: if people collaborate better, the output of the entire team, both its quality and quantity, will be better.
While I do not want to mitigate against collaboration, there are specific cases where it simply doesn’t work. I will exemplify that and suggest some solutions as well.
