Photo by Kirill Balobanov on Unsplash
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.
Managing today’s complex business communications solutions is beginning to require more than just a guy with a manual and some IT experience. New evidence is mounting that Unified Communications solutions are becoming vital for companies big and small. As the UC sector is busy working up some momentum, industry experts are already sensing the need for Business Communications Operations Management, or BCOM. UCStrategies, a self-proclaimed authority in UC education and information, hints at the need of configuration templates for businesses looking to finally say yes to technology.
When creating a new product or launching a new service, the first question you ask yourself is whether it will be successful and you will be able to sell it. Marketing theory says that you start with the user’s needs and then build products/services to meet them. In reality, after the launch it doesn’t work like that anymore. You already have your solution and want to find a way to match it on potential customers’ needs. As soon as you can sense any opportunity there, you can start building your approach.
In this first article of the series, we will start with medical practices. Imagine a medical partnership with a couple of practitioners and a couple of nurses in a small office, a receptionist, and a legacy telephony system.
You’d think that a simple enunciation like “Unified Communications” is pretty straightforward, right? After taking my first plunge into the subject, my answer was “I beg to differ.” While UC is certainly alive and kicking, it strikes me as still in its early fledging stages. Strictly from a technical standpoint, it was doable a decade ago. So why is it so fragmented?
It started with a tweet…
Most people try to sell to anyone with a pulse. Big mistake. Selling to no-targets costs a lot & is usually non-repetitive. Focus!
This made me think of something all companies, big or small, older or younger face every day. The combination of finding the right customers and creating replicable selling scenarios makes all the difference.
This is a video we’ve shot two weeks ago about VoipNow Mobile. Please excuse my performance 🙂 VoipNow Mobile is at the beginning of its life, there is still much to do and we know it. But at the end of the day, we want our partners to be able to deploy their infrastructure on over 90% BYOD.
Why? Traditionally, BYOD is associated with high risks, poor compliance and so on. Considering the problems our customers face with business desktop IP phones, we believe that properly done BYOD can provide a better experience not only for end-users, but also for specialized IT personnel. While we do not know precisely how many support cases are associated with client issues on the service provider’s end, we know that about 20% of our support tickets contain various phone client problems, starting with provisioning and ending with illegal equipment usage. It’s a big opportunity to hunt these down.
Workers today have more communication tools to choose from than ever. That includes Unified Communications, which integrates voice, video, instant messaging, conferencing, faxing, and more – all on one platform. However, employees often receive little or no training to reap the benefits of using these innovative tools. Many organizations end up removing training from their budgets when making such large technology shifts – believing that people should inherently know how to use and why they should use these tools. But this decision to remove training and consulting can be a costly choice for enterprises, as the technology won’t be used to its fullest potential. This could increase the total implementation cost ten folds.
As Americans join their families around Thanksgiving tables this year, many will reflect on their gratitude for family, friends, good health, and their jobs. Back at the office on Cyber Monday, SMB decision makers that worked to deploy a company-wide Unified Communications (UC) solution in 2014 are counting their blessings, too 🙂
If you want to learn how not to implement collaboration software, here’s the perfect hypothetical situation: a mid-sized company is looking to enhance the knowledge sharing and productivity of its employees. As a result, the firm settles on a collaboration solution and the IT department has the task to implement the platform.
