Page 3 - Telecom Reseller JanFeb 2017

January/February 2017
Telecom Reseller 3
THE LATEST
TECH BLOGS
MIKE PATTERSON
DAVID BYRD
ALAN PERCY
THERESA SZCZUREK
Eective Contact Center Solutions: Exceeding Expectations in an “Instant Gratication” World
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Productivity and User Experience Drive Anticipated IM&A Activity in 2017 for Dynamic UC Market
Y
oung, technologically-savvy professionals are now taking leadership roles as contact center managers in
McFARLAND
by Rick McFarland, Chief Executive Officer at Voice4Net (www.voice4net.com)
capabilities while allowing the end-user to preserve their legacy investment.
A sophisticated WebRTC-based contact center implementation is as close as one might come to “plug and play” integration, while still facilitating the rich customization that caters to a unique set of business processes.
It is, in e ect, the best of both worlds: Crucial customization and an advanced feature set, in an expedient timeframe, and for lower total expenditure.
Another strategy is to keep in mind exactly who will be using the system: human beings.
In the current climate, technology has become so sophisticated that to truly create a good
t for users, telecom resellers have to pay particular attention to the human element. Many outstanding solutions are rejected because personnel have di culty accommodating
new interfaces or procedures, no matter how stupendous their capabilities. Productivity- enhancing features go unused because employees who are not comfortable with change are o en intimidated by new tools and policies.
Resellers can o er the most cutting-edge contact center solutions on the market, but if they don’t support the sta ’s ability to adopt these innovations, the solution risks failure. You must deliver not only the tools, the industry
knowledge and the integration expertise for each job, but also the people expertise to facilitate migration.
A savvy solution provider should institute a consultative approach including comprehensive research on the procedures and internal culture of the client. You must become immersed enough to reasonably predict the necessary learning curve, and begin advocating new concepts that will breed familiarity with the incoming system. Policy shi s should be implemented before
the upgrade even goes live. e dealer should estimate the level and type of training that suits the learning style of the organization, and provide a plan to institute that training.
Ask questions to this end: Are customer policies rigid, requiring personnel to adhere to steadfast procedures, or are workers encouraged to employ their own problem-solving skills? Is the sta resentful when it comes to mandates? Are they encouraged to be independent self-starters? Each of these dynamics will
have a major impact on how a new system
will be adopted, and whether they will use sophisticated—but unaccustomed—features.
A truly e ective contact center is the result of a well devised plan. It considers the needs of the individual company, by providing the best possible interactions with its customers and business partners. e plan requires integration time, labor, and above all, an intrinsic understanding of the company’s existing infrastructure, business processes and internal culture.
In the end, technology is not about hardware and so ware. It’s about helping human beings conduct business better, faster and easier, and in a cost-e ective manner. ■
an internal and external communication tool, expect that UC vendors either build the functionality themselves, partner or even acquire existing applications or technology. Salesforce recently acquiring messaging specialist HeyWire and Broadso acquiring Intellinote further illustrates this trend.
e days of audio-only communication
and collaboration are numbered. With
the proliferation of video-enabled devices, improvements in cloud infrastructure, consumerization of the medium as well as lower bandwidth costs, video is now becoming a must-have functionality for comprehensive UC suites. Additionally, enterprises are seeing the bene ts of video in both external and internal communications and demanding video as an option. e industry will continue to see the integration of video conferencing capabilities into UC suites and video as a service or cloud video providers will most likely capitalize on these current market trends. Larger UC vendors have already tapped into this through strategic acquisitions like Microso buying Skype,
Cisco purchasing Acano and IBM acquiring UStream, while video as a service startups such as Zoom, Vidyo and Blue Jeans Network
ATHERTON continues on page 5 ››
the eld. It’s only natural that many of these individuals focus on the concepts they were raised with: plug-and-play technologies that o er instant grati cation and rewards. IT directors that look for plug-and-play results don’t always understand how sophisticated a contact center installation can be, expecting an instantaneous, pre-con gured solution. ey have a less-than-realistic sense of the amount of time, foresight and integration expertise it takes to create a solution that addresses the unique issues of their businesses.
Mismanaged expectations are a sure way
to sink a new client relationship. So how
do we combat the unrealistic expectations
of IT personnel who may anticipate instant grati cation in the integration process? How do we change their pre- xed mindsets for quick, cookie-cutter solutions—that in some instances are simply not feasible, or even desirable?
One way is for technology resellers to
utilize WebRTC, or real-time web-based communications, as a primary tool. is protocol can generate notable e ciencies by way of time-to-market, cost savings and labor by reducing integration requirements. WebRTC is a browser-based, HTML-5 protocol that leverages the architecture of the common web browser.
A richly-featured contact center solution that
is tailored to a speci c business need can be accomplished much more quickly via WebRTC, and at a lower price-point, since both time and labor are conserved. is framework can be built on top of the client’s existing infrastructure, making it easier to adopt new features and
n a dynamic and rapidly shi ing Uni ed ATHERTON is will lead to continued acquisitions of pure Communications market, what matters play UCaaS providers by legacy UC vendors in most is productivity and user experience, the search for growth.
everything else is noise. is is a market that e acceptance of cloud vendors and
has transitioned from the acceptance and by Andrew Atherton, Director hybrid deployments will also lead to further
convergence of diverse communication channels to the virtualization of those channels and now towards the aforementioned productivity and user experience, or making those channels work in concert with each other.
Uni ed Communications players are addressing the joint enterprise desires for increased productivity while maintaining
a clean and manageable user experience by continuing investment in both organic and inorganic (M&A) initiatives. e technology drivers of this M&A activity will be the shi
to the cloud, Cloud Platform-as-a-Service (“CPaaS”), messaging, and video. Additionally, general industry consolidation in the name
of growth and synergies will also continue to drive activity as seen in PGi’s acquisition of ReadyTalk, Mitel’s attempt to acquire Polycom,
& Jace Kowalzyk, Partner at Union Square Advisors (www. usadvisors.com)
and even Microso ’s acquisition of LinkedIn.
SHIFT TO CLOUD
e enterprise move to the cloud will continue as today’s cloud-based UC platforms provide the ease of use, exibility, predictability of operating expenses and security that both large enterprises and SMB’s desire. Per Gartner, Cloud telephony and cloud-based web-conferencing services are projected to yield 16.9 percent and 7.5 percent respective CAGRs through 2020. However, on premise is not dead and cloud solutions will
not wholly replace on premise UC platforms
as many organizations will utilize hybrid deployments with a mix of both technologies.
acquisitions of CPaaS and cloud API vendors as enterprises continue to utilize API’s more frequently to integrate UC features into their current applications. Recent activity illustrating this trend includes Cisco’s acquisition of Cloud API vendor Tropo, Vonage’s acquisition of CPaaS company Nexmo and Twilio’s IPO.
PROLIFERATION OF MESSAGING AND VIDEO TECHNOLOGY Historically primarily utilized for social purposes, messaging is quickly becoming a key form of communication in the enterprise world. Messaging is already the number one activity on mobile phones and has now rmly entrenched itself in the workplace in the form of team chat applications due to its ease of use and e ciency. As more enterprises embrace messaging as