Healthcare organisations face unique challenges in managing their UC infrastructure. Compliance, security, data handling, the list goes on.
This is particularly pronounced as the sector undergoes rapid digital transformation, making adherence all the more difficult.
Equally, navigating the complexity of multi-site operations - as many healthcare providers do - or taking on new providers in ongoing merger and acquisition activities and the need for robust security controls have created an environment where streamlined UC management has become crucial for operational efficiency.
"That's a good spot for us because we bring automation to complex UC environments.”
Marc Haimsohn, Vice President of Sales and GTM, Americas, at Kurmi Software said.
The healthcare sector's unique characteristics have naturally led to increased demand for specialised UC management solutions, Haimsohn explained.
Complex Challenges in Healthcare UC Management
Healthcare organisations face several distinct challenges in managing their UC infrastructure. One of which is the sheer number of different systems they must consider.
"There's probably more M&A [merger and acquisition] activity in healthcare than an average enterprise type organisation," Haimsohn said.
These M&As mean when a healthcare organisation merges or acquires other organisations, they inherit different UC systems and management practices that need to be unified. This presents a huge challenge in terms of ensuring compliance, matching configurations.
Equally, with such acquisitions, or indeed just through expansion, healthcare providers are often faced with the complexity of having to manage multi-site operations with varying management approaches.
This inconsistency is particularly problematic in healthcare because, Haimsohn explained: "With healthcare, oftentimes you've got whole different UC teams or different support staff... supporting each different site."
"You can certainly have it with banks that have different branches, but with healthcare, I think it's pretty different from most organisations. Usually, it's more centralised with IT."
This creates a complex environment where organisations need "a template" of how they're going to have their UC managed in every different site rather than having an overarching guideline. This level of site-by-site variation is what makes coordination particularly challenging in healthcare compared to other industries where IT management tends to be more centralised.
The goal is to make everything "look roughly the same, which is a huge advantage for them."
Additionally, healthcare providers often maintain extensive contact centres and experience significant employee turnover, requiring efficient onboarding and offboarding processes.
Such employee turnover combined with extensive contact centre operations means organisations must constantly provision and de-provision UC services - a process that can take up to around 30 minutes per employee without Kurmi, but can be fully automated or reduced to a process that takes less than a minute to complete.
Security concerns have also led many healthcare organisations to maintain on-premises technologies longer than other sectors.
"Many of them are in a hybrid situation where some but not all of their technology is in the cloud," Haimsohn explained.
This time-intensive process becomes especially problematic when managing multiple sites with different systems and procedures. It forces IT teams to juggle different management interfaces and security protocols across both deployment models while ensuring consistent service delivery.
