We’ve all been there. We get a calendar invite from a customer or vendor, but the online meeting service is unfamiliar. When the meeting starts, we fumble around with the link and dial-in, wasting precious time and guaranteeing an awkward start to the call. Even worse? We can’t join the meeting because our systems can’t communicate.
These collaboration roadblocks between organisations are real. When a company rolls out a new technology, such as Skype for Business, its users become ingrained in that service. The workflows and features become second-nature, and familiarity reigns.
But what happens when you need to meet with someone outside your company, who does not use that same tool?
For many people, this is extremely difficult. Their videoconferencing service doesn’t talk to other videoconferencing services or devices, leaving users stuck somewhere in the middle. For instance, what if Company A has deployed Skype for Business on their desktops, but Company B (its law firm) uses videoconferencing room systems, and not Skype for Business? Those employees cannot call their attorneys on their videoconferencing units, and the attorneys cannot join Skype meetings from their units. When users cannot join meetings quickly and easily, enterprises face:
- Lost productivity - Participants lose time fiddling with an unfamiliar service and interface
- Obsolete investments - If participants cannot connect videoconferencing units (SIP/H.323 devices) to their service like Skype and vice versa, they'll stop using them
- Frustrated users - If users cannot easily meet with third-party contractors, vendors, consultants, or other outside companies on video, adoption of collaboration tools could plummet
One of the most common challenges that enterprises face is connecting standards-based videoconferencing units with Skype for Business. The popularity of Skype has exploded over the past few years as more organisations deploy Office 365. In fact, a recent study by Spiceworks found that Skype for Business is one of the most common collaboration tools, with 36 percent of organisations using it. Employees love Skype, too, for its intuitive chat, presence, and audio call features, and this adoption trend is only expected to continue.
However, organisations that use Skype for Business must consider how often employees collaborate with external companies and how a communication challenge like this could impact the business.
Breaking down barriers
To address the interoperability issue, companies need a way for their systems to talk to each other, and cloud-based solutions that bridge these ecosystems are the answer. It’s no surprise that enterprises are moving to the cloud. While digital transformation (DX) may be a buzzword to some, this shift is taking the business world by storm. In fact, it’s the leading factor in cloud adoption as companies look for ways to work smarter. Need more proof? A recent survey by LogicMonitor found that a whopping 83 percent of enterprise workloads will be in the cloud by 2020.
