As companies around the world search for a more seamless solution for their communication and customer experience strategies, “integration” has become the name of the game for many vendors. When it comes to ensuring integration, there are few organisations in the marketplace quite like Mondago when it comes to popularity, success, and reputation.
Mondago offers Computer Telephony software to companies that want to enhance and improve their systems through immersive integrations with the Customer Relationship Management world. By connecting the CRM in all of its many forms to the communication environment, Mondago provides businesses of all shapes and sizes with the tools they need for transformative CX.
I sat down with the Commercial Director of Mondago, Rob Cox, to discuss the things that the company had learned in 2018, and what the team expects to see in 2019.
What Kind of Significant Changes Did You Notice in 2018?
Mondago uses standards-based components to help streamline the integration process between the CRM and communication environments. Rob told me that during 2018, the company began to see a shift in the new opportunities being presented. Particularly, newer hosted telephony platform providers began to grow aware of Mondago as a solution provider and started to come to them for help.
“There’s a lot of great hosted platforms out there. They’re all making significant investments, and the market is certainly growing, but it’s also a very competitive space.”
“CRM integration has become an essential requirement for service providers who want to compete and grow their channel”
Although hosted platforms can do some of the integration work for themselves by connecting with partners and covering the basics, as the CRM market continues to grow, Rob believes that Mondago’s specialist services will become more essential. “Ultimately, end-customers won’t sacrifice the CRM they work with for a phone system. They will have made a significant investment in their customer management systems and need their service providers to work around the CRM they already have, and that’s what we can help with at Mondago.”
How Do You Think Mondago is Standing Out in the Market?
When it comes to CRM integrations, few companies match up to the sheer scope that Mondago can provide. As new entrants continue to make their way into the market, it’s no wonder that business is growing for Mondago. According to Rob, people aren’t just coming to Mondago to differentiate themselves; they’re realising that they simply can’t compete if they don’t have ability offer telephony integration their customers preferred systems, and not to just the standard well known CRM systems.
“Our partners feel that they simply have to have this flexibility in their portfolio now – they can’t be a competitive without it. CRM software evolution isn’t slowing down. I’m not just talking about traditional CRM systems here – but anything that integrates with contact-oriented database applications. We integrate with service desk systems, accounting systems, and a host of other things. It’s about delivering context to communications.”
One major trend that Mondago’s team noticed in 2018 was an influx of people coming to them for new solutions. Rob told me that a couple of years back, the business introduced a partner program for people who write CRM programs. “If you go back 3 or 4 years, if we wanted to add an integration for a product, we would approach the developer and collaborate with them on an add-in. We still do that now, but we’re also seeing application developers contacting us and asking us to write add-ins for their products too.”
These strategic partnerships are becoming increasingly important throughout the entire communication market. According to Rob, Mondago doesn’t mind whether they join the partner programs of the application providers, or they join Mondago’s partner program. The key is making sure that everyone can work together towards the right outcomes.
What’s Happening for Mondago in 2019?
After a year of substantial growth and success in 2018, I was keen to find out where Rob thought Mondago would be heading this year. He told me that the whole company is excited about entering a new launch cycle to push the products that they started to introduce at the end of 2018. These include products for a wider range of hosted platforms, a range of contact centre orientated products and more.
“Many of the new products that we’ll be delivering are less obviously connected to the traditional CRM integration USP. We’re bringing things to the market that can stand on their own merit too. The call centre wallboard solution is particularly impressive because while a lot of communication vendors can offer wallboards, our CRM integration modules are included into our new product so that you can see your CRM data on your wallboard solution.”
For Mondago, a lot of 2019 will be centered around taking advantage of the substantial work that the company has put into developing their products.
“We’re taking these collaborations we’ve had with manufacturers and creating real products that can be used by a lot of different service providers”
Any Predictions for 2019?
Rob told me that when he looks at the communication and CRM markets, he can see a number of trends continuing within 2019. “I think we’ll continue to see consolidation in the service provider market particularly on a regional, cross-border basis. Some of the more mature hosted markets are getting close to saturation and the most successful service providers are looking to expand internationally”
Rob also noted that we’re all entering an environment where it is difficult it is for one company to provide everything their customers require and need to partner with third party developers to provide feature parity and a complete end-to-end solution. Mondago is perfectly placed in today’s customer experience focused environment to make the crucial connections between modern islands of technology. Not only do Mondago’s integrations support productivity, but they deliver exceptional customer experience too.
