When demand is high and the market is crowded, differentiation is king.
You have to stand out. You have to have something your competitors lack.
After all, opportunity is one thing: capitalising on it is quite another.
And, so it is with the Covid-related explosion in demand for remote working solutions.
In the beginning – as part of an emergency response to workforces’ forced exodus from office to home - UCaaS providers innovated fast.
Their customers too, were swift to act: deploying whatever quick-fix tech they could in order to maintain business as close to usual as possible.
A year in, it can be argued that UC has made the single biggest contribution towards keeping the wheels of the global economy turning, albeit somewhat slower than before the pandemic struck.
Now, as that frantic adaptation morphs into a more strategic approach, businesses’ redesigns of a so-called hybrid working model are more calmly considered and ultimately more demanding on vendors.
The opportunities remain, but capitalising is more of a challenge – with those all-important differentiators key to success.
“The transition to hybrid is the next huge phase in the evolution of unified communications and you have to have it right on multiple fronts,” says Scott Bleasdell, Vice President of Product at fast-growing cloud telephony innovator net2phone.
An early pioneer, today it delivers a cost-effective platform rich with reliable, feature-filled solutions that helps hundreds of thousands of businesses throughout the US, Canada, Spain, Mexico and Latin America work smarter.
Its cloud-based UCaaS solution enables users to work from anywhere in the world via an integrated mobile app, softphone or desk phone, with fully-integrated features such as video calling, chat-based messaging, and powerful analytics.
Whilst the technology is proven and transformative, Bleasdell believes that, in the new hybrid world, the most successful partnerships will deliver on three more granular fronts: productivity, ease of acquisition, and cost.
