In the not-too-distant past, communications technology had distinct meanings within organisations and without, and was used very differently by varied categories of workers with different needs. Each could be managed separately and distinctly as a result — whether an organisation had fixed landline handsets in the warehouse, a big on-prem server for the office workers, and so on.
Today everything has changed, and managing the complexity of communication and collaboration services has become an art in its own right. The Kurmi-sponsored IDC Spotlight publication by Oru Mohiuddin, “Managed UC Service Key for Business Outcomes”, subtitled Changing work dynamics create new communication needs, reflects on this transformative shift — and the reasons you need a consolidated approach to UC management, to succeed in the future of work.
Provisioning as a category
Enterprise communications has changed so rapidly, in response to technical advances and user demand, that it’s easy for emerging solutions to be reactive and fragmented. This gives rise to many risks including the rise of shadow IT, security breaches, and inefficient use of resources (e.g. via manual provisioning), as well as the opportunity costs of outages and support. A single point of provisioning not only simplifies specification and financial management, it also outsources many of these dangers to a source of expert management.
Return on Investment projections need to take account of all these hard-to-quantify variables, to realise the benefits of straightforward non-technical and rapid provisioning services via a ‘single pane of glass’ — increasing productivity and flexibility through efficiency at every level, without the need to manage multiple vendors and accounts.
Work has changed forever
Complexity will not roll back, and the ways in which we communicate and collaborate are altered permanently, by the global health crisis of 2020. What we define as a workstation, a collaboration device, a knowledge-worker… all of this has changed, and so must the tools they use - as the report indicates, team collaboration is projected to increase at a 16% CAGR between 2019 and 2023.
