Navigating the new normal: multiple vendors for your communication and collaboration tools. As communication tools become more important for different modalities of work (remote, hybrid, in-office), IT departments at large enterprises are in the difficult position of supporting more systems with the same resources. Multi-vendor environments are the norm among these organizations as a way to meet demands for functionality and affordability.
In fact, a report by Metrigy found around 18% of companies are using at least two primary calling platforms, while over 38% use multiple meeting apps and collaboration tools. In addition, there are a myriad of add-ons users require like compliance, security, contact center activation, dial plan management, license management, and more to come. A multi-vendor environment has its benefits. It ensures companies can provide hybrid, remote, and in-office employees with the perfect blend of technologies to accommodate their specific needs and preferences.
Multi-vendor strategies also ensure companies can avoid the issues of vendor lock-in, increase flexibility, and customize their IT and UC stack based on their specific security, compliance, and performance needs. The problem is, managing these environments is notoriously difficult, error prone, and cost inefficient if done poorly.
The Challenges of a Multi-Vendor Workplace
Though multi-vendor environments allow organizations to get the best technologies in the hands of users that can benefit from them the most, managing various disparate systems is complex, time-consuming and expensive. In a multi-vendor environment, crucial tasks, like provisioning and deprovisioning users, ensuring enforcement of security settings, and managing day-to-day operations become increasingly difficult.
The more systems and vendors and organization uses, the more challenges emerge for business leaders and their teams, such as:
- Higher operational costs: Multi-vendor environments impose additional demands on IT staff to have more specialized knowledge about more systems which drives high technology overhead.
- Poor visibility: With UC systems across several vendors comes a fragmented visibility into crucial performance metrics and data becomes difficult to use. This can lead to longer response times for employee service requests, as well as compliance issues.
- Limited insights: Missing integrations between critical tools can lead to issues with business intelligence and insights. This can make it difficult for companies to make the right decisions about how to allocate resources and manage technology.
- Poor user experiences: In a fragmented multi-vendor environment, end-users lack a simple and consistent means to manage functions and features ranging from the complex to the common such as password resets, leading to a poor user experience.
Preparing for a Multi-Vendor Workplace
For many organizations, simply migrating to an all-in-one platform for unified communications, customer service, and productivity, isn’t an option. Instead, they need a way to unify their various tools and technologies into an environment that enables end-to-end management and control.
A UC service management platform offers the optimal solution, providing enterprises with an opportunity to automate repetitive tasks, reduce complexity, ensure security, and enhance the user experience with more options for self-service. In fact, studies show that implementing one of these platforms into an IT ecosystem can reduce operational management costs by 36.9%, while also reducing users’ time to activation or deactivation by 46.4%.
With a UC service management platform, companies can manage multiple vendors, as well as cloud-based and legacy tools in one ecosystem. Most importantly to support current and future automation requirements, they make it easy to build flexible workflows for repetitive business processes, streamline bulk administration tasks, and enforce key security requirements.
What to Look for in a Solution for Multi-Vendor Management
While various solutions exist to simplify multi-vendor management, not every platform offers the same level of flexibility, scalability, and functionality. Aside from choosing a UC management platform that centralizes operations in a single pane of glass, there are a few other things you should be looking for:
1. Endless Integration
An intuitive solution for multi-vendor management should provide a single interface managing every communication platform and tool, from VoIP and video conferencing systems, to messaging and email. It should synchronize directly with the directory services you already use, for user authentication and attribute retrieval, and it should work seamlessly with third-party applications.
A UC management platform that can work effectively with ITSM, HRIS, and other enterprise hyper-automation tools will make it easier for businesses to keep track of their entire UC ecosystem in one location, and to design automated workflows that enhance onboarding, provisioning, troubleshooting, and more.
According to Micah Singer, CEO at Kurmi, “Centralizing management of UC and other communication tools to a single platform saves businesses time and money, ensures security settings across these exposed applications, and let’s enterprises and service provider use multiple vendors based on need and budget. Kurmi is building more technology integrations and working hard to provide the best tools – API, SDK – for broader integration.”
2. Comprehensive Security and Compliance Features
Securing a multi-vendor environment can be notoriously difficult, particularly when systems have varying levels of access controls and permissions. A service management platform makes it easier to meet security compliance requirements and to enforce a company’s compliance and security requirements.
The right management platform will enable IT teams to create comprehensive user profiles, define user attributes, and assign specific roles and permissions to each team member. It will enable companies to implement end-to-end security policies, instantly deprovision users when necessary, and track potential user-configuration compliance issues.
3. Extensive Automation
In a multi-vendor environment, automation can significantly improve business efficiency and reduce operational costs. A platform that allows companies to automate various repetitive tasks, such as provisioning users, adjusting the contents of services and even migrating users between technologies, ensures IT admins can spend less time on mundane work, and more time focusing on strategic tasks.
With the right UC service management tool, companies will be able to automate zero-touch provisioning and implement automated workflows for managing call routing and forwarding, handling conference room settings, and more.
4. Enhanced User Experiences
One of the core benefits of a multi-vendor UC service management solution is it can eliminate many of the issues that harm user experiences. These tools ensure that IT teams provide employees with the right technologies and permissions in minutes. They also enable companies to create self-service portals, where users can manage their own services without the support of an IT team. This makes it easier to complete a series of pre-automated actions like asking for more features, new devices and changes to location or situation.
Plus, these platforms can integrate with ITSMs like ServiceNow, Fresh Service, and Workday, enabling the helpdesk and other non-technical staff to complete routine tasks within the same interface used to manage tickets. This speeds up response times to common tickets, like resetting a user’s PIN or activating their Voice service.
5. Complete Flexibility
A truly effective multi-vendor UC management solution should be flexible and highly configurable to meet the needs of and scale with the company using it. The right platform will enhance the IT team’s current tools to automate multi-step, repetitive user management tasks with workflows while empowering companies to implement innovative technologies, because they aren’t so hard to manage.
It will ensure businesses can adapt to support the needs of hybrid workers, full-time in-office staff, and remote employees, as their organization evolves. What’s more, it will ensure businesses can continuously customize their environment over time, creating templates and pre-defining settings for distinct departments and teams.
“UC service management tools should centralize and streamline operations, not create new challenges for IT teams,” said Singer.
“Kurmi’s flexible design allows UC admins to tailor workflows, including integrating their own scripts and expanding use cases when a new one arises. This adaptability ensures that the platform enhances productivity and efficiency now and into the future as the communications systems marketplace evolves.”
Reduce the Complexity of Multi-Vendor Environments
Instances of multi-vendor IT environments, especially among large enterprises, will expand in the years ahead, as businesses employ a broad range of new tools and services to support their teams. However, to unlock the full benefits of a flexible multi-vendor approach, to make sure these systems are secured, and to keep a tight handle on costs, businesses need the right technology.
A comprehensive UC service management application that centralizes management of your technology stack, provides complete visibility into your UC ecosystem, and allows you to automate repetitive tasks will boost your company’s efficiency, and optimize the ROI of your current and future IT investments.
