There is a paradox built deep into the heart of the role digital technology plays in business and industry.
If there is one single defining reason which explains the digital revolution of the past 20 years, it is that technology makes things simpler for the end user. For businesses, that means simpler infrastructure, easier deployment, and most important of all, making work processes faster and more efficient, adding up to achieving better results.
If this wasn’t the case, there would be no case for digital transformation.
The paradox is that the technology itself is far from simple. As work-based systems have become increasingly reliant on software, programming has reached ever new heights of sophistication and specialisation. We may now all take the internet for granted, but the physical network of global data centres, routers and carrier infrastructure it is built on is beyond the imagination of what any business telecoms engineer could ever have dreamt up.
This is a point Sahil Rekhi, RingCentral’s EMEA managing director, emphasises in the role of cloud communications. For Sahil, the Cloud has been and will continue to be critically important in delivering better consolidated, intuitive and responsive communications solutions to businesses. It is also very good at hiding the complexity it requires to achieve those ends.
Sahil said: “Business wants consolidation of tools and users want the ability to work anywhere and on any device – a system that delivers on these points while enabling cross functional tools will see success in the long run.”
The next frontier
Mobility and flexibility have long been the watchwords of cloud solutions. But consolidation is a relatively new frontier in battle for the hearts and minds of end users. And it does not just means consolidation in the sense of having all tools accessible at a single point on a single platform, as in a /unified-communications/ucaas solution. It means consolidation of all communications and IT systems, everything working as one through open integration and cross-functional compatibility.
Sahil believes this will become even more important as emerging technologies enter the mainstream of business communications.
“Collaboration suites with integrations into other cloud services and AI platforms will be next frontier of competition and drive significant adoption for cloud communications in the marketplace,” he said.”
“Automation is the buzz word in the market alongside AI and building a communication system that gives customers the flexibility to adapt the system to more efficient workflows across multiple applications will be key for future growth.
“Video and AI will become more mainstream in the future. End users are seeking a Facetime-like simplified video experience for video in business use, telepresence rooms are old school. Faster decision making across the business is coming out as a key driver for business change and this ecosystem as a service will be a key ask in the future.”
RingCentral has worked hard on establishing strategic partnerships and has moulded its UCaaS platform RingCentral Office to offer plug-in compatibility with a wide range of business applications, including Salesforce, ZenDesk, Box, G Suite, Microsoft Office 365 and Oracle. It also has an active developer platform offering extensive open APIs and SDKs for developers to to create their own plug-ins into chosen software.
Choice hurdle
Sahil also sees another driver of consolidation in the market – customers being swamped by choice. “User adoption of any new communication tool is the biggest hurdle for enterprises today because a plethora of solutions exist in the market.,” he said. Because the process of choosing a workable product is complicated by a glut of competition, business owners often struggle to make good decisions, failing to take a joined-up approach and consider the needs of either the broader business or their staff.
“[Businesses take] a silo approach to purchasing solutions,” he said. “They end up buying systems which are not integrated into other tools in the enterprise IT stack, and without understanding the impact of new communications on processes like sales, service, BYOD policies, hot-desking policies and so on. This leads to barriers in user adoption.”
“IT in large enterprises can often have a disconnect with how the business works. Decisions for new tools are made without line of business leaders being involved in the process.”
This is turn, argues Sahil, create further silos, as you get a process of “consumerisation” where staff start to use their own tools “to overcome work challenges and keep productivity high.”
The blame for this is not entirely at the door of the decision makers and buyers, says Sahil. He sees it as a consequence of a comms market that is still locked in proprietary silos, where the interests of competition between vendors has primacy over the needs of customers. Only when consolidation becomes a dominant consideration across the industry, when all vendors adopt a fully open architecture and aim to make systems as straightforward and as compatible as possible, will adoption become easier for businesses.
Finally, Sahil talks about another kind of consolidation in relation to cloud contact centre solutions – ‘global consolidation’. He believes the cloud has been a significant factor in extending and improving contact centre operations across all types of business.
“[It has] reduced upfront costs of deployment, provided a true omni-channel experience, and offered instant scalability and flexibility to adjust according to demands,” he said. “It has aso allowed for much lower costs for DR as this is now being delivered by the cloud vendors. It is helping BPOs lower charges to their customers and at the same time offers a better level of service and experience
“There has also been an influx of informal contact centre solutions, allowing for flexible working, yet ensuring control/data protection and other regulations for operating customer service centre or sales centres is being met. This has only enhanced the service being offered by the business further.”
In terms of consolidation, Sahil sees the Cloud as instrumental in resolving the issue between local delivery and outsourcing. “Contact centre operations have been through a series of swaps of being run locally or internally, or in different regions altogether based on outsourcing plans. The Cloud delivers a global contact centre solution allowing companies to now offer a happy medium, extending a hybrid on-shore/off-shore approach to customers. This in a legacy on premises world would have been cost prohibitive for many organizations, but the Cloud has made this an affordable reality.”
