As the hybrid workspace continues to develop, small and medium businesses need to adapt to the new way of working, with various vendors offering different solutions.
UC Today sat down with GoTo‘s Director of Global Product Marketing Joe Walsh and Cavell Group’s Director of Research Dom Black to discuss making IT management easy in the hybrid workspace.
UC Today: What are the challenges facing the SMB market, particularly around IT management?
Joe Walsh: Tech is at the foundation of everything we’re doing right now, and there are two big issues that small to mid-sized businesses are working on, that’s employee productivity and where they work, to offer hybrid working which is a massive demand for employees after the recent changes we’ve seen.
Then of course customers’ expectations are always increasing over the last few years as they’ve engaged digital channels a lot more, moving a lot of their services and their buying journeys online.
We’re seeing small to mid-sized businesses try to grapple with that as well, so it’s trying to provide that employee experience and also meet those customers’ expectations at the same time, and that’s putting a bit of pressure on the IT teams in workplaces.
UC Today: Dom, could you share some insights on what you’re seeing in the market right now?
Dom Black: I think it’s been a really interesting time for business owners, especially SMB owners, to navigate their way through the pandemic over the last few years.
What we saw at the start of that was a lot of people snatching at services and solutions that were going to help them work from home and continue to help their businesses continue running. That was a real struggle for a lot of those businesses because they were on legacy equipment.
As we have emerged from lockdowns and are now looking at the next stages I think it’s a real challenge for IT within these organisations that are going, “well, how does our business want to communicate and what do they want to do, what technologies and what tools do they want to use?” That’s a conversation that can’t be just led by IT, it needs to include the employees as well to decide; how do you want to work from home or in a hybrid model, what technologies do you need and how do they work together?
UC Today: Nearly 50 million employees in the US have moved roles in the last 12 months – how has this impacted IT teams?
Joe Walsh: I think it creates a lot of challenges. We know seven out of 10 employees will refuse a job now that doesn’t offer flexibility.
They want the ability to work from their home office, to work from the office or work from wherever it suits them on any given day, and that adds to the pressure and challenges that IT teams need to address.
It’s trying to make that easy to do in the simplest way possible for these teams because, particularly in the SMB market, they don’t have a rich amount of IT resources nor budget. They find themselves more often than not trying to do less with more, and the biggest trend to try and achieve that is consolidation. A lot of the set ups put in initially by companies was done based on what they thought would be a temporary basis. Now it’s two, three years down the road and they need to provide permanent solutions that are as easy as possible and simplify the procurement by going through one vendor.
UC Today: Dom, does that align with your research? Are people looking for that one vendor approach to solve some of these issues?
Dom Black: It depends obviously on the size of the company, but we certainly saw that small businesses are looking to buy from a single provider who can provide all business services.
When we look at businesses with between 10 and 49 employees, 70 per cent of those don’t want multiple providers. They want to have one provider or a couple who are going to provide very specialist equipment in different places and give that integrated solution.
It’s certainly something which we’ve seen grow and grow; we’re seeing more and more channel organisations and businesses out there selling these services and seeing what else they can bring in to their portfolio because demand is so high for these different solutions.
UC Today: What are your top tips on implementing hybrid working strategies and making IT management a lot simpler and smoother?
Joe Walsh: There are five areas I always advise our customers to look at. One is the administration tools. Particularly if you are light on IT resources or the person looking after your IT isn’t from an IT background; they just seem to be the most tech-savvy person in the business. Make sure they have the best options to make light of the work they need to do.
The second thing is the end user. You want a really easy-to-use platform consolidated into one application; you want to make it as simple as possible. I think overall $4 billion will be wasted in the UCaaS industry this year on licences that are not adopted.
Customer support as well is a big one. Look at the vendors and what the support processes are like. If you’re not big on IT resources and you need help, you want that help to be readily available, simple, easy and intuitive.
Then you want value for money. It’s always important to get the best bang for your buck and make sure that when you do procure things, you get the best deal for your business.
Lastly, I would look at trying to consume as much as you can from one vendor, particularly when it comes to your communications and those connections with employees and customers. If you can get both of those in a simple way that’s manageable for your organisation, you’ll always stay in touch with those two most important parts of your business.
Dom Black: One of the key things that we see from all of our end customer surveys is that support is so important, so make sure you look at support when you’re speaking to these organisations and looking to procure their services.
Things do go wrong in IT, and everyone is aware of that, but making sure that you have that route to speak to the right person is super critical.
One of the key points that Joe raised is to evaluate what your employees want to use. There’s no point investing in solutions expecting they’re going to work for your business if your employees say, “well, this doesn’t work for us; we don’t work this way”.
I think in getting engagement across the whole organisation, making sure you have those people within your organisation who are cheerleaders for that technology and making sure they’re driving adoption, so it’s not just coming from IT, but within specific teams.
I think that’s going to be the way you’re going to get the highest adoption at the end of the day and the highest return of investment for these solutions as well. Make sure you are engaged with the whole process and working with a provider who is going to deliver.
Obviously price is a consideration but more it’s about what features and benefits is the solution going to give me to communicate better internally and externally. Customer service is such a key part of what a business can do to differentiate, and should be considered from a technology point of view to drive productivity and efficiency.
