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.
“When people leave the office, they sometimes leave functionality behind which, in turn, hurts productivity,” he says.
“Organisations need full remote access to all of the office functionality such as their CRMs and their other business-critical applications.
“They need to be able to acquire, deploy and use the right technology from a vendor able to provide an elegant user experience and brilliant service.
“And they need to feel confident that they are making the right, cost-effective investment in all of that.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, all of those things were nice-to-haves. In the hybrid world, they are must-haves.
“Organisations do now see the real and long-term value in investing in UC tools but the pandemic has hurt them financially, so they are rightly cost-conscious.
“We have opened up our platform to integration by anyone and with any product; we constantly talk to our partners who tell us we provide the best kind of white glove service; and we are constantly monitoring the market to ensure we stay competitive”
“Yes, there is opportunity for all – but I believe those who are able to deliver effectively in those specific areas will capitalise most.”
For net2phone, there is a fourth key differentiator too: its ownership by parent IDT Corporation (NYSE: IDT) which not only powers its platform but also provides it with an internationally-scalable dimension.
It all adds up to a compelling offer for partners AND end customers keen to leverage the positive implications of a permanently changed world.
Sure, it’s about standing on the shoulders of giants…but it’s also now about standing out in the crowd.
