8×8 has set out plans to continue combining its unified communications and contact centre offerings, according to CTO Bryan Martin.
Speaking to UC Today, Martin said that he thinks this trend is only going to accelerate as businesses aim to bring more features typically seen in contact centres into their UC systems.
“That’s the most exciting thing that you’re going to see from us in the future,” he said.
“Gartner still has separate magic quadrants for unified communications and contact centre but I really believe those worlds are blending and you’re seeing functionality that used to only be in the contact centre now appearing in the UC world.
“Analytics has become really, really deep, especially in the contact centre space, and that’s starting to come over to the UC side of the house too, for example”
Martin said that analytics has started to see a huge rise in adoption in the UC space around employee behaviour in particular.
He said that businesses are now looking at how their employees are interacting with each other in the same way a call centre manager will look at how agents are speaking to customers.
With the pandemic in mind, businesses are also now having to think about how many people are occupying a single room much more carefully.
Many businesses will also be wondering if they need the same real estate footprint they had pre-pandemic, with remote working more prominent than it’s ever been. Analytics can help them see which rooms are being used and how often.
“I think we’re going to be a core part of the equation as people figure out this new world and how to optimise their business using those communications trends,” Martin added.
Ease of deployment
Martin said that 8×8’s own unified platform, named X Series, has seen success because of the simplicity of choosing the right components – in contrast to how UC and CC solutions would have been procured in the past.
“X Series has a simple-to-understand matrix of functionality and pricing,” he said.
“One of the reasons we did that was so customers can understand what we were offering; if we went back 10 years ago it was a long, a la carte menu of capabilities and you had to pick the dishes you wanted to order and we delivered that.
“Now we’ve got very standard and simple bundles that gradually increase the capabilities and the global reach of the product.”
He added that this simplicity has been largely behind 8×8’s growth in the channel.
In the firm’s most recent earnings report, it said that channel sales grew 64 per year on year and accounted for 64 per cent of new bookings.
The channel growth outpaced overall revenue, which was up 15.3 per cent to $136.7m.
“It’s interesting for me because when I started the business we were 100 per cent direct and I come from a direct background,” Martin said.
“It took me years of working with partners to understand these relationships, but now when I do a deal direct I almost feel naked because there’s not a partner involved.”
The Teams effect
Microsoft Teams has become a crucial part for many businesses in the world, and almost forcing suppliers in the industry to integrate with its platform.
Martin said that this is something 8×8 was preparing for almost as soon as Microsoft launched Teams.
“I was meeting customers two years ago and they were very clever; they knew they wanted to leverage the Teams experience for their end users globally”
“So we dug in and built some capabilities that are unique in that we enable them to do that natively with the client. We don’t require a modified client, plug-ins, bots or anything like that,” he explained.
“In large organisations, you’ll find that not every seat is licensed to use Teams and so keeping that world synchronised with the 8×8 softphone users was a lot of work. It really simplifies how the administration works for the IT team.
New leadership
8×8 appointed a new CEO in December, with former RingCentral COO Dave Sipes taking the helm after a 12-year spell with the vendor.
“Dave joined 8×8 at the right moment in time, not just for 8×8 but for where the industry is, and he’s really helped us focus,” Martin said.
“I only have good things to say about him and that’s not just serving my own self-interest. We’re really focused on taking a leadership position.
“We think we have a leadership position in this combined unified communications and contact centre offer so we’re really going to double down on that and try to extend that leadership.”
