Tipsheet: Successful Technology Advancements Must Align with Business Trends

Rukmini Glanard

August 10, 2017

Enterprise communications have changed greatly over the last century, as you may have read in our brief travel through its history -- a rapid evolution made possible by technology and vendor advancements.

But as impressive as those advancements are, how do they fit together with the current trends and requirements of today’s enterprise?

We’ve spent some time working with independent market research firm Wainhouse Research this year to gain a deeper understanding of market trends to perfect our Alcatel-Lucent Rainbow™ cloud-based relationship management platform.

Out of that work came this infographic on business trends impacting enterprise communications. Without balancing technology advancements against the business trends explored in this infographic, a new enterprise communications solution will likely be unsuccessful. Here’s a closer look at each of the trends:

Security, Privacy and Regulatory Focus – We don’t have to tell you that data security is top of mind for well, everyone, especially today’s enterprises. Enterprise cloud vendors are keenly aware of this, and most position digital security as a core competency to their service. The more advanced solutions ensure that encryption, storage, and transmission protocols meet a wide range of industry and geography regulations – and deliver maximum transparency and clear communication to the enterprise.

Control – Services are provisioned and deployed as new employees are on boarded and de-provisioned as employees exit, or the company can face ongoing costs and security risks. At a user level, services must support administrative control of content, permissions, and ongoing conferences.

Technical Support – Most enterprises require access to advanced technical support resources, so enterprise cloud vendors must offer an array of business-focused support resources, from simple email and online ticketing systems, to advanced tier 2 and 3 support teams.

Multi-device Users – The average enterprise user leverages a mix of devices to get their jobs done. In fact, a Wainhouse Research survey found that upwards of 70% of end users leverage a combination of a desk phone, PC, and mobile device for business communications.

Complex Environments – The average enterprise has a mix of UC vendors supporting their users’ communications, which can make it difficult to deliver an enterprise-wide, advanced user experience. In fact, Wainhouse Research found that 75% of enterprises leverage two or more PBX vendors supporting business communications, and 33% have two or more UC platforms in production!

Borderless Teams – Today’s enterprise supports a growing mix of external team members, contractors, and partners who communicate and collaborate on a regular basis. These users require solutions that make it easy to collaborate regardless of location, device, or domain. To put this in context, the average enterprise notes that a full 25% of their conference calls include external participants.

Increasing Collaboration – Larger enterprises note that over 50% of their voice traffic ends up in a group conference call! As peer-to-peer voice communications takes a backseat to conferencing or group IM, those who are aware of this trend are increasing focus on collaboration-enabled solutions, over traditional point-to-point voice infrastructure.

Customer Engagement – This is a key area of focus for many enterprises. CPaaS solutions are enabling many enterprises to change the way they communicate with their customers, providing cost-effective and tightly integrated voice, text, and video touchpoints within their core products.

Well, our blog series on our work with Wainhouse Research is almost complete, but we have one more post for your coming soon on keys to a successful transition. In the meantime, you can download the report here that looks at “seven steps to unifying the user experience” and more great information from ALE and Wainhouse Research!