You’ve Been Disrupted: Turn Challenges into Opportunities
Disruption is not only unavoidable; it’s quite simply the “new normal.” Communications technology advancements, coupled with socio-demographic shifts such as the growing proportion of digital natives among consumers and the workforce, have transformed entire industries for the past couple of decades. However, it wasn’t until the recent pandemic that business models were disrupted on a truly massive scale. The widespread move to remote and hybrid workstyles wreaked havoc but created opportunities for organizations to rethink the way they operate and serve customers. Digital technology adoption skyrocketed in the past three years as business leaders strove to maintain worker productivity and effective customer engagement across expanded physical distances.
Much too soon, new challenges are plaguing organizations worldwide. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing trade embargos have resulted in further supply-chain disruptions, rising food and fuel prices, rampant inflation, and the threat of a global recession in the near term. Organizational resiliency and adaptability have become key focal points in business transformation strategies, and digital technologies are widely perceived as key enablers of transformation success.
Effective business leaders are not letting circumstances dictate their organizations’ fate. Instead, they are launching strategies to turn current challenges into future opportunities. They are leveraging digital technologies, including advanced communications and collaboration tools, to make their organizations more agile and responsive to ever-evolving market conditions.
Don’t sit on the sidelines and wait for things to happen. Seize the opportunity to transform your organization and gain a competitive edge using advanced technologies.
Evolve Your Business Communications Capabilities to Prepare for the Next Disruption
Modern cloud communications and collaboration solutions are essential to empower diverse and highly distributed workforces. Feature-rich, unified communications as a service (UCaaS) comprising cloud-based enterprise telephony and video meetings, along with other integrated collaboration tools, help boost worker productivity and increase the organization’s appeal to digital natives. They also enable IT/telecom staff to manage fluctuating capacity and constantly shifting user requirements more easily and cost-effectively during major disruptions and good times.
Many organizations have invested in a variety of disparate cloud communications services over the years; many more created new technology silos throughout the pandemic when decisions needed to be made urgently, with little time to strategize and rationalize investments. Business and IT/telecom leaders must plan the evolution of their communications capabilities carefully to build a solid foundation that will sustain their organizations through future disruptions.
Communications investments must be aligned with every organization’s overarching objective of sustaining growth. Customer satisfaction and loyalty are key tenets of an effective growth strategy and important investment drivers. In the age of digital agility, internal and external communications must be integrated to ensure that all employees can support an excellent customer journey. Visionary organizations are adopting integrated cloud communications and customer experience (CX) management solutions to:
- Enable greater collaboration across departments and job functions.
- Provide enterprise users and contact center agents with additional capabilities.
- Enable unified analytics across both internal and external communications.
- Reduce vendor management costs.
- Streamline future technology upgrades with a consolidated UCaaS and contact center as a service (CCaaS) technology roadmap.
The time is right to upgrade your communications with a purpose. Invest wisely in integrated cloud communications and contact center solutions to achieve tangible business outcomes.
Partner with a Growth and Innovation Leader to Future-proof Your Communications Investments
Most business leaders understand the importance of moving communications technologies to the cloud as part of digital transformation projects. However, finding the right partner is often challenging in the fragmented and highly competitive UCaaS and CCaaS markets. Existing cloud communications solutions provide a broad array of capabilities that are difficult to compare side by side. Solution packaging and pricing can be confusing, which makes it challenging to compare the total cost of ownership (TCO) across different provider offerings. But even more difficult to assess at first glance are provider innovation velocity and ability to execute a growth strategy—both critical factors when selecting a partner for the long run.
The Frost Radar is a competitor benchmarking tool that provides an unbiased third-party perspective on the growth and innovation capabilities of key market participants. The 2022 Frost Radar on the North American UCaaS market profiles 31 growth and innovation leaders selected for their accomplishments based on 10 evaluation criteria. Frost Radar arms IT/telecom decision-makers with the tools they need to short-list future partners, which they can investigate further to find the best fit for their organizations.
Capitalize on Frost & Sullivan analysts’ deep market expertise to find the right partner for your communications and collaboration requirements. Do not rush into a partnership that will not deliver the optimum business results you seek.
Provider Spotlight: Intermedia
Intermedia holds a prominent position as a leader on the 2022 Frost Radar for the North American UCaaS market, ranking sixth in innovation and seventh in growth. Since 2019, when Frost & Sullivan launched the UCaaS Radar, Intermedia has been featured consistently, which is a testament to the provider’s growth and innovation capabilities.
Intermedia stands out among competitors with its integrated platform, which enables the provider to deliver robust communications, collaboration and CX management services. Intermedia Unite, Intermedia’s flagship UCaaS solution, features an enterprise-grade PBX fully integrated with video/web meetings, team collaboration and file sync, share, and backup—all accessible through mobile and desktop applications. With the integrated platform, businesses purchasing Intermedia’s UCaaS and CCaaS solutions provide users with a single application for unified communications and contact centers.
Intermedia also offers businesses the benefits of a one-stop shop for additional services, including business email and productivity services (based on Microsoft Exchange or Office 365); email archiving and encryption; session initiation protocol (SIP) trunking; identity and access management; and standalone video conferencing and webinar services.
Intermedia continually innovates to serve its customers better. In the past year, Intermedia launched Interaction Analytics, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to improve customer satisfaction by making it easier for supervisors to ensure every frontline employee is meeting customer expectations. Financially backed SLAs guaranteeing 99.999% service availability and Intermedia’s signature “worry-free experience” founded on five pillars—security, reliability, onboarding, support and regulatory compliance—help future-proof customer investments in Intermedia’s solutions.
With a laser focus on customer value and leveraging a robust channel of 7,200 resellers, both agents and MSPs, Intermedia can maintain high growth rates. A strategic partnership with NEC will likely enable Intermedia to scale and thrive in the ever-more competitive UCaaS market.
Disruptive events are bound to impact your organization in the future. To be prepared, you must invest in digital technologies, including cloud communications, collaboration and CX solutions. Trust growth and innovation leaders among communications providers to become your long-term transformation partners.
