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As another year in the unified communications and collaboration industry draws to a close, we take this time to look back at some of the biggest trends that have shaped how we serve our customers. The UCaaS and CCaaS market underwent a number of corrections in 2022 as businesses sought to evolve their post-pandemic playbooks, with primary goals centered around enhancing customer service, thereby building customer loyalty.
Here are a few of the other major trends we've seen on the rise in 2022:
Contact Center Drives Decision Making
While many of our clients were driven by unified communications needs in 2020 and 2021 to enable work-from-home environments, our advisements now center primarily around modern, full-featured contact center experiences. From small biz to mid-market to enterprises, businesses seek to provide higher levels of customer service and customer satisfaction in an expedited manner, often with unprecedented labor shortages, the need for better employee retention, and minimal ramp-up time for new hires. The adaptation of work from home within the contact center solves these pain points with numerous ease-of-use and productivity tools.
The maturity of today's leading cloud contact center platforms also provides advanced analytics and reporting features that lead to smarter business decisions. Combined with simplified management, contact center will continue to dominate conversations in 2023 and beyond.
Shrinking Market Share of Prem-Based Providers
On the other end of the spectrum, premise-based providers such as Mitel, Cisco, and Avaya continue to see losses in market share as their legacy platforms become harder to manage and maintain. Despite a loyal following over the past few decades, hardware shortages, rising expenses, and diminished support are causing all levels of business to second-guess remaining on-prem. Losses of support contracts and service agreements are forcing significant cuts to research and development, which is the lifeline of any telecom provider.
Several of these vendors are already seeking exit strategies through partnerships with Gartner Magic Quadrant Leaders in UCaaS, and we expect this decline to continue over the next several years. The demise of the prem market is imminent.
As we advised in our 2021 Year in Review, it is important to remember that moving to a modern UCaaS or CCaaS platform takes significant planning, reviewing, and testing in the evaluation stages. For large enterprises, the discovery could take six months to a year, with another 12-18 months required for optimal implementation. Since this is such an important decision for the future of your brand, we recommend beginning the evaluation process as early as possible.
Growing Problems in Service Delivery
Private equity has been a buzzword for some time in the unified communications segment, both with the vendors and rapidly scaling private organizations in healthcare, financial, legal, and retail. Over the past few years, we have seen many mergers and acquisitions funded by private equity groups to consolidate the market and expedite growth. We believe that the largest blockbuster mergers may still be ahead in 2023.
This trend also creates an equally challenging problem for the unified communications market as brands focus more on scaling than actual profitability. Top organizations rapidly increased their sales teams in 2020 and 2021, offering many services at cost or a net loss to stave off competition. Meanwhile, these same brands have laid off US-based operational support in favor of overseas help desks, which has led to long wait times, reduced customer service, and challenging implementations.
Vendors are under extreme pressure to return to profitability, and it's why our team is now performing implementations in-house for vendors such as RingCentral, NICE, and 8x8. It is a distinct competitive advantage that provides immense value to our clients, and we are working on receiving additional vendor certifications in 2023 and beyond. Stay tuned for updates.
What to Do with Microsoft Teams?
At the start of the pandemic, virtually every organization, large and small, turned to Microsoft Teams to collaborate internally and keep projects on track. This trend led to one of the most explosive growths ever witnessed in the unified communications industry, but it also brought several challenges. One of our clients' most popular questions in 2022 was, "What the heck do we do with Microsoft Teams?"
Thankfully, the answer has become much clearer. While Teams is not ideal for everyone since it's not yet a full-featured unified communications solution, it can fulfill the needs of a large portion of enterprises. With attractive pricing on E5 phone/audio conferencing licenses and some familiarity within your organization, we believe that Microsoft Teams will continue to grow in popularity as the backbone of unified communications.
If you're wondering what to do with Microsoft Teams and how best to utilize it alongside a modern contact center solution, give us a call.
Greater Complexity in Enterprise Segments
The needs of enterprises have continued to grow in complexity this year, with extensive professional services required to integrate popular applications and customizations. Workforce management and workforce engagement have been much more prevalent on our enterprise clients' wish lists, which is reflected in Gartner's Magic Quadrant leaders. The divide between challengers and top solutions such as NICE and Genesys has broadened due to leaders being able to stay ahead of the market curve.
Enterprise clients ultimately seek a unified, do-everything platform with ample room to scale as new needs arise. This trend will continue to grow in 2023 and beyond.
The Need for Personalized, Unbiased Guidance
On a personal note, 2022 was our greatest and most challenging year to date; we finished as the #1 overall global partner for multiple leading vendors. What drove our success? Our unique procurement process, rooted in a deep understanding of our client's technology environment and business objectives, empowers them to make informed decisions without being pressured by the typical sales tactics that are so well known within the industry. We continue to proactively scale and adapt on pace within this constantly changing landscape, which is why our advisors, operations, and professional services team are amongst the best in the business.
If we've learned one thing from 2022, it's that our success is directly tied to building deeper relationships with our clients and finding better ways to meet their overall needs. From our family to yours, we wish you a great holiday season and a Happy New Year—see you in 2023!
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