Studying UCaaS

UC is a bucket of ways to communicate – voice, video, conferencing, messaging (SMS, text, IM, chat), presence and more. Some of those buckets are shifting. Voice calls can be made through many apps (like Facebook, WhatsApp, Skype, Google Hangouts, Snapchat, etc. and I am amazed NOT through LinkedIn). Chat is taking over for SMS/text, but the app for chat keeps evolving. Desk phones are going away for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the office is going away – and employees are declining. Where does that leave the average UCaaS provider?

A survey from BroadSoft found, “one in three small businesses expects to have mobile-only UCaaS solutions in place by 2020.” I guess Verizon decided to jump to the future with its One Talk Mobile service (powered by BSFT). (I wonder how Mast Mobile is doing?)

Same BSFT study found “more than four in five (82%) expect OTT messaging and collaboration software to be the mainstay of communication by 2020, with the remaining 18% saying email will still be the primary messaging tool.” Now they always say email is going away, but Slack does replace internal email to relieve that inbox load. The volume of comms is not going away, it is just shifting to other buckets. But will one of those buckets be yours?

“A report from Osterman Research in November found that two in five business decision makers were either ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ fearful about moving to unified comms (UC). Reasons given for not making the jump include not fully understanding the impact UC would have on their business, as well as various investments in legacy phone systems.” Selling Change is Hard. Selling UCaas on features is harder. Deployment is frightening. User adoption is slow. These issues need to be addressed in the sales process. (It’s called building Trust.)

Businesses buy Microsoft and Cisco for a few reasons: (1) never get fired buying these brands; (2) so many certified people working in enterprise act as brand ambassadors plus trust the brand; and (3) marketing/branding.

There are many studies on UCaaS. Are you reading them? Applying that info to your bundle or sales techniques?

It isn’t that you don’t have a good service (hopefully), it is that you don’t message it; target it; and market it. And you better hurry because the market is quickly being dominated by about 15 companies of the 2000+.

Tags: broadsoft, cisco, conferencing, hosted pbx, microsoft, UC
Related tags: those buckets, ucaas, going, email, reasons, mobile