Most Businesses Fear Change

We have been successful as a sector (if you can call it successful) by selling replacement services by saving the customer money. From $1 per minute long distance to almost free; from $1500 T1 to $199. I even heard an SD-WAN pitch about how it would save the customer money. UGH!!!!

This is why the debt is increasing while revenues barely eke up – and in many cases, slowly decline. This is also why Hosted PBX, UCaaS, UC&C and now WCC are experiencing such slow growth. It is sold as cheap voice replacement, when in fact the move to cloud is about changing the way orgs do business. But People Fear Change!

In a survey by Osterman Research, the result was that while Most Businesses See the Value of Skype for Business, many Fear the Change.

“According to the survey, 26% of IT decision makers and 39% of business decision makers are either “somewhat” or “very” fearful about migrating to UC with nearly half (48%) of those surveyed admitting that they don’t fully understand the full impact UC would have on their organizations.”

Too much product talk; not enough talk about outcomes. Listing 400 features isn’t going to quell the fear. Knowing what happens after the sale will. Detailing the deployment process and the user training might help.

“One out of six organizations admit their legacy investments in telephony and related systems is a key factor for not immediately adopting a UC solution. While nearly a third of decision makers agree that a full return on investment from legacy technology is preferred before moving to UC, another two-thirds would consider improvements in employee productivity as reason enough to justify the migration.”

They would change if the salesperson could just give them enough reason and Value to make the change. To sell Change, you have to build Trust and battle the fear. Not an easy thing to do. You must eat the dog food. You must be enthusiastic about the platform. Sadly, that isn’t very many people.

“71% of those surveyed believe there are “significant” and even “enormous” benefits to be realized from the deployment of UC.” If there wasn’t a realistic fear that porting the numbers and deploying a software platform of this magnitude wouldn’t be a complete disaster. (Remember they probably bought an Integrated T1 from some CLEC that screwed it all up. And that was a simple request compared to implementation of UCaaS.)

There is Hope: “Osterman Research predicts the amount of users served by Unified Communications will jump from 45% today to 68% in 2017 with some of the boost coming from a remote workforce that is expected to climb from 14% to 22% in that time.” Good thing companies are closing brick and mortar office – or UC wouldn’t have a chance.

“The survey also revealed a change of heart among IT decision makers with a majority of them (55%) now recognizing Skype for Business as a legitimate productivity enhancer. With over a quarter of those surveyed already using Skype for Business as their primary voice solution, 61% intend to fully migrate to Skype for Business–71% within the next 12 months.” Good day to be a Microsoft Partner.

Analysts have predicted that up to 55% of the UCaaS market will be shared by Microsoft and Cisco. All the other players will be fighting it out for the other 45%! If only they could tell stories about successful deployments.

Tags: change, hosted pbx, microsoft, sales, sellecom, selling, skype, UC
Related tags: decision makers, skype business, those surveyed, customer money, osterman research, change