In Unified Communications there are 3 obstacles that have kept UC from hitting more than 20% of the marketplace.
The first issue with UC is that it does solve a specific problem. It isn’t really a replacement for anything. It tried being IP Centrex. It tried being Hosted PBX. Then it tried being Unified Comms and cloud comms and UC&C and so on and so forth. UC has always struggled to explain exactly what it’s best use was. It always wanted to be everything to everybody.
Point 1: There is already an AT&T. You need to try to be something else.
For many companies moving from a Key system to UC was painful (and more expensive). For other sectors of the market, it required a forklift upgrade – not unlike servers to AWS, which doesn’t always smell like success when the project is marked done.
Point 2: Treat it like it is: a software migration (as painful as those two words are).
The next biggest issue in the UC space is the lack of focus. The focus is always on revenue – any revenue. The focus should be on customer experience and service delivery. One hole in the system is the role played by inter-connects in the heady days of PBXs. There was a time when the inter-connects did most of the pre-sale and post-sale work (for a fee). The telephony piece was separate but usually managed (and billed for) by the inter-connect. In UCaaS this is the huge hole in service delivery and thus customer experience. Hasn’t anyone realized this yet? Or created a PMO department to fix it?
Point 3: Focus on the customer, not on revenue.
I touched on the third issue above: we-will-take-any-revenue-we-can mentality is just stupid. In the early days (and it is coming back around now), UC providers were retail and wholesale – just anyone sell a seat, puh-lease! We are back there again. In the 15 years that UCaaS has been around in its many forms, it still is a short sighted game. It doesn’t matter if you burn the customer or the partner, you need to book revenue. That mentality is just dumb.
Point 4: The sweet spot is, well, sweet.
I moderated a panel of UC VPs at ITEXPO. They blamed most deployment issues on sales. It turns out that when you sell to your target audience that the customer experience is better. When you sell/deploy outside your target, it is poor. What should that tell you?
Point 4: You can’t provide value at every segment of the marketplace; focus on where you can and target that.