Slack comes along and changes the way team communications are looked at. Microsoft launches TEAM. Broadsoft launches a team app. Panterra rolls out Streams. Now the owner of Hipchat, Atlassian, unveils Stride.
Nextiva rolled out an omni-channel comms app that is more like a contact center app with social media, SMS/text, etc rolled into one inbox. Unified Messaging = One Inbox, finally. Setting it up – and maintaining those links to the every changing social networks wil prove challenging. The last time a Broadsoft shop developed its out platform of any kind, Shoretel bought them. (I am talking about M5.)
Most of these launches made no impact – for the provider. Lack of marketing. I can Google pretty good but couldn’t find any third party reviews of these apps. It is a problem, especially in an age when buyers are doing two-thirds of the research before contacting you. The information needs to be validated by someone other than the business (and resting on their website). User recommendations, case studies and reviews are critical pieces of the marketing.