Oct 20, 2020 IT Leaders Find Measurable Value in UCC Provider Consolidation
Nearly 75% of companies are transforming their communications and collaboration strategy. The massive shift to Work From Home (WFH) has exacerbated the need to reshape how they deliver applications to their employees.
These transformation initiatives involve everything from making more apps available remotely, to moving to the cloud, to adding new apps that solve specific business requirements. One key shift that is helping them achieve these goals is consolidating to a single provider for all Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) applications.
As they consolidate providers, they also are evaluating and switching to cloud services, which are more agile and extensible. Following the WFH initiatives from COVID-19, 64.8% of companies said they were more likely to use cloud services.
Single Provider Benefits
Already, 24.4% of companies have consolidated to a single provider. Another 28.5% plan to do so by the end of 2020, and another 23.2% plan to do so by 2021.
Not surprisingly, using one provider for all UCC applications makes life easier for IT staffs and all employees in the following ways:
- IT teams only need to learn or be certified in one provider’s products or services
- Organizations save money on bundled licenses
- Employees benefit from a consistent user interface across apps, so utilization and productivity increases
- Integrations between UCC apps are seamless, and they also can integrate with the providers’ contact center apps, as well
- It’s easier to add ancillary services with a single vendor vs. multiple vendors, as the provider may offer security, network reliability guarantees, or network transport services
Of course, IT leaders often say that want to move to a single provider, but that may be easier said than done. Mergers and acquisitions bring in new technology providers, for example. Or, existing apps may be crucial to one department’s project that’s underway.
In those cases, I recommend identifying a primary provider, which handles all or most of an organization’s UCC and ancillary needs. Will there come a time when someone needs an innovative new product, feature, or service from another company? Sure, and IT leaders will continue to buy one-off products. But by consolidating all or as much as possible with a single provider, organizations see significant improvements in business metrics.
Business Metrics Soar
Nemertes conducted a research study with 571 organizations. We found that those who moved to a single provider found significant—and measurable—benefits with employee productivity, operational costs, application utilization, and employee satisfaction.
When employees use a single provider, they become 31.7% more productive. Through integrated apps and feature-rich UCC experiences overall, they are able to complete tasks faster and collaborate with their teams in more efficient ways.
They also see their monthly per-employee license cost drop by 44%. Single providers offer nice, bundled discounts for their applications, including voice, video, team collaboration, and potentially more services, such as security, network connectivity, and ongoing management.
By delivering a consistent user interface from single providers, companies saw a 33.1% increase in the utilization of UCC applications. This has become an important measurement of success all around. If organizations are going invest in technology, the business leaders want to make sure employees are actually using it.
And lastly, because employees like the predictability and consistency of using one provider for all their UCC apps, they rate their technology toolkit higher. The research participants said employees rated UCC apps 35.7% higher once they switched to a single provider.