Service providers must know a customer’s digital transformation goals
Any digital transformation initiative should be divided into six stages: assessment, planning, delivering, managing, transforming, and optimizing. For service providers selling unified communications, the importance of conducting a comprehensive assessment at the start of a cloud communications deployment cannot be overstated.
Begin the assessment of the project by:
- Defining the digital transformation goals
- Integrating the enterprise’s business goals
- Understanding the critical workflows and processes
Planning and delivering
Next, in the planning and delivery stages, service providers must help design and implement the appropriate solution. The elements to consider should include the feature set desired and the solution’s performance.
The proper training of both admins and users will ensure broad solution acceptance and usage. Don’t forget to cultivate internal advocates throughout the company who will be vital to your digital transformation projects’ success and help maximize the return on investment.
The final stages
As they move their customers through the management, transformation, and optimization stages, service providers must stay on top of the project by continuously monitoring and documenting customer costs, productivity gains, and other relevant KPIs. These stats will validate the team’s efforts and make the next digital transformation project easier to push forward.
Remember to capitalizing on the power of APIs and programmability
Service providers should focus on integrating communications, collaboration, and customer experience solutions by using flexible APIs with the important business and vertical applications. The end objective is to use API flexibility and programmability to:
- Automate business workflows
- Increase user productivity
- Enhance the UX (user experience)
In a recent white paper, Frost & Sullivan reported that 36% percent of the companies surveyed found that “programmable communications” improved operational efficiency by automating processes. 29% of the same respondents said that these adjustable communications helped reduce their customer service team’s workload
“Providers can capitalize on the power of APIs and programmability to elevate the cloud migration conversation to focus on high-level business outcomes.”
Frost & Sullivan, May 2021
Frost & Sullivan survey results
PROGRAMMABLE COMMUNICATIONS DELIVER CONSIDERABLE BENEFITS
| Benefits | Percentage of the respondents |
| Improve operational efficiencies by automating workflows | 36% |
| Reduce costs and risks related to human error | 31% |
| Improve outbound customer outreach | 31% |
| Support worker or customer safety | 30% |
| Enhance office worker productivity | 30% |
| Reduce customer service workload and associated cost | 29% |
| Improve inbound customer interactions | 27% |
| Address frontline worker needs | 27% |
| Address unique vertical/business-specific use cases | 25% |
BUSINESSES’ USE OF APIs IS GROWING
| API | Percentage that use now and plan to use in the future | Percentage that do not use now but plan to use in the future |
62% | 28% | |
| Messaging | 59% | 28% |
| Video | 58% | 31% |
| Voice | 54% | 34% |
| Two-factor authorization | 53% | 36% |
| Provisioning/Management | 48% | 37% |
| Chat Bot/AI | 46% | 38% |
Get your complimentary copy of the Frost & Sullivan report
The Frost & Sullivan visual white paper titled Enabling Disruption Through Innovative Business Models and Advanced Cloud Collaboration Solutions is available for download now.
You will learn
- What APIs businesses plan to use in the near future
- Top 10 types of criteria that are used to choose a cloud comms provider
- What 68% of UCaaS buyers say is crucial to their purchase decision
- Cloud strategies that are key to digital transformation
- Cloud migration plans for businesses within the next two years
- How to choose platform partners that unlock value on all levels
The next Frost & Sullivan report-inspired blog: Guiding Businesses on their Digital Transformation Journeys
