Businesses around the world have been asking themselves some tough questions about how they want to address the current working challenges presented by the global pandemic. Whilst it looks as though our working lives will never be the same again, technology buyers must invest for the long term.
Supporting a dispersed employee base is fraught with problems which IT leaders have been working hard to solve. Not only are people harder to manage, but the move to working from home has raised serious questions about staff hardware, available connectivity, and enforcing security policies which walk a daily tightrope between keeping corporate data safe and enabling people to get on with their jobs.
With 36% of IT managers expecting their budgets to increase in 2021, spending on solutions will be laser focused.
According to Intrado’s Cloud Communications Trends to Watch in 2021 Report cyber security, enabling remote working, and cloud communications are priority spending areas for IT managers.
Cyber Security
Marcus Schmidt
According to research, 29% of IT managers say that they are focused on securing their business and 51% say it will be a priority when spending their budget, an attitude that Marcus Schmidt, Vice President of Product Management at Intrado, agrees with.
“Ensuring a secure and connected workforce is critical for businesses to succeed today” he said. “A security-first mindset should influence spending and planning, particularly as the rise in remote work can expose new risks to the company network.
“Beyond securing the network, employees must be educated about their shared responsibility for security and the potential risks involved in the tools and applications they use daily.”
Enabling Remote Working
Throughout 2020 collaboration tools that enabled remote working were on the rise. Over 55% of businesses adopted a cloud-based collaboration platform before 2020, and 43% were forced into adoption by COVID-19. But the results show that there is more that needs to be done, with 29% of IT professionals expecting remote working to be a priority and over 51% of IT professionals envision spending their budget on hardware.
Schmidt added: “We’re not likely to return to the office anytime soon, so IT leaders need to understand and address end user needs.
“Ensuring your employees are equipped with the necessary devices and connectivity will improve employee experience and will have a large impact on productivity and efficiency”
Cloud
Cloud solutions, including CX (Customer Experience) and contact centre solutions, is also an area that requires attention, with over 55% of IT professionals saying that cloud comms is a priority for spending and 29% saying that it is a priority in general.
The necessity to look after customers was also evident in the findings as just under a third say that customer experience is a focal point for their IT teams, with around half of respondents confirming that contact centre technology would be a priority for spending.
“2020 was a massive year for cloud adoption as businesses that were considering a move to the cloud found themselves facing an accelerated timeline to make that decision” said Schmidt. “Many found success taking a hybrid approach. At Intrado, we’ve found that taking a crawl, walk, run approach to cloud migration can help businesses optimise their spend while also maximising existing legacy infrastructure and moving solutions to the cloud as it makes sense for the business.”
The pandemic has thrown up a lot of questions for businesses, including how they move forward with their IT infrastructure strategy. However, in a recent discussion with UC Today, Schmidt advised to “think about the big picture.”
“When partners ask me for advice, I tell them to think about where they are today and where they want to be in the coming years”
“Businesses need to opt for a technology partner that has the capacity to grow with their business and can unify the solutions they already have in place.”
from UC Today https://ift.tt/37Iu1y2
0 Comments