It’s been an unprecedented two years for the unified communications and collaboration industry, and 2022 is unlikely to be any different.
As we enter another year set to be dominated by the move to hybrid working, UC Today sat down with Steve Rafferty, UK Country Manager at RingCentral, to discuss what he expects to be the biggest challenges and opportunities over the next 12 months.
Businesses need to address the Great Resignation or risk losing talent
The pandemic has shown employees around the world that they can be as productive when working from home or remotely, and this trend is only going to continue.
Rafferty said that employees are going to demand more flexibility than ever and warned businesses that they could pay the price if they don’t deliver.
“We’ve seen a lot around the great resignation and how businesses really need to heed that warning, and give works a flexible working environment,” he explained.
“We recently did a survey that found that a quarter of workers are expecting to change role over the next few months; I don’t think there’s ever been a time when it’s been like that.
The challenge for businesses, Rafferty said, is to create an environment that people want to work in – or risk losing them.
“It’s imperative that businesses take this into account when they’re building the workplace of the future and they need to make sure they give employees an attractive environment,” he added.
“Businesses have a real challenge to nail that down over the next few months”
AI Adoption Will Accelerate Even Faster
Rafferty said that artificial intelligence is only going to play a more important role in how people are productive and communicate.
He said that AI will increasingly be used to take menial tasks away from workers and to help create enjoyable environments in which to work in.
“Video calls are prevalent everywhere now and having a nice background is one thing, but how about automating note taking and pushing out actions?
“They’re the areas we’re going to see really take hold next year to help employees be more productive on the move and at home, to give them more time to do strategic work”
Security Will be the Number One Conversation with Customers
Security was becoming a top priority even before the pandemic, but the mass move to remote working and dispersed workforces has created even more opportunities for cybercriminals and, therefore, more challenges for businesses.
Rafferty said that the increasing use of collaboration tools such as video and messaging means that more IP than ever before is tied up in digital platforms – making it more important than ever to protect these platforms.
“You can have five-nines availability with messaging, video and phone… but if it’s not secure it is a real challenge.
“Security really needs to underpin everything that we’re doing and businesses will need to integrate unified comms tools with robust data encryption and password protection, along with other functions. Availability and accessibility are key, but it needs to be done securely.”
Sustainability will become an increasingly important driver
While the restrictions placed on society because of the pandemic were forced, the past two years have shown that more is possible with remote working than many people first thought.
This created dilemmas in areas such as business travel when countries started to open back up. Can flights around the world for business meetings still be justified when such advanced collaboration technology is so readily available?
“We’re all becoming a lot more conscious of our own environment and how we impact it,” Rafferty said. “Net-zero goals will hold implications in all business areas.
“We do need to manage and limit business travel but we still need to manage work-life balance and mental health, so it’s a really interesting 12 months coming up around how we can get to net zero and make sure we give employees the best environment to work in.”
Voice will be as important as ever
It may have been messaging applications and video meetings that have stolen the headlines over the past two years, but Rafferty said that voice will be as important as ever – particularly because it can often be a quicker and easier way of communicating than video and chat.
He added that he expects to see more people jumping between the three options has hybrid working becomes more common.
“Voice is more than telephony; it’s the route of UCaaS,” he said. “Sometimes voice is just the best way of doing it.
“Video is great, messaging is great – but we just see voice being dominant”
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