For a CIO, enterprise communications need to deliver business value as well as cost efficiency. Employees need to be able to connect to services and collaborate with each other with ease, improving performance and productivity but, at the same time, the CIO requires visibility and predictability of cost.
Meanwhile, CIOs at B2C enterprises also need to ensure the business is delivering a great communications and engagement experience to customers.
Take a global bank. Here, the CIO needs to ensure that the bank’s employees are always connected and can securely access business applications from wherever they may be working, be that in the office or on the road. The CIO also needs to ensure effective two-way communication with its customers across a variety of channels and territories, from voice to email to social and even messaging within its own customer app. Delivering all of this can involve integrating and managing a host of fragmented technologies and service providers, so things can get very messy, very quickly.
The Platformication of IT
The gradual and constant acquisition of new technology has increased enterprise IT complexity. In response CIOs have looked to reduce the number of suppliers and focus on integrated platform solutions which provide the ability to dynamically provision and manage a range of services, rather than standalone point solutions which tend to offer less flexibility.
However, when it comes to communications, many enterprises are still paying a multitude of different suppliers for different communications services and customer engagement tools.
So enterprise communications is ripe for the same disruption and improvement which has affected enterprise IT.
Cost-efficiency, control, flexibility and security are major considerations for the CIO when it comes to delivering effective enterprise communications experiences, so enterprises require a communications platform which ticks all of these boxes. And requirements reach far beyond smartphones, laptops and desktops – the growth of IoT means a whole host of new devices also need to be managed.
Insights from all of these connections and experiences are also crucial if CIOs are to continually optimize the way the enterprise manages communications.
The ideal is a single platform that meets all enterprise communication needs – from connectivity and internal communications to multi-channel consumer engagement for B2C players and actionable insights. The ability to buy this platform as a service is also essential.
Increasingly, every enterprise thrives on the quality and reliability of its connected experiences, both internally and externally.
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