How to gain a competitive advantage in UCaaS
Recently, Simon Blackell, our CMO, sat down with Comms Dealer to discuss his insights on achieving lasting success in the UCaaS industry and understanding the needs of a wide range of market verticals to gain a competitive advantage.
Comms Dealer: How do you gain a competitive advantage in UCaaS?
“With literally thousands of service providers offering seemingly similar product portfolios and promises to their customers, the communications industry is awash with ‘me too’ solutions often with little to differentiate in the eyes of the customer.
“Too often resellers are caught having to compete on price over value, forcing them to seek out equally low cost vendor offerings in a race to the bottom, over richer solutions commanding more attractive margins.
“There are three core areas where resellers can leap-frog the competition whilst enjoying attractive margins. The first of these is by deploying solutions with a strong ongoing development roadmap. Nothing speaks stronger to a customer than a solution that continues to improve and evolve throughout the customer lifecycle, whether that’s powerful new features or UI/UX improvements. Too many solutions deployed are no different in month 24 or 36 than they were in month one, and that makes the contract re-sign conversation more complicated. If you can get to the end of a customer contract having shown continued technical improvement in the product you deployed throughout, then the customer will always recognise that value.
“The second area is in recognising market vertical specific needs, and this is especially important in terms of integrations. We’ve had partners who specialise in certain industries come to us asking if we can build a UCaaS integration between our platform and that ‘must have’ core piece of software used by the majority of legal firms, healthcare providers, or other market areas. With a powerful vendor-driven Open-API framework you can intelligently wrap up multiple software products into compelling solutions for dedicated markets, and charge a premium for being the only option.
“The third area is how quickly and easily you can deploy product to your customer. If you can port numbers and deploy solutions quickly, accurately, and with maximum automation that minimises customer involvement then you’re already ahead of many of your competitors.”
Comms Dealer: Where will future growth come from?
“The future of UCaaS, like many software solutions, is inextricably linked to the rise of transformative technologies. It is crucial to recognise the innovation of AI powered tools like virtual assistants, chatbots, and analysis tools capable of personalising communications, optimising workflows, and presenting data to us in a quick and actionable format.
“Low code or no code integrations and Open API will enable significant growth opportunities for those vendors who have rich enough tech stacks and development competency as already mentioned, and so those running proprietary code bases over open source are primed to deliver growth-driving solutions to channel partners and their onward customers.
“We couldn’t talk about growth in the market without referencing Microsoft. In line with recent years there are no bonus points for stating Microsoft Teams remains a major player, wielding significant influence, particularly within those larger, enterprise customer bases. Those resellers integrating powerful voice solutions over a Teams endpoint will set themselves apart from their competitors, and in doing so will make Teams an opportunity rather than a threat.”
