The results produced some interesting stats including - 56% of companies that didn’t have voice in the cloud and were missing out on the opportunities. However, 44% did which was refreshing to see how companies are now realising the benefits of putting their voice infrastructure in the cloud. And a staggering 64% said they had a partial voice solution in the cloud, followed by 36% whose communications solution was wholly cloud based.
Those responsible for the decision making of putting voice in the cloud were as follows: 49% IT Directors, 36% were CEOs and 31% were on the Board of Directors. Pleasingly 84% of people understood the cloud proposition and clearly this proliferates from the use of cloud in the consumer world where the stats showed that 80% of people use the cloud in their private lives.
Jonathan Sharp, Sales and Marketing Director, Britannic Technologies commented, “Senior Managers are now aware that technology helps businesses differentiate themselves in today’s competitive market place. It also enables employees to work in more collaborative ways and essentially service customers better.”
The most popular application of voice in the cloud was for customer facing contact centres at a whopping 55%. This is due to the fact that the contact centre has matured and for many now incorporates email, web chat and social media, providing different ways for customers to contact agents. Cloud makes deploying these applications easier and quicker and in turn helps businesses improve customer service and generate revenue.
The reasons why companies put voice in the cloud came out as follows: an impressive 60% stated that cost savings were the main reason, followed by 55% of companies wanting to be more agile as a business, 40% due to the speed of deployment and integration, 33% said it freed up the IT team to focus on other areas, 28% said it improved reliability and connectivity.
Britannic’s customer Trailfinders employed its voice infrastructure and contact centre in the cloud. Matthew Raymond comments, “Since moving our telephony to the cloud we have achieved a total of approximately £250k saving per annum on line rentals alone, increased the agility of the business – it now takes 10 minutes to set up a new travel centre. We also benefit from shared resources, increased resiliency and can offer personalised customer service through the contact centres.”
Reasons why people have not put voice in the cloud are: still 48% concerned about security, 38% concerned about reliability, 29% difficult to integrate into existing systems, 19% can’t manage it in-house, 19% don’t understand it and finally 3% don’t know who to approach about it.
The great news is as the technology and market has evolved, so too has the capabilities of key service providers, such as Britannic in working with customers to address those fears and concerns – through: effective design, planning, structured processes, program management, formal certifications and quality standards, underpinned with next generation managed services.