UC tech-budget spending targets staffing
Organizations moving UC to the cloud plan to increase spending on staff to manage cloud providers and fill more strategic roles around UC. Organizations are also hiring IT staff with backgrounds outside of IT, such as marketing, for user adoption and awareness programs, Gareiss said.
During cloud migrations, the UC tech budget is examined more closely, and IT needs to ensure paid licenses are used. User adoption and awareness programs teach users how to use UC and collaboration apps and why they should use them, she said.
Improving the customer experience is another driver for organizations investing in UC. An organization’s customers can range from internal customers, such as employees, to external ones, such as consumers.
Providing new collaboration apps is one way organizations are improving the customer experience. Nearly 20% of organizations are already using team collaboration apps, while nearly one-quarter is planning to use or evaluating team collaboration, the report found.
Team collaboration is a major talking point for UC vendors as end users look to improve these workflows, Costello said.
According to IDC, 41% of organizations currently use UC, while another 22% plan to deploy UC in the next year. The top drivers to deploy UC include cost savings, productivity increases and improved employee collaboration.
Contact centers are another focus of UC tech budgets for organizations with up-to-date infrastructure and basic UC apps rolled out. Gareiss said these organizations are looking to improve the user experience, expand the contact-center experience and integrate the contact center with employee communications.