End-User Priorities in Communications and Collaboration Investments, 2019

Adoption of Advanced UCC Tools is Rising as Businesses Pursue Digital Transformation and Address Shifting Workforce Requirements

The overall research objective is to measure the current use and future decision-making behavior toward unified communications and other workforce technologies around the globe, specifically: desktop, room-based and huddle room video conferencing; audio conferencing; web conferencing; IP telephony; team collaboration tools (e.g., Slack); unified communications (UC) clients; consumer messaging and calling services (e.g., Skype, Google, WhatsApp, WeChat); headsets; and unified messaging.

This research aims to:

• Understand the IT-related challenges organizations face today
• Assess the current and future use of business communications technologies
• Evaluate factors that drive investments in communications technologies
• Gauge IT and communications trends
• Appraise available IT budgets

The data were collected using an online survey of 1,067 global IT/telecom decision-makers and influencers during the July-August 2019 period.

Key Features:

• IT staff, C-level leaders and department heads are most commonly involved in enterprise digital solution purchase decisions.
• Those same roles are also most consistently involved in driving solutions adoption within their organizations.
• A consumer-like experience is deemed “very influential” in communications and collaboration solution purchase decisions.
• Half of decision-maker respondents “often” consider diverse workforce demographics, compared to 27 percent that “always” consider workforce demographics, in purchase decisions.
• Only 15 percent of respondents view their organizations as part of the late majority or laggards with respect to adoption of new enterprise digital technologies.
• A majority of organizations expect the number of private offices, huddle rooms and mid-to-large conference rooms to increase in the next three years.
• Desktop communications and collaboration tools, wireless enterprise voice devices, video endpoints, and collaboration-equipped huddle spaces rank among the top investments aimed at increasing office productivity.
• The top drivers for investing in communications and collaboration solutions in the next two years include improving teamwork, information management and customer experiences.
• Top investment restraints across most technologies include: cost, lack of perceived value and integration complexity.
• Organizations are almost equally split on whether they have deployed single-vendor vs multi-vendor solutions. Hybrid (cloud and premises-based) architectures will continue to account for a considerable share of customer communications environments.
• Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance communications is a very relevant or somewhat relevant topic for nearly 80 percent of organizations.
• Security concerns and job displacement are top concerns associated with leveraging AI to enhance communications.
• The top four decision-making factors across numerous technologies include: security, ease of use, reliability, and features.
• The top four investments for enterprise digital solutions in 2020 include: big data analytics, web and video conferencing, group video conferencing, and marketing automation.