CBM: Has your customer base become more remote? How has this changed your approach?
PG: A good UC package that enables the ability to have that ‘face to face’ at the touch of a button is now being requested more and more. We as human beings still like to meet people and form relationships in person so having so still doing face to face meetings is, in my opinion, key but can we use UC Technologies to do the follow up meetings and even walk prospective clients through proposals.
As a channel provider, our resellers have always been advocates for remote working but I think we can still do more to get this message out to the masses. We see end users often demand the ability of home or remote working and are looking to explore what this looks like and how it can be deployed. In the mid-market segment they have been slower to adopt these technologies with the fault often lying with the a lack of belief that people can and are looking to adopt these. So our approach has been around education and adoption in the channel. Educate the end user around what can be achieved and help the channel drive adoption into their base.
CBM: Flexible working, has everyone caught on to the benefits?
PG: No, BUT we are continuing to see reasons why businesses need to think about this type of technology. I think we as the channel have been preaching the benefits for years but the current situation has made it real and has demonstrated what can happen if you don’t have this ability within your business. It is now the channel’s chance to show how our solutions can allow you to flex with the demand for remote working and make your whole business resilient.
CBM: What is the danger of employees using consumer applications to bridge short-term remote working practices?
PG: We are seeing the ‘knee jerk’ reaction of people scrabbling around to find anything that can solve their ‘now’ issues. This has led to further fragmented applications being rolled out with the danger of having multiple, high priced subscriptions with different termination dates and costs. The most frustrating thing out there at present is the ‘ I didn’t know you do that’ conversation. How do I sell more to our customers has always been a tough question to answer but I feel at the moment we have a real opportunity to help our customers make the more informed choice to avoid the above situation.