Business Communications Transformation

Enterprises are using digital technologies to transform their businesses, identify new sources of revenue, improve customer experience, and create a competitve advantage. IDC-defined third platform technologies, around cloud, mobile, social, and big data/analytics, are fundamentally changing the way business is conducted and driving better business results.

Cloud communications is a critical digital transformation enabler. It’s essential for businesses to implement these technologies thoughtfully and to integrate them into existing enterprise infrastructure and applications. The research shows that when deployed effectively, cloud-based solutions provide new options for customer-facing and internal communications to improve revenue, profitability, customer satisfaction, retention, and productivity. Nonetheless, many companies and decision makers still don’t understand how communications can help drive business.

IDC characterizes companies’ communications technology selection and usage and groups firms by communications technology maturity. The four categories of communications technology maturity are:

1. 1. Communications Powerbrokers
2. 2. Communications Respecters
3. 3. Communications Skeptics
4. 4. Communications Unaware

Higher maturity companies use more communications technologies and depend on more recent technologies such as SMS or IM than older technologies like voice telephony and audio conferencing. These companies show better business results than lower maturity companies according to every KPI measured in IDC’s research, indicating that communications technology is an important driver of business success.

Companies seeking to improve their use of communications technology should follow these guidelines to improve both internal and external communications: