NEC Advantage - Quick Thoughts

I've been to this event a few times, and there's a lot to like about how they run it, along with what NEC is doing in the collaboration marketplace. Will have more thoughts to share later, but the main takeaway is that NEC continues to build quality products, continues to innovate on all fronts, and continues to compete successfully. On the other hand, being more sale-driven than marketing-driven, their story is not so well known in North America. Of course, I could help them fix that, but the call hasn't come  yet.

I'll continue to patiently wait for that moment, and for now will just say that it's refreshing to hear about a company building around a different value proposition than everyone else. Cloud seems to be the only message coming from vendors now, but that's not the story here. They're very much on that path, but clearly, there's still a big chunk of the enterprise market that is premises-first, telephony-centric and still using a lot of hardware. This may not be the long-term scenario, but it's going strong, and NEC has a good handle on what makes these businesses buy.

UNIVERGE Blue is very much about UCaaS, but their view of collaboration is closer to the voice-centric legacy model. Yes, they have contact center - including CCaaS via partnership with Enghouse Interactive - but video and team messaging aren't that much in the equation. Same story with AI - their contact center offerings are definitely voice-centric, and it doesn't sound like AI is much on the roadmap.

Funny, you wouldn't know it based on Tiffani Bova's opening keynote about becoming "customer-led". She's with Salesforce, and we're very much on the same page about the need for culture change and how data and analytics are the new currency for creating customer value. However, I'm not so sure this is the highest priority for this audience, but am glad NEC is getting the message out. Now, they just need to fast track their contact center offerings, and all will be right.

Aside from what's overly familiar, the clear standout from a solid product portfolio is NeoFace Watch. They have long been leaders in biometrics, and NFW takes things to another level. Real time identification and authentication can definitely streamline workflows, so it has some tangential value for collaboration. However, it has much greater enterprise value for safety and security, both of physical assets and employees. There's definitely a Big Brother element to all this, but being able to pick faces out of a moving crowd and instantly matching them against a watch list to keep the bad actors out has its place as surveillance becomes ever-more the norm. Am not a fan, but there sure are tons of valid use cases.

That's the update for now, and here are a few photos from the event. 

This is my third different gaylord stay since march - they're all good, but there's little doubt that you're in the lone star state here.

there's lots to like about the gaylord, but this time around, not so much for the view from my room. i did a double-take when seeing this, and for a moment thought i was in san antonio visiting the alamo. :-)

Next Stop - NEC Advantage, Grapevine, Texas

Can't say I've ever been to Grapevine, but Google tells me it's near Dallas, and being in Texas, it's probably much bigger than I'm inclined to think. That's the locale for this year's NEC Advantage event, and while it's geared more to consultants than analysts, I'm going and am very much looking forward to it. More details are on the Event Calendar page of my website, and I'll be sharing on social as time allows.

Ribbon Communications, Perspectives18 - Photos and Quick Take

Am back now from the Ribbon Communications conference in Los Angeles, and definitely glad I went. For me, there were both good answers and new questions, and I'm going to explore those in a separate post that will run next week on the BCStrategies portal. For now, I'll just share a few high-level impressions, along with some photos to give you a feel for what was on tap there.

First is the changing of the guard, with Fritz Hobbs taking on the CEO role, and David Walsh taking on a more focused role as Founder of Kandy. Fritz Hobbs is unknown to pretty much everyone I spoke with, and clearly he's a finance guy, not a tech guy. He said very little on stage, so it's hard to tell how he's going run things, but it's safe to say he'll be focused on keeping shareholders and investors happy. David's entrepreneurial and visionary style seems likely to be applied to Kandy rather than the entire organization, so it's also hard to tell what his overall impact is going to be now.

Speaking of Kandy, that was clearly the focus of the conference, and we didn't hear much about the core products that drive revenues and get the attention of analyst houses that track market share and build forecasts. This was also the case at last year's conference, but with the newly-formed Ribbon being a public company, I was surprised about that. We heard even less about how Kandy is actually doing - lots of use cases, customer success stories and touting of CPaaS and UCaaS capabilities, but no metrics. David Walsh made it clear that it's too early for that so let's just move on.

I really liked the clear focus on how Kandy is a great way to leverage the cloud so service providers can be more competitive, not just against other carriers, but the disruptors like Amazon and Twilio. It's debateable how much of a threat those players really are, but they're definitely in the mix, and service providers really do need an innovation engine to bring new services to market, and that's exactly Kandy's MO. Sound like another platform provider serving the carrier market? I'll have more to say about that in my BCStrategies post. And with that, let's shift from text to images with a few photos from the event - and to follow further, check out the twitter feed, #RBBNP18.

New CEO, Fritz Hobbs

David Walsh, no longer CEO, but now Founder, Kandy, and I love those cons - my kind of sneaker.

Patrick Joggerst and Bita Milanian

Innovation Panel

Service Provider Panel

10-piece band AMFM, who played throughout the show - great energy and very fun!

The LA sunset - a hotel specialty - did I pick the right cocktail for this conference  or what?

Next Stop - Los Angeles and Ribbon Communications

Got industry events happening during the next two weeks, so it's travel time again. On Sunday, I'm flying to LA for Perspectives18, the annual confernce for Ribbon Communications. I've been to a few of these, but this marks the first Perspectives event under the Ribbon name, since the merger between Genband and Sonus happened shortly after last year's event.

I've always struggled a bit with the rationale for this pairing, and hearing more about how it's working out will be a primary focus for next week. Also, the messaging last year was heavy on Kandy, their CPaaS platform, and am keen to hear the progress report nearly a year later.

More details are here in the Event Calendar section of my website, and to follow the updates, my twitter handle is @arnoldjon, and for Ribbon's feed, it's #RBBNP18.

June 5 - our next SCTC regional event - Toronto

Just doing another shout-out for next week's one-day event just outside Toronto. It's being shared by two SCTC chapters - Canada and Mid-West US. This won't mean much to non-members, but if you're from the communications consulting community and want to learn more about what the SCTC can offer to strengthen your practice, this is a great way to do it.

Being an analyst, this isn't particularly relevant, but I'm one of a handful of SCTC members from the analyst community, and the only one in Canada. For the past couple of years, I've been actively involved with the programming for our Canadian event, and have also been a keynoter. So, I can vouch first-hand to say that we have a really strong event lined up for next week, and it will be time well spent.

That said, this is one of three events I could be attending next week, but I can only do one, and unfortunately, it won't be SCTC. Sorry to be missing it, but I've been helping make it happen, and one way is to talk it up here. So, if you're interested, or still mulling it over, all the details are here, and if you end up going, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

AI, Chatbots and Improving Customer Satisfaction

I've been working on a series of writeups for Upstream Works on the growing role AI is playing in the contact center. The second Strategic Insight in this series can now be downloaded from their website, and I've written a blog post that serves as a preview for my analysis.

Here's the opening para of that post, and you can read the rest here on the Upstream Works blog.

Contact centers are not alone in trying to keep up with fast-changing technology, but they face two distinct challenges that are highly related. First would be various constraints that limit their ability to provide agents with the tools needed to effectively support today’s tech-savvy customers. This challenge was addressed in my previous blog post, which in turn supports a deeper analysis that you can access here.

Managing CX from the Inside-Out - my Latest on No Jitter

I draw writing inspiration from many sources - industry events, news items, personal interviews and research studies. Regarding the last item, publicly-available studies cross my path on occasion, and if there's interesting data, I like to add my own take.

Sometimes I do this because the findings simply need more attention, but other times I see things in the data that haven't been picked up on in the sponsor's writeup. In part this is due to my unconventional background, but I also come by it honestly, since I've been a market research practitioner for 30+ years. I don't see much of that expertise in this space, so I'm happy to add to the learning that can come from new research.

That's the preface for my latest No Jitter writeup, and it's drawn from a new study done by Genesys that was shared at a high level during their recent CX18 conference. I've focused on some specific findings that support what I call the "inside-out" approach to CX, and why most enterprises aren't getting it right. My analysis has been posted now to the No Jitter site, and if you give it a read, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

My Next Webinar - Collaboration Vendor Landscape Update

Lately, it seems like like each month brings a major change of some sort among the collaboration vendors - and things get even more intense as the overlap with contact centers gets larger. Cisco just bought Accompany, Mitel just went private, Plantronics just acquired Polycom - just to name a few.

Aside from the dizzying pace of acquistions, large players who either weren't in this space until now, or are themselves new companies, are creating all sorts of disruption that cannot be ignored.

That's the milieu I'm going to address in my next Ziff Davis webinar on May 24, and if you'd like to check it out, all the details are here on the registration page. Hope you can join me then.

My May Newsletter is Out, Including a New Podcast - Subscribe Here

I'm going to do a standard shout-out here each time my newsletter is published. You need to subscribe to get it, and all you need to do is provide your email address. Not all of you follow my blog, or understand the range of services I provide, and the newsletter addresses both by providing updates on my practice, broad insights about the collaboration space, and current examples of what I'm doing with my clients.

My newsletter is very much a work in progress, and this month marks the inclusion of a podcast as a regular feature. For this segment, I'm in conversation with colleague Chris Fine, talking about the MoNage conference we spoke at last month, and how technology is reshaping the way we work.

The content in my newsletter is exclusive for subscribers, so if any or all of this is of interest, you need to subscribe. Signup forms  can easily be found on my website - including this standalone page - and hopefully that will be your next stop. I should add that many of you follow me via RSS, but we'll both be better served by subscribing as well, and if you do, thanks!

5 Signs it's Time to Change Your Phone System - My Latest Webinar

Most webinars I do are recorded live, so it's important to know the date if you want to participate. This time around, I was involved doing an on-demand webinar, and like the podcasts I do with BCStrategies, there's no live audience. We record the session as if it was live, and make it available on demand soon after.

For the above-titled webinar, I was the featured presenter, and following my talk, I was joined by Randy Carter from Genesys for an interactive dialog about the topic. The webinar was hosted by Toolbox.com, and the registration page has now been posted to their site. To learn more about the topic and access the webinar, here's the link.

If you're interested in understanding how the role of voice is changing in the contact center, I think you'll find this worthwhile, as there's much more to consider than the state of your phone system. As always, your comments are welcome, and if there's another topic you'd like to see us tackle, I'd love to hear from you.

Preview for New Series - AI, Chatbots and New Value in Contact Centers

I’ve recently been working with Upstream Works, an up and coming company helping contact centers leverage digital technology and migrate to omnichannel. There is no straight path to follow, and to better help contact centers find their way, I’ve prepared a series of Strategic Insights that can be downloaded from their website.

I'll be writing preview posts here on my blog as each Insight is published, and this post serves to support the first one. You can also find this post here on the Upstream Works blog, and from there, you can access the full Insight. With that said, here's my preview post...

Today, most contact centers face a technology gap between customers and agents, and as long as agents remain constrained by legacy tools, productivity will invariably suffer. Chatbots represent one of the best ways to quickly close the gap, but before doing so, contact center decision-makers need to get up to speed on two things:

Artificial Intelligence – The Basics

First, they need to understand the basics of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Aside from the rapid pace of innovation, AI is complex and not native to the contact center. Ultimately, the goal should be to improve the customer experience, but AI won’t deliver unless your decisions are well-informed.

Using AI to Improve Agent Productivity

Secondly, the use cases need to be thought through in terms of how chatbots can improve agent productivity. There’s a temptation to view AI as a way to automate customer service simply for operational efficiency and cost savings, but there’s much more to consider.

There is no straight path to follow, and to better help contact centers find their way, I’ve prepared a series of Strategic Insights that can be downloaded from Upstream Works.

This series is focused on the rapidly evolving field of Artificial Intelligence, and the various ways it can be deployed in the contact center. Chatbots are the most tangible application of AI, but it’s not easy to get past the hype to determine the best use cases. To do that, decision-makers need to take a holistic view across the entire customer care value chain, not just because there are many touchpoints along the way, but also because they are interconnected. Based on my ongoing research, this can be distilled to three focus areas – contact center agents, end customers and overall business performance.

Each of these will be addressed in separate Strategic Insights, and collectively, this series will provide that holistic view. The first Strategic Insight focuses on contact center agents, and how AI in general – and AI-driven chatbots in particular – can help improve agent productivity.

There’s an almost universal interest right now in AI and chatbots for customer service, and expectations are getting higher every day. While these technologies are far from perfect, they are certainly mature enough to be deployed, even if just for basic applications. Some decision-makers will hold off and learn from the mistakes of others, but it’s equally true that the sooner you start on the AI learning curve, the lower the risk as things improve – and there should be no doubt about that.

If the time is now to start your journey with AI and chatbots, I think you’ll find this series timely.

Empowering Frontline Agents for a More Personalized CX

My first Strategic Insight in this series examines two basic use cases that are built around improving CX. The first use case is about directly supporting agents to engage more effectively with customers, and the second one pertains to improving self-service capabilities so agents can focus on higher-value interactions.

The first Strategic Insight has now been published, and you can download it here. The next two in the series will follow over the next few months. I hope you find them of value, and your comments are welcome any time.

Next Stop - Nashville and Genesys CX18

Haven't blogged in a while, mainly due to being so busy. Last week was MoNage and Cisco's customer care event, and this week has been month-end writing, getting plans in place for next week's Genesys event, and practicing music for the SIPtones gig we have next Wednesday night during CX18. Also been very active developing new projects based on inquiries from recent industry events, so things are never dull here.

Just doing a quick shout-out now about next week's event, and I'll be there from Tuesday through Thursday. Details about the event and our SIPtones gig can be found in the Event Calendar section of my website. While there, I'll be tweeting as time allows - @arnoldjon - and you can follow the event feed at #CX18.

Is the Contact Center Going the Way of the PBX?

That's the question posed for my latest No Jitter writeup, and it stems from several takeaways from last month's Enterprise Connect 2018. You don't have to look far on my blog to see what I've already written about the conference, but for No Jitter, it just seemed that a number of learnings from Enterprise Connect pointed to that big question.

I'm not saying it's happening tomorrow, but the parallels are strong, and perhaps you'll agree after giving it a read. And if you don't, I'd still love to hear from you, as would the folks at No Jitter. Are you there?

Enterprise Connect - BCStrategies Podcast Review

Many of us with BCStrategies both attended and presented at Enterprise Connect earlier this month, so there was a lot of collective insights in our circle. The best way to bottle that is with a podcast, and after recording it a few days ago, it's now been posted to our portal.

Here's the link, and I think you'll find this a very good way to tap into the essence of what came out from the conference. For more, there are several posts on our portal related to Enterprise Connect, along with various posts from us on No Jitter.

Media Citings Summary Following Enterprise Connect

One of the benefits of being at major industry events is the media presence, and analysts are often cited as sources in their coverage. Like all analysts, I have my hot streaks, and I've been on a good run following Enterprise Connect. Since then, I've been cited as a source in the following writeups, as well as a full length guest post that was written earlier. More is coming, and to follow my media citings, please viist the In the News tab for my website.

IBM's New Watson Assistant Targets Business with "White Label" Service, Computerworld, March 26

Rethinking Customer Support with Office 365 and TouchPoint Agent, guest post for SMBnation.com, March 21

The Evolution of the Digital Workspace, CDW.com, March 21

AI and Speech Advances Bring Virtual Assistants to Work, Computerworld, March 20

Ready for Artificial Intelligence in Speech Recognition?, Tech Target, March 14

Enterprise Connect 2018 - My First Impressions, Literally

That's the title of my current writeup for BCStrategies. Last week was a non-stop run of sessions, networking and walking the show floor at Enterprise Connect. Very worthwhile, as I got to speak, get to know companies a whole lot better, and take the overall pulse of the collaboration market.

It was my first time there, so these literally were my first impressions, and would welcome your thoughts on my thoughts. While you're on our site, you'll find other writeups about the conference, and tomorrow we'll be doing a podcast to talk about it collectively.

The New Voice - My Next Webinar

Time's short for this one, but am doing another webinar with Ziff Davis. It's next Tuesday, March 20 at 2pm ET. Just finishing up my presentation now, and as the title implies, it's about the "New Voice", a broad trend that is being driven by the cloud, and emerging AI capabilities. There's a lot to talk about - no pun intended - and if you follow my work, you'll have a good idea of what to expect. I hope you can join me, and all the details to register are here.

Enterprise Connect Preview #2 - New Podcast: Interviewed by No Jitter

I can't tie up loose ends fast enough ahead of next week's Enterprise Connect in Orlando. Got back-to-back podcasts to share here that will help set the stage. Yesterday, I posted about our BCStrategies podcast, where we each did a brief preview of our talks and what to expect at the conference.

Today, I'll get more specific, with another podcast - this time, about my speech tutorial, which starts right at the beginning - 8am Monday. The interview was conducted by No Jitter's Beth Schultz, and we touched on the key themes I'll be addressing, along with why speech tech is getting really interesting now in the enterprise.

The podcast was just posted, and is titled "Talking Speech Tech for the Enterprise", and can be accessed here, on No Jitter's site, under the Podcasts tab. Small hurdle, though - you need to be registered with UBM to get it there. Just takes a moment to sign up, and then you're in. The benefit is you can then peruse all the other podcasts, and there's lots to choose from.

While you're on the No Jitter site, feel free to review this article I recently wrote about my session, and if you're planning to attend, here are the details.

Finally, if you just have to hear the No Jitter podcast NOW, and can't be bothered to register, here's a direct link. I also shared that link earlier on both twitter and Linkedin - and on that note, to follow the conference on social, the hash is #EC18, and I'm @arnoldjon.

Preview for Enterprise Connect - Our BCStrategies Podcast

The week is flying by, and the biggest conference in our space is next week, so time is short. I've already done shout-outs about my session there - and more to come - but we're going bigger picture here. Since many of us at BCStrategies (nee UCStrategies) are speaking at Enterprise Connect, we put this podcast together so you can hear all about that in one place. 

Our fearless leader, Jim Burton, did a great job moderating, and he's pulled it all together nicely, with both our podcast, and a summary table for all our speaking spots at the show. It's a lot to follow, posted now on our portal.

Sidebar - I rarely post two images, but it fits this time. Below is our BCStrategies logo, and a shout-out for my speaking spot. Also, fyi, if you register before March 9 with this link, you'll get $500 off your registration.

Thoughts on ITExpo - Where the Phones Are

That's the title of my latest analysis, wearing my BC Expert hat for BCStrategies. For this month's post, I've done a recap of last week's ITExpo in Fort Lauderdale. I posted about it here on my blog a few times leading up to the expo, and now it's time for my post-expo takeaways.

ITExpo is certainly a different vibe from next month's uber-event, Enterprise Connect, and I've been posting about that here as well. Not too many analysts make it to both events, so I'll be doing a similar recap about Enterprise Connect for BCStrategies later next month. Until then, here's my take on ITExpo, and if you were there, I'd love to hear your thoughts.