INSIGHT
The golden rule of transformation – revealed
Unwriting the digital future
Head of Emerging Technologies for Virgin Media Business, Jo Watts, explains why the future is already an exciting place for many of our customers.
Let’s face it, traditional telecoms companies aren’t renowned for their innovation road maps. Over the past 25 years, standard fixed connectivity and telephony services have been our bread and butter. Only now are things changing – and fast. The increasingly dramatic pace of technological advancement and a changing consumer landscape, are having a profound impact on what we do.
Thrive, grow, transform
Of course this can be scary for the more traditionally-minded telcos, but for us things are getting exciting. Traditional connectivity networks now offer huge opportunities, with the potential to become the catalyst for real change, helping UK organisations to thrive, grow and transform the way they serve their customers.
Gaining the 'digital edge'
My emerging technologies team has the privilege of being at the forefront of this change and we are looking to customers for inspiration and partnership just as much as they look to us. Our job is to get under the skin of what they need to do to gain a ‘digital edge’ in their market place, reach new customers through new channels or, in the case of our public sector customers, transform the service and care they provide to citizens.
Keeping ahead of the game
Through innovation we help customers overcome the barriers to transforming their organisations. The first step is almost always creating a more cost-effective and efficient operational environment to free up resources and cash to be invested in innovation.
Our security team knows keeping data and IP secure is top of most organisations’ priority list. However, alongside such essentials, agendas are shifting towards staying ahead of the game in the relevant market place. For example, more and more organisations are asking how to make sure the workforce is productive and happy, as well as how best to attract new talent by offering the most advanced devices, apps and office spaces.
Most important of all, organisations want to know how to open up new contact channels to customers or citizens, so they can get in touch through their channel of choice.
It gets even better. Unlike traditional telecommunications services, Cloud Voice operates on a licence-based model, so you pay a fixed monthly fee based on your usage – there are no nasty surprises.
Moving telephony and call handling to a single, hosted, managed network makes it easier to predict budgets. And that’s the kind of freedom that allows you to grow, disrupt, surprise and thrive.
Tim says, “We’re creating cost certainty for businesses on their telecoms spend. Previously an organisation would have to buy a PBX regardless of whether they had 200 employees or 2000. With the scale and agility of a cloud-based PBX, a business only needs to buy as many licences as it has employees. It’s easy to scale up or down, so you can respond quickly to the unexpected.”
Fail, but fail fast
Flexible, secure and consolidated digital infrastructure is essential to achieve these goals. It provides a platform for innovation no matter how large or small the organisation and, once it’s in place, it paves the way for the next phase of growth or transformation.
In this case my team encourages organisations to follow one golden rule: it’s okay to fail – but do it fast.
If you work with the right partners, many technology trials can be implemented at low cost to a small part of the organisation. IT teams are often wary of taking on a trial in case it fails, but failure delivers lessons and knowledge that help get the next innovation right. That’s why my golden rule is that failure isn’t to be feared.
It gets even better. Unlike traditional telecommunications services, Cloud Voice operates on a licence-based model, so you pay a fixed monthly fee based on your usage – there are no nasty surprises.
Moving telephony and call handling to a single, hosted, managed network makes it easier to predict budgets. And that’s the kind of freedom that allows you to grow, disrupt, surprise and thrive.
Tim says, “We’re creating cost certainty for businesses on their telecoms spend. Previously an organisation would have to buy a PBX regardless of whether they had 200 employees or 2000. With the scale and agility of a cloud-based PBX, a business only needs to buy as many licences as it has employees. It’s easy to scale up or down, so you can respond quickly to the unexpected.”
