Welcome to Ask the Experts, brought to you by CloudServicesUniversity.com. In this video, Intelisys’ SVP Cloud Transformation Andrew Pryfogle discusses the top three UCaaS features that are improving customer efficiency with MegaPath’s Senior Vice President of Marketing and Product Management John Scarborough. Find out more about UCaaS and end-to-end solutions from John and the MegaPath team here: http://megapath.cloudservicesuniversity.com/
| Andrew: | OK, guys. Time for another Ask the Experts session. I’m sitting here with John Scarborough, who’s the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Product Management with MegaPath. One of our long time suppliers. John, welcome man. |
| John: | Thank you very much Andrew. Great to be here. |
| Andrew: | Very cool. We’ve been talking obviously a lot about UCaaS and this whole certification track. I wanted to get your opinion on what are the top two or three UCaaS features that you’re hearing about, or maybe even more features that are driving the most efficiency improvements for end user customers. The kind of features that can really move the needle, and it will be meaningful to customers. What are those that are top of line for you? |
| John: | You know Andrew, that’s a great question. When working with our customers, consulting with them on our UCaaS applications and their business requirements. One of the things that I keep on seeing of customers that have implemented UCaaS are some of those surprising applications that they come back to us on that, “Oh my gosh. I didn’t realize that this application was actually going to be the killer application for us.” |
| I think a lot of times when you think about UCaaS, well, it’s a soft client, and you can make a phone call over it. In fact, the key feature that I keep on hearing our customers rave about is the simple presence capability. | |
| So in other words, just simply the ability of recognizing whether or not another colleague, or an employee, or a work mate is on or off the phone, in or out of the office, available or not for a phone call. What’s really interesting about presence because most of the time you’ve never had visibility before. What’s interesting about presence is that it usually translates into this escalation capability. | |
| I referred to it as an escalation in communications, in fact, because as soon as I recognized that, “Oh, hey. Andrew’s available.” I might IM you. Say, “Hey, Andrew. Are you there?” You might respond back, “Sure, right here.” “Oh, great.” Then, it escalates from an IM to a telephone call, or to a video call. It’s also going to be based off this presence, and this visibility application. | |
| I always want to bring that one up because I think its overlooked a lot of times. “Why would I really want to know whether Andrew’s there or not,” but it leads to a major productivity improver. All because of that level of visibility. | |
| The other two features that I’ll mention here have to do with collaboration. Screen share capability is fantastic. It’s all baked into in many of these applications and the service that we provide. Collaboration is a core utility that you can invite via IM, or you can send in email, get people involved in your own screen. | |
| The last thing I’ll mention too that I think is really important, is integration with a configuration or control capability. If you wanted a real-time ability of redirecting call handling–redirecting all your phone calls to voicemail for example, or redirecting phone calls to your cell phone. Or the ability of switching the phone call–as you’re on your mobile and you sit down to your desk, to be able to switch the call over to your desktop, or from your desktop over to your mobile. That utility–and seamless utility because it’s different than a call transfer function. It’s really a seamless transition between these two unified applications, all into one. Those are the key features that we’re seeing customers really, really depend on. | |
| Andrew: | Cool. Let’s just recap those. Those are great. Very top of the line for me too, because I use this stuff every day. It’s presence, and not just who’s on the phone, who’s not on the phone, or are they available or unavailable, but the ability through that IM presence and chat to escalate that to a phone call, or a video call. I love that. That’s very cool. |
| The second one you mentioned was collaboration, and the idea that I can do screen sharing from within this application without having to go through a whole other WebEx, or GoToMeeting, or something like that. It’s built into my communication experience. Again, escalate that IM to a phone call, to a video call, or even to a screen sharing session. | |
| Lastly, was this controllability, which is really big with mobile users. I can bounce calls from my cell phone to my desk phone, my desk phone to my cell phone. That kind of ability to control where that call lands in real time is powerful, no doubt. | |
| Those are cool man. Love them. Tell me this, how important do you think it is that Sales Partners that are trying to sell this stuff are also users of this stuff? | |
| John: | I think it’s invaluable. I don’t know how you can necessarily sell it effectively without being an active user. Without being able to really effectively demonstrate it to a customer. UCaaS has a lot of cache, and a lot of buzz right now in the industry, but there’s a great deal of confusion on what it is exactly. |
| For you to be able to actually demonstrate it, show it, show how you personally use it–it sells itself. Frankly, if you’re a sales agent, I would do the demo and let the product, or let the demo sell it for you. | |
| Andrew: | Very cool. Good stuff, John. Thanks so much, man, for jumping in. I really appreciate it. |
| John: | Anytime, Andrew. Thanks so much. |
| Andrew: | Good deal. Guys, that John Scarborough. He is the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Product Management for MegaPath. One of the bigger suppliers in our portfolio. We do a lot of business with these guys. They’re really, really good in the distributed enterprise space, and UCaaS plays really well for those types of customers. |
| You can learn all about that in the MegaPath learning center here at the University. Go deep there. Get smart about how MegaPath can help you close those big UCaaS opportunities. Good selling. |
