Welcome to Ask the Experts, brought to you by CloudServicesUniversity.com. In this video, Intelisys’ SVP Cloud Transformation Andrew Pryfogle discusses the top three ways that UCaaS features boost business efficiencies with Masergy’s Maurie Munro. Learn more about UcaaS solutions from the Masergy team here: https://cloudservicesuniversity.com/supplier-directory/masergy/
| Andrew: | All right guys, we’re jumping back into our next Ask the Experts session, and I’m having us joined again by Maurie Munro, who’s the Director of UCaaS for Masergy out of Plano, Texas, where they’re headquartered. They’re getting tons of rain there but he’s inside and dry and now ready to share his wisdom. Maurie, thank you, man, for jumping in. I appreciate it. |
| Maurie: | Sure, my pleasure. |
| Andrew: | Very cool. Hey, I wanted to talk to you about some of the common features out there that we’re seeing in UCaaS. Not just the everyday features, but the ones that are really driving efficiency improvements for businesses. If you had to boil it down to the top two or three features that are really driving improvements for businesses, what would those be in your mind? |
| Maurie: | We’ve really been getting quite a few requests in the instant messaging, collaborative tools arena. When you can offer–especially the global customer or any customer that have distributed offices–the instant messaging presence, we all know the convenience of seeing the availability of your coworkers without necessarily having to be there. That is a tool that, combined with the soft-calling capability–if it’s chat, if it gets into the actual audio portion or video–you’ve really expanded your role with that relationship of another end user significantly. You want to go down to even something of a screen share capability. It expands the entire working relationship, increasing that user productivity. |
| Our tool that is built and allows you to create contacts within your company directory is first and foremost really an all-encompassing way to have a user interaction. It’s important to introduce that to users just because you want that seamless experience for them to be able to use a tool that increases that productivity, as I mentioned. | |
| Andrew: | Yeah, makes sense. So we’re talking about instant messaging in the collaborative toolset around desktop sharing and video and so forth. Fantastic. I love it. Big believer in that. Is there another feature that jumps out to you? |
| Maurie: | I think that users in general want–or companies, I should say–want to enable mobility. When you get into the considerations that the smartphone is a device that probably is more frequently used than the basic desk phone without it having the same capabilities of the clients that I just mentioned. The downloadable client that could give them full desktop experience on their smartphone. I want that to be something that’s at the ready. You can use simple, single number reachability. And when doing so, you don’t necessarily have to make the cell phone number the dedicated number of that salesperson. It keeps your capability of providing that desk number, that company number, as the primary reach number. |
| Andrew: | Really protecting the identity of your business. Yeah, no doubt. |
| Maurie: | Without it, everything’s going directly to a cell phone. In the event that individual is no longer with the company, you really do lose proprietary information. |
| Andrew: | Yup, fantastic. |
| Maurie: | You find that … Just one last … You find if they do travel out of country, the soft client capability, that being able to put a softphone of the business line on the cell phone, again enhances–or, let’s just say reduces–company cost because they can use their company number with calls that essentially originate in the domestic US, allowing them to offset any potential roaming charges that they may incur. |
| Andrew: | Very cool. That’s compelling. That’s compelling. So guys, there you have it, man. We’ve talked about instant messaging. We’ve talked about kind of the collaborative suite, with desktop sharing and video, and then mobility. You’re absolutely right, Maurie. We’re seeing an enormous explosion there. And that speaks right to kind of the hard of what UCaaS is all about. |
| Very cool stuff, Maurie. Thank you very much, man, for jumping in. I appreciate it. | |
| Maurie: | My pleasure. Thank you. |
| Andrew: | All right you guys. That’s Maurie Munro, who’s the Director of UCaaS for Masergy, one of our members of the faculty here at the Cloud Services University. Make sure you jump into their learning center for Masergy. Learn about what they’re doing in international and domestic, what they’re doing with mirroring up their really, really robust MPLS network and what they’re doing with next-generation network stuff, mirroring that up with a really, really compelling UCaaS offer. Hope you can win big with them, guys. I know we are. Good selling. |
