For Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, moving to Avaya Cloud Office® from a legacy phone system unlocked innovative features and functions including voicemail-to-email and breakout rooms for the county courthouse.
In Australia, InnerVision Engineering deployed Avaya Cloud Office® by RingCentral for patrons with questions about “Beyond Park,” its ticketless and cashless app for parking lots and garages. This solution reduced operators’ technology and hardware costs by up to 70 per cent and laid the groundwork for elevated collaboration between InnerVision’s staff members.
Today, it’s clear: moving to the cloud can spur innovation in a number of ways, including a better customer experience (CX), more efficient work processes, and new features that can provide a competitive edge.
“Innovation is about making changes to something established, specifically by introducing new methods, ideas, or products,” said Tim Sherwood, VP of product and offer management, Avaya, in a recent blog post, “Understanding Innovation as a Large, Well-Established Enterprise.”
Sherwood noted that innovation is vital for organizations because it can create new value. However, there are no guarantees that a new product will sell or a new method will enhance productivity. That’s why fear of failure, uncertainty and an aversion to risk are obstacles that hold organizations back from trying a new approach.
But as developers create new apps, customers escalate their demands and employees ask for work-from-anywhere tools, legacy solutions are hard-pressed to keep up. Fortunately, Avaya has taken a hybrid approach that allows organizations to migrate to a cloud platform in their own way and at their own time.
What do you want to innovate?
There are many questions to ask when looking at the cloud, including what you might want to innovate. Sometimes the answer may be clear, like new products for a manufacturing or retail operation, or integrated communication tools for a hospital or construction management company. But other times, an enterprise needs to look closely at its customers or internally at its employees to see where innovation can deliver the biggest return on investment.
A 2021 innovation study from Deloitte found higher-growth companies spend less time focusing on internal operations and more time identifying and responding to their customers. While 40 percent of respondents began the innovation process by looking internally, another 25 percent started scanning their markets for new technologies and ideas.
Today, innovation at any level requires ongoing communication and collaboration. A business leader, C-suite executive or a key partner might make suggestions or recommendations, but it’s usually up to the IT team to identify a good solution and overcome the obstacles to implementation. In many cases that means moving some processes – or perhaps the whole UCC platform – to the cloud.
Making that migration can be a key step to support innovation in your organization. For instance, Stemmer Distribution Group, the largest distributor of dental products in France, turned to Avaya in launching an innovative program to improve the user experience while simplifying its architecture. The investment paid off in several ways, including a 50 percent reduction in the cost per user, as well as simplified IT management. Most importantly, moving to the cloud allowed Stemmer to deliver a consistent experience for its employees and customers.
So, when you think of innovation, the first step is to generate some great ideas, and consider the cloud for support in turning those concepts into reality.
