Digital Transformation: The Long-Term Revenue Opportunity

Steve Law

At the start of the pandemic, many people would have been mistaken for thinking that work-from-home and stay at home orders were going to be short-lived. After the (UK) Prime Minister introduced these initial instructions to the nation, many IT teams rushed like mad to maintain business continuity and productivity for their organisations. Since then, society’s behaviour has changed, and so has the way in which people work, seeing the rise of remote working.

During that time cloud application usage skyrocketed too. Digital transformation initiatives sped up almost overnight. And, while the initial scramble focused on business continuity and technology upgrades, across the board, the cloud evolution has not ceased and neither will digital transformation. That’s especially since the UK is encouraging investments in connectivity and digitising Britain.

Changing the Shape of Organisations

Initially, during the pandemic, homeworking was considered temporary. But, through 2020 many organisations came to accept the longevity of the situation and changed their working policies. Today, we see more firms opt for continued remote working and/or hybrid working policies, offering a blend of office-based and remote working options to employees.

But, where does the opportunity to sell “remote working” truly lie for the channel in this scenario? Research shows that in 2020 there were 6 million SMEs in the UK, which was over 99% of all businesses. Clearly, there is vast revenue potential available here.

Another driver of organisational change across enterprise and SMB markets is cloud adoption. Research points out that 88% of organisations expect the adoption of cloud services to increase in the next 12 months. This underpins the importance of cloud within wider future technology strategies, which will, no doubt, improve organisational operations too.

Business-Grade and Secure

Through the pandemic, we’ve seen many people work from their kitchen tables, for instance. Often employees have used their personal broadband and, in some cases, own mobile devices and laptops. While this workforce’s diligence is worth applauding, the use of their own personal technology is often not business-grade or secure. At first, these temporary solutions may have been sufficient, but they are not sustainable long-term.

This is where the ongoing opportunity lies for the channel. As organisations make committed strides toward remote or hybrid-working, they will require the right blend of technology and equipment to enable employees to be productive. This means kitting out employees with fast, efficient, robust and secure internet and voice connectivity. Ideally, companies need to provide Rthernet solutions that are suitable with employees’ jobs. And they need to offer staff access to feature-rich communication applications like Microsoft Teams, for unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) so that productivity can be maintained.

At a practical and physical level, organisations need to supply employees with reliable equipment to do their jobs. We’ve talked about business-grade laptops and phones. But what about support with setting up ergonomic home working stations for staff, as they provide people with voice, data and cloud applications to enable them to work?

Collaboration and Brainstorming Applications

Before the pandemic, Microsoft Teams wasn’t used effectively by many firms. However, since last March, Microsoft Teams usage for video calls increased by 1000%. And, it is also reasonable to say that many firms have become adept at driving productivity with UC&C technology, and that they derive substantial return on investment from these applications.

The need for UC&C is not going to go away anytime soon. That means the revenue opportunity will …