SMB customers are the backbone of the UK economy – but many small businesses have struggled with the impact of changes resulting from the pandemic, and now they are once again faced with global uncertainty. This economic anxiety has resulted in many companies rethinking their business and IT strategies.
Hybrid is Here to Stay
A Forrester study of 20,995 ‘purchase influencers’* found that 47% of workforces have transitioned to full-time remote working since the Covid-19 pandemic hit and 48% are anticipating a permanently higher rate of full-time remote employees. This means that efficiency savings have become a key focus for many SMBs, who are now balancing the shift to hybrid working with providing the right solutions and tools to their teams to ensure that productivity and output is kept high.
These changes are driving SMBs to invest in three key areas:
1. Collaboration
2. Security
3. Hybrid working practices, including managing devices outside of the office
Microsoft’s research has shown that over 70% of workers want flexible, remote working options to continue and 66% of business decision makers are planning to redesign spaces to accommodate hybrid working.
Brand New Features
Microsoft 365 features and functionality have grown exponentially over the last decade to include an extensive range of collaboration tools, security features and solutions to support hybrid working. Microsoft Teams, for example, has seen 300+ new features added in the last year and 400+ new features are set to come within the next 12 months, yet many users aren’t aware of the benefits of this amazing collaboration tool, nor do they know that they can use Teams as a fully-fledged telephony solution for their business to bring about significant cost savings!
Stay Connected
With the UK PSTN switch off coming in 2025**, all businesses will need to find an alternative telephony solution to ensure that their company can keep communicating. Telephony forms an integral part of the Microsoft solution stack and businesses are increasingly coming to our CSP partners asking for help moving from their traditional PSTN telephony systems over to Microsoft Teams with Phone System. Microsoft Teams provides a seamless solution across all business applications and tools as well as a single place to communicate and collaborate.
Research from Ofcom in October 2022*** tells us that “83% of SMEs agree ‘Communications services are fundamental to our business, without them we could not function as a business’”. The report shows a down trend in the use of traditional telephony solutions, demonstrating that now is the time for resellers to have conversations with their customers about their telephony strategies…before someone else does!
Why Microsoft?
Microsoft are recognised as a leader in both the 2021 Gartner® Magic Quadrant for Meeting Solutions and the 2021 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Unified Communications as a Service. By moving to Microsoft Teams for all their communication and collaboration needs, customers are not only assured of a fully comprehensive and reliable platform to increase productivity, but they can also reduce device and leasing costs through improved voice communication and collaboration on a single platform, with an average 30% cost saving on telephone bills by moving to SIP.
To help our partners to meet this new market demand, whilst at the same time helping them to add more value to their cloud propositions, TD SYNNEX have developed a Microsoft Cloud Practice Builder for Unified Communications and Collaborations. If you would like to take advantage of UC&C and develop it into your services and value proposition, now is the time to sign up and join us on our future Microsoft Unified Communications & Collaboration Practice Builder Sessions.
* https://aka.ms/MWForresterTEI2021
** https://bit.ly/3UkbPAz
*** https://bit.ly/3t1fbNb