Technology transformation is gathering pace among organisations with enhanced business agility, followed by increased productivity and mobility as the major outcomes from better engagement amongst their teams.
With a clear emphasis on driving more effective customer engagement, attendees at the Avaya Technology Forum in Bangkok cited increased levels of customer satisfaction, followed by retention and brand loyalty as their primary areas of focus.
According to the communications solutions provider, there was a strong mood of optimism around business growth prospects among customer attendees, with four out of five customers predicting growth for their business in the next 12 months, and 44 per cent anticipating that growth to be in excess of 10 per cent.
When asked about the technology developments having the biggest impact on their business, customers revealed that the rapid deployment of new applications and services was helping their transformation most, with 54 percent citing this as one of the three most important developments.
They also said that the evolution to a software defined architecture (51 per cent), and the use of Big Data and analytics to drive customer lifetime value (49 per cent) were important factors for their business.
“It is fantastic to see from these results that the level of vibrancy and dynamism in the APAC market place is as strong as ever,” says Mike Ansley, President, Asia Pacific, Avaya.
“Record-breaking attendance from our customers and partners at this event is a strong sign of their confidence both in their future opportunities and in the ability of Avaya to support them with the right team engagement, customer engagement and next generation networking solutions to help them achieve their ambitions.”
In terms of challenges faced, Avaya customers cited security – with 69 per cent ranking this in their top 3 challenges - and network downtime (61 per cent) as the two biggest issues they are facing in supporting the rapidly evolving needs of their businesses.
These were also ranked highly by Avaya channel partners, 61 per cent of whom also included managing complexity as one of their top three challenges.
When asked about the single biggest improvement they would like to make to their network, one in four respondents focused on having more flexibility for their network to grow with their business needs while other significant choices included enhanced virtualisation and simplified service and application deployment.
While not quite as confident of strong growth in the coming 12 months as their customers, Avaya channel partners at the event also demonstrated their optimistic outlook for the future, with 68 percent predicting growth in the next 12 months.
And there was a difference too in what channel partners saw as the highest priority technology development for their customers.
While rapid deployment of new applications, and evolution to a software-defined architecture still ranked highly, it was the ability to arm mobile workers with the right application environment which ranked highest, cited as a top three choice by over 2/3 of respondents.
Increasing employee mobility and productivity also ranked slightly higher among channel partners than enhanced business agility as the number one goal of better team engagement.
