How has the pandemic impacted cloud adoption? What pivotal shifts have you seen in communications over the years?
Ringside is all about finding out answers. For this episode, we hear from Tom Reed, managing director and founder of UCAdvisor. Before founding UCAdvisor, Tom had several successful management and leadership roles within the telecoms and IT industry. All his roles focused on unified communications and contact centre products.
Working with the likes of Mitel, RingCentral, 8×8, and Gamma, Tom focused on developing and driving the adoption of cloud-based solutions. Tom has a passion for new and innovative ways of doing business and hopes to disrupt the IT procurement process. Outside of work, his hobbies include a love of tabletop gaming, electric scooters and watch collecting.
Can you tell us a bit about UCAdvisor?
UCAdvisor is a faster way for IT Teams to compare, shortlist and fund their next UC or contact centre project. We’re unique in our industry and incredibly proud of what we do.
The platform enables users to research and compare the leading UC and contact centre vendors all from a single site, turning what would traditionally be weeks (if not months) of information gathering by IT and procurement teams down into a few minutes.
On top of this, because we use the existing partner network to our end customers advantage, we freely fund up to 100% of any upfront costs incurred by switching providers. We allow organisations to concentrate on finding the right solution for them rather than worrying about the cost of switching.
What’s your role at UCAdvisor, and what do you love about your job?
I’m the managing director and founder of the business, focusing mainly on strategy, UK growth, and vendor relationships. I love that we genuinely get to help companies and IT Teams get the most out of their digital transformation projects and provide a useful platform to aid them in their search. There are not many genuine win-win scenarios out there (in any capacity), and I’m incredibly grateful that we can offer one in the telecoms marketplace.
For me, this is the ideal situation to be in. I genuinely love my job and am lucky to work with really great employees, customers and partners.
In what ways has business communications changed over your career?
I think adoption would be the main aspect. Things like SIP trunks and cloud PBXs were still very much on the peripherals when I started out. Now we are seeing a surge in organisations accepting and adopting the tech en masse, and it’s great to see such a shift in attitude.
How have the events of the past 12 months impacted the way you work?
In a word. Massively! Everything from trying to keep the kids out of the home office to not realising you haven’t left your seat in five hours. It’s strange what habits you fall into when you are working in isolation. That being said, it’s been great to see more of my family, and I’m always home on time now! Moving forward, a mixture of office and home working would be a great balance.
It took something like COVID-19 to highlight the flaws in the traditional platforms and hopefully means people can appreciate how crucial flexibility is nowadays. Click To Tweet
How has the pandemic impacted cloud adoption and what do you think will happen next?
I can’t speak for cloud adoption as a whole, but certainly, it has been a game-changer for UC and cloud PBX adoption. Traditionally, cloud telephony and UC always sat way down the pecking order for CTOs and CFOs to digitise or transform. There was a mentality of ‘if it isn’t broke, why mess with it’. I think it took something like COVID-19 to highlight the flaws in the traditional platforms and hopefully means people can appreciate how crucial flexibility is nowadays.
Moving forward, it goes without saying that the industry will go from strength to strength. We will see adoption skyrocket globally. Hopefully, this shared experience will mean UC and cloud telephony stay top priority for businesses moving forward!
Find out more about Tom and UCAdvisor here.
Originally published Apr 06, 2021
