"Microsoft's movement in the space speaks volumes about the seriousness of the unified communications and collaboration space" This is the way my Microsoft Teams interview kicked off with Director of Product Management, TetraVX, Kara Korte.
We had a great conversation about the unified communications and collaborations landscape, which both evolved at grander scales than ever before in 2019. We witnessed substantial innovation on the contact center front with the introduction of several new UCaaS solutions by Zoom, Slack, Avaya, RingCentral, and Microsoft.
We also saw significant collaborations milestones, with more people around the globe meeting via video conferencing systems than any year on record.
The goal of such platforms, of course, is to help contact center agents, remote workers, business partners, and customers connect while increasing efficiency. Do these tools rise to the challenge of mounting consumer demands for enterprises to make communications convenient? Do they increase workplace efficiency?
According to Lifesize's 2019 impact of video conferencing report, 94 percent of businesses said video conferencing increases productivity. Another 89 percent said video conferencing helped reduce the time it takes to complete projects and tasks.
Korte said there's no doubt these tools work, they just have to be implemented properly and leveraged throughout the entire organization, otherwise their ineffective. And she should know, as she has over ten years of product management experience, along with previous expertise as a business analyst and a developer.
In prior roles, and especially in her present, Korte shared, she's learned a lot about the deployment, management, as well as the support of communication and collaboration tools like Cisco Webex and Microsoft Teams. She also said she's grown fond of these tools and kept her eyes on the market as a whole.
