A rich portfolio of Cloud, SaaS and IaaS solutions, collaboration solution such as unified communication solutions help Tata Teleservices to enable businesses stay hyperconnected and collaborate more efficiently.
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“We will continue to strengthen our services in areas like Cloud, SaaS, IaaS, along with enhancing our network and sales reach to cover as much SMB footprint as possible.”
Joyjeet Bose,
Sr. Vice-President,
Tata Teleservices
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The Collaboration Technology industry witnessed a significant uptick in the demand due to the massive digital adoption triggered by the pandemic. As part of our effort to make the voices of major Collaboration technology players heard by the channel community, SME Channels embarks upon recording the voices of the who’s who of the Collaboration Technology landscape.
In a special interaction with SME Channels, Joyjeet Bose, Sr. Vice-President, Tata Teleservices, reveals his organization’s strategy to address growing demand for Collaboration solutions from customers, his predictions for the Collaboration Solutions industry in 2022 and his vision and plans for the channel community. Edited excerpts…
There has been a significant uptick in the demand for Collaboration Technology Solutions triggered by massive digital adoption due to the Pandemic. How has your company been leveraging this hike in demand?
Enterprises are increasingly becoming digitally agile to simplify, secure and enhance their customer experiences to drive business growth. Business communications went into full-digital mode, owing to the pandemic. The situation necessitated innovation in communication and collaboration solutions that are scalable, robust, secure, reliable and serve as a proxy for real-life interactions.
Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS) as one of India’s leading and trusted technology enablers for SMBs ensured that our customers had uninterrupted services and provided them with innovative solutions that helped them to maintain business continuity during the pandemic. We have the most comprehensive portfolio for Cloud, SaaS and IaaS solutions. Our collaboration solution such as unified communication solutions that we offer in partnership with Zoom, webcasting services, International Bridging services help businesses stay hyperconnected and collaborate more efficiently.
What key mega trends do you foresee in the Collaboration Technology Solutions market?
As organizations further embrace hybrid work, Collaboration Technology trends continue to signal that growth is unstoppable as this has redefined the ‘future of work’ teams. Following are the key trends that we expect to dominate:
- Hybrid Workplaces- Employee experience is crucial in remote work. For this reason, companies will be requiring project collaboration tools that will facilitate hybrid work culture and supports the distributed work force to collaborate effectively. TTBS’ smart remote VPN and Smartflo portfolio will enable users to work in soho hybrid environment
- Immersive Technology for Collaboration- Immersive technology will continue to be at the forefront of emerging collaboration software trends, especially for industries that carry out complex projects that rely heavily on the use of 3D data. Immersive technologies can sustain engagement and lead to a positive employee experience. VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented reality) can provide realistic collaboration settings, thus improving team interactions. Immersive technologies will continue to drive major changes in workplace collaboration.
- External Collaboration Will Grow- External collaboration facilitates the exchange of knowledge between organizations sharing the same business goals. Through working with other organizations, a company’s propensity to innovate increases. New security features will revolutionize external collaboration.
- Asynchronous Collaborative Environments- Business leaders find asynchronous collaborative environments as effective in managing a distributed workforce living in different time zones with different workforce plans. However, asynchronous collaborative environments can be leveraged by remote teams living in the same time zone as well. Collaboration software is now integrated with features that allow users to send video clips in place of virtual meetings.
- The Rise of Collaborative Flexibility- Considering the heterogeneous sentiments among individuals, collaborative flexibility is being adopted by organizations. For instance, employees have mobile access to meetings to optimize the workplace. Collaboration tools are also used to communicate both synchronously and asynchronously. As workplaces adopt innovative management philosophies, technology is seen as the most important enabler: TTBS offers Remote smart VPN for accessing office infrastructure and Smartflo to have inbound/outbound voice services anywhere anytime; in conjunction with Zoom Digital meetings helps to offer unified Video communication
- Workstream Collaboration Platforms- Workstream collaboration (WSC) platforms are technology solutions that can be deployed into existing multi-vendor, multi-cloud, and multi-modal environments to glue all applications and reduce application fatigue. The WSC tools work by eliminating multiple logins and different user interfaces. In this new environment, collaborative apps are integrated, and employees no longer have to use multiple communication channels to be able to work together TTBS has worked extensively in multi-mode, cloud and vendor environment. Our solutions are vendor agnostic and TTBS can establish a private mode connectivity to CSP (EZ connect) to offer uniformity and simplicity.
What are your major Product/Services offerings?
The epidemic has boosted the digital adoption in a variety of industries. While businesses have recognised the importance of digital solutions for survival and growth, it is up to digital technology companies like to provide relevant solutions to aid them in their transformation journeys.
At TTBS, we are enabling our customers to harness the power of digital technologies and build a more connected and secure future. For many businesses especially SMBs, lack of knowledge and resources remains a crucial problem when it comes to taking care of IT and security woes. Our overall market strategy has been to accelerate the adoption of digital solutions by businesses aspiring to Do Big. We are committed to democratize technology so that any business irrespective of its size can become digitally agile with our smart and affordable solutions backed by our highly acclaimed 24*7 managed services and support.
TTBS has strengthened its approach basis industry use case scenario:
TTBS offer smart solution to mitigate Industry value chain wise challenges. We have unique Smart solutions which can cater to various industry segments. The solutions are meticulously designed to cater industry wise requirement ensuring uniformity, security, and simplicity.
TTBS has strengthened its portfolio of enterprise grade solutions such as:
- Smartflo: an advanced cloud communication suite that enhances customer experience by streamlining Voice call flows and tracking performance with detailed reports and advanced analytics with no geographic boundary (Anywhere Anytime)
- SD-WAN iFLX : An advanced networking solution with intelligent and flexible networking capabilities helping businesses accelerate their digital transformation with wide range of granular information and real time changes to enhance performance.
- Smart Internet : Industry’s first smart internet leased- single suite combining high speed internet with cloud-based security and greater control at an optimized cost. We bundled the best of internet and security features with managed services.
- SmartOffice® : It is literally an office in a box, which integrates voice, data, storage and applications in one device and saves customer time, effort, cost and complexity of working with multiple vendors providers in setting up an office. It is as appealing to a start-up as it is to an established organization wishing to open a branch office.
- Ultra-Lola 3.0- This is a technologically enhanced point-to point offering between India’s Biggest exchange NSE & BSE, lowering latency in microseconds, which enables broker/BFSI companies that must stay securely connected to process market data in real-time.
- EZ Cloud Connect, an easy, fast, reliable, cost effective and secured Point to Point (P2P) cloud connectivity gateway. EZ Cloud Connect enables Enterprises to bypass the internet and deliver data to and from the Cloud Service Provider (CSP) by establishing a dedicated private secured network connectivity.
Collaboration techs should provide the platform to connect with external partners, customers, and vendors through seamless and high-impact communication. How have your clients as well as partners been benefitted from them?
TTBS has teamed up with Zoom Video Communications to offer an intuitive, scalable, and secure communications solution to enterprises and individual customers. We have leveraged Zoom’s robust and secure platform to address the growing collaboration requirements of Enterprises for seamless unified communications. We offer Zoom’s world-class communications platform on our high-capacity network. These services include Zoom Meetings, Zoom Webinars among others to businesses across industry segments particularly education, healthcare, BFSI enabling them to collaborate effectively within their teams and partners in India and globally.
Also, in order to address the continuous shift in modern workplace, where employees expect more openness, collaboration and flexibility in how they stay connected, we offer a host of plug and play collaboration solutions, such as web conferencing solutions, hosted IVR, and international bridging services.
Clear, easy to understand, user-friendly End-User Interface is pivotal for the success of any Collaboration Solution. What sort of Product differentiation do you bring onto the table to ensure greater traction for channel partners?
Channel partner network has been an important contributor to our business growth. We have, perhaps, the largest channel network which is available at hand to meet the requirements of our customers in over 60 cities across the country. We have the right mix of partners who address various industrial segments. We have pure telecom partners, system integrators, data security experts, software selling partners and even non-ICT partners who have better reach across industry segments.
We have also introduced ‘Customer Experience Platform (CEP)’ industry’s first highly engaging, innovative, and integrated platform to bring the product experience closer to the customers, based on their availability and comfort anytime anywhere. Customer Experience Portal lets customers understand and experience how our products and solutions can enable them to build digital capabilities. It serves as a one-stop digital guide for customers to better experience TTBS products and make speedy and informed decisions.
What are the major factors that are impacting the growth of the Collaboration tech sector? Is cannibalization of revenue, a major challenge?
Fragmented communication and the resultant loss of productivity are problems most enterprises are facing with extended periods of remote working and time away from the office. Work-from-anywhere and flexible working are becoming commonplace and simple yet powerful solutions like, unified video conferencing solutions are now an integral part to support the hybrid culture of mobility and collaboration for today’s anytime, anywhere and any device workforce.
Most of the modern businesses that are successfully moving their operations on the digital side are embracing asset light models which are affordable and highly flexible. And one solution does not fit everyone. Each business has specific requirements, and we offer them bespoke solutions which can be integrated easily in their existing infra. This presents us with tremendous opportunity to offer our solutions to the burgeoning market of SMBS and Start-Ups across their entire value-chains.
Collaboration Solutions business is highly tech intensive. How do you upskill your partners to help them tap more into the market opportunities?
Emerging technologies provide a competitive advantage by opening up new revenue streams and reshaping business strategy, but they also function as a catalyst in increasing industry skill gaps. Companies that invest in adaptable teams get a competitive advantage by being able to turn more quickly. Learning management systems are an efficient technique to improve transferable skills and introduce new technical concepts through training- boost visibility and reduce friction.
We continue to enhance our channel partner network in every part of the addressable market. We are continually empowering and upskilling our partners under our ‘Certified Solution Partner’ program which is at par with industry certification to enhance their capabilities as an ICT solution provider.
This is significant because it provides them with opportunities to learn new skills and earn credentials, especially as they reskill and upskill more frequently to address the customers’ demands in the competitive market.
Have you recently made or plan to make any major investments in terms of channel expansions or product development in India and SAARC?
TTBS is one of the prime players in the enterprise segment guided by the principles of customer centricity, obsession for innovation and commitment to operational excellence with an unwavering focus on future processes. We have grown to be a one-stop digital solution provider for businesses in domestic market with our most comprehensive suite of enterprise grade solutions that are flexible, easy to deploy, and are available in an asset/capex light model _say in a plug n play mode.
We are continually investing in developing all our partners as a digital solution providers for SMB segment. We have a large fibre network of around 1,25,000 route kms that runs through the length and breadth of the country. We have connected perhaps the highest number of business clusters, over 1 lakh buildings which house the businesses we serve, and this number is increasing daily. All our Channel partners and large field team, leverage these connected buildings, interact with the customers directly, make them aware of our services and generate demand that then translates into an order that is fulfilled and serviced efficiently.
We will continue to strengthen services in the areas of Cloud, SaaS, IaaS and while at the same time enhancing our network and sales reach to cover as much SMB footprint as possible.
