PGi Aims to Become Heart of Digital Transformation and UCaaS

60% of companies are behind on digital transformation (DX) and 34% of business owners say half their workers will be remote by 2020. Companies have to change and quickly to be able to keep up with a workforce which is increasingly working from remote locations.

Sure, (DX) is a term we use a great deal – perhaps even overuse but if the market considers itself behind and competition and a changing workforce require it, then perhaps it needs even more press coverage to ensure decision-makers are taking the competitive threat and opportunity to excel, seriously.

iPhone XS and XS Max Benchmarked: World’s Fastest Phones (Again) https://t.co/2Knzy2iFrC pic.twitter.com/41ik34t4jQ

— Rich Tehrani (@rtehrani) September 18, 2018

We know not only is change happening more quickly but the pace of change is increasing as well. Apple’s iPhone XS to be released tomorrow, is the fastest smartphone on the planet and increases the pressure on enterprise services to keep up with all the amazing things the latest generation of handheld devices can achieve.

A major thought leader in the DX space PGi CTO Patrick Harper recently wrote a compelling piece on a TMCnet sister-site detailing six considerations for enterprises adopting a UC&C strategy. In it, he had this to say:

Uptake of collaboration tools continues to grow as companies using this technology report higher productivity. Those with effective internal communications achieve 47% higher returns for shareholders, which makes effective communication and collaboration technology highly prized, while failure to promote effective communication and collaboration can be expensive – $37 billion is lost annually due to employee misunderstandings and poor communication. According to IDG Enterprise, enterprises on average are investing approximately $8.1 million in these services and technologies.

Who is PGi? They are the largest collaboration company in the world with $500 million in annual revenue and over 40 thousand customers. In an exclusive interview with Pat he told me in an exclusive interview the average tenure for customers is 15 years which is quite impressive.

He also explained that organizations which put collaboration at the core of their operations are two-times more likely to be profitable and outgrow their competition.

In another piece on a TMCnet sister site, he details how to ensure DX drives business success while explaining competitive pressures are pushing companies to the cloud and UCaaS with open APIs will allow for more efficiency and interoperability.

Speaking of interop, PGi announced late last year integration with Skype for Business which will become a subset of Microsoft Teams.

This past January, they released GlobalMeet 5.0 taking over for the rebadged iMeet and ReadyTalk and Pat explained the company has deep penetration in multinational companies for things like town halls and webcasts.

Over time, they have noticed communications becoming more unstructured and 50% of enterprise voice traffic showing up on the conference bridge.

This is an interesting trend because conferencing is now becoming the majority of real-time communications – which by the way the company now handles with WebRTC as of the 5.0 release referred to above.

Speaking of releases, the latest news from the company is GlobalMeet Webinar and GlobalMeet Webcast, scalable event platforms allowing organizations and marketers to deliver messages easily and cost-effectively.

GlobalMeet Webinar helps marketers and organizations deliver their message to up to 2,000 attendees via brandable, professional-quality web events without the need to spend time managing complicated software.

Benefits include:

Produce HD broadcast video and audio webinars without allocating IT resources.
Allow the audience to engage with content during the event through interactive polling, chat, Q&A, and surveys.
Seamlessly integrate with key marketing automation and CRM systems.
Collect actionable insights to improve future events and prove ROI with robust reporting and analytics.

GlobalMet Webcast, formerly branded as iMeetLive is for Fortune Class companies and benefits include:

Schedule and host a streaming event or leverage PGi’s professional event services team for your broadcast.
Equip webcasts with enhanced security features such as authorization by IP to ensure your content is delivered to your selected audience only.
Broadcast to an unlimited number of participants with high-bandwidth video streaming without impacting mission-critical networks.
Launch online testing and certifications immediately after the conclusion of an event.

June McCarthy, EVP Marketing, said, “Executives, marketing teams and business leaders will be able to benefit from GlobalMeet Webinar and GlobalMeet Webcast for a host of use cases including lead generation, internal or external training, investor broadcasts and more. The streaming technology that our webinar and webcast products are delivered on is built to be feature-rich, flexible and easy-to-use for hosting secure, engaging and measurable events. With self-service and fully managed options available, companies of all sizes can leverage GlobalMeet Webinar and GlobalMeet Webcast to deliver high-impact messages.”

The Future Opportunity

While much has been made about the chat app or the social network like Facebook becoming the entry point to a UC solution, it makes just as much sense to get to cloud communications via the conferencing vendor.

This is what PGi hopes will happen. Consider, the company knows about scaling communications as they serve the largest organizations on the planet. They have an amazing UI and intimate knowledge of global telecom infrastructure and the cloud.

GlobalMeet 6.0 will bring in hosted voice – a full PBX and UC/UCaaS, allow extension-based dialing, add a deskphone experience, P2P audio and video and messaging and presence using RCS. Utilizing RCS through a partnership with Mavenir, they could allow non-subscribers access to the system thanks to this telco standard which has been around for many years but only started to blossom when Google adopted it some time back.

In addition, we will see a move towards a more fixed licensing model and less per-minute as well as simplification of security and of course, user identity management – a big plus.

This means PGi will be able to work more seamlessly with future organizations utilizing unstructured communications which escalate to a group collaboration event.

Other exciting innovations in the future include adding AI and gamification – allowing for rewards to employees who meet or exceed set metrics.

In addition, the entire solution is also available via API, meaning current partners can white-label all or some of these services and of course this means easier integration for services like Slack in the future.

Workers can also start their conversations via PGi chat.

PGi is a cloud communications powerhouse. They don’t have the household name of the top few UC vendors but they certainly have the scale, experience, technical chops and vision to become a serious player in the larger UC&C and DX space.

DX by definition will mean more integration with disparate tools into a cohesive solution allowing organizations to become more efficient and productive. UC&C is at the heart of this next generation of tech and PGi hopes to become a growing part of corporate budgets as they continue to adapt, innovate and grow.