Over the past year, businesses have faced evolving challenges, from economic uncertainty and technological advancements to an increasing focus on sustainability. These shifts present both opportunities and uncertainties for organizations looking to stay ahead.

As we begin 2025, we share our insights on the key trends that will shape the year ahead.

Strengthening hybrid work ecosystems

Hybrid work has become a standard expectation for many. In 2025, we foresee businesses continuing to refine their hybrid work models further to maximize productivity and boost collaboration.

Modern, innovative technologies are revolutionizing infrastructure, enabling greater scalability, automation, and flexibility. The iPECS Cloud platform supports innovation, ensuring that businesses can take advantage of new trends and meet the changing demands of the modern work environment.

Tools like iPECS ONE remain instrumental in empowering businesses to unify communication across devices and locations. With advanced features for voice, video, and instant messaging, iPECS ONE enables seamless internal collaboration and efficient customer-facing communication, no matter where employees are located. Hybrid work isn’t just the norm – it’s a key driver of innovation and employee satisfaction.

Generative AI and beyond

AI remains at the forefront of technological evolution, and 2025 will see further integration of advanced AI solutions in daily business operations. Generative AI continues to evolve beyond simple chatbot functions and virtual assistants into sophisticated tools that deliver deeply personalized and context-aware applications resulting in better user experience.

Building on innovations like ENGAGE for iPECS Cloud which utilizes AI through webchat, we expect AI-powered communication tools to continue to grow in demand and functionality. Solutions will not only analyze customer queries but also proactively suggest intelligent responses to agents, significantly improving service quality and resolution times. AI integration with platforms like iPECS ONE will continue to drive smarter, faster, and more meaningful business interactions.

Transforming customer experience

Customer experience (CX) will see a dramatic evolution in 2025, driven by generative AI and hyper-personalized services. Advancements in technology are making personalization ever more achievable. More and more, business are seeking more personalized omnichannel experiences from trusted providers. From tailored solutions to sophisticated device recommendations, businesses will rely on AI to transform CX, anticipating customer behavior and proactively seeking solutions.

The iPECS Cloud platform is already at the forefront of enabling seamless CX through intelligent call routing, omnichannel integration, and real-time analytics. Through iPECS Cloud, businesses can deliver consistent, memorable experiences that build loyalty and enhance customer satisfaction. Through the power of iPECS, the iPECS global community are supporting businesses to deliver exceptional customer experience, helping to build strong relationships and maintain a competitive edge.

Data-driven decision making and advanced analytics

Data continues to shape business strategies, and in 2025, the focus will be on transforming data into actionable insights. Advanced analytics are empowering organizations to predict trends, identify opportunities, and optimize resources in real-time.

iPECS Analytics remains a powerful tool for analyzing call data, offering businesses deeper insights into call patterns, customer behavior, and operational efficiency. By harnessing predictive analytics, organizations can proactively address customer needs, optimize staffing, and refine their strategies for greater success.

In 2025, 5G technology is poised to revolutionize industries, enhance connectivity, and unlock a wave of innovations. One key development is the rise of private 5G networks, which will see widespread adoption. Sustainability will play a significant role in 5G’s growth, with telecom providers prioritizing energy-efficient infrastructure.

On a global scale, the adoption of 5G-enabled devices and network rollouts in emerging markets are projected to support over a billion connections by the end of 2025. This rapid growth will not only strengthen global connectivity but also foster innovation and collaboration across borders, reshaping the digital landscape for businesses worldwide.

Cybersecurity and digital transformation

In a world of increasing cyber threats and unpredictability, resilience is essential. As hybrid work, cloud technologies and services increase, businesses that rely heavily on these solutions need to consider the cybersecurity implications. It’s crucial that businesses with remote and hybrid workers use secure networks and have robust measures in place around security.

As digital transformation drives forward, businesses will increasingly prioritize cybersecurity to ensure networks and customer data is protected. Robust encryption, enhanced privacy protocols will be key areas businesses will be looking for in their modern technology and infrastructure.

At IPECS, security is of upmost importance which is why the iPECS Cloud platform is hosted in the most secure data centers. It is also why we ensure secure communication with encrypted calls and recordings while offering robust backup options for business continuity.

Our mission for 2025

Whether through advanced AI, enhanced CX tools, or innovative communication solutions, our mission at IPECS remains the same – we empower businesses to connect, collaborate, and thrive in a rapidly evolving world.

With flexible, scalable, and secure iPECS communication solutions, the IPECS community is helping businesses adapt to new challenges and seize new opportunities.

If you’re ready to embrace the power of iPECS in 2025, contact your nearest global partner today. Let’s make this year one of connection, growth, and innovation together.

 

The journey of leading corporations for digital transformation already began a long time ago.

A global consulting group, A.T. Kearney defines digital transformation as a corporate activity that pursues a distinctively enhanced competitiveness on its current business by preemptively adapting to the major momentums from a dramatical shift in entrepreneurship settings, which are  brought by cutting edge technologies as mobile, cloud, big data, AI, IoT and the like, or to newly revolutionize its business model to bring about the new growth model through the similar technological breakthrough. In other words, the core of digital transformation is on the action of a corporate’s autonomous adoption to the technical advantages that its pace and effect can be fully optimized, prolonging the competitiveness of an institution.

With corporations bringing new emerging digital innovation and making numerous new technologies introduced to the market popular by quickly making them a common everyday feature. Nowadays the trend allows companies to apply and deploy digital technologies easier and cheaper. It’s a phenomenon that is seen to be identical in the business communications market as well. As cloud solutions become the new normal, many efforts are made on applying the new technologies, as big data and AI to the conventional communications solution.

 

All means in communications will be unified in a single platform.

Unified Communications (UC) represents all means of communications including phone calls, e-mail, messaging, as well as video conferencing system, unified in a single platform efficiently operated and managed. UC makes network equipment, software, and terminals seamlessly unified, structuring all communication system in a single operating system. Commonly, UC is to support applications of IP phones, Instant Messaging (IM), Real-time presence, E-mail, Voice or Video conference, file or screen sharing and the like. Through these features, various communication and collaboration are made available from one on one to multilateral.  

In addition, UC solutions support PC’s, tablet’s, smartphones and more. Multi device support surely expands the boundaries of personal and professional communications for in and out of office, anywhere anytime and on any device allowing the same user experience. Collaboration and communication among colleagues will be close to the on-line office environment.

 

Why would UC be an important part of your digital transformation strategy?

Through digital transformation strategy, a corporation can adapt to the latest digital technology, reduce operating cost by combining digital technology to the existing physical layer, increase flexibility and agility of the business, and can create value by cultivating a new profit model. The UC deployment can be crucially important to achieve the above objectives.

 

Digital Workplace establishment

Through UC deployment, a corporation can structurally organize and unify their means of communication under one platform and that can establish the fundamental infrastructure of a digital workplace for a radical change and modernization of the business process. From IP phones to IM, e-mail, voice or video conference and more, all are to be operated in a single platform, regardless of the physical location of an employee, the same settings will be provided for the work performance. The workforce in the digitalized working environment can easily establish a workflow of their own to be able to solely concentrate for a greater working performance.

Securing business flexibility and agility

When changes happen in unpredictable ways corporations of today must be able to allocate their available resources rationally and accordingly to the circumstances. By utilizing UC, the initial investment for a communications solution can be optimized and become an agile and flexible way to change one’s working environment by promptly restructuring its business communication infrastructure accordingly to the fickle demands constantly changing by the market or targeted customer segment. Moreover the bill for calling, IT management, business traveling and those of related business costs can be visibly saved with UC solutions which gives new opportunities to invest on other core areas of the business.

Corporate efficiency and collaboration capacity enhancement

By installing and using UC, the work process can be built on a new logical and efficient way which will promote better team project results. All employees in the corporation will be able to benefit from the various collaboration tools for easier, real-time communications. Multi-lateral conference by voice or video, group chatting, file sharing. All the various means of collaboration promotes a faster and clearer information sharing for precise decision making. Especially for virtual organizations where flexible working can now be a viable option in the modern days where mobility is emphasized. These are realistic solutions and are becoming a fashion through the use of UC operation that are directly connected to the corporate performance. 

Incremental Customer Experience improvement

Dramatically increase and improve your customers’ experience, within the organization, from the moment customer requests are received, by allocating the best fit agent for each call through real-time presence and with the relevant past performance and records. The corporate grade infrastructure will be available to fully support the situation on site that can elevate the qualities of the customer service. The viable options can be optimized for your business process. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools, for an example, can be integrated to the communications platform for a smoother and greater quality in providing the best services for the customer experience.

 

Ericsson-LG Enterprise will be your trusted partner for your digital transformation journey. Click here for more detail on iPECS communications solution.

Three pillars to explain the latest consumer trends – ‘cost effectiveness’, ‘sharing economy’ and ‘pursuit of convenience’.

The consumer buying trends are keeping pace to the fast-changing market environment and drastically advancing technologies. Cyclic rise and fall of world economies, evolutionary technology and science development, and the corresponding consumerism keeps reshaping new trends. Especially, internet, smart phones and the likes are leading digital cultures to have raised the recent natural adaptors for so-called millennials who are in the center of the changing trend, increasingly becoming the majority of this society.

With a few years or even decades of consumer trends, we can’t miss out or over emphasis the term, cost-effectiveness or value for money. As an active response from consumers to the ongoing economic recession, ‘cost-effectiveness’ simply demonstrates the consumer’s search for products with superior functionality and performance at a reasonable price. These smart consumers are no longer loyal to manufacturers or distributors, but seek reasonable consumption, which is driven by a variety of digital devices and social networks that closely compare the price and value of their products.

Consumers are now beginning to focus more on services or product utility than on the satisfaction of ownership. They find something cheaper and more satisfying or choose a more convenient or high-quality service if the price is similar. What’s being highlighted in this trend is the shared economy, which has already begun to deepen our lives in many areas, including Uber (vehicle sharing), Airbnb (lodging sharing), and We Work (office sharing). It is safe to say that businesses and consumers are now at a crossroads between owning and sharing, especially with the advent of a hyper-connected era based on everyday IT technologies such as 5G, AI, and big data.  

The last trend that needs to be pointed is ‘the pursuit of convenience’. Much to do and less time is what we all confront in the modern days. Time saving means a lot now. The convenience is the new premium. Now it’s time to reduce the time and effort that goes into useless or relatively less important things and use them for more important work or various experiences.

 

Implication of the three trends gets down to ‘Pay as You Go’

The trend of ‘cost effectiveness’, ‘sharing economy’ and ’pursuit of convenience’ from modern consumerism does not only belong in a specific field or market. The trend is also visible in the business communications solution market. PAYG (Pay as You Go), the concept of paying only for what you have used is one of the greatest examples that the trend’s existence is now indisputable.

In the past, a product or a solution had a characteristic of solidness or the inability to be flexible so that a solution architect or a buyer should analyze the business forecast. Thus, not only was the initial investment cost high, but some of the systems invested could be unnecessary if the company’s growth went in a different direction than planned, and sometimes the communication system could not keep up with the speed of the company’s growth, which hampered the business.

Nevertheless physical or systematical limits still exist in adopting perfect flexibility, recent development methodologies of a communications platform are now with greater flexibility, especially when the cloud solution which needs no ownership of any expensive hardware but rather paying for subscription model for various solution services are incorporated.

PAYG model benefits the customers for below reasons.

– Initial or upfront investment is minimal, and they can gradually purchase add-ons as they grow.

– No costly forecast analysis is needed.

– You pay for what you’ve used so you can be assured that there are no unnecessary expenses.

– Corporations needs and structure change constantly, but PAYG is super elastic to adjust accordingly.

In short, PAYG model is used to optimize a company’s investment for a communications system, which enables resource concentration on the core business, thereby conveniently and efficiently optimizing the use of limited resources.

 

Ericsson-LG Enterprise already provides ’Pay As You Go’ model in every communications platform.

Differentiating from other manufactures, Ericsson-LG Enterprise has both a conventional ‘On-Premise’ communications solution as well as ‘Cloud’ solutions that the customer’s business needs, and environment can be provided with for the optimum fit.

On-Premise type of communication platforms such as iPECS UCM, iPECS UCP and iPECS eMG features simple yet rich functionality to minimize customer upfront investment and is designed to scale systems flexibly as businesses grow with minimal hardware additions and smart licensing, even when expansion is needed.

‘Pay as You Go’ model is based on the cloud communications solution, ‘iPECS Cloud’.  iPECS Cloud enables immediate adjustments to the capabilities and the number of users required by the software licensing scheme, enabling you to quickly and conveniently create an optimal unified communications environment. In particular, the service provider can provide support from initial consulting to maintenance so that businesses can focus on their own business without the burden of managing the communication platform.

 

Click here to find more information about the various solutions from Ericsson-LG Enterprise providing the best convenient and economic but premium solutions to our customers.

Consumers today, are spoiled for choice. If they want to buy something, they can get it from ten different businesses. This doesn’t affect them, it affects your business! One of the best ways to ensure your sales don’t dip is to offer a great experience.

“66% of consumers discontinue using a brand due to poor customer service.”

Kan-tar-IMRB survey for American Express

Product features and prices can be quantifiably and objectively measured, and delivered to consumers. But there’s one element which differs from business to business, and that’s the way you treat your customers along their conversion journey and how they feel about it.

But what’s interesting here is that consumers are actually willing to pay more for a product, if they are guaranteed a great experience.

 

Consumers are more empowered than ever

Consumers are in command of their own buying journey. Today, they don’t wait for business marketers to provide them with information on products and services. 81% of consumers conduct their own research before interacting with a brand and making a purchase.

A typical consumer knows what products or services they need, what options they have, why they should be opting for a brand and what more can they avail from the business.

 

Word-of-moth marketing is trending

When consumers don’t receive the experience they desire, they spread the word – through phone calls, on social media, via surveys and more. By 2020, a fifth of consumer sales will happen through word-of-mouth marketing, and that’s something all businesses have to adapt to sooner rather than later.

“When customers share their story, they’re not just sharing pain points. They’re actually teaching you how to make your product, service, and business better. Your customer service organization should be designed to efficiently communicate those issues.”

Kristin Smaby, customer service expert

 No wonder, businesses have to make extra efforts to keep their customers happy.

 

Customer most likely to pay for a better experience

According to BW Disrupt, 8 out of 10 consumers will pay a premium for a prompt service in return for a better customer experience. Marketing Week also states that consumers aren’t looking for over the top experiences. 62% of them are willing to pay more to businesses with a simple proposition and experience.

Yet, almost 31% of businesses face a challenge in keeping up with the consumer’s expectations. With technology and the digital landscape evolving at a faster pace, it is only getting tougher to impress the consumer market with an omnichannel experience.

 

Hook the existing customer to drive sales

A Medallia study reports customers who rate an experience higher, spend 140% more than those who have a poor experience. Another report by Capgemini states that 81% of consumers are willing to pay extra to a business that guarantees a better customer experience.

“Although your customers won’t love you if you give bad service, your competitors will.”

Renowned business trainer Kate Zabriskie

Always remember: in most cases, majority of your business comes from your existing customers. Therefore, there is a clear opportunity for a business to make better use of resources to treat every consumer as an individual and deliver a good experience.

 

Disconnect between business offerings and customer expectations

A June 2017 Capgemini report clearly states that customers get frustrated by businesses that don’t respond to their feedback or compliments in the online channel. The report notes that 1 in 5 consumers stopped purchasing from a company after a poor experience.

The report also stresses that there’s an absolute disparity between what the business offers and what the average consumer expects. A few reasons for this disconnect are as follows:

• Evolving customer technology landscape
• Lack of training for an omni-channel customer-facing service
• Evolving customer behaviors
• Lack of customer experience budgets
• Internal ownership of the digital customer experience

Creating goodwill with customers requires an ongoing investment in customer experience technology. With customer expectations evolving at a frighteningly rapid pace, it is necessary for businesses to maintain momentum.

As serial entrepreneur and bestselling author Gary Vaynerchuk aptly puts it,

“You have to be no less than a customer concierge, doing everything you can to make every one of your customers feel acknowledged, appreciated, and heard. You have to make them feel special.”

 

Conclusion

Customer experience can have a major impact on any business’s bottom line. Investing in customer experience technology, staff training and the correct business intelligence systems offers a huge return on investment:

• Increase in the amount of money a customer is willing to spend.
• Increased customer loyalty and ‘lifetime value’.
• Positive word-of-mouth marketing.

By ignoring your customer’s experience expectations, every one of the above advantages can very quickly turn to a major disadvantage. Lower sales, loss of customers and negative marketing.

 

Find out more about how to improve customer experience here. 

Why is the importance on collaboration being increasingly emphasized?

Collaboration is a type of work style where many people or organizations work together to solve common problems or to provide services. The importance of collaboration today is becoming even more important in terms of solving complex problems and being able to respond more flexibly to changes in the environment. Collaboration discussions are increasingly effective to minimize human and physical resources and provide comprehensive customer-centric services.

For modern enterprises, collaboration is more than just a ‘working together’ concept, you can say that it’s a smooth transition to intra-organizational collaboration when you achieve common goals and achieve results through collaboration.

Through collaboration, we can expect below effects.

• You can look at problems not only from an individual’s point of view, but from an organizational point of view.
• We can create synergy through cooperation to overcome the limitations of problem-solving capabilities.
• In the course of communication for collaboration, you can come up with new ideas and share a common understanding of the problem.
• Effectively increase productivity via information sharing and communication in a group.
• Customer centric service is provided that improves customer interaction.

True collaboration requires a set of tools from digital collaboration applications.

To enjoy the above-mentioned benefits from collaborations, companies are creating an in-house culture for collaboration to expand its usage with great success. Collaboration has become more important than ever, especially in today’s organizational environment, where virtual organization, flexible work, and mobility of employees are becoming common.

However, top-down instructions to expand a collaborative culture or the simple repetition of slogans alone can’t be expected to establish true collaboration within the organization. In addition to the various efforts associated with the culture of the organization, a collaborative digital workplace can only be implemented and completed when the work process is natural with digital collaboration tools such as unified communication solutions.

 

Unified Communications provides various features for digital collaboration.

Unified Communications (UC) refers to utilizing e-mail, voice messaging as well as video conferencing by combining all the possible solutions into a unified platform for maximum efficiency in operation and management of the solution. Corporations can increase the quality of the organizations collaboration to another level by utilizing various features from a UC solution

1. Unified Presence

Users through collaboration can see the presence of their co-workers using the real time data traffic signals providing them the ability to communicate in real time saving time and money. Using the presence in conjunction with the mobile client and office IP phones double its usability.

2. Video calling and conferencing

  Video call and conference functions allow simple business collaboration anytime, anywhere. From 1:1 to multi-lateral, diverse forms of conferencing can be carried out. With an e-mail invites, attendees can easily add to their schedule an upcoming video/conference call. This can drastically reduce time and cost for face-to-face offline meetings and will allow businesses to focus on other important tasks that need to have a higher priority.

3. Click Call

No need to memorize or write phone numbers down, since you can simply drag your mouse across the phone number from the web page, you’re on your PC to make your daily operations faster and more hassle free.

4. Instant Messaging

  Unified communications solutions typically offer a variety of instant messaging capabilities. This allows simple communication and can be done without a voice call, and if the user is offline you can leave a message so that business can be processed immediately upon their return to the online state.

5. Collaboration tools

  Users can use a variety of collaboration tools during the communication process. File sharing, program sharing, remote monitoring, and recording functions are all available, and business collaboration can be even more effective when using presentation mode or white board functions during the video conference.

6. Mobile Client

  The use of a mobile client enables seamless communications even in times of traveling or remotely working. Nearly all the features can be utilized on a mobile client for utilizing real-time presence, video conferencing and other various means of collaboration.

7. Office terminal control

  Whether you are using a unified communications client or IP terminal they can be synchronized for remote control to provide a higher level of service for business collaboration.

8. Integration to other applications

  Integration to other value adding applications can expand the usability and will surely improve the customer interaction. For example, you can synchronize Microsoft Outlook’s address book and schedule with the directory of unified communications users and have a Customer Management System (CRM).

 

Find more information on Ericsson-LG Enterprise unified communications solution.