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.
Regardless of what industry or the size of the company, ‘customers’ are the center of the company activity and reason for its existence. Companies continue to produce products and services that meet customer’s needs, and customers continue to consume them and provide feedback on them, leading to two pillars of the economy. So, it’s only natural that products or companies that are shunned by customers are left behind in the ecosystem of the market.
Companies must put tremendous efforts in attracting customers. Various marketing activities are performed and constant trials of improving service quality are made, all which are concentrated efforts of corporations to deliver higher customer satisfaction results. At the center of these efforts is the ‘Customer Experience’, and companies want to increase their brand value by providing a differentiated customer experience and to continue to stay ahead of their competitors.
What is the Customer Experience?
Customer Experience also called CX refers to the total customer experiences across the organization. Sometimes CX is confused with ‘User Experience,’ (UX) and User Experience means the cognitive response of a user using a product or service, Customer Experience refers to the sum of every moment that a customer has experienced throughout the customer’s purchasing journey, from beginning an online search to purchasing and feedback. Therefore, even if you provided quality products, you would not be able to say ‘the best customer experience’ when you provided unsatisfactory experience to the customer’s purchasing processes, such as a problem with the delivery of the product or a failure to provide post-service. In other words, customer experience is not a piecemeal problem, whether it’s technology, product, or marketing, but an area that requires a holistic approach and management.
Technology is a critical component of the customer experience initiatives.
Recognizing the importance of the customer experience, companies are engaged in many activities to improve the customers experience in a variety of ways. To improve the quality and design of their products, companies reflect on feedback from customers, utilize various online channels for better communication with customers, and continue to train their employees to deliver superior service to their customers. To this end, companies are scrambling to introduce the latest technologies to transform the company’s process for improving the customer experience.
Research institution, Gartner pointed out in their recent work* that ever-advancing science technologies will be a driver leading improvement in customer experience and illustrated five main technology areas which will greatly affect the revolution.
- Artificial Intelligence
- Virtual Customer Assistance and Chatbots
- Omnichannel Customer Engagement
- Real-Time Event-Driven Application Architecture
- Internet of Things
*From ‘How to Leverage the Top 5 CX Trends in 2020’, Gartner
Contact centers are at the forefront as customer contact continues to evolve.
For modern companies, their contact center is an important interface for customer interaction. It plays a direct and diverse role from the beginning to the end of the customer’s purchasing journey.
Customers can access corporate websites, generate IDs to obtain product information or may need additional help from the contact center in the process. A customer could effectively be introduced to a product through speaking, chatting or e-mailing with a contact center agent rather than searching the information by their self. After making a purchase, customers can check the delivery status of the product through the contact center, and there are many other situations where the contact center would need to be contacted, such as how to use and after-sales service. Unfortunately contact centers some of the time are placed at the end of dealing with customers directly so the impact it has on CX is tremendous. So how quickly and accurately you can deliver a solution to a customer who’s connected to a contact center is now a very important factor that directly impacts corporate performance.
As technology advances, customers are using various devices such as PCs and smartphones in addition to telephones. Unlike in the past when customers used to rely on fixed-line phones, customers communicate with companies through various channels such as real-time chatting, e-mail and SNS etc. These evolving technologies and customer environments require an omni-channel contact center to accommodate diverse ways of communications beyond the traditional voice-oriented contact center. That’s because they can handle customer inquiries from different paths within a single contact center platform, we can improve your customers experience and increase the productivity of your employees through faster and more accurate responses.
It’s time to evolve your contact center, which is at the forefront of customer contact, as technology and customer behavior change.
Click here to see the omni-channel contact center solution from Ericsson-LG Enterprise.
Every company is constantly striving to improve its organization’s processes for sustained growth. In the current trend of the 4th Industrial Revolution or Digital Transformation, companies are engaged in various activities to maintain their competitiveness by rapidly embracing the latest digital technologies and adapting to the ever-changing environments.
From a company process perspective, communication systems play a critical role in company activities as a link between members or organizations and customers. As cloud technology becomes increasingly common with evolving IT technologies, there is a growing trend of change in the way communication systems used to be owned and operated by most companies in the past.
What is UCaaS (UC as a Service)?
Unified Communications refers to the efficient management of all means of communication, from telephony, e-mail, messaging to video conferencing systems, on a single platform. UCaaS (UC as a Service) is the service of a unified communications (UC) solution through a cloud service provider, which is the same as the existing on-prem unified communications solution in function but different in operation.
Only a few years ago, cloud solutions were often seen with doubts that it was not yet proven enough in the areas of security and options of customization. However, as cloud technologies and services advance, the market’s general concerns have been complemented, and cloud service providers are also offering cloud services at a more convenient and competitive price based on this technological maturity, increasing interest in UCaaS.
UCaaS offers many advantages.
Gartner Inc., a research firm, predicted in a recent report* that the cloud-based communications market will grow at an annual rate of 12.2% by 2023 to lead the future unified communications market. In 2019 alone, UCaaS has rapidly become one of the pillars of the communication market, with a 14.6% year-on-year growth rate.
* Forecast Analysis: Unified Communications, Worldwide (Gartner, Jan 2020)
Why is UCaaS, a unified communications service through the cloud, so rapidly being embraced in the market?
Scalability & Flexibility
UCaaS is optimized in the cloud environment which can provide the utmost flexibility in providing capacity expansion much easier than the conventional on-premise UC platforms. UCaaS does not require additional hardware but utilizes the data center’s hardware provided as a cloud service that through software settings can flexibly manipulate the capacity on demand. Therefore, UCaaS is seen attractive for its efficiency to the companies that have seasonal workloads or to companies like start-ups that would not expect to scale to their potential organizational bulk without costly adjustments according to the constantly changing circumstances.
Smart investment & expense management
The high upfront cost that could be a burden can now be minimized by using a cloud solution deployment. With a cloud solution there is no need to calculate the investment cost for an IT infrastructure, instead you simply focus on the needs of today without forecasting and analyzing the uncertain future capacity that may or may not be necessary. Most cloud service providers will give options for a PAYG (Pay as You Go) monthly charge model as a service, reducing the customer’s CAPEX by shifting investment cost to an OPEX for a more flexible management of cash flow.
Efficient use of company resources
As mentioned, UCaaS will optimize your investment in your IT infrastructure by enabling you to deploy a platform to meet the capabilities and capacity you need today and then scale as quickly as you need it. In addition, cloud platforms are maintained and managed by cloud service providers, eliminating the need to have separate in-house IT staff for maintenance. As a result, companies can maximize business performance by focusing their human and physical resources on their strategic areas through rational investments and operations.
The latest technology
Another great advantage of UCaaS is that you can always use the latest features and technologies. Cloud service providers periodically update and upgrade their UC platforms and apply new features and technologies to each site with less effort from remote locations. In addition, the cloud makes it easy to change systems as your business grows and your communication needs change. This means that you can quickly update or upgrade features to support your business needs, which greatly improves flexibility in changing business environments and technology changes.
By adopting UCaaS, you benefit with the functionalities from the conventional on-premise communications solution but at the same time benefit from additional merits like better expandability and flexibility that comes from utilizing the cloud environment. It’s surely a smart choice for your business communication. Click here and find more on iPECS UCaaS solutions from Ericsson-LG Enterprise.
Contingency plan refers to a prepared emergency response plan.
Corporations and entities sometimes get confronted with unexpected outbreaks that could grow to an extent of a disaster. In such cases, they may have seen a leader or CEO of an organization proclaim that he declares the current status as ‘emergency’ and the ‘contingency plan’ is now to be put into effect.
But what exactly is the ‘contingency plan’ referring to?
An effective contingency plan means to implement the prepared protocol for future outbreaks of an emergency. In other words, it’s a plan made from hypothetically events that may be a series of uncontrollable situations and making a responsive plans for each so that in times of such situations, we can be systematically prepared of the predicted events for example, international wars, serious conflicts, upheavals in the business management environment or unexpected natural disasters.
Iconic events that can describe such situation can be pointed to the 2008 global financial crisis, 2011 European dept crisis, economical panic, regional military conflicts, natural disasters like Fukushima nuclear radiation tragedy in 2000s can all be examples. Natural disaster like volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunami’s bring times of crisis more frequently than we think. And now we are witnessing and suffering an epidemic of the Novel Coronavirus, COVID-19, which can be categorized as a crisis that calls for public and private organizations collective response.
Seamless communications are the crux of a contingency plan.
The utmost purpose of a contingency plan is to normalize an organizations operation despite an emergency. A corporation when faced with such circumstances will activate a contingency plan that first protects the company’s resources and minimizes the customer impact by promptly implementing the protocols according to the scenario prepared beforehand that has already been assigned and delegated to the resources for the necessary measures to be carried out.
However, the contingency plan alone can be fragile and often malfunctions due to numerous variables from panic which is why seamless internal and external communications between employees and customers are the crux of a contingency plan. Seamless communications can steer and navigate the situation increasing the probability of a contingency plan to succeed but without it in place it would be extremely difficult to achieve the normalization.
In times of crisis, the value of communications becomes ever greater.
In the past, it was the physical aspects of an investment in preparing for seamless communications. There were investments for server redundancy, back-up power and service redundancy all installed and still having value in the current times. Now we see multiple innovations to support more software applications that ensure redundancy and back-up with such features as standalone survivability, or active-active standby functionality,
However, to procure a complete communications infrastructure for a contingency plan, the above-mentioned hardware and software support are both needed together with the deployment of a unified communications platform.
Generally, a unified communications platform supports multi-technologies and multi-devices. Including Phone calls, e-mail, chatting and more, on the unified communications platform, various technologies are supported to enable emergency back-up that allow you to choose an infrastructure to maximize your communications’ effectiveness through multiple devices like a PC, smart phone or tablet for seamless communication. In addition, in times of a disastrous situation when your office is closed down and you are to work from home or elsewhere, various collaboration tools including voice and video conferencing, group chatting , file sharing, remote monitoring can empower your collaboration with your colleagues for constant discussion for rational decision making. You can experience work efficiency just as if it’s done in the office.
Unified communications shines in times of a crisis. And likewise, the tools provided can smoothly operate a contingency plan which acts as the crux of the emergency response protocol.
If you wish to get more information on the unified communications from Ericsson-LG Enterprise, please click here.
