Market Perspectives

Ensuring continuous collaboration and digital communication across an organization advances its ability to engage workers and maintain workforce resilience and readiness. Achieving this goal requires a platform that enables business operations to continue under any circumstance.

One key provider of digital communications that has advanced in the past five years is Zoom. The Zoom One platform is an enhancement of its meeting tools, providing a broader framework of capabilities that include collaboration areas, contact centers and tools for developers and the third-party independent software vendor ecosystem. Zoom’s evolution supports our assertion that, through 2024, a new breed of digital communications platforms will evolve from today’s unified communication-as-a-service technology to meet contemporary business requirements.

Zoom is a communications company based in San Jose that offers a meeting platform used across many industries. It provides the ease to meet dynamically or scheduled with those internal or external to an organization. Zoom One is a unified cloud communications platform that combines communication and collaboration tools, providing video conferencing, voice-over-internet phone service, instant messaging, a virtual whiteboard and the ability to host events. The meeting platform for video reaches 1,000 participants, and multiple screens can be shared and annotated at the same time. Zoom Chat allows users to chat with people on other platforms – such as Microsoft Teams or Slack – directly from Zoom, and conversation can be archived for up to 10 years.

Zoom also offers other applications to enhance the quality of collaboration between workers. Zoom Whiteboard is an interactive tool that team members can use to brainstorm or present information with a variety of options, which can be accessed during and after meetings. Zoom Rooms includes several features to organize conferences between virtual and in-room participants.

Zoom’s goal is to aid organizations with a digital communications platform that is simple and streamlines the productivity of anything related to calls and meetings. Deploying several communications applications across an organization can cause confusion for customers and internal IT support. With Zoom One, workers can engage beyond a basic meeting to collaborate more efficiently. Organizations can eliminate redundant technologies that require significant time and resources to manage by adopting a cloud-based platform. The Zoom platform and application suite promotes flexible work to ensure business continuity and resilience every minute of the day and under any circumstance.

Our research in interactions with customers finds that 82% of organizations prioritize improving customer experience, and 47% prioritize improving worker satisfaction. An organization’s digital communications platform will impact the quality of these interactions. For example, Zoom Contact Center is a cloud software that uses Solvvy artificial intelligence self-service tools to reduce calls to agents.

It is important that an advanced, cloud-based service that is open and secure on any device or channel is selected to ensure strong worker and customer relations. Usability should be simple and secure to onboard new users, allowing easy access across different departments in an enterprise. Platforms must also include end-to-end encrypted communication to prevent cybersecurity issues.

Zoom has advanced dramatically in its efforts to provide improved security and encryption of its tools and platforms, a concern that became more apparent during the pandemic. Zoom communications are encrypted and can have an optional passcode to protect the privacy and security of organizations.

Zoom’s architecture can help move organizations toward a unified communications experience. These advancements are essential, as the need for the expanded footprint of Zoom is critical. The use of this technology can apply to a broader set of use cases and workflows across the organization. Zoom, though, has not stepped strongly into the formal and informal collaboration forums-based messaging that is found in other products like that from Microsoft, Avaya and Cisco, and has depended more on its partner Slack. As a communications platform, Zoom has built connections between workers in any environment, from mobile to desktop computer-based environments. Digital communications is essential to the growing interest of hybrid work options, and Zoom can expand its usage by offering simple, reliable and innovative technology in the marketplace.

Zoom has advanced its focus to support broader organizational needs with Zoom One. This includes a commitment to engage more third-party integration with other software vendors. Zoom is at one of its most important inflection points to expand its product portfolio, which will require not just products but a commitment to the customer experience that has plagued its efforts and is still not articulated, even on its website. The customer experience is not just promoting case studies and satisfaction levels, but also entails a commitment to the entire customer journey and life cycle of interactions with the vendor, from adding and removing users in groups and teams to billing and invoicing flexibility for self-service subscriptions.

Zoom’s establishment as a key provider in digital communications is clear, and organizations will need to determine if it will follow its roadmap for the broader requirements or just connect to other messaging and collaboration technologies used in the organization. Zoom has the opportunity to further its overall relevance to organizations through its expanded approach, which is essential for every customer using Zoom to evaluate. Organizations of all size should consider implementing a cloud-based platform to increase the quality of digital communications. Those looking at Zoom for the first time should ensure they plan out the entire framework and requirements for digital communications.