Many CPaaS providers have been running hard the last few years, experiencing a period of unexpected and accelerated growth.
There was already a strong trend towards over-the-top providers, including CPaaS providers, boosting the market. But the pandemic really stepped growth up a gear, to levels providers hadn’t foreseen – or planned for.
During the pandemic, the CPaaS market evolved considerably to support customers with their shift to remote working. Organisations everywhere wanted to upgrade their communications strategy at speed to become more future-ready and to suit their new and more distributed ways of working. They could see that voice and video would be increasingly business-critical functions and wanted to converge their infrastructure so they could make calls over the network.
But to do this, they needed new collaboration tools, UC platforms and cloud contact centre solutions with integrated SIP trunking. Many CPaaS providers quickly stepped up to fill this gap in the market, expanding their offerings into the latest UC technology and moving into new markets and regions as a result. They thought fast and moved even faster to meet evolving customer needs with no real chance to review their medium-term strategy.
Now that things are settling down, it’s time for CPaaS providers to re-evaluate – but where do they go from here?
A time for re-evaluation
Rapid growth in new markets with evolving regulatory compliance and legal requirements takes specialist skills to navigate. Understandably, this hasn’t been the primary focus for many CPaaS providers under pressure to deliver quickly for customers. One of the biggest challenges today has two parts – getting up to date with current regulations and then keeping a finger on the pulse of change to ensure services are always compliant.
What’s more, in many cases, these providers are rapidly growing software-based companies that may not have the inhouse experience and skills to handle this at the same time as keeping pace with the latest emerging technologies.
Customers make significant demands on CPaaS providers
As customers adopt new SIP and VoIP solutions, they’re expecting providers to support them across a range of areas that adds to the pressure CPaaS providers are under. Customers are asking about:
Technical configuration: Without prior experience, many customers will need technical assistance with new UC platforms and SIP trunking, particularly with VoIP signalling and security protocols and making the correct equipment investments.
Billing and reporting: When they design solutions themselves, customers can easily become confused with the billing and reporting options available. They will expect partners to help them simplify this experience.
Compliance and regulation: Documentation and systems for number porting and emergency calling usually vary from country to country. Accidental non-compliance can cause damaging penalties and affect the end user’s service experience. Because of this, it’s critical customers can turn to providers for advice and expertise.
Access: Customers often need guidance on the type of access required for each of their sites, and support in ensuring maximum quality of their voice services by taking into account the number of employees they have at each location.
Global expansion: Customers are also expanding into new countries, which increases the burden on supplier relations, supervision and management to provide help in overcoming these operational challenges.
The right partnerships are critical for success
To take on these challenges and transform their customers’ voice infrastructure into something that’s future proof and easy to manage, CPaaS providers are turning to partners that can bring in the expertise they need. They’re looking for strength, global reach and reliability across all services. And they want a high-quality and centrally managed global voice service, delivered on a secure network with both inbound and outbound SIP functionalities. CPaaS providers want a partner capable of supporting them to expand their coverage in terms of reach and quality in a simple and streamlined way.
One of their main asks of any partnership is a provider that has a strong track record of offering expertise in areas the CPaaS provider may not have, such as international experience and credentials in compliance across multiple geographies.
A strong CPaaS partner will also have robust plans that will make things easier for the CPaaS provider and their end customers. It’s worth asking any potential partner whether they will be providing a range of self-service options, management tools with automation capabilities, in-depth reporting and analytics.
We offer industry leading CPaaS partnerships
Our reseller ready GSIP solution already delivers coverage across 17 countries, direct connectivity to major cloud providers in every continent, as well as guaranteed service level agreements and uptimes. It’s built on an extensive ecosystem of industry-leading partners and continuous investments in the latest innovations. Plus, we provide voice quality and SIP performance reporting and analytics tools. And through our dedicated CPaaS team we offer support on international tax, regulation, and technical requirements.
Contact us to find out more.