Millennials are Redefining UC Experience for Businesses

India is a young country with over 600 million people below the age of 25 years. Gen Y/Millennials, as you would like to commonly call them, will rule the roost, and shape the future of our economy. This new generation is redefining the way we communicate, do business and even transforming the workplace all together. And want to live by their own rules.

Unlike the previous generation, which desired structure, stability and a 9-5 job, the millennials are redefining structure, stability and work timings. Unlike popular belief, millennials do not only strive for better pay checks and a “fun only” work environment, and rather want to see value and impact of their work.

Millennials are energetic, willing to take up challenges and are ever ready to perform. This generation is shaping the country’s future already and it is essential to further enable them with the right solutions to help them do better. They crave regular feedback, seamless communication, flexibility to work from anywhere and anytime, using any device and the freedom that comes with mobility. ‘

The Workplace Revolution’ report by Regus highlights that over 50 percent of workers now work outside the main office 2.5 days a week or more. This expectation of Millennials for an ever-connected future has given the Unified Communication industry a huge boost.

According to 6Wresearch, India’s Unified Communications and Collaboration market is anticipated to record CAGR of 12 percent during 2017-23. The world is growing at a rapid pace and so are technologies that enable people to collaborate across distances, time zones and geographies. As per recent surveys, millennials demand the use of technology to be better able to communicate, collaborate and work more efficiently.

Now, 77 percent of Millennials believe that flexible work hours would actually make them more productive, while 40 percent said the same of remote and virtual work. With easy to use chat and instant messaging tools, it’s easy for this young generation to be in constant touch with one another.

Because of this, the need for long, in-person meetings is little to non-existent. Mobile devices make information sharing on the go simpler, and video screen sharing tools make collaboration and idea sharing a breeze. In the office or on the go, these solutions bring the whole integrated collaboration environment of voice, video, data, and web communications to Millennials’ fingertips.

Today’s millennials are digital natives, they check their smartphones over 150 times a day. This increasing tech dependence, adoption and growing demand for better communication models has created a huge opportunity for UC players to tap into. It is hardly surprising to find that businesses are therefore marrying their need for greater communication and collaboration, agility and productivity.

Millennials will form 50 percent of the global workforce by 2020 (report by PwC) and businesses are therefore increasingly investing in UC to give a more convenient and tech savvy experience to this budding workforce.  

Gaining the edge with UC
Unified Communications ensures that Millennials have access to the people or resources that are important to their function at all time, making them more efficient at work. Along with this, enabling the mobile workforce to interact as if they’re in the same room, face to face—with the ability to collaborate on documents, spreadsheets and other content helps to provide the ultimate experience to these Millennials.

But, just providing communication solutions is not enough. Communications, conferencing, and infrastructure solutions today need to support real-time engagement by integrating voice, video, data, messaging, conferencing, mobility, and more to maximise the UC experience for these millennials.

These solutions must provide the right combos of features, ease of use, and seamless integration for a variety of locations and catering to varied Millennial needs. Hence, businesses in the times to come will look out for the right UC solutions that centralise and simplify technology infrastructure so it delivers the high performance, flexibility and agility needed to enable their growth and build for the future.

With India going digital rapidly, young professionals turning to entrepreneurs, and 60 percent of young population residing in the country, UC is the way to go forward for business to remain competitive, relevant, and productive, on the go and at the same time, profitable and efficient.

By empowering the young and budding workforce, these solutions put businesses ahead in a world of mobility, apps, social, and cloud, their young workforce becomes more seamlessly connected and productivity increases. Customer satisfaction rises, and innovation thrives by delivering seamless collaboration inside and outside the business. And as these businesses grow, they can count on unrivalled scalability and flexibility to support every location, from small branches to corporate headquarters, wherever the Millennial wishes to be located.

-- Vishal Agrawal, MD, Avaya India & SAARC.