Intermedia news

Reliability Ranks as Top UCaaS Purchasing Priority Among SMBs in New Intermedia Study

With today’s workforce having an ever-increasing expectation to work in a more mobile, “virtual” environment, the tools that enable and support this mobile workstyle are no longer a “nice to have,” but are now a “must have.”

That’s why we came together with Techaisle, a leading global SMB IT market research organization, to evaluate the factors that are top of mind for companies with 10-99 employees when it comes to their UCaaS needs.

40% of SMBs are using collaboration tools – up from 32% two years ago – yet the majority of SMBs don’t have full-time internal IT.

Lack of full-time IT support increases need for reliable UCaaS tools

Despite traditional notions of what smaller businesses look like, today’s SMBs share many similar traits with their larger counterparts. For example, the average number of office locations among SMBs surveyed was 2.4, with the vast majority of respondents (91%) having mobile employees. And despite growth, fewer than half (44%) of respondents had full-time, internal, dedicated IT personnel on staff. Without full-time IT, SMBs arguably need reliable and secure, yet cost-effective communication and collaboration tools the most.

Critical decision factors impacting UCaaS purchasing: Reliability rules

Respondents echo this sentiment as well. When considering the top five purchase decision factors, reliability ranked the highest at 63%, followed by price (57%), features (50%), quality (47%) and support (35%). Further, quality issues were the biggest reason that SMBs switched Hosted VoIP providers. This further emphasizes the value that companies put on having a solution that consistently and reliably works.

For more insights from our SVP of Product Management, Irina Shamkova, as well as complete survey methodology details, check out our press release.