This shift is driven by consumer behavior where everybody nowadays mainly sends text messages and shares digital content via messaging apps, because it is simply much faster, more effective, leaner and easier than email.
Enterprise messaging apps like Teamwire which focus on improving the internal communication and increasing the productivity are determined to be a major trend in the business world for several years to come.
Here is why:
1. Consumer Messaging Apps Are Not Suitable
From a user perspective consumer messaging apps like Whatsapp, Line, WeChat, etc. might be sufficient. From a business perspective consumer messaging apps are not suitable at all: They don’t protect corporate data, they use insecure public clouds in countries with weak data protection laws, they don’t allow to manage users, they employ weak encryption, they don’t provide company-wide administration tools, they don’t integrate in EMM solutions, etc. Basically, consumer messaging apps don’t offer the data protection, security, administration and compliance features which enterprises require.
2. Unified Communication Solutions Are Too Weak in Enterprise Messaging
Unified communication solutions focus on VOIP and online meeting, but not on messaging. The group messaging features of Skype of Business, Cisco Jabber and IBM Connections Chat are weak and sometimes even persistent chats are an issue. Digital content sharing (multiple photos, videos, voice messages, locations, calendar dates, links with previews, etc.) is often limited and not without friction. These solutions also hardly support MDM or EMM solutions to secure corporate data on mobile devices, and integrations in 3rd party services (e.g. for enterprise file sharing) are not available. Besides businesses which prefer on-premise deployments are let down by questionable roadmaps of these products. For further information please read our blog post “Why Lync and Jabber Are No Mobile Enterprise Messaging Solution”.
3. Enterprise Messaging Apps Offer Huge Productivity Gains
Real-time communication for instant responses, 1:1 chats for faster decision making, group chats to quickly solve topics, team channels for immediate updates, and digital content sharing for better information exchange – these are just some examples how enterprise messaging apps like Teamwire increase the productivity of businesses. The results are faster processes and workflows, less email overload, reduced messaging time, far less time spent in unneeded meetings, reduced travel expenses, increased employee satisfaction and overall less operational costs.
4. New Use Cases Require Specialized Business Messaging Apps
Initially a standard feature set with 1:1 chats, group chats and photo sharing might be enough to improve the internal communication of businesses. However, in a short time workers want to easily communicate with the whole enterprise, need read receipts for all members of a group chat, require universal digital content sharing, want pre-defined team lists and channels, require access to the whole corporate directory on the go, might need to search for messages and content, and want to access and exchange documents from corporate file sharing solutions. To satisfy all those use cases a specialized business messaging app like Teamwire is required.
5. Ecosystem Integrations Accelerate Workflows and Processes
A “Whatsapp for enterprise” like Teamwire with its comprehensive instant messaging capabilities significantly increases the productivity of businesses. In addition the productivity can strongly be improved with an integration into the IT ecosystem of an organization. The integration of file sharing services into enterprise messaging apps is typically a first step. Other examples of an integration are CRM and ERP solutions, procurement, manufacturing and logistic systems, accounting and HR tools, and basically any kind of 3rd party and in-house software. This allows enterprises to simplify and accelerate workflows, automate and stabilize processes, and improve business operations overall.
6. Enterprise Messaging Apps Provide Better Security and Data Protection
IT security has become a core topic for businesses and advanced protection of corporate data is a must nowadays. Better enterprise messaging apps provide state-of-the-art technology and help businesses to tackle security concerns: Very strong encryption during transport and at rest, robust protection of all user and corporate data, cloud and on-premise locations at buyer’s option, guarantee of local data protection law, professional administration and control of the organization and its users, mobile security layers including EMM support, and everything else required for enterprise-wide security and compliance.
As a consequence the majority of businesses will deploy new enterprise messaging apps like Teamwire in the next couple of years. Due to the increasing demand business messaging will likely spin off out of the unified communications category as an own market. Enterprise messaging is a fast growing field and will become a big market.
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