Recently, RingCentral took center stage at the Enterprise Connect 2018 conference in Orlando, Florida. During the event, we spoke to more than 200 IT leaders who visited our booth and gathered feedback on the proliferation of business communications and collaboration apps and their sentiments about managing these disparate apps in their organizations. The responses demonstrated that IT faces serious challenges related to app overload in the workplace and they seek a better way.
Here are some of the feedback highlights we captured live from IT leaders at Enterprise Connect 2018.
Similar to our findings based on a recent survey of 2,000 knowledge workers discussed in the report, From Workplace Chaos to Zen: How App Overload Is Reshaping the Digital Workplace, we found consistent conclusions on the solution to this from both IT decision makers and end users.
The grand irony—productivity tools gone wrong
As uncovered in our survey report, knowledge workers feel app overload profoundly, with 70% reporting that their communications volume is a challenge to getting work done. The Enterprise Connect survey found that 75% of IT leaders said it’s challenging, with some saying it’s even overwhelming to manage disparate communications and collaboration apps within their company.
IT decision makers ranked the management of disparate communications and collaboration vendors (36%) as their biggest challenge. They also cited reduced productivity (23%) and user adoption (17%) as issues.
How to stop the insanity?
Thirty-one percent of IT professionals said implementing a single communications platform was the best way forward while 41% stated that integrating business communications apps with other popular work apps would be the most effective way to reduce communications complexity at work. We also found that 20% of IT respondents believe a top-down mandate from the C-suite would help reduce complexity.
Knowledge workers agree, with 66% in favor of a single communications platform to reduce the hassle of app overload.
The biggest benefits of reducing app complexity
It’s no surprise that increased productivity tops the list of anticipated benefits from reduced app complexity. Thirty-one percent of IT decision makers agreed. Twenty-one percent said reduced costs was the second biggest benefit, and 20% cited increased user adoption as another key benefit.
The bottom line is both end users and IT have a consistent perspective on the extent of app overload, the profound challenge of managing multiple disparate business communications apps, and the solution being a single communications platform. This is a wake-up call for the industry at large to stop the insanity of app overload and give workers and IT the right tools to be successful—and create a more productive state of workplace Zen.
Originally published Mar 28, 2018, updated Dec 30, 2022
