The Evolution of Unified Communication and Collaboration as a Service
Before the term collaboration was a thing, there was “conferencing” where I’ve spent the bulk of my business career. I’ve seen technology evolve from having an AT&T operator dial out to connect everyone to their call to where we are today with an array of low-cost video and collaboration tools at our fingertips. The real story doesn’t necessarily lie in how technology has moved the ball forward, but rather the profound impact it has had and continues to have in the way we get our jobs done while at the same time helping us balance the way we live.
When I co-founded InterCall in 1991, we had a very simple premise. Companies with a distributed salesforce or field team just could not hold conference calls. So instead, managers had a Monday phone day, called everyone individually and spent hours repeating the same message with each team member. So, we simply asked them to use an 800 number to dial in, have a weekly conference call and get everyone on the same page in an hour vs. an entire day and that simple concept transformed how managers worked with their remote teams and how much more those individuals felt connected to their organization and that their opinion mattered.