THE FUTURE OF VOICE AND WHAT THIS MEANS FOR THE CHANNEL

Martyn Ward, Chief Revenue Officer.

A recent report states that the global speech analytics market size is expected to increase from USD 941.1 million in 2017 to USD 2,175.8 million by 2022*. That’s a lot of growth in just five years and reflects the increased market recognition of the significance and importance of captured voice as a data set, its inherent value and the tools now available to unlock this value. 

The challenge for resellers is how to best position themselves to help customers unlock that value and create additional review streams from this opportunity. Our goal is to help them do this through supporting customers in bridging the gap between new world and old world technologies, improving efficiencies and delivering future predictive outcomes. 

Previously we’ve seen significant compliance-led growth in our space (most recently around around MiFID II & GDPR in particular). There will be more legislation in the future, but organisations are now taking an enterprise-wide view of voice capture to understand conversations taking place across their entire business. Advances in AI and Machine Learning mean that voice-based interaction has progressed beyond compliance and is being used to address automation, security and fraud; to enhance employee engagement and the customer experience; and to fuel AI strategies. 

Organisations are placing increased importance on retaining the ability to securely access that data wherever it resides (in line with regulations). With this, they need to move to true hybrid models – we’re seeing a continued desire from customers to access Cloud services whilst maximising on-premise investments. We will continue to provide a resilient, open and connected platform that operates and scales on all cloud and on-premise environments whilst ensuring the capture of all voice communications from new world and old world telephony. 

Looking forward, we will be working with our resellers to ensure they are as relevant as ever to their customers, beyond infrastructure. This means ensuring there is close alignment to customers’ true business drivers and agendas and connecting our resellers to a partner ecosystem that creates additional value and the desired business outcomes for customers around the voice data set.

We’ll be linking our open platform philosophy to the continued development of a value added ecosystem of partners. Our resellers can leverage this ecosystem to create additional revenue opportunities by helping organisations maximise the value of their voice data by using it seamlessly in multiple tools and applications. Use cases include compliance, reconstructing trades, or predictive analytics where machine learning can be applied to influence business strategy, increase efficiencies and reduce operational costs. 

We’re also providing resellers with an additional revenue opportunity through a platform-enabled managed service offering. 

The landscape is changing, and there is a real opportunity around the realisation that voice holds more inherent value that any other data set. By understanding the AI tools customers want to leverage, the data required to feed them and the platform to connect them together, we will unlock additional revenue streams, increase customer satisfaction, and fully maximise the untapped potential of voice. 

*Markets & Markets - report code: TC 2259, published February 2018.