For those of you who have met me, you might be wondering why I would take an interest in hairdryers, given that evaporation is quite sufficient to dry my ever-decreasing barnet. However, as a techie geek I take an interest in innovation, particularly anything which seeks to address a problem – like drying hair – in a way which differs from the pack.
A story that caught my attention recently in The Guardian sought to answer the question as to whether Dyson’s £300 supersonic hairdryer is any good. In short, the answer is yes, it’s brilliant. What appealed most to me about it is the backless design (the filter and motor are in the handle) so you don’t get that horrible cludge of hair stuck in the filter and ‘create a smell like a fire in a pet shop’. In other words, the Dyson solves the basic problem (of drying hair) but without any of the traditional unpleasant side effects that we have come to tolerate.
Solving problems by doing things in an innovative way and overcoming limitations, which create friction with our customers is something that we in the product team at Intercity strive to achieve. Touch Telephony is our strategic platform for doing this. What makes us different? Firstly, we own the platform so we can add to it quickly. If one of our customers wants a new feature or needs us to integrate with another application, then we can deliver it within the next development sprint, but if they change their mind or the feature isn’t as useful as expected we can bin it and move on. Imagine asking a large vendor to work in that way! Secondly, we can build the platform out to our customers. Rather than the wasteful, old-world telco approach of, If you build it, he will come, if our customer needs the assurance that a local point of presence brings, then we can deliver this quickly and effectively, as we have done in Washington DC and Hong Kong.
Touch Telephony enables us to compete in a UK market, which at the end of 2015 comprised 2.2M Hosted VoIP seats, an increase of 526k (32%). Even the laggards are contemplating a move from tin to cloud as demand for PBXs falls precipitously. Whilst all the available Hosted VoIP products solve the basic problem (providing reliable dial tone) the wow factor comes from their other capabilities. For example, for our largest Touch Telephony customer, the audio/web conferencing feature alone justified the move to a cloud-based telephony system!
To find out more about Touch Telephony, contact us today.
