Enterprise communication is a rigid need in the enterprise digital intelligence service market, and it is also an important component of the most revolutionary and subversive innovation. This market will usher in a generational change almost every ten years. From fixed phones to Internet phones, mobile phones to smartphones to WeChat, from enterprise switchboards and call centers to unified communications, enterprise IM to AICC, every technological change in communication will bring about huge changes in the industrial ecology, and often the birth of New industry giants. With the implementation and popularization of 5G, AIGC, and large models, China Software Network and Haibi Research Institute have discovered that the enterprise communications market will usher in a new round of major changes in the next 10 years.
In order to better promote the more orderly, healthy, sustained and rapid development of the enterprise service industry, China Software Network, Haibi Research Institute and experts from Youyin Communications, the current representative of innovators in the enterprise communications market, have worked together to provide a comprehensive understanding of enterprise communications. In-depth analysis and research were conducted on the user side, supply rules and industrial ecology of the market.
Haibi Research Institute believes thatWhether it is from the demand for communication services required for business management on the demand side, or from the tools, means and methods of supply-side services, as well as the In terms of business models, the enterprise communications market is undergoing some important changes. The popularization of the Internet has led to the continuous evolution of enterprise communications towards networking. The current 5G and even 6G and intelligent changes may completely change enterprise communications in the future. In the next 10 years, the enterprise communications market structure, dominated by the three major operators, will completely change. Internet companies, artificial intelligence companies, and even enterprise application providers will likely become major players in the enterprise communications market.
China Software Network, together with Haibi Research Institute and Youyin Communications, jointly released the "Top Ten Trends in China's Enterprise Communications Market in 2024"
Looking forward to 2024, Haibi Research Institute believes that China's enterprise communications market will present ten major trends.
1
Haibi Research Institute believes that starting from 2024, China's enterprise communications market will begin to enter a new turning point: beginning to enter a new era of intelligent enterprise communications. This new era has three major characteristics: communication technology takes 5G as the core, communication methods take voice and video as the core, and the communication experience is more automated and intelligent.
2
China's enterprise communications market has grown rapidly during the epidemic. However, Haibi Research Institute believes that 2023 and 2024 will be years of adjustment for the enterprise communications market, and the growth rate of its overall market size will be adjusted back. This is mainly due to factors such as the international geopolitical environment, the Russia-Ukraine strategy, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the international trade war, and other factors, as well as more stringent domestic policy control over telecommunications fraud. Haibi Research Institute predicts that the overall market size of China's enterprise communications will grow at about 10% in 2024.
3
Industry user demands are also undergoing significant changes. A survey by Haibi Research Institute found that large enterprises are beginning to develop towards AICC and are trying to deeply integrate with their business and pay attention to compliance; small, medium and micro enterprises pay more attention to costs and hope to fully integrate with marketing and pay attention to customer acquisition and customer maintenance. What is sad is that the demand for cross-border communications, which was originally growing at a rapid pace, has declined due to trade wars, regional conflicts and other reasons. Haibi Research Institute predicts that after about three years of adjustments, the needs of industry users will gradually form a new stable trend around 2026, and the small, medium and micro enterprise market will usher in more innovation needs.
4
The shift from passive communication to active communication will be a new demand highlight in China's enterprise communications market in 2024. Haibi Research Institute’s investigation found that after the establishment of various call centers focusing on passive communication on a large scale, whether it is enterprises, institutions or government departments, a large number of secondary and multiple communication needs such as feedback and inquiries have been generated. Ushering in more “active communications.” Active communication brings greater value to industry users, but requires higher technical requirements for corresponding products. It no longer has a single communication requirement, but also needs the ability to be personalized, automated, and intelligent. It is an overall AICC solution that needs to interact with business and customers.
5
For the supply side, value-added service partners will face greater development space and greater development opportunities in 2024. The entire enterprise communications industry chain has always been dominated by the three major telecom operators, and they have greater control over the entire market, leaving less room for value-added service partners to develop independently. However, in the past two or three years, the future development strategies and positioning of the three major operators have undergone new changes. Their businesses in the digital intelligence era have become more diversified, and communications are no longer their only business focus. Digital intelligence industry infrastructure such as computing power, intelligence, security, and capabilities have become the strategic focus of their efforts. Haibi Research Institute believes that in the future, operators will hand over enterprise communications that increasingly require personalized and in-depth services to ecological partners.
6
A survey by Haibi Research Institute found that the supply side is currently divided into two major camps. One is enterprise communication service providers represented by Tianrun Rongtong and others that serve large enterprises and central state-owned enterprises, governments, education and medical and other administrative agencies; Enterprise communication service providers serving small, medium and micro enterprises, represented by Youyin Communications. Judging from the development trend in 2024 and in the future, the first type of manufacturers will face many development opportunities brought by "Xinchuang", but they will also face strong competition from the "national team"; Haibi Research Institute's review of the second type The development prospects of manufacturers are more promising. The main reason is that formerly free enterprise IMs such as DingTalk and Enterprise WeChat have completed popular education for the small and medium-sized enterprise market, and they are now charging fees. This has led to the continuous expansion of communication needs and paying groups in the small and medium-sized enterprise market. For the second type of enterprise communications manufacturers, this is a huge market opportunity.
7
Transforming to a cloud-native architecture and adopting the SaaS model will become the technical architecture chosen by more and more enterprise communication service providers. For example, since the emergence of cloud call centers in 2016, Youyin Communications has basically completed its transformation to the cloud by 2019. During the epidemic control period, it seized the opportunity to reap business dividends and achieved rapid business growth. Haibi Research Institute predicts that enterprise communication service providers for small, medium and micro enterprises will basically complete cloudification in 2024. Those that have not completed the transformation must also speed up their pace to avoid falling behind in subsequent market competition; while for large enterprises, central state-owned enterprises, and governments Service providers will increasingly adopt hybrid cloud and proprietary cloud methods. Cloudification reduces costs for service providers and lays the foundation for them to provide one-stop enterprise communication services to enterprises. Based on communication functions, providing enterprises with one-stop customer acquisition, customer interaction, customer service and other functions has become the development direction of enterprise communication manufacturers.
8
Video customer service may become a flash point in the market. New communication functions such as 5G new messages and 5G new calls are likely to become commercial services officially launched by major operators in 2024. This will further promote the rapid development of video customer service. In the past two years, due to problems such as terminal upgrades and compatibility, its progress has been much slower than expected. But this situation will change dramatically in 2024. Banking and government window services will become important breakthroughs, and terminal forms such as work phones will usher in more applications.
9
The combination of large models and enterprise communications will become a hot topic for major manufacturers to upgrade their products and solutions in 2024. Not only is this change happening on the supply side, but some large companies on the demand side will also combine their own resource accumulation to launch their own large-scale models. However, Haibi Research Institute’s investigation found that the maturity of the current large model has yet to be tested, and there are still many problems in integrating it with actual industry and business application scenarios. Judging from the implementation of smart customer service, the large model did not achieve the expected results. Most of the various application scenarios envisioned by the vertical large model cannot be directly implemented into products. It is expected that a small part will be implemented in 2024.
10
Haibi Research Institute believes that the industrial ecology of enterprise communications will be more open and active in 2024. The entire ecosystem will develop from enterprise IM manufacturers such as DingTalk, WeChat Enterprise, and Feishu to more enterprise application manufacturers. CRM and collaborative office vendors will become key areas for ecological expansion. At the same time, the requirements for channel partners will be higher, and they must upgrade from the previous pure sales capabilities to consultant-type expert sales capabilities, implementation delivery capabilities and other professional capabilities.
Deputy General Manager of Beijing Youyin Communications Co., Ltd. Hu Junfeng
The key trend in the future enterprise communications industry is "convergence": IT (information technology), CT (communication technology) and DT (data technology) will be deeply integrated into DICT. Informatization will develop toward intelligence and create more intelligent applications through industry integration.