Changing Employee Behaviour To Spike Demand For Enterprise Headsets

Business handsets have evolved from a simple telecommunication accessory to an important tool offering flexibility, mobility, and multitasking, allowing businesses to boost worker efficiency and productivity.

The increase of worker mobility and flexibility has resulted in the creation of various worker classifications and nicknames, such as Corridor Warriors, Road Warriors, Home Workers, and Telecommuters.

These workers, across several markets, utilise telecommunications technologies such as virtual private networks, videoconferencing, and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) to communicate with their central offices.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (conferencing.frost.com), World Enterprise Headset Market, finds that this market earned revenues of $849.5 million in 2007 and estimates this to reach $1.02 billion in 2014.

“The need for enhanced communications is resulting in the creation of a series of communication tools and devices that are helping the employee to efficiently perform his/her job at any location and on the go,” says Frost & Sullivan research analyst Alaa Saayed. “These business endpoints include unified communications (UC) clients (integrating multiple communication applications such as messaging, presence, and conferencing) and mobile soft clients.”

Enterprise headsets are expected to be the key enabler of continuous communication, independent of the type of worker, location, or device used.

The increasing sophistication of communication devices and greater recognition of the technology’s benefits will keep the market buoyant, despite the economic downturn, which may have put a dampener on the global demand for business headsets. Novel technologies, such as softphones, UC, and videoconferencing, will gain in popularity as businesses continue to view telecommunications services as a critical tool in controlling overall costs and increasing productivity.

To enhance demand, enterprise headset vendors should constantly upgrade their headset offerings to fit the requirements of the ever-changing communications technology. They can achieve this by ensuring compatibility with enterprise softphones, UC clients, and fixed mobile clients.

Furthermore, the development of new, enhanced, but economical headsets that will improve and standardise voice quality across multiple soft clients will be crucial for sustaining success.

“Market vendors can further support their distributors through continuous marketing and advertising, customer education programmes, strong relationships with channel partners, and improvement in product lead times,” notes Saayed.