Verizon Audio Conferencing Award Write Up

2017 North American Audio Conferencing Product Leadership Award

BEST PRACTICES RESEARCH

© Frost & Sullivan 2017 2 “We Accelerate Growth”

Contents

Background and Company Performance ........................................................................ 3

Industry Challenges .............................................................................................. 3

Product Family Attributes and Business Impact ........................................................ 3

Conclusion........................................................................................................... 5

Significance of Product Leadership ................................................................................ 6

Understanding Product Leadership ................................................................................ 6

Key Benchmarking Criteria .................................................................................... 7

Best Practices Award Analysis for Verizon ...................................................................... 7

Decision Support Scorecard ................................................................................... 7

Product Family Attributes ...................................................................................... 8

Business Impact ................................................................................................... 8

Decision Support Matrix ........................................................................................ 9

Best Practices Recognition: 10 Steps to Researching, Identifying, and Recognizing Best Practices ................................................................................................................. 10

The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best Practices Awards ..................... 11

Research Methodology ........................................................................................ 11

About Frost & Sullivan .............................................................................................. 11



Background and Company Performance

Industry Challenges

The conferencing industry is in a state of evolution, with many service providers striving

to add new features and capabilities to increase the usefulness and overall return on

investment (ROI) of their solutions. Video, screen sharing, collaborative functionality, and

other advanced features have quickly grown in importance, and are often a necessary

component for attracting new clients. Thus, these added capabilities have quickly evolved

from being value added features to being client-expected functionality.

However, despite their potential benefits and ability to attract new customers, advanced

features are used far less than basic audio functionality in most organizations. Thus,

many adopting organizations are purchasing solutions based on features that might see

little internal adoption or use. However, companies which focus on, and improve, their

audio capabilities and reliability, are likely to experience the highest level of customer

satisfaction and long-term retention. Due to this, audio is still the most important aspect

of a conferencing and collaboration solution.

Verizon offers an industry-leading audio conferencing solution, which is easily integrated

with web and video services as well. Verizon’s approach to focus on audio first also places

the real-world requirements of end users first, thus fostering conferencing and

collaboration deployments which emphasize end-user satisfaction and operational

efficiency.

Product Family Attributes and Business Impact

Match to Needs

The needs of the conferencing industry often differ substantially from the wants of the

conferencing industry. The only consistent component across both needs and wants is

reliable, high-quality audio conferencing capabilities. Audio conferencing is at the heart of

every conferencing and collaboration deployment, and is the one critical component that

cannot be allowed to fail or under-perform. When video, screen sharing, or collaborative

document editing fail, the meeting can continue; however, this is simply not true with the

audio component of a conference. If audio is allowed to fail, or the service degrades

substantially, it impacts the conference more adversely than any other component of the

system.

Thus, Verizon’s dedication to call quality and reliability, coupled with its video and web

capabilities through strategic partnerships, allows the provider to focus most on what is

important to clients. Verizon currently offers High-quality audio performance and

reliability; which accounts for the majority of their revenue within the conferencing and

collaboration industry.



Currently, Verizon offers four tier levels of audio service to meet the diverse needs of

clients, including: instant meeting, unattended, standard, and premier service. These

meeting categories incorporate varying levels of services ranging from bare-bones audio

conferencing to fully managed meetings with multiple conference coordinators and

available participant list data. Additionally, Verizon also offers both IP and Public Switched

Telephone Network (PSTN) access capabilities, which can be used exclusively or in a

hybrid configuration. This allows for more flexibility than traditional IP or PSTN audio

conferencing services.

Reliability and Quality

The single most requested improvement to conferencing technology by clients throughout

the industry is audio quality. Adopting organizations throughout the industry rely on the

audio component of their conferencing and collaboration deployment the most. Thus,

while features and new capabilities may help draw new clients to a solution, audio is the

necessary component for keeping clients satisfied with the solution.

Verizon’s audio capabilities are extremely dependable and reliably offer a high level of

quality of service; with some of their service levels offering periodic or continuous

monitoring of the quality of service. This not only ensures that the call quality is of a

high-standard, but also results in quick resolution to any issues that may arise during a

conference call. Additionally, Verizon offers network engineering and consulting services,

which can mitigate or prevent potential quality of service issues before they ever become

a problem.

Positioning

Although adopting organizations and those considering adoption generally have an

extensive list of desired features when shopping for conferring solutions, this rarely

translates directly to features that will be utilized throughout the organization. This is

because the list of desired features more accurately reflects what IT personnel and key

decision makers believe is ideal for each department in their company, rather than what

their employees are comfortable using, and familiar enough with to be efficient while

using.

Verizon has positioned their audio service to adhere to the needs of a broad range of

adopting organizations from low-cost, instant meetings, to large, managed presentations.

Verizon also offers IP and PSTN hybrid flexibility, as well as active quality monitoring to

ensure the integrity of the conference call. In addition, Verizon’s engineering and

consulting services can address and optimize client networks for audio conferencing. This

includes, level balancing, duplex settings, bandwidth utilization, SIP configuration, and

addressing packet send and receive issues. Thus, Verizon’s audio capabilities are uniquely

positioned to be competitive in all audio conferencing use-cases, while upholding high

standards for quality.



Additionally, Verizon offers a compelling combination of many other unique features,

which allows them to be used in demanding applications with unique needs. Some of

these features include: audio translation in over 120 different languages, saved/re-

playable conferences, participant screening, polling, question and answer functionality,

sub conferencing, Web RSVP, conference room locking, two factor authentication, and

meeting transcription.

Financial Performance

Verizon’s dedication to the reliability and quality of audio can be seen in their overall

market performance in audio conferencing, as well as web conferencing and video

conferencing. However, currently 60% of Verizon’s revenue in the conferencing service

market comes from their robust audio conferencing offering. Due to audio playing a role

in all of these markets, Verizon maintains a strong overall conferencing and collaboration

industry presence and subsequent growth rate. Additionally, Frost & Sullivan anticipates

that their strong audio performance will also help Verizon have a high level of customer

retention as the web and video conferencing markets mature. While it is common for

clients to change the web or video components of their deployment, the

proven/dependable audio component is far less likely to be changed.

Growth Potential

Verizon is expected to continue to grow in audio, video and web conferencing, while

maintaining a high level of customer retention. While much of this growth is due to new

features and capabilities, customer satisfaction and retention is reliant on Verizon’s audio

capabilities. Despite industry growth shifting toward web and video services, Frost &

Sullivan anticipates that Verizon’s audio services will remain the foundation for countless

current and future conferencing and collaboration deployments.

Conclusion

As one of the three largest audio conferencing providers in North America, and a strong

competitor in web and video conferencing, Verizon continues to have an impactful

presence on the overall conferencing and collaboration market. Its dedication to quality

audio and expansion through partnered web and video services will both secure its

existing customer base and enable the provider to continue to expand outside of pure

audio. Its strategic approach to this industry greatly improves Verizon end-users’

efficiency and ability to perform their job tasks.

With its strong overall performance, Verizon has earned Frost & Sullivan’s 2017 Product

Leadership Award.



Significance of Product Leadership

Ultimately, growth in any organization depends upon customers purchasing from a

company and then making the decision to return time and again. A comprehensive

product line, filled with high-quality, value-driven options, is the key to building an

engaged customer base. To achieve and maintain product excellence, an organization

must strive to be best-in-class in three key areas: understanding demand, nurturing the

brand, and differentiating from the competition.

Understanding Product Leadership

Demand forecasting, branding, and differentiating all play a critical role in finding growth

opportunities for your product line. This three-fold focus, however, must be complemented

by an equally rigorous focus on pursuing those opportunities to a best-in-class standard.

Customer communications, customer feedback, pricing, and competitor actions must all be

managed and monitored for ongoing success. If an organization can successfully parlay



product excellence into positive business impact, increased market share will inevitably

follow over time.

Key Benchmarking Criteria

For the Product Leadership Award, Frost & Sullivan analysts independently evaluated two

key factors—Product Family Attributes and Business Impact—according to the criteria

identified below.

Product Family Attributes

Criterion 1: Match to Needs

Criterion 2: Reliability and Quality

Criterion 3: Product/Service Value

Criterion 4: Positioning

Criterion 5: Design

Business Impact

Criterion 1: Financial Performance

Criterion 2: Customer Acquisition

Criterion 3: Operational Efficiency

Criterion 4: Growth Potential

Criterion 5: Human Capital

Best Practices Award Analysis for Verizon

Decision Support Scorecard

To support its evaluation of best practices across multiple business performance

categories, Frost & Sullivan employs a customized Decision Support Scorecard. This tool

allows our research and consulting teams to objectively analyze performance, according to

the key benchmarking criteria listed in the previous section, and to assign ratings on that

basis. The tool follows a 10-point scale that allows for nuances in performance evaluation.

Ratings guidelines are illustrated below.

RATINGS GUIDELINES

The Decision Support Scorecard is organized by Product Family Attributes and Business

Impact (i.e., These are the overarching categories for all 10 benchmarking criteria; the

definitions for each criterion are provided beneath the scorecard.). The research team



confirms the veracity of this weighted scorecard through sensitivity analysis, which

confirms that small changes to the ratings for a specific criterion do not lead to a

significant change in the overall relative rankings of the companies.

The results of this analysis are shown below. To remain unbiased and to protect the

interests of all organizations reviewed, we have chosen to refer to the other key

participants as Competitor 2 and Competitor 3.

Measurement of 1–10 (1 = poor; 10 = excellent)

Product Leadership

Product Family

Attributes

Business

Impact Average Rating

Verizon 9.0 10.0 9.5

Competitor 2 9.0 9.0 9.0

Competitor 3 8.0 7.5 7.75


Criterion 1: Match to Needs

Requirement: Customer needs directly influence and inspire the design and positioning of

the product family.

Criterion 2: Reliability and Quality

Requirement: Products consistently meet or exceed customer expectations for

performance and length of service.

Criterion 3: Product/Service Value

Requirement: Products or services offer the best value for the price, compared to similar

offerings in the market.

Criterion 4: Positioning

Requirement: Products or services address unique, unmet need that competitors cannot

easily replicate or replace.

Criterion 5: Design

Requirement: The product features an innovative design, enhancing both visual appeal

and ease of use.

Business Impact

Criterion 1: Financial Performance

Requirement: Overall financial performance is strong in terms of revenues, revenue

growth, operating margin, and other key financial metrics.

Criterion 2: Customer Acquisition

Requirement: Product strength enables acquisition of new customers, even as it enhances

retention of current customers.



Criterion 3: Operational Efficiency

Requirement: Staff is able to perform assigned tasks productively, quickly, and to a high

quality standard.

Criterion 4: Growth Potential

Requirements: Product quality strengthens brand, reinforces customer loyalty, and

enhances growth potential.

Criterion 5: Human Capital

Requirement: Company culture is characterized by a strong commitment to product

quality and customer impact, which in turn enhances employee morale and retention.

Decision Support Matrix

Once all companies have been evaluated according to the Decision Support Scorecard,

analysts then position the candidates on the matrix shown below, enabling them to

visualize which companies are truly breakthrough and which ones are not yet operating at

best-in-class levels.

High

Low

Low High

Business Impact


Verizon

Competitor 2

Competitor 3



Best Practices Recognition: 10 Steps to Researching, Identifying, and Recognizing Best Practices

Frost & Sullivan analysts follow a 10-step process to evaluate Award candidates and

assess their fit with select best practice criteria. The reputation and integrity of the

Awards are based on close adherence to this process.

STEP OBJECTIVE KEY ACTIVITIES OUTPUT

1 Monitor, target, and screen

Identify Award recipient candidates from around the globe

• Conduct in-depth industry research

• Identify emerging sectors

• Scan multiple geographies

Pipeline of candidates who potentially meet all best-practice criteria

2 Perform 360-degree research

Perform comprehensive, 360-degree research on all candidates in the pipeline

• Interview thought leaders and industry practitioners

• Assess candidates’ fit with best-practice criteria

• Rank all candidates

Matrix positioning of all candidates’ performance relative to one another

3

Invite thought leadership in best practices

Perform in-depth examination of all candidates

• Confirm best-practice criteria • Examine eligibility of all candidates

• Identify any information gaps

Detailed profiles of all ranked candidates

4

Initiate research director review

Conduct an unbiased evaluation of all candidate profiles

• Brainstorm ranking options • Invite multiple perspectives on candidates’ performance

• Update candidate profiles

Final prioritization of all eligible candidates and companion best-practice positioning paper

5

Assemble panel of industry experts

Present findings to an expert panel of industry thought leaders

• Share findings • Strengthen cases for candidate eligibility

• Prioritize candidates

Refined list of prioritized Award candidates

6

Conduct global industry review

Build consensus on Award candidates’ eligibility

• Hold global team meeting to review all candidates

• Pressure-test fit with criteria • Confirm inclusion of all eligible candidates

Final list of eligible Award candidates, representing success stories worldwide

7 Perform quality check

Develop official Award consideration materials

• Perform final performance benchmarking activities

• Write nominations • Perform quality review

High-quality, accurate, and creative presentation of nominees’ successes

8

Reconnect with panel of industry experts

Finalize the selection of the best-practice Award recipient

• Review analysis with panel • Build consensus • Select recipient

Decision on which company performs best against all best-practice criteria

9 Communicate recognition

Inform Award recipient of Award recognition

• Present Award to the CEO • Inspire the organization for continued success

• Celebrate the recipient’s performance

Announcement of Award and plan for how recipient can use the Award to enhance the brand

10 Take strategic action

Upon licensing, company is able to share Award news with stakeholders and customers

• Coordinate media outreach • Design a marketing plan • Assess Award’s role in future strategic planning

Widespread awareness of recipient’s Award status among investors, media personnel, and employees



The Intersection between 360-Degree Research and Best Practices Awards

Research Methodology

Frost & Sullivan’s 360-degree research

methodology represents the analytical

rigor of our research process. It offers a

360-degree-view of industry challenges,

trends, and issues by integrating all 7 of

Frost & Sullivan's research methodologies.

Too often companies make important

growth decisions based on a narrow

understanding of their environment,

leading to errors of both omission and

commission. Successful growth strategies

are founded on a thorough understanding

of market, technical, economic, financial,

customer, best practices, and

demographic analyses. The integration of

these research disciplines into the 360-

degree research methodology provides an

evaluation platform for benchmarking

industry participants and for identifying

those performing at best-in-class levels.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth

and achieve best-in-class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's

Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined

research and best practice models to drive the generation, evaluation, and implementation

of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages more than 50 years of

experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses, and the

investment community from 45 offices on six continents. To join our Growth Partnership,

please visit http://www.frost.com.

360-DEGREE RESEARCH: SEEING ORDER IN

THE CHAOS

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Verizon Audio Conferencing Award Write Up

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