is needed and we all need to innovate and we are pushing hard on innovation, but you start from what works and then once you start utilising the technology you learn more how to do it better.” Q Given Zoom has now decided to bring employees back to the office, can Zoom play a role in helping define a strategy that works for leaders and employees? Graeme Geddes: “Our policy isn’t because we had to, it is about making sure that we’re embracing hybrid the same way that our customers are. When we think about the transformation of companies that are remote, what’s top of mind for a CEO is how to keep a sense of culture, purpose and belonging and that’s where the portfolio expanded when we acquired Workvivo last year, which is referred to as the digital heartbeat of the company. It’s that ability to bring everyone together, share common values, share common purpose, and recognise employees, which companies struggle with when people aren’t there in the office. Q How do you measure productivity gains with Zoom? Graeme Geddes: From what I see, a lot of it is personas-specific. For sales departments, those efficiencies and productivity gains drive top-line revenue, and there are a lot of great stats like close rates, deal sizes, and sales cycles. For the marketing persona the KPIs that we see are efficiencies in brand reach, and brand awareness. Then internally, with Workvivo or internal webinars, employee sentiment and employee engagement, are key critical items. Q What’s been driving enterprise uptake? Graeme Geddes: “We launched Zoom One last year, which is our collaboration suite which encapsulates a lot of core video use cases, telephony, advanced capabilities, and solutions for the conference room, and within that suite, enterprises find a lot of value. That’s where we’ve seen the results for Zoom One
grow significantly because they don’t have to pick and choose, they get access to the full suite of services. “Some of the use cases driving their consumption of Zoom One is that they already had broad success with the platform migrating their video workloads, and so we’ve seen our Zoom Phone business grow significantly. In our last earnings, we announced that we surpassed 7 million paid seats of Zoom Phone and we find that once businesses have a need for more than one service the suite makes more economic sense.” Q What do you see developing over the next 12 months? Smita Hashim: “Generative AI is at the top of my mind and our customers are excited about our AI companion capabilities, they appreciate the inclusion of AI at no additional charge because they can give it to all their employees, as opposed to having to pick and choose who they can afford to give it to. Q How committed are you to a free AI model in the long-term? Smita Hashim: “That’s an interesting question and I think it’s partly prompted by seeing other companies charge a lot for it which provokes the question ‘How come it’s free?’ We actually take a very unique approach in how we are implementing a generative AI assistant. Some of the folks in the market have gone with one very large foundational
Graeme Geddes
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