Hear How Your Peers are Thinking Strategically

December 19, 2024

Written by Eric Krapf, General Manager and Program Co-Chair, Enterprise Connect Publisher

So often, IT’s work consists of putting out fires, dealing with installed base or technical debt issues, or scrounging for new ways to cut costs. Those parts of the job will never go away, but what if you could step back and look at the big picture?

That’s one of the things Enterprise Connect 2025 is going to try and help you with, and to do so, we’ve enlisted the best possible sources: Your peers.

The last couple of years, we’ve been fortunate to get a plethora of terrific enterprise pros to lead sessions on the EC program, and 2025 will be the biggest yet. One new and exciting area centers on a few sessions aimed specifically at helping you think strategically about your enterprise communications/collaboration/CX technology.

One of our Monday morning Strategic Impact Summits, Case Studies in Communications Strategy, will feature leaders discussing how they’re thinking strategically about the direction of their enterprise’s business, and the impact it’s likely to have on their IT organization. We’re starting out with a session called, Moving from Infrastructure Management to Business Enablement, led by Abe Smith of First Citizens Bank. As the title suggests, Abe will offer a roadmap for how to get beyond the break/fix mentality, to make sure you’re aligning with the business.

We’ll follow that up with a session featuring Manny Rodriguez and Doug Blankenship of Moffitt Cancer Center, a Florida-based healthcare provider that’s poised for rapid growth over the next 5 years. The IT organization knows this growth will tax their resources as it impacts nearly every part of the communications/collaboration/CX environment, so they’re positioning now to make sure they can support growth in areas including:

• Supporting virtual health practice
• Expanding the contact center
• Developing strategies and governance around AI
• Growing and advancing the AV/video estate
• Continuing to develop Moffitt's cloud strategy
• Supporting remote work and mobility initiatives
• Gaining efficiencies as the IT organization's growth lags behind that of the overall business

Finally, our third session for this Impact Summit will feature Brian Honaker and Thomas Densmore of the University of Central Florida. UCF is the second-largest college in the U.S., and when we were planning the session, Brian and Thomas emphasized to me that they see their task in broader terms than as a higher education vertical—given the needs they must serve, UCF is more of a “corporation that supports education,” handling the demands of police, medical, hospitality, and other unique types of users within the UCF system. They’re leaning into the challenge and will present a session entitled, Think Big, Connect Better, where they’ll describe their vision for providing communications, collaboration, and CX technology to an institution that serves over 60,000 students and employs 13,000 people.

Of course we’ll be complementing these broad, strategic sessions with many more enterprise-led sessions that focus on specific challenges—everything from CCaaS migration to AV/video management to rolling out Microsoft Teams. I’ll share more details on these sessions in my next newsletter, but you can find them now, along with our complete Conference program, on the Enterprise Connect 2025 website. Now is also a great time to register for the conference; you can get our lowest rates. I hope to see you in Orlando!

One final note: This newsletter will be taking the next 2 weeks off for the end-of-year break. I hope all of you have a wonderful holiday season, and we’ll connect with you again in the New Year!