Ericsson-LG Enterprise’s Product Management Meeting 2022 was held virtually across 5 sessions on 5 – 7 April 2022. The meeting allowed Ericsson-LG Enterprise and our partners to share the latest market developments and discuss our strategies for business growth moving into the future.

2022’s event was the third PM Meeting to be hosted online since 2020 and we hope that next year’s event will be hosted in person.

The meeting began with an address from Jaeen Yoo, Head of Operations at Ericsson-LG Enterprise. Jaeen explained how some of the challenges that the industry is facing, from Covid-19 to the global part shortage, have led to new innovations and opportunities.

The first day of the PM Meeting began with an overview of the UCaaS market from HM Lee, Head of Strategic Portfolio Management.

HM provided an insight into where the UCaaS market has seen the most growth over the past year, and the new developments that will define the market moving forward. Hybrid working and collaboration are the two most important trends that need to be considered. HM outlined ways that we will address these needs with the iPECS UCaaS portfolio.

HM was followed by Minsoo Park, who detailed the latest features coming to the iPECS Cloud platform in its Ph5.0 update. These new features will be released throughout the year. New features arriving soon include ACD group multi-login and video call recording for the 1080i handset.

The features arriving to iPECS Cloud are designed to improve call quality, provide more options for calls, and enhance iPECS Cloud’s range of applications such as iPECS ONE and iPECS Analytics. A full feature list for iPECS Cloud Ph5.0 will be released later this year.

The final speaker from day one of the Partner Meeting was KS Choi, Product Manager of iPECS Analytics. KS introduced iPECS Analytics’ Ph3.0 update, including the new call center solution.

KS’s session was split into two parts. The first covered the strategic approach that Ericsson-LG is taking with iPECS Analytics. This included how iPECS Analytics is being updated to better support call centers as well as other business uses.

Call center features in Ph3.0 include ACD group multi log-in, integrated call recording, group KPIs and selective user monitoring. This will be combined with better UX and management features. KS provided an extensive overview of these features, followed by the licenses available in Ph3.0.

The second day of 2022’s PM Meeting began with an address from KS Choi, who provided an overview of updates coming to Unified Ph6.0 and the 1000i range of handsets. The first stage of Unified Ph6.0 launched in Q1 of 2022 and you can see an overview of its features in March’s edition of iPECS Insights.

KS highlighted some of the features coming throughout the year to the Unified platform. This includes Czech language support and adding more Web APIs. UCS will also see new features in its 6.2 update, such as compatibility with Windows 11 and language support for Greek and Hebrew.

New updates are also on their way to the 1000i range of handsets. This includes improved QoS with a reliable connection for handsets from the 1010i to 1050i, and compatibility with SIP for the 1080i handset.

Following KS, Jinho Choi provided an overview of new updates coming to the CCX application coming in its version 1.2 and version 1.3, launching in Q3 of 2022. Version 1.2 comes with a huge range of new features for enhanced reporting, AWS support, and a better user experience. Jinho also explained how the IPCR application will be updated in Q4 of 2022 to provide enhanced user experience and strengthened security.

Jinho and KS were followed by Symon Park, part of Ericsson-LG Enterprise’s PLM team. Symon’s presentation focused on the latest updates coming to the iPECS ONE application in its Ph3.0 update.

Symon first addressed the success of January’s iPECS ONE feature drop, which included contact enhancements and more user experience improvements, such as a personal contact directory, and the ability to import contacts in CSV format.

July’s update will follow on from this with more expansion to the contacts section and better integrations with mobile operating systems and accessories. Later in Ph3.0 we are planning to launch new features designed to make iPECS ONE into a fully functioning contact center solution, complete with a range of UI improvements and features for this purpose.

The next speaker was Yongmyoung Lee, from Ericsson-LG Enterprise’s PS Team. Yong’s presentation stepped away from technical developments. Instead, Yong took a closer look at how the iPECS Cloud technical support process could be improved. We believe that with the combined engineering resources of our global partners, we can co-operate on technical support in a much more efficient way.

Yong provided insight into where IR is most required, the key findings taken from support requests, and key actions Ericsson-LG will take to address user pain points. This will improve training, as well as providing troubleshooting maps for support teams and a help center for partners around the world to collaborate on support queries.

The final speaker on day two was Jinho Choi who gave an overview of how iPECS training will improve in 2022. Jinho explained that there still has to be a consistent support for the on-premise market, but following market changes, more focus needs to be placed on iPECS Cloud. New training will be more effective, efficient and will be able to provide a higher level of detail.

Future online training will be more customer-oriented and will focus on 3 key axes to lead to customer satisfaction. These are the online and offline training, certificates program and a new video library. Finally, Jinho provided a calendar of training plans for the rest of 2022.

The third and final day of the PM Meeting was designed as an open discussion among selected partners, who are actively selling iPECS Cloud in their market. Here partners shared their insights and priorities on how to improve the iPECS platform moving forward. The session was led by product experts from Ericsson-LG Enterprise in collaboration with global partners.

Attendees shared their feedback on where improvements could be made to key iPECS services. This included iPECS Analytics, iPECS ONE, Unified, and iPECS Cloud. This discussion will help us to prioritize new features to introduce to the platform and identify any existing pain points.

These meetings are an insightful way to see how the iPECS portfolio is used across the world. Especially considering the changing market we are all working within, it is very useful to receive feedback from partners on how the iPECS portfolio is serving their individual markets.

This discussion prompted some compelling and thought-provoking input, and we would like to say a very big thank you to our partners for attending and offering their contributions. Your continued support is fantastic to see, and we cannot wait to keep building together into the future. 

If you have any questions, please contact us at ipecs.partner@ericsson.com.