The CPaaS market is in a phase of significant growth as businesses of all sizes recognize the benefits of leveraging the cloud communication model and the ease of adopting new channels. By partnering with a specialist CPaaS provider they can get immediate benefit without the risk and overheads of developing their own solutions.

But with so many new customer types entering the market, it has become apparent to industry experts that a one-size-fits-all approach to the provision of communication services is no longer acceptable.

For example, what about platform companies that have unique requirements and their own customers to keep happy? Customers with very different needs and business goals, but who nonetheless demand a bespoke but cost-effective solution.

For these organizations a vanilla CPaaS solution is not going to be enough to differentiate their service in a competitive market.

What they need is a more advanced communication service that ticks all their boxes:

Luckily for them the intense activity in the market has stimulated the creativity of one forward-thinking CPaaS provider who has bridged the gap between these requirements and the capabilities of existing platforms.

Through a process of co-creation with our platform partners, Infobip has evolved the concept of CPaaS to enable platform companies to truly fulfill their potential and provide a better, more tailored, and more cost-effective service to their customers.

Let’s take a look at how our new solution CPaas X can help them do this.

Businesses that provide communication services to a global set of customers did not choose an easy life. Not only are the requirements of every customer different, but the communication landscape in the countries they operate in may be completely dissimilar in terms of channel usage and legislation.

For example, launching a conversational marketing campaign across multiple countries means the primary and failover messaging channel mix may include SMS, MMS, RCS, Email, and multiple messaging apps depending on market penetration in each region.

Our latest messaging trends report provides some fascinating insights into the popularity of the many chat apps available around the world. The example we have used before is how WhatsApp may be the biggest single app globally in terms of usage, but it isn’t even available in the giant market of China, and is behind apps like LINE, Viber and WeChat in many countries.

Being able to reach consumers on their preferred channel is the basis of an effective omnichannel communication strategy – and CPaaS is a key enabler in the following ways.

Agile development methodology is a proven technique for creating and releasing high quality products that meet specific business requirements – all with the minimum engineering effort, maximum efficiency, and the ability to respond quickly to changing market requirements.

Sound familiar?  These are the exact goals that platform companies are looking to achieve with their services, and CPaaS can help in a number of key ways.

Learn by doing with easy channel adoption: By making it quick and easy to adopt new messaging channels, platforms can build proof of concepts and do AB testing to see what works and what doesn’t – and because they have invested minimal time and resources, they can confidently throw away things that don’t. The agile concept of ‘failing fast’ encourages an iterative approach to communication solution design that leads to faster innovation and the shortest route to success.

Speed up time to market: The CPaaS model gives platform companies early access to new technology so that they can start generating revenue while their competitors are still building their own solutions. This could be new features released by established providers like WhatsApp or an entirely new channel or technology. The meteoric rise of ChatGPT has been a perfect example of this, as we have followed our own philosophy of learning by doing and built an integration that enables Infobip customers to explore our extensive product documentation through a ChatGPT powered interface.

In addition, by being able to automate the client onboarding process, platforms can get their customers up and actively sending traffic quickly and consistently, removing bottlenecks associated with manual set up.

Empowered staff: CPaaS X simplifies the management of your communication solution so that tasks that previously required a developer or technical person can now either be automated or handled by non-technical staff. The ability to self-serve increases both velocity and reduces costs.

With a modular API stack, CPaaS X can handle all channel orchestration and failover logic. It can also automatically monitor traffic in real-time and notify you when specific events are triggered, saving you the manual task of wading through reams of irrelevant reporting data to find the stats you are interested in. Enable your developers to concentrate on valuable new use cases and automate the everyday tasks that take up too much time.

In case you are not familiar with the concept of a unified API you could think of it as a shared language spoken by different technologies.

Imagine three engineers from a global company meeting up to discuss a project. They might be from Japan, China, and Brazil and be fluent in their mother tongues, but they will communicate in a basic form of English that is more than sufficient to achieve their goals. This is the same role that a unified API plays.

In an omnichannel communication solution each channel will have diverse and rich functionality, but a lot of it will be specific to that channel. The unified API covers the shared functionality and configuration that is consistent across multiple channels – making it far easier to orchestrate and manage omnichannel messaging.

CPaaS X is not just a one-trick pony – it can add value throughout the client journey and enables client-specific configuration and reporting that was not previously an option.

A more granular API enables clients to be added to the platform as individual entities, which makes it simple to allocate resources and monitor activity and resource consumption per client. This significantly increases the speed that clients can be onboarded and automates many of the domain and number provisioning tasks that were previously done manually.

With CPaaS X you can easily create multiple environments, each with its own configuration to cater for specific use cases, or identical configuration to support a Test, Staging, and Production approach.

With a unified API it is now possible to use a single API call to connect multiple channels to enable clients to benefit from seamlessly automated messaging using different channel options. CPaaS X can also optimize traffic distribution across channels and trigger failover messages when necessary.

With an API that enables clients to be added as individual entities, reporting is both easier and more in-depth with easy access to consumption reports and reporting per customer, use case, or resource type. With continuous and automated monitoring of traffic, any anomalies and potentially fraudulent activity can be spotted early, and action taken before it has an impact.

You want to scale your platform, adopt new channels, and explore new overseas markets but you also want to minimize risk. We understand this, and we are in the ideal position to help. We have once again been named as a ‘Leader’ in the IDC Marketscape CPaaS vendor assessment – with the report noting both the quality of our services and ability to support global expansion.

“Consider Infobip if global scale and local, regional support are key requirements for your company. Infobip’s comprehensive portfolio of services spans telco as well as enterprise needs, ranging from carrier-grade services and CPaaS to highly customized SaaS services and support.”

Built specifically to meet the needs of platform companies, CPaaS X has raised the bar of what is achievable for platforms. We would love to help yours achieve the success that it is capable of.

Thinking about adopting CPaaS (communication platform as a service)? Or are you sold already and just looking to build a business case that demonstrates the practical benefits for your own organization?

In this blog we cover everything you need to be aware of – including both the strengths and weaknesses of the approach, which use cases it is ideally suited to, and some which it is not.

Most importantly we describe how the business communication landscape is currently undergoing a rapid transformation and what you need to know to ensure that decisions about your communication strategy are future proof.

You have undoubtably noticed that brands want to talk to us more and more. The era of personalization seems to have morphed into the epoch of conversational everything. You have to admit that it is quite handy to be able to interact with a business any time of the day or night, get queries answered immediately, and even make purchases without even having to leave the channel that you are interacting on. And it doesn’t even matter which channel that is and whether you are talking to a human or a chatbot, businesses are able to support your intentions on any channel because they are all connected to the same underlying customer data platform (CDP).

This is the beauty of CPaaS – total flexibility in adopting and customizing communication to suit the strategy, goals, and brand personality of a business. Not only can you orchestrate conversations that leave a positive impression on your customers, but you can also use the best channel for any given scenario – to achieve maximum impact or optimize costs.

And don’t think personalization has been abandoned – it is now interwoven into every brand interaction because every conversation on every channel can be orchestrated for the individual. Crucially, any important data learned can be retained in the person’s profile so that it can be ‘remembered’ the next time they get in touch – even if it on a completely different channel or they are in a different part of the world.

That is another differentiator for CPaaS – being a cloud-based technology it transcends national borders and enables brands to offer the same type and quality of service to a globally mobile customer base. A bit like that McDonalds quarter pounder that looks and tastes exactly the same whether you are in Pittsburgh or Paris – although as the film Pulp Fiction informed us, it might have a slightly different name.

In many cases a company will adopt CPaaS incrementally. For example, they might partner with a provider to satisfy a single use case on a single channel – for example to send 2FA authentication messages by SMS. This might expand to other SMS use cases, and then as the business sees the cost and efficiency benefits of having a specialist handle the delivery and associated infrastructure, then they may look to extend this to other communication channels, and even adopt new ones over time.

In some ways this is a good approach as the communication solution can mature organically as the business adapts to the new paradigm. However, it can be wasteful with duplicated technology and supporting staff, and an inconsistent experience for end customers who might wonder how that 2FA message always gets delivered within 5 seconds by SMS no matter where in the world they are, but they can’t get reliably informed when their order has been delayed.

For some organizations a ‘big bang’ transition to CPaaS for all their communication requirements will be more effective and simpler.

No matter what a business’ journey to CPaaS adoption looks like, it is always a good idea to partner with a CPaaS provider that can offer both strategic advice and practical support with everything from client onboarding, to configuring failover channels, to dealing with local compliance legislation.  

Most importantly they enable you to be flexible in the channels that you adopt – let them do the hard work building and perfecting solutions with new technology, ChatGPT being a recent example, and then use those solutions yourself in the way that provides you and your own customers with the most value.

Not every business is the same and there may be some instances where the CPaaS model is not appropriate. Here are just a few examples of CPaaS challenges that you should be aware of.

Legislative restrictions: There may be some use cases where the cloud communication model is simply not an option. For example, some governmental departments or businesses that deal with sensitive data might stipulate that data cannot be processed in the cloud or moved out of a specific geographic area.

Legacy systems: Some organizations may be dependent on older technology or software that is not compatible with modern CPaaS solutions. This does not rule it out completely, but additional development would be required to build an intermediary layer between the legacy applications and the CPaaS APIs.

Organizations in this situation would be well advised to address this dependency as not only are they missing out on the opportunities that CPaaS provides, but they are also more exposed to new security threats and will find it increasingly difficult to find staff that are trained to develop and support the older technology.  

Niche requirements: CPaaS is ideal for businesses that use popular communication channels like SMS, email, voice, and messaging apps like WhatsApp. However, if your organization has very specialized communication requirements then CPaaS may not be suitable – for example, some industry sectors like mining, shipping, and law enforcement may rely heavily on satellite communication devices or even wireless two-way radios.

Luckily the majority of organizations would benefit from adopting a CPaaS model for their communication requirements. This applies to small businesses that might want to add one or two channels, for example a chatbot or video call option, right up to platform companies that provide the full range of communication services to their own customers.

Let’s have a closer look at some of these benefits and how to leverage them effectively.

When building a use-case for CPaaS you should focus on the practical advantages rather than the intangibles. Here are just a few areas where CPaaS can add obvious and immediate value.

By partnering with a CPaaS provider that covers multiple channels in a single platform you get instant access to all the communication methods that your customers use without having to develop them from scratch. This removes the start-up costs and the time and expense of building up the domain knowledge within your organization to manage and support them.

Your existing staff get to concentrate on your core business, and you get reduced and predictable costs for your communication use cases with no need to purchase any hardware or manage the infrastructure. What’s more, all resource allocation and failover configuration are taken care of.

With a traditional on-premise communication solution, the hardware and infrastructure has to be of sufficient specification to deal with the highest demand peaks of the year and will be underutilized for the rest of the time. For example, in the retail sector there is an extreme peak in messaging before Black Friday and the holiday season as businesses publicize their offers before the busiest shopping period.

With a CPaaS provider that can provide all the resources you need, you can simply request additional bandwidth to cater for the increased traffic and only pay for the resources that you actually use.  

Communication technology is constantly evolving, sometimes at a startling pace – just look at the impact that ChatGPT has had in just a few short months.   

By building a communication solution in-house you may get one that is exactly suited to your requirements at that point in time, but you lose the flexibility to adapt quickly when the market and the available technology changes. You may get locked into a specific way of doing things because of the restrictions imposed by your own tools.

With CPaaS you have the flexibility to adapt the tools and infrastructure to deliver on your evolving strategy – not the other way around.

Just as your strategy changes, so might your target markets. In an ever more globalized world, finding new overseas customers might be the key to growth.

The problem is that your current communication strategy may not be effective or even legal in some regions. Infobip’s messaging trends report clearly shows how there are major differences in the popularity of different communication channels in different regions. For example, WhatsApp might be the most widely used chat app globally, but it isn’t even available in China, and in the major SE Asian markets of Japan and Thailand LINE is the dominant player.

Even the usage of specific channels will differ, for example the rules for SMS communication may be quite different, even between countries in the same region.  

Partnering with a CPaaS provider that has global presence and infrastructure can help you easily adapt your communication strategy for new markets and operate successfully without breaking any local compliance rules.

Using multiple channels to communicate with customers and prospects involves moving and updating  customer data, some of which may be sensitive or subject to data protection legislation like GDPR. By creating your own communication solution inhouse you increase the risk of data being compromised or breaking compliance rules in certain countries. With CPaaS, data can be stored in a single customer data platform which can be accessed via the APIs of the messaging applications.

This not only increases data security by reducing the movement of data and the number of places that it is stored, but with a ‘single source of truth’ it enables businesses to provide a consistent experience for customers, which reduces their exposure to fraud attacks like phishing and smishing.  

The goal of business communication is to improve the experience of customers by providing information in an accurate, timely, and engaging way. New technology can support this objective and with CPaaS you can get access to it far quicker. Whether you want to start using conversational tactics in your marketing and customer service or boost your customer service with chatbots or face-to-face video calls. All can be achieved far more quickly by accessing these channels via a CPaaS platform.

Adding a new communication channel is not like buying a plug-and-play device off the shelf. You can’t always just switch it on and start reaping the rewards straight away. Every channel has its nuances, and there will be a learning curve before the benefits are felt.

CPaaS can significantly accelerate this process as the provider will already have the expertise and partner networks that you can tap into. Take email for example – there is an entire science around ensuring maximum delivery rates for messages. You have to build the reputation of your sending IP and domain by slowly building the volume of messages that you send without increasing negative indicators like spam complaints. A reliable CPaaS provider will have pre-warmed sending IPs that you can use and will be able to provide the guidance you need to give your messages the best chance of being delivered.  

In the world of SMS – a high quality CPaaS provider will have all the global network connections required to ensure that SMS is delivered reliably and cost-effectively and without using grey routes, which might harm your business reputation.  

In addition to the formal support that they provide, established CPaaS providers will have networks of developers who have experience integrating with their APIs and will be willing to share best practice and advice with their peers in your organization.

The CPaaS market is in a phase of ‘hyper growth’ as Forbes put it, but it is also evolving rapidly. There are a number of factors driving this trend, some of which we have alluded to already.

More channels: Companies are adding more and more channels to their communication offering – considering the individual preferences of consumers and the popularity of different channels in specific regions. CPaaS supports this by making it far easier to add new communication channels and to share data between channels seamlessly and securely.

Increased role of AI: Chatbots have dramatically increased in sophistication in recent years and with the advent of drag and drop chatbot builders, anyone can create one without needing to be a developer. Chatbots designed for a specific purpose take the strain off human staff and can perform an ever-larger proportion of business functions. Just as important is the increased levels of acceptance and trust that consumers have in chatbots. People will often seek out a chatbot for their first interaction with a company, knowing that they can get the right answer right away, and that their personal information will be safe and won’t result in a barrage of spam.

Conversational everything: The growth of the chatbot market and the increased sophistication and popularity of chat apps means that brands can now do conversational marketing and provide a conversational customer experience at scale. More and more use cases that rely on the dynamic two-way exchange of information can now be facilitated using CPaaS. The growth of video calls and the ability to embed video into web chats is also driving this trend.

More channels, more conversations, and a greater role for AI sounds like a recipe for confusion and data overload.

But what it actually means is more opportunity.

With CPaaS, all of these elements can be supported by a single customer data platform so that every channel has instant access to the latest state of every customer record and the customer record can be continually enriched after every interaction.

What’s more, analyzing past and present activity across multiple channels provides unique insights and intelligence that can help businesses improve their marketing and sales strategies, provide better customer experiences for more people, and improve ROI.

CPaaS is not a silver bullet, but with the right strategy in place and the right CPaaS partner, it can help you benefit from the rapidly evolving communication landscape and help you provide a consistent and joined-up experience for your customers.