Are you using UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) in your business?
Or thinking of migrating to UCaaS in the future?
More and more businesses today are using UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) to make the switch to a fully remote or hybrid workforce smoother. To make the switch effectively, without compromising efficiency, your company’s employees need to be able to connect easily and securely with customers and one another from any location on any device. UCaaS allows your organization to be agile and adaptable, enabling reliable communication all day every day. Here are 5 key benefits of moving your business onto a unified communications platform.
1. Operational Agility
We have all learned the importance of being flexible, dependable, and adaptable in the face of unforeseen events over the last 18 months. We have also realized the many issues with our current communication technologies that are simply not built for remote working.
With UCaaS, your communication is safe and secure in the cloud. This cloud communication solution enables your colleagues to collaborate and communicate easily by combining audio, video, document sharing, virtual meetings, and chat into a single platform. Your team is completely supported whether they are in the boardroom, home office (or even the kitchen), on a mobile device, or bouncing between a combination of all three. Whether they are a parent dealing with a toddler’s tantrum or sitting in a corner office, it’s a simple and effective solution.
Managing all your communication with a UCaaS platform using a single, easy-to-use portal, makes it simple to add, remove, and manage users. In 2020, the importance of this kind of agility was demonstrated when companies across many industries had to suddenly reduce their employment due to a slowing economy. Now, as the economy improves, many companies are expanding and many employees are quitting (the so-called ‘Great Resignation’), making it even more important to quickly onboard new employees as the pace of life once again speeds up. You can edit features, adjust licenses, manage permissions, construct call flows, and much more through the centralised portal, ensuring that each team has the resources they need to accomplish their jobs well.
2. Reliability & Security
Communication is the backbone of every organisation, whether they realise it or not and any interruption has ramifications on productivity. Regardless of how successfully your IT team is managing your current network, I’m sure you have experienced some form of downtime, interruption, or other malfunction that made it difficult for your employees to interact and complete their tasks. It makes no difference if it was a simple network outage or a storm. The SLAs inherent to UCaaS allow you to establish a communications platform that provides the required network redundancies to assure business continuity, ensuring your employees and customers remain connected with nearly 100% uptime.
Another key point to consider is security. When your current communications network fails to meet the level of connectivity and quality that users expect, they frequently turn to alternate channels of communication that are beyond your IT team’s control and visibility. This is a clear security problem, whether you are dealing with sensitive data or not, that can have far-reaching, long-term consequences.
It’s also important to note that outdated systems are frequently incapable of keeping firms compliant with a whole host of requirements relevant to your sector or business case, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS. Regulatory violations can result in substantial fines and reputational damage, both of which can have a considerable fiscal impact.
3. Better Customer Experience.
In an age where your customers are contacting your company via more channels than ever, providing a true omnichannel customer experience has become a crucial goal for many business leaders. UCaaS, and its big brother CCaaS (Contact Centre as a Service), is a vital component needed to accomplish this as it enhances team collaboration and eliminates communication silos, allowing businesses to improve the speed and efficiency of issue resolution by ensuring a seamless transition and consistent experience from one channel to the next.
A UCaaS platform also provides organizations with tools like custom dashboards and real-time analytics reporting so they can determine where customer satisfaction can be improved. By integrating the platform into their CRM, businesses can move to a customer-centric approach, instead of a ticket-centric approach — using the data from every customer interaction across all channels to build deeper, more meaningful customer connections, boost revenue streams, and improve operational performance.
4. Improved Efficiency.
With unified communications, your employees no longer have to juggle tons of applications throughout the workday. This prevents workers from losing focus every time they have to switch apps, while also saving time by making everyday tasks like sending an email or sharing a file more efficient.
UCaaS platforms also have application programming interfaces (APIs) that support integration with other key business applications such as CRM, supply chain management, workflow management and compliance systems. Business practices become even more streamlined, everything your employees need can be found all in one place. Plus, now that mobile devices have desk-phone features including extension dialling, conference calls, access to the company directory, and hold and call transfer, users can log in from anywhere. Finally, tasks don’t have to wait for someone to return to the office.
5. Cost-Effectiveness.
While it is clear that the benefits outlined above lead to substantial financial benefits, it’s not always easy to quantify them. This can make it more difficult to convince others to implement the platform. There are, however, several ways that UCaaS allows you to show hard savings to stakeholders e.g., the lower initial costs. Since UCaaS is a cloud-based platform, you just incorporate a network of IP phones into your pre-existing internet connection, download an app onto your current computers and mobile devices, and you’re good to go. No need for expensive hardware.
As advanced features are already built-in, there’s no need to pay for costly add-ons. All the exciting features that make modern communication systems so revolutionary are included in your subscription. Your communications are futureproofed as all the technology is handled and kept updated by the UCaaS provider. In fact, you no longer need an entire IT team to maintain your system as any assistance or changes you needed are only a click away.
Finally, paying a single subscription price for all your local and long-distance calling means that budgeting is predictable and often lower than accumulated call fees. Plus, months of remote working means we’ve become comfortable with the convenience of online meetings. There are now many alternatives to business travel, reducing travel costs and encouraging online communication.
Conclusion.
Remote working is here to stay in one form or another so effective, efficient communication is more important now than ever before. UCaaS is the best way to achieve this, providing a secure, simple platform that brings all your communication methods into one place for easy access. The benefits are clear, UCaaS maximises productivity all while minimising costs. Plus, with all the necessary features built-in, your system is future proofed, ready for the rest of the 21st century.
Are you using UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) in your business?
Or thinking of migrating to UCaaS in the future?
More and more businesses today are using UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) to make the switch to a fully remote or hybrid workforce smoother. To make the switch effectively, without compromising efficiency, your company’s employees need to be able to connect easily and securely with customers and one another from any location on any device. UCaaS allows your organization to be agile and adaptable, enabling reliable communication all day every day. Here are 5 key benefits of moving your business onto a unified communications platform.
1. Operational Agility
We have all learned the importance of being flexible, dependable, and adaptable in the face of unforeseen events over the last 18 months. We have also realized the many issues with our current communication technologies that are simply not built for remote working.
With UCaaS, your communication is safe and secure in the cloud. This cloud communication solution enables your colleagues to collaborate and communicate easily by combining audio, video, document sharing, virtual meetings, and chat into a single platform. Your team is completely supported whether they are in the boardroom, home office (or even the kitchen), on a mobile device, or bouncing between a combination of all three. Whether they are a parent dealing with a toddler’s tantrum or sitting in a corner office, it’s a simple and effective solution.
Managing all your communication with a UCaaS platform using a single, easy-to-use portal, makes it simple to add, remove, and manage users. In 2020, the importance of this kind of agility was demonstrated when companies across many industries had to suddenly reduce their employment due to a slowing economy. Now, as the economy improves, many companies are expanding and many employees are quitting (the so-called ‘Great Resignation’), making it even more important to quickly onboard new employees as the pace of life once again speeds up. You can edit features, adjust licenses, manage permissions, construct call flows, and much more through the centralised portal, ensuring that each team has the resources they need to accomplish their jobs well.
2. Reliability & Security
Communication is the backbone of every organisation, whether they realise it or not and any interruption has ramifications on productivity. Regardless of how successfully your IT team is managing your current network, I’m sure you have experienced some form of downtime, interruption, or other malfunction that made it difficult for your employees to interact and complete their tasks. It makes no difference if it was a simple network outage or a storm. The SLAs inherent to UCaaS allow you to establish a communications platform that provides the required network redundancies to assure business continuity, ensuring your employees and customers remain connected with nearly 100% uptime.
Another key point to consider is security. When your current communications network fails to meet the level of connectivity and quality that users expect, they frequently turn to alternate channels of communication that are beyond your IT team’s control and visibility. This is a clear security problem, whether you are dealing with sensitive data or not, that can have far-reaching, long-term consequences.
It’s also important to note that outdated systems are frequently incapable of keeping firms compliant with a whole host of requirements relevant to your sector or business case, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS. Regulatory violations can result in substantial fines and reputational damage, both of which can have a considerable fiscal impact.
3. Better Customer Experience.
In an age where your customers are contacting your company via more channels than ever, providing a true omnichannel customer experience has become a crucial goal for many business leaders. UCaaS, and its big brother CCaaS (Contact Centre as a Service), is a vital component needed to accomplish this as it enhances team collaboration and eliminates communication silos, allowing businesses to improve the speed and efficiency of issue resolution by ensuring a seamless transition and consistent experience from one channel to the next.
A UCaaS platform also provides organizations with tools like custom dashboards and real-time analytics reporting so they can determine where customer satisfaction can be improved. By integrating the platform into their CRM, businesses can move to a customer-centric approach, instead of a ticket-centric approach — using the data from every customer interaction across all channels to build deeper, more meaningful customer connections, boost revenue streams, and improve operational performance.
4. Improved Efficiency.
With unified communications, your employees no longer have to juggle tons of applications throughout the workday. This prevents workers from losing focus every time they have to switch apps, while also saving time by making everyday tasks like sending an email or sharing a file more efficient.
UCaaS platforms also have application programming interfaces (APIs) that support integration with other key business applications such as CRM, supply chain management, workflow management and compliance systems. Business practices become even more streamlined, everything your employees need can be found all in one place. Plus, now that mobile devices have desk-phone features including extension dialling, conference calls, access to the company directory, and hold and call transfer, users can log in from anywhere. Finally, tasks don’t have to wait for someone to return to the office.
5. Cost-Effectiveness.
While it is clear that the benefits outlined above lead to substantial financial benefits, it’s not always easy to quantify them. This can make it more difficult to convince others to implement the platform. There are, however, several ways that UCaaS allows you to show hard savings to stakeholders e.g., the lower initial costs. Since UCaaS is a cloud-based platform, you just incorporate a network of IP phones into your pre-existing internet connection, download an app onto your current computers and mobile devices, and you’re good to go. No need for expensive hardware.
As advanced features are already built-in, there’s no need to pay for costly add-ons. All the exciting features that make modern communication systems so revolutionary are included in your subscription. Your communications are futureproofed as all the technology is handled and kept updated by the UCaaS provider. In fact, you no longer need an entire IT team to maintain your system as any assistance or changes you needed are only a click away.
Finally, paying a single subscription price for all your local and long-distance calling means that budgeting is predictable and often lower than accumulated call fees. Plus, months of remote working means we’ve become comfortable with the convenience of online meetings. There are now many alternatives to business travel, reducing travel costs and encouraging online communication.
Conclusion.
Remote working is here to stay in one form or another so effective, efficient communication is more important now than ever before. UCaaS is the best way to achieve this, providing a secure, simple platform that brings all your communication methods into one place for easy access. The benefits are clear, UCaaS maximises productivity all while minimising costs. Plus, with all the necessary features built-in, your system is future proofed, ready for the rest of the 21st century.