Why you should consider UCaaS for your business communication now

Are you considering a move to UCaaS? If so, you are not alone. According to IDC in December of last year (2020) the UC market grew over 46% YoY and UCaaS specifically grew over 23%. Over the next five years it is estimated that virtually all UC deployments will be cloud based.

In 2020, covid made many organizations rethink how they collaborate, work remotely & leverage digital technologies to serve their customers. With that forced shift in thinking, Unified Communications & Collaboration have been front and center for all of us. So what is the scoop, why are organizations moving away from their traditional communications technologies and towards this UCaaS stuff?

When it comes to serving your internal and external customers, traditional PBX systems have been inefficient, expensive, unreliable and typically deliver a less than inspiring customer experience. They are just old. At the rate of change in technology today, this platform is outdated and falling further behind every day as the new hosted cloud based solutions deliver new features at a click of a button in the new digital economy.

Key Benefits of moving to a cloud based UCaaS provider:

Change is difficult for most every organization and there needs to be a compelling reason to initiate that pain beyond providing services that are just good enough. With UCaaS this is no different. Thanks to covid, we are all now used to the video conference call and this increased digital collaboration is here to stay.

Increased Business Productivity

According to a survey run by IDG, 82% of respondents noted a desire of increased business productivity as their top five driver for implementing UCaaS of which a third cited as their #1 driver.

UCaaS is one of those IT projects that is going to impact every user in the organization from C-Suite down to the most recent intern hire. The tool that we leverage to communicate with one another is key for supporting collaboration in the business and externally with customers. Any negative experience will be felt so it is critical to find a provider that can help deliver on the enterprise services needed to help foster improved business productivity.

This technology allows users to communicate via voice, video and chat regardless of if they are in the office, working from home or at a coffee shop. The seamless integration delivers regardless of how your team likes to engage and supports the release of new features as they become available. For administrators, a dashboard of tools and analytics are just one of the many ways UCaaS helps reduce the amount of time and resources needed to support communication technologies in the organization.

Predictable Cost Models with Reduced Cost

The legacy model of buying what you think you may need for 3-5 years is going away as more services move to cloud and SaaS offerings. With that comes greater visibility into a predictable cost model with gains in efficiency. It is not necessary for technology teams to over buy hoping that they will meet the needs of next year. With the ability to turn the dial, administrator can provide what they need for today and adjust as the business grows. The cost to support these technologies is far less as well, no longer needing to hire highly skilled network technicians to keep a complex communications platform operating in your data center. Those staff members can now be reallocated to business critical projects to help drive additional innovation and growth as opposed to keeping the lights on.

Paying for what you need in a per knowledge worker model is much easier to understand and plan for. It’s simple and shouldn’t be as complicated as it has been. UCaaS really does a great job to provide greater visibility for forecasting the needs of the business and supporting any organic or inorganic growth which may occur in the future.

Streamlined Operations & Administration

Look at a typical company’s communication environment. Often times you can find a variety of vendors, hardware, software and service partners patched together to meet your needs. As business requirements or compliance changes, so does that mousetrap. With UCaaS, there is no longer a need to stack several vendor and solutions together. Depending on your specific requirements, there is an ability to partner with the proper supplier for every feature on a single platform supporting all of your omni-channel needs.

This single UCaaS platform hosted in the cloud drives down resource waste, integration requirements, expensive support and maintenance. IT admins appreciate the ability as does the business to leverage intuitive dashboards and user interfaces to make updates to features, dive into analytics and update your customer experience. What would have taken hours of scripting can now be accomplished with simple drag and drop admin interfaces.

Flexibility & Scalability

As with most all cloud solutions, native to the environment is greater flexibility and scalability. UCaaS is no different. Your business is constantly changing and your digital systems should be able to too. Not only can many legacy systems not support the features offered in UCaaS platforms but they also cannot adapt with the business. These static systems are being replaced with offerings that can meet the ever-changing digital needs of their clients.

UCaaS gives their customers the ability to design their collaboration environment however they would like for today while also offering the luxury to change those as the business changes. Whether you deploy all of the features on day one or just roll out the capability to a small team, UCaaS is flexible to fit your needs and budget.

Reliability & Security

We can’t get away with talking about a new technology without hitting on the security topic. UCaaS providers are no different than other cloud or SaaS based offerings that can meet your compliance and regulatory needs. Depending on your specific industry and needs, providers have built offerings to support regulations like HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR and others.

Reliability is also a key consideration for cloud based platforms. Many of the enterprise providers today work extremely hard to meet an uptime SLA or nearly 100%. With the expectation that you should be able to collaborate with others 24×7, a well architected platform with business continuity and disaster recovery built in is a requirement. Based on a number of industry reports, reliability was the top consideration when making a UCaaS purchase.

New Technology

Moving to a UCaaS solution will not only enable your users to leverage a great technology but that solution will evolve over time like your business. New feature enhancements and expanded capabilities are offered out to the marketplace on an on-going basis and as a customer, you can leverage those updates as they are released. No longer do you need to buy another tech stack or wait 3 more years until your refresh hits before delivering valuable tools to the business. This customer experience is expected when moving to a UCaaS offering and another excellent value add for customers choosing to make the move.

Tackling the Transition

So by now, maybe you are interested in exploring further how you can help lead your organization as they tackle the transition to UCaaS. Before jumping in with both feet, finding a partner to help navigate the ecosystem will greatly improve your time to value. Aligned Technology Group serves as a partner to our clients as they are making the decision to move to a UCaaS provider. There are dozens of providers and each are unique in what the offer and the segments which they best support. In order to help our clients reduce the team researching countless providers, our team of industry experts to guide you through the ecosystem and ensure each individual requirement of your business is met. Please reach out to speak further about how we can support your needs as you go on this journey.