12 July 2019
Richard Buxton, head of collaboration at Node4
How UCaaS is becoming the key driver for agile businesses around the world
The business landscape is constantly being shaped and moulded by new technologies and services.
It’s probably safe to say that the ‘9 to 5’, desk-and-telephone-bound office of years gone by has all but disappeared, replaced by more flexible working hours, shared information and remote working practices.
The latter has largely been driven by the advent of cloud technology, which delivers solutions and services that are accessible, efficient and price competitive.
A good example of this is Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), which delivers unified communications (UC) such as voice, messaging, video conferencing, file sharing and collaboration via a cloud model from a single application or platform, enabling people to interact quickly in multiple ways.
The fact that UCaaS facilitates collaboration in this way, allowing users to be more productive and efficient when they’re not in the office, means it automatically supports a more agile business approach.
So much so that Gartner predicts there will be a steady increase in Unified Communications spending, and the industry has seen that the migration from on-premises UC solutions to a cloud first model, i.e. UCaaS, is well underway.
For businesses that depend on UC and are keen to adopt an agile business way of working, UCaaS may well be the answer.
Driving collaboration and productivity
UCaaS solutions are an extremely efficient way to encourage collaboration and support employee productivity.
They’re light on capital expenditure, and have the flexibility and scalability to add or remove users as required.
Choosing a hosted UCaaS solution means that you gain access to the latest functionality, have to deal with less internal business admin, have a guaranteed service level agreement (SLA), and a level of expertise offered that can be hard to achieve internally, particularly for smaller businesses.
Added benefits include being able to:
• Connect any device and collaborate across one service
• Allow employees to securely file share and connect easily, wherever they are
• Identify call capacity trends, and plan and allocate resources efficiently
• Control cost spikes, detect inefficiencies and manage calls better
• Report and analyse on call data, across multiple departments and branches
• Ensure compliance with extended storage needs
With so many UCaaS providers and solutions available though, and with issues such as cloud integration, security, compliance and support to consider, how do you start comparing UCaaS providers and decide which solutions are worth the investment?
What to consider when comparing UCaaS providers
When it comes to comparing UCaaS providers, start with what you know best – your business.
Establish targets and expectations that are practical and achievable in the short, medium, and longer terms.
It might seem obvious, but planning against targets will help you to accurately and consistently measure the impact of your strategy, and will allow you to look for third party solutions that align with your business’ needs and budget.
Keep these key considerations in mind:
1. A list of UCaaS applications offered. What are your UCaaS functionality requirements? Does the provider meet or exceed these with its offering?
2. The cost to subscribe. Cost will always be a key factor in any outsourcing decision-making. Does the provider only offer the required functionality at a premium cost? Whereabouts do you choose to compromise?
3. SLA terms. When you’re relying on a third-party provider to deliver business-critical functionality, solid SLAs are essential to ensure that uptime and performance meet your business’ requirements.
4. Network access requirements. How much access to your network does the provider need in order to implement and support its UCaaS solution? How does this impact on your business’ security and compliance posture?
5. Track record and evidence of happy customers. What do the provider’s existing customers say about the services they receive? Are they satisfied with their UCaaS solutions, and more broadly working and communicating on a regular basis with the provider itself?
Supporting a connected and agile workforce Unified Communications has come a long way since the first IP-based networks were built more than 20 years ago - in the UK alone around two million businesses have adopted either hosted voice or UC, and it’s predicted that by 2020, 50% of businesses will have taken on hosted solutions.
UC has ushered in the era of the ‘connected employee’, bringing a more agile, flesxible, working culture to many businesses.
Investing in the right UCaaS solution will help ensure that your business embraces and drives this ‘new normal’ into the next generation of UC and collaboration, for the benefit of both your employees and business bottom line.
