Pew research showed that up to 70% of office workers started working from home due to the pandemic. This caused major issues with internal communications and everyday operations.
Businesses scrambled to figure out remote work and adapt infrastructure to communicate internally and externally. However, the fight is not over. Even though the world bank estimates that the global economy is recovering, there’s still a long road ahead.
One of the biggest things that helped businesses ride the wave was a good, existing communication strategy. Most of the global workforce is still pushing to work from home, and companies need to adapt.
Keep reading to see how you can use strategic sourcing and take advantage of UCaaS solutions for your business.
UCaaS in a Nutshell
UCaaS stands for “Unified Communications as a Service.” This simply means taking all the various communication tools and methods that organizations use and blending them into one single platform.
The new platform incorporates everything from mobility management, instant messaging, unified messaging, and Cloud-Hosted PBX phone systems.
Gartner reports that more than 90% of workers are expected to continue working from home. This means that UCaaS has become even more important in the struggle to stay relevant.
For a deeper dive into UCaaS and what it means for your business, check out our companion blog piece that goes into considerable depth.
What Are My Options?
When we talk about UCaaS, we’re really talking about an integrated mesh of communication tools. Hosted in the cloud, UCaaS covers a whole multitude of options. Your ideal solution will depend largely on a couple of factors such as:
- Size of your organization
- What your organization does
- Budget
- Size of your IT Department
Depending on your values for the four factors we’ve listed, you may need anything ranging from a full UCaaS suite of products or simply use the components that make sense for your organization.
Adopting any or all of the cloud based technologies is likely to boost your workforce’s productivity and go a long way towards improving your organization’s overall communications and providing you with enhanced security.
What UCaaS Solutions Does My Business Currently Use?
It should be fairly simple to evaluate your business’s current solutions. You can check off a box for each of the following items to find out whether you are already using a UCaaS solution:
- Are all telecom services hosted centrally in the cloud?
- Is my PBX cloud based?
- Do all my communication tools work together seamlessly?
If you answered “no” to any of those questions, you’re not yet using a full UCaaS system. You might already be using some elements of the technology, but you should consider moving towards a fully integrated solution.
What Products/Services Does My Business Need?
Again, this will depend largely on your business’s digital footprint and which factors are important to you. Of course, a fully managed system will be the easiest to manage and work with. It will also provide you with all the benefits of UCaaS, while a partial system will not.
As UCaaS incorporates so many services in one package, you may require any of the following:
- Voice Integration
- Video Conferencing
- Internal and External Messaging
- Collaboration Tools
Knowing which services will enhance your business model will help when you look for a provider. Let’s take a closer look at some of the services that typically form part of Unified offerings.
Voice Integration
Voice over IP is now an essential communication method in use by most businesses. Due to the rise of remote working, and the general proliferation of VoIP use, around 3 billion people are expected to use VoIP in 2021.
Because UCaaS integrates your communication systems, your voice requirements are folded into the offering. This means a reduction in costs, an increase in quality, and access for remote workers. In addition, reductions can be expected in POTs Lines, Long distance, and PBX fees as they move to the cloud.
Video Conferencing
Video Conferencing has risen at almost the same pace as VoIP across the world. It’s far more common now for companies to rely on platforms like Zoom or Skype.
Integrating your video conferencing requirements using one single solution allows you to keep control of IT policies, security, and privacy. Because UCaaS functions as an extension of your corporate network, all the usual corporate rules apply.
Internal and External Messaging
Traditionally, companies have relied on a mix of internal and external messaging. This has lead to some unfortunate security lapses, and organizations have had to tighten up rules quickly.
Combining your messaging platforms into one ensures the same benefits as video conferencing and voice integration – enhanced security. Once you are using one single solution, applying specific corporate policies becomes simple.
Collaboration Tools
In the past few years, collaboration tools have seen a massive upsurge in adoption. Whether companies are large or small, IT Departments have begun to roll out tools that allow employees to work together.
With the rise in remote work, this has become a more challenging arena. It became difficult to oversee access to shared resources, as well as restrict access to potentially sensitive documents.
Outsourcing Your Technology Management
If one of your aims is saving money and keeping up with current trends, you should consider outsourcing. Not only does this mean that you will spend less direct capital investment on hardware and software solutions, but it also means you can take advantage of strategic sourcing services.
Strategic Sourcing
The concept of strategic sourcing isn’t a new one. Organizations need to know that the services they’re obtaining come from a reliable source and that they are being priced correctly.
Strategic sourcing simply formalizes and outsources this concept by using benchmarking techniques. Modeling the requirements, costs, and deliveries of specific suppliers and solutions makes decisions far easier.
Your telecom expenses fall into a few categories. All of these categories can be benchmarked and evaluated to save you money and get better service:
- Network services such as MPLS, WAN, IP provisioning
- Cloud Services such as UCaaS, CCaaS, and SaaS
- Wireless Services
- Colocations, offsites storage, and DR services
Reducing the costs of your core network services is a worthwhile exercise in itself. Strategic sourcing can help reduce both capital and operational expenditure.
Building a Smarter Infrastructure Plan
Although every organization is unique and has unique challenges, there are certain constants. These include all the services covered by UCaaS.
Combining a good, solid UCaaS solution and strategic sourcing should help you reduce the costs associated with your telecom services.