6 cloud-based unified communications benefits for enterprise business

The 6 key UCaaS benefits

All businesses can benefit from cloud-based unified communications, regardless of their industry. Here are six main reasons why.

Better collaboration

Removing communication barriers allows for work to get done better, faster, while building a sense of teamwork and delivering more engaging customer experiences.

With cloud-based unified communications, employees can use all their communication tools, whether they’re at work or at home. Teams can collaborate anywhere, at any time, with secure videoconferencing and file sharing.

Further, UCaaS lets employees switch from one communication channel to another seamlessly on any device—including desk phones, laptops and mobile phones—without sacrificing time or functionality.

Greater flexibility

For enterprises

Unlike premises-based UC, UCaaS is more customizable, depending on the specific demands of the business.

Senior leadership and IT can decide which communication services the organization needs, and which common apps they can use across departments—like G-Suite, Microsoft Office 365, Slack and others.

As the organization’s needs change, applications can be added, scaled up (or down), updated or upgraded quickly by the service provider, without the need for manual provisioning.

UCaaS also comes with a centralized management portal, making it easier for IT to analyze and adjust workflows to improve performance.

For employees

Employees want options for how and when they communicate.³ UCaaS enables workers to switch from SMS, to audio and video conferencing, to screen and document sharing seamlessly.

With the combined business functions available in UCaaS, they can maintain productive, engaged relationships regardless of where they work.

UCaaS also makes it easier for employees to engage with customers using their preferred method, enabling a better customer experience.

Improved productivity

With UCaaS, employees can spend less time shifting between applications and more time doing their best work.

UCaaS provides a major boost in productivity. In fact, 75% of UCaaS users report heightened productivity levels, especially when UCaaS is paired with SD-WAN for maximum availability.

More visibility and control for IT

In a premises-based UC solution, the lack of integration among communication tools can easily lead to management complexity, increased maintenance workloads and poor visibility into system performance.

UCaaS comes with a centralized portal that integrates all management and reporting functions.

IT gets 360-degree visibility into all system activity, allowing them to identify usage trends and respond proactively to network issues—as well as perform ongoing maintenance, upgrades and provisioning from a single interface.

The portal’s monitoring and reporting functions allow IT to plan and pivot for future software needs, as well as provision new users and services as they become available.

Optimized spend

UCaaS enables advanced functionality without relying on expensive infrastructure, leading to lower up-front costs and savings on capital expenditures (CAPEX).

As UC becomes more necessary to operate and grow a business, corporate IT teams face tremendous pressure to deploy and manage a wider set of communication technologies—requiring costly hardware and software updates.

The direct cost of IT staff focused on managing in prem UC/collaboration/telephony solutions instead of focusing on strategic initiatives to create value for the company is significant.

Not to mention the talent pool of IT pros is increasingly under strain, making the hiring and retention of these employees a priority. If getting and retaining these valuable workers is such a challenge, why spend that resource on managing solutions that can be more easily managed by your MSP?

As a result, enterprises find it more cost-effective to migrate to UCaaS from a qualified managed services provider.

The provider handles all software and service updates, enabling the organization to save on CAPEX, along with the specialized expertise and best practices needed to install and manage it successfully.

The as-a-service model gives IT the ability to scale users and services up or down depending on what the company requires, helping them avoid unnecessary spending on unused software licenses.

As an added bonus, reducing on-premises hardware also reduces energy costs—making cloud-based communications not only cheaper, but also more environmentally sound.

Increased security

In hub-and-spoke networks, security architecture is based on closed network models that serve stationary endpoints from data centers. With the rise of remote work, security must now extend beyond the data center to protect endpoints everywhere.

Security risks increase dramatically when remote workers log on from home or public WiFi hotspots.

UCaaS presents an opportunity to tighten up on network security and ensure that employees can access cloud-based apps without posing significant risks to the enterprise.

Rather than depending on manual security updates tied to specific hardware devices, the organization can rely on their UCaaS managed services provider to help mitigate risk and ensure business continuity with security compliance, industry expertise and dedicated security resources.