Don't Just Manage Communications, Focus on Collaboration
October 17, 2016
By Susan J. Campbell
TMCnet Contributing Editor
The benefit of having all employees in one location is that you can easily communicate with anyone on the team by simply walking to his or her desk and pulling up a chair. The reality in today’s environment, however, is that we want to hire the best candidates for the job and they may not always live and work in the same city or state. When we want to build the best team, we often have to rely on technology to support our collaboration, regardless of location.
That’s why so many companies are considering the benefits associated with unified communications as a service (UCaaS). Regardless of location, knowledgeable workers rely on communications tools to help them stay connected. Information is shared through smartphones, instant messaging, cloud apps and more. Call accounting solutions help keep track of the costs to the organization, but the use of UCaaS can help streamline the activity for even greater benefit.
As highlighted in a recent Huffington Post (News - Alert) piece, UCaaS and other online collaborative services are used to relay messages clearly and move discussions along without quality issues. Plus, it helps get around the challenges normally associated with upgrading today’s communications network. Too many companies feel married to their legacy systems, making a rip-and-replace strategy out of reach. Instead, moving to a cloud-based solution eliminates upfront expenses, while making communications tools available nearly instantly.
At the same time, UCaaS also reduces the total operating costs as shared data centers deliver PBX (News - Alert) services more efficiently compared with the onsite infrastructure. You don’t bear the burden of locating rack space, paying the energy bills or configuring and managing your connections. You can also plan for scalable provisioning in that you can start small and move your resources as needed according to growth or the end of specific projects.
There’s also the benefit of inherent enhanced security. Regardless of the resources you have available, they still can’t match those that the UCaaS provider can put in place. They not only offer cloud hosting, they also have the backup and redundancy necessary to ensure you don’t go offline in the event of an interruption. They also bear the responsibility of keeping security provisions tight and up to date as they aren’t just preserving your information, but that of all of their customers.
There’s considerable benefit to the pay-as-you-go model, especially in an age where we can scale quickly according to need. Customers now expect this kind of flexibility, so why not incorporate the tools necessary to make it happen? You already have call accounting in place to help keep a handle on costs. It’s now time to take it to the next level to get more value out of your opportunity to collaborate.
Edited by Alicia Young