Unified communications as a service (UCaaS) brings all your communications tools together under one umbrella. This business case for UCaaS is clear. It simplifies communications and, as a cloud solution, enables easier scaling, greater flexibility, and advanced security.
Businesses that adopt UCaaS get all of these benefits for less than you would normally pay for disparate systems and on-premises business phone services. No wonder the market for UCaaS nearly reached $20 billion in 2020 and has an impressive predicted annual growth rate of 14.5 percent for the next decade.
Agile and ultra-practical, UCaaS solves a lot of the business communication challenges organizations face today. Let’s dive into some of the key ways cloud-based unified communications supports business goals.
The UCaaS Business Case
The reality is, the communications tools your company relies on will impact business success. From better relationships with customers to streamlined cloud transformation, with the right technology, you and your teams have everything you need to thrive.
Business Goal #1: Improve Customer Experience
Offering tangible benefits and differentiating businesses, customer experience (CX) continues to be a priority as we move into 2022. According to research conducted by PwC, people are willing to pay up to a 16 percent premium for products and services that come with exceptional CX.
At the same time, poor experiences are driving customers away. In the U.S., 17 percent will walk away after just one bad experience and nearly 60 percent will abandon a brand after several, even if they like the products.
UCaaS empowers users to offer better experiences because they can communicate with customers in real-time. With remote audio, video, and chat capabilities, employees can answer questions and resolve issues from anywhere.
You can also integrate your UCaaS solution with your customer relationship management platform and other customer service and sales management tools, bringing together all the data you need to better serve your customers.
As a result, customers know they can always reach out for help and their concerns are addressed quickly. This can build customer loyalty and reduce churn, which helps your business increase revenue.
Business Goal #2: Enable a Flexible Work Environment
Since the start of the pandemic, a lot of businesses have been putting more focus on work flexibility. For most of 2020, a huge chunk of the workforce worked remotely. Now, both employers and employees have seen the benefits of maintaining a remote or hybrid work model.
One survey found that, if forced to choose between a $30K raise and a permanent remote work option, 64 percent would choose remote work. Clearly, employees value the ability to decide where they work from, which means employers that implement a hybrid work model are in a better position to retain talent. In addition to this business benefit, remote workers tend to be just as if not more productive than they are in the office.
The challenge has been: how can you quickly transform into a hybrid company? How will you keep work going when employees are located in different places?
UCaaS makes remote communications possible – and efficient. Whether users are at home, at the office, or anywhere else, they can participate in video meetings, securely share files, receive business calls, respond to chat conversations, and more.
Even better, users can access all the tools they need from one log-in, helping to streamline communications and messaging. Ultimately, with unified communications, you can be a work-from-wherever organization that’s flexible, employee-focused, and ready to adapt.
Business Goal #3 – Implement a Cloud Transformation
Most companies today are using some type of cloud technology. However, moving fully to the cloud is another thing.
Despite the benefits of relying on cloud technology, only about half of corporate data is stored in the cloud today.
In order to achieve all the business benefits – reduced IT costs, increased operational efficiency, and better support and access for a distributed workforce – organizations need to migrate their data and systems to the cloud. This can be difficult and expensive if you don’t have the IT resources to handle it, or a strategy in place to ensure you’re making wise cloud transformation decisions.
With UCaaS, you can move your communications systems to the cloud without the hassle. To achieve this, work with a cloud provider that helps you with onboarding and migration. A good provider will create a custom migration plan that moves your existing users and data into the cloud without interrupting your business.
They’ll also be available with 24/7 support so you always have access to well-trained IT experts when questions arise. This gives even small companies access to advanced technology without having to invest a huge amount of resources into transformation.
In fact, switching to cloud phones and unified communications can result in cost savings. Companies that eliminate excess IT expenditures when they switch to a unified solution can save 25 percent on software costs.
Achieve Your Business Goals with the Help of UCaaS
Unified communications allows employees to be productive from anywhere. They can better serve customers, and they can easily collaborate with unified data and messaging tools.
For a lot of small to medium-sized businesses, adopting UCaaS is also an important foundational step in the cloud transformation journey. And with a provider that streamlines migration and onboarding, it’s a hassle-free one.
Organizations across the board, from financial services companies to healthcare, are differentiating their business and driving growth with the help of UCaaS. Learn more about how UCaaS can help to support business goals by looking at first-hand experiences – check out Intermedia’s Customer Stories.
The Intermedia Team
Intermedia helps businesses of all sizes connect better – through voice, video conferencing, chat, contact center, business email and productivity, file sharing and backup, security, archiving, and more – from wherever, whenever. And, as a partner-first company, Intermedia goes to work for our channel partners to help them grow their revenue and maximize their success.
January 31, 2022
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