The world has witnessed an extensive digital transformation in the last two decades. Businesses have revamped their operations and are now adopting more technologically-focused solutions to improve communication, performance, and productivity. In the middle of all these technological breakthroughs and adoptions is Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS). If you’re wondering; “what is unified communication as a service or interested in how it works, you’re in the right place.
What is UCaaS?
Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS) is a marriage between two words, “Unified Communication” and its offering as a “Service.” Unified communication describes how people connect, collaborate, and communicate within a digital workspace.
With Unified Communications, more businesses have been able to bridge the communication and productivity gap among their teams across the globe. A seamless Unified Communication also has a collaboration aspect that allows employees to collaborate on projects virtually to drive performance and productivity.
Unified Communications combines all the different areas of a workplace’s communication and collaboration needs. It cuts across areas like;
- Messaging
- Video and voice calling
- File and media sharing
- Team collaborations
- Meetings
- App integration, and lots more.
By combining these features, businesses can keep their employees updated and in sync on projects wherever they may be located across the world.
Are There Benefits to Unified Communications?
With the growing rate of technological adoption, even among small business owners, one can expect that Unified Communications would present many benefits, especially in lowering the overhead communication cost faced by most businesses.
The benefits of the Unified Communication solution are immense. However, here are the notable ones;
Reduced overhead costs: Unified Communications allows business owners to do away with the installation, software, and equipment costs required to set up a traditional communication channel. Instead, they can leverage a more fluid communication solution that doesn’t require upfront installation costs, equipment installation, maintenance or upgrades, and other related costs.
Improved productivity: Most businesses now have at least one of their members working offshore or remotely for an extended period. These staffs are also an essential part of the company’s system and can remain productive wherever they are through the Unified Communication solution. This solution allows remote working employees to contribute and deliver their jobs in real time and anywhere.
Stronger team performance: A lack of proper communication can cause projects and even businesses to fall apart. However, using the different collaboration solutions offered by Unified Communications solutions, businesses and employees can stay in touch and collaborate better on projects to get the desired outcomes.
Improved user experience: Most employees aren’t tech-savvy and are, therefore, late adopters of new technologies. But with Unified Communications and the extensive integration window, employees can now plug into the system seamlessly while adopting new technology without hassles.
Flexibility: Unified Communication also offers seamless flexibility to businesses and their employees. By leveraging its technological presence, employees can now flexibly shift from one device to another, allowing them to stay connected on the go.
How UCaaS Integrates It All
One of the biggest advantages of Unified Communication as a Service is that it integrates all communication channels and solutions into one, allowing employees to collaborate better within an organization.
For voice solution, it offers Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solution that allows employees within an organization to make calls reliably at a fraction of the traditional telephony cost. This communication method is directly over the internet, meaning businesses do not need to incur additional costs setting up the solution for individual departments or employees, whether they are working on-site or remotely.
With the VoIP solution, businesses can enjoy rich feature sets, including data gathering and monitoring, faster communication, and increased mobility.
The UCaaS System also incorporates the video feature, allowing team members to meet virtually and deliberate on issues at hand. With the video feature, training and meetings can be had in HD video across the world, thus enabling remote teams to perform better and hit their targets faster.
However, businesses need to choose the right video solutions for themselves, depending on their specific needs, including the number of employees, ease of use, mobile presence and experience, etc.
Businesses that rely on messaging can also take advantage of the messaging aspect of the UCaaS, offering them a chance to stay in real-time communication with one another while sharing files and collaborating for better performance. With the messaging solution, data recording for quality check purposes becomes possible, as well as a seamless integration across platforms, whether web or app.
By combining all the communication requirements and bringing them as a packaged solution, UCaaS has helped more businesses cut their overhead costs, improve communication, boost flexibility, and overall improve performance.