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4 Steps in Preparing Your Business for Transition to Unified Communications

Written by Jeff Blackey, SVP Marketing, Broadview Networks

4 Steps in Preparing Your Business for Transition to Unified Communications

IT executives have been challenged to streamline technology and spending, resulting in an industry-wide drive to unified communications (UC). Many businesses adopting cloud-based UC find they can downsize their data centers, as they consolidate applications using the service. As the link in an increasingly mobile workplace, UC is expected to surge as the UCaaS market grows to $5.3 billion in 2018.

Cloud-based unified communications is particularly powerful, offering scalability, continuity and ease of use. These attributes boost productivity, allowing businesses to realize a strong ROI - in fact, 79 percent of companies that have completed post-UC installation ROI analyses have met or exceeded goals.

As businesses prepare for the transition to cloud-based UC, they should follow the below steps.

Determine the best strategy for your business

Understanding the needs of your business is critical to UC success. Enlist the support of executives and seek their input from the beginning, as various departments may require different services or nuances. Understanding the business will influence the features you prioritize when vetting solutions. For organizations like Interact, where employees regularly rotate between multiple offices, a flexible, cloud-based UC solution is imperative to seamless customer communication and undisrupted business operations.

In addition to understanding business needs, recognize how a change in communications solutions could affect existing business infrastructure or critical software such as Salesforce. Adopt a cloud-based UC solution that has integration capabilities, streamlining workflows with the user in mind.

Choose a user-centric solution

With employees and their productivity in mind, prioritize ease of use when selecting a solution. If features are complicated or counter-intuitive, then moving to UC will be a wasted effort, creating a solution no better than the legacy system.

Cloud-based UC offers universal access and true mobility, a necessity for the modern user. Solutions with one centralized dashboard give users control of their personal preferences and profiles from anywhere. This flexible, streamlined self-management reduces hassle, increases productivity and boosts ROI. Employees who are able to easily access and make changes to their work preferences in real time can eliminate the need for technical support, returning valuable time to workflow.

Recognize the importance of security and preparedness

Housing your UC solution entirely in the cloud offers major benefits for backup and disaster recovery. In the event of a crisis, natural disaster or office closure, your business can remain connected and retain access to critical data and files from anywhere. To ensure business continuity, look for providers who can manage your infrastructure in secure, geo-redundant data centers.

Also essential is considering your company's policies and needs around privacy, security and data sharing and how they align with your UC service. In addition to your own virtual security and encryption, choose providers whose data centers offer carrier-grade security. Housing data off-premise ensures secure access from any employee's location.

Consider long-term cost savings

When comparing solutions, approach cost with a long-term perspective, as cost savings are not realized as immediately as the benefit to communications. Housing servers in the cloud is often much more cost effective, as businesses don't bear the burden of maintaining the IT infrastructure. Staying ahead of the technology curve can be costly for individual enterprises and SMBs, as new services may require expensive and frequent hardware updates. By contrast, an excellent cloud-based UC solution should include ongoing maintenance and support, ensuring your technology stays up to date and fully operational.

Consider ROI in customer service and relations, selecting a provider that integrates with your CRM software and offers advanced features such as a virtual auto-attendant that routes calls and streamlines customer service. Providers should include ongoing software updates, the latest applications, and any required hardware, so you are not met with unplanned costs.

The cloud is the foundation of a fully-optimized UC system, and modernizing business phone systems provides unmatchable benefits. Grounded by an understanding of what both the business and individual users need, IT leaders can realize long-term benefits with a secure and adaptable solution, positioning the business to meet industry challenges and produce the greatest ROI.

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About the Author

Jeff Blackey is the Senior Vice President of Marketing for Broadview Networks, one of the top 10 UC cloud providers in the nation. Broadview's cloud offerings include OfficeSuite Phone, the easy-to-use hosted phone system that is 100% cloud-based using technology unique to Broadview. Mr. Blackey has more than 25 years of marketing management experience in the communications industry.

Published Monday, May 09, 2016 6:58 AM by David Marshall
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