Unified communications as a service (UCaaS) was on a significant growth trajectory prior to 2020, and its usage has increased even more rapidly since the COVID-19 pandemic forced employees to work from home. UCaaS sales worldwide1 have increased by more than 85%, and the market is projected to increase to $87.20 billion by 2026 – a CAGR of 19.25%. In addition, the team collaboration tools market2 is expected to register a CAGR of 18% between 2021 and 2026.
The sharp increases in both UCaaS and collaboration tools are happening because supporting a remote or hybrid workforce is impossible without them.
Why You Need UCaaS for Remote Work
A UCaaS solution provides a central platform for communication – helping to streamline and support a remote workforce with various features.
Softphone Calling
A UCaaS system offers software that allows users to use the telephone over an internet connection without needing a specific device. Remote employees can use their computer or mobile device to get all the advantages of a full-featured telephone system.
Video Calling
Video calls are also a UCaaS feature. Being able to see a coworker when you place a simple video call makes calls more productive.
Call Recording
The ability to record incoming and outgoing calls is invaluable in situations like monitoring and evaluating a customer service representative’s performance with clients on the telephone.
Audio and Video Conference Calling
Whether your employees want to conduct a formal meeting or just get a few people together to discuss a problem, a team can meet to resolve issues or plan strategy quickly and easily.
Instant Messaging
Sometimes an employee needs to get a coworker’s attention quickly. Sending an instant message can make getting an answer to a question fast and simple.
Group Chat
When one instant message won’t do, a group of people can get together on a chat screen to exchange ideas, provide project updates, or gain consensus for next steps in a project.
File and Screen Sharing
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, and employees can save time by sharing their screens to review something a team is working to complete. File sharing also speeds up a revision process by letting multiple people contribute at the same time.
Voice to Email
Remote workers don’t need to stop what they’re doing to access a voicemail system to check their voice messages periodically throughout the day. The UCaaS system will transcribe a voicemail to an email. And since many people check emails frequently or get notifications when new emails arrive, they’ll be able to respond to the voicemail much quicker.
Fax-Via-Email
Fax machines will probably never become obsolete. There are too many paper-based communications that must be distributed. But, with the ability to transfer faxes into emails, the entire process is more effective. The sender doesn’t need to scan and save a document before they distribute it. Receivers don’t need to track down the paper fax in a central location. In addition, this capability helps businesses save paper and reduce waste.
In addition to these specific capabilities, UCaaS offers excellent security. Providers supply secure data centers, data encryption, network security, and administrator tools. They also provide regular software updates and patching.
Why You Need Collaboration Tools for Remote Work
Collaboration tools weren’t always in high demand, but as businesses had to respond to the increased pace of their marketplaces, effective collaboration became a differentiator. In fact, research has shown3 that:
- Collaboration can result in productivity improvements of 10%.
- Using collaboration tools, employees could recover 5-10% of their time every week for other tasks.
- Among business owners and staff, 86% cited lack of effective communication tools as the cause of workplace problems.
- When employees collaborate, 73% produce better work, 60% innovate more, 56% are more satisfied, and 15% complete work more quickly.
While communication solutions like UCaaS and collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams aren’t typically sold at the same time, they are dependent upon one another to successfully support remote work. A UCaaS solution is necessary to provide the communications required for collaboration, and collaboration tools provide the platform to leverage the communication solutions. Each type of collaboration tool will usually offer a different set of capabilities, but these are the top capabilities that a collaboration platform can provide:
Dashboards
A collaboration tool will have a variety of dashboards that help employees organize their work. The company itself might have a welcome dashboard where employees can keep up with company news and access other dashboards that are more specific to the individual’s work.
Work/Project Management
A work dashboard could be centered around a specific project. It might contain the names and profiles of everyone on the team to facilitate introductions and help the team members get to know one another. It would also include tools to keep track of the status of the project, do project management tasks such as create and manage to-do lists, note when decisions or approvals are received, and provide a group chat function.
Social Networking
Internal communications are categorized into channels by topic. Employees can look at all the communications or go to a specific channel to review what’s happening in their areas of interest.
Document Management
Document management is critical, especially for cross-departmental retrieval. Collaboration tools may allow for assigning different types of access to documents. Therefore, if a user is saving a document that is informational for employees across the organization, they can save it as a read-only file, or they may be able to assign different permissions based on user roles.
High-Powered Search
A McKinsey report4 found that employees spend almost 20% of their week searching for information. A high-powered search can help alleviate that problem. The search can cover all files saved in a document management system, which would significantly reduce the amount of time employees spend searching for information manually.
Some companies have also categorized knowledge resources by topic. If an employee wants to talk to someone who completed the last product marketing survey, all the employee needs to do is search for resources related to that topic. The search will return documents as well as subject-matter experts.
Automating Forms and Workflow
A powerful collaboration tool will provide tools that allow users to access standard forms from departments like Human Resources or Sales. The tool also allows users to create their own forms and assign required permissions.
Some collaboration tools also allow users to automate workflow. Wherever a workflow needs to do things like move to another user or check a document for approval, the system will take care of those parts of the process.
Internal Messaging
Typically, a collaboration tool will provide access to use chat or instant message technology to simplify communications within and across teams.
Collaboration tools also need to function within a secure infrastructure, offer mobile-friendly operation, and be easy to use.
There are many providers of collaboration tools. Software such as Slack, Wrike, Asana, Trello, and Podio provide different versions of collaboration capabilities. One of the shining stars in the collaboration tool market is Microsoft Teams, which is part of the Microsoft 365 suite. The number of daily active users of Microsoft Teams has almost doubled in the past year.5
What to Look for in a UCaaS Provider
Your UCaaS provider will have a big impact on how successfully you can support your remote or hybrid workforce. This list of what to look for in a UCaaS provider will help you to make an informed decision:
Type of Cloud Offering
Determine which type of cloud offering would be most beneficial for your operation – and if you need a local data center, make sure your provider can supply it.
- A Public Cloud. This is typically the easiest type of cloud to set up for small and mid-sized businesses. You will share the cloud infrastructure with other organizations.
- A Private Cloud. This often works best for larger businesses. The required infrastructure is dedicated solely to the cloud’s owner and offers more flexibility and customization options than a public cloud.
- A Hybrid Cloud. This cloud configuration allows you to keep some of your existing communications infrastructure and is especially helpful if you have recently upgraded your internal communications. This option also provides flexibility because you can easily migrate to a public or private cloud alternative.
Support
Choose a provider that offers outstanding customer and technical service, including things like 24/7/365 support by phone, online, or onsite. This is especially critical since you will be combining support for all your communications in one provider. You’ll also need excellent reliability. Choose a provider who can document 99% or better uptime.
Long-Term Prospects
Given the surge in the UCaaS market, many companies are entering it. Since UCaaS is a long-term investment that will be at the core of your businesses success, make sure you choose a UCaaS provider for remote work that is stable and has good long-term prospects.
Innovation
Your needs will change, and the market is moving rapidly. Make sure the provider you choose can move with the demand on their systems without major changes to their infrastructure or bandwidth capabilities. Your provider should be looking to the future and innovating before the demand overwhelms them.
Security and Compliance
Security and security compliance are critical components to ensure that your systems remain on, and that you don’t get into compliance issues. Things like PCI and GDPR compliance are the topics you need to explore. Also, find out how the provider can support you with business continuity and disaster recovery.
Features and Customization
Gartner identifies6 six communications functions that should be included in a UCaaS system:
- Enterprise telephony
- Meetings such as audio/video/web conferencing
- Unified messaging
- Instant messaging
- Mobility
- Communications-enabled business processes
A critical function to add to that high-level list is integration of third-party platforms and software. You undoubtedly already use office platforms, and the best UCaaS providers will be able to integrate those systems into their technologies. For example, if you are using Microsoft Teams for collaboration, your provider should be able to offer a Direct Route for Teams option to seamlessly integrate UCaaS into your collaboration solution.
How Can CommQuotes Help?
The markets for UCaaS and collaboration tools contain an overwhelming number of providers. This is where working with a third-party expert like CommQuotes can save you time, money, and the possibility of needing to recover from a bad match between you and your providers.
We help our customers make smarter IT decisions because we act as your advisor with vendor-agnostic advice. We’ve dedicated ourselves to helping our customers secure UCaaS for remote work and integrate the right collaboration on top. We help you understand what you need, and we have a cloud-forward strategy to address your needs.
In addition, we have the expertise and experience that spans decades in telecom and IT – offered with white-glove service and world-class post-sales support. If you have questions or would like more information, please contact us.
Sources:
- https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-unified-communication-as-a-service-ucaas-markets-2021-2026—increasing-penetration-of-5g-network–sd-wan–growing-trend-of-byod–advances-in-ai-based-technologies-301359799.html
- https://www.globenewswire.com/fr/news-release/2021/03/16/2193635/28124/en/Worldwide-Team-Collaboration-Tools-Industry-to-2026-Continuous-Innovation-in-Team-Collaborative-Tool-Offerings-are-Driving-Growth.html
- https://financesonline.com/online-collaboration-statistics-analysis-of-trends-data-and-market-share/4. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/the-social-economy
- https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/the-social-economy
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033742/worldwide-microsoft-teams-daily-and-monthly-users/
- https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/unified-communications-service-ucaas
