The world is changing, and remote work is at the forefront of that change. UCaaS is becoming more and more essential in the workplace by the day.
In 2020 alone, the global unified communications and collaboration market grew by 26.7%. These significant investments in UCaaS technology are a clear sign that companies see UCaaS as the pathway to a connected, collaborative, and productive workplace.
Why is that the case?
UCaaS could be the breakthrough your office or employees need to embrace remote work fully, providing all-in-one unified communications to help you get work tasks done faster and more efficiently.
UCaaS is the go-to solution for companies that want to keep their employees connected, up to date on the latest changes, and prepared to adapt to whatever challenge
COVID-19 Has Changed Work. Now We Need to Adapt
New workforce, new workplace. The transition to online and remote work and the work from home phenomenon have been abrupt. Within less than a year, sometimes in only a few days to weeks, workplaces have had to transition to remote work to ensure their workers’ safety.
While COVID-19 accelerated this change, it was inevitable. Automation and the transition to remote work have been a talking point in offices, politics, and schools for decades. COVID-19 just sped everything up.
Luckily, we have technology that helps us adapt as seamlessly as possible. Collaboration suites like Cloud Softphone, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, VPNs, and UCaaS technology make it all possible. Making this change even five to ten years ago would have been much more painful.
“The pandemic has accelerated global UCaaS adoption substantially, meaning it’s no longer an option today — it’s a must-have.”
Before we dive into why UCaaS is essential, we need to discuss key UCaaS terminology covered below.
Key UCaaS Terms You Should Know
Remote work is the new work, and UCaaS is at the forefront. However, before you start working from home, you need to know some key UCaaS terms. They are as follows.
UCaaS
UCaaS, or Unified Communications as a Service, is a software service that provides an all-in-one communications service to clients. UCaaS services include VoIP, email, messaging, video conferencing, and more.
Collaborative Workplace
A collaborative workplace refers to employee practices. Instead of each employee being responsible for specific tasks and each task being isolated to one worker, employees are encouraged to collaborate and share work duties. Collaborative workplaces can be remote as well, as employees can telecommunicate with each other to complete their tasks.
Telecommuting
Telecommuting refers to a popular work from home task, where workers perform telecommunications, like answering emails or phone calls, from their remote workplace. Depending on the secure nature of your work, you may be working from an office, your car, or even a local library.
Virtual Office
A virtual office refers to a virtual office space setup where workers can access all office functionality but from a remote location. The office is virtual in the sense that you are working but not physically present. Working in a virtual office may mean accessing work email servers, printing remotely, or even accessing secure servers using a work VPN.
Knowing these and other terms and definitions regarding remote work will ease the transition from physical offices to virtual workspaces.
Before you can start using UCaaS, you should know the types of common implementation challenges you will face and how to overcome them, as an employer and as part of your workforce.
Critical Challenges That the New Workplace Faces
Communication, whether in-person or remote, is essential. Without communication, work cannot be completed. Your office or workplace can continue to communicate effectively during this pandemic and beyond with remote work.
With each passing day, more and more software companies pop up online, each offering the solution to your communications needs.
Which UCaaS Solution Is Best For You?
“Look for an established UCaaS provider with a track record, not only to solve communications issues but also to solve challenges in the workplace.”
The best companies to look into are ones that provide all-in-one communications solutions. Some popular tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams are great but, unless your company invests in compatible third-party tools and networking, such free tools could cause more headaches than they solve.
Learn more about UCaaS platform trends and must-haves in our UCaaS for remote work blog.
Remote work is a new frontier for many businesses, even if it has existed in some fashion or another for many, many years. It takes time to transition, and COVID-19 has accelerated the timeline.
The next section will discuss why UCaaS is essential to the future of work and how you can transition seamlessly.
Why UCaaS Is Essential to the Future of Work
Remote work is nothing new. Even before the Internet existed, people would work remotely in the telecommunications industry. But UCaaS is one telecom trend that you should keep your eyes on, especially if you run a business.
The radio broadcast example is an admittedly silly example to prove a point — as the world becomes more connected and more work can be done remotely, more work will be done remotely.
The viability of remote work is the big reason why UCaaS allows employees, and even employers, to telework.
With UCaaS, many people are working where they are most comfortable. Many are working from home. Some are working cross-country or internationally.
Collaborating Long-Distance with Coworkers
Employees can still collaborate as long as they are connected. UCaaS solutions allow employees to sync up time zones, videoconference, and even edit the same documents simultaneously.
There is no technological barrier to long-distance collaboration for remote workers.
“However, it would help if you emphasized the importance of secure collaboration and communication to employees. Sending work documents over Facebook or collaborating over unsecured platforms is dangerous to the company.”
Ensure that employees understand that, no matter how seemingly trivial or unimportant, all work topics and conversations should occur over secure and private company lines and platforms.
Poor security practices can easily take down a company. Equifax, for example, was hacked because its password management was poor. Over one hundred million Americans have been negatively affected by the preventable hack. Don’t let this be you!
Platform Integration
While UCaaS provides many essential features in one platform, your UCaaS software may not be the only one used in your workplace or even for a single task. No problem. Many software solutions allow for the integration of third-party services via API use.
Your IT and development teams can “pull” the features and services they need into your central communications platform. Any service you need for your work can be found and integrated into your workplace workflow.
Ensure Business Continuity With UCaaS
Business continuity is not merely a technological challenge to achieve — It is also a personal one. New technologies take time to master, and many people are resistant to unlearning old technology and learning new ones.
Embracing new technology is a challenge that existed before remote work and will continue to exist with each transition and improvement in remote work practices and procedures.
The most crucial step to ensuring business continuity is by providing training to your workforce. Your employees need to understand why you are implementing new workplace changes, the benefits they will receive by adapting to new workflows, and how their daily work will change.
A secondary, but still significant, step to ensure business continuity is to ask for feedback and provide updates to employees. Adapting to new technologies can be difficult for some. We all learn in different ways. Some of us like visuals, while others like listening lecture-style to new information.
If employees can access help, whether, through documentation, online videos, or their IT department, they will be better able to adapt to these changes.
Emphasize the importance of seeking assistance and collaborative and enhanced communication, and understand that transition is hard.
UCaaS Saves Businesses Operating Costs
Businesses reduce costs when expenses decrease. Although UCaaS solutions require payment on a recurring basis, the amount of money saved may eclipse their cost.
These costs can be high.
Here are some of the more popular savings UCaaS can provide to your company:
- Hardware Costs — By going remote, your workplace will not be as reliant on hardware like servers or wired networks. Most software can easily replace hardware, and, now with the COVID-19 pandemic, we are seeing workplaces transition from software-only setups.
- Physical Costs — With decreasing amounts of hardware come decreasing material costs. Your workplace can save money by ending leases on server space, moving costs, and physical upkeep.
- All-in-one Pricing Advantage — UCaaS’s main advantage is that it offers all-in-one platforms for telecommunications work. By bundling all these features and services, businesses, especially small businesses and entrepreneurs, can save on operating costs instead of purchasing access to individual features.
- Generic Office Expenses — By having employees working from home or remote working, employers no longer need their large office leases, nor the generic expenses that come with it like pens, staplers, and office snacks.
- Office Utility Costs — Office utilities like power, water, electricity, and more now do not be paid or paid at the same amount as pre-pandemic work. Offices are downsizing and closing, and employers are ending leases for space now that they do not need it.
- Limited IT Support Costs — While IT support is crucial for employees to be able to complete remote work or telecommunication, much of that IT support work can be outsourced to the companies providing communications platforms like UCaaS. Workplace IT can now focus on providing support for work devices and generic work processes.
We covered just some of the benefits of UCaaS in the workplace in this section, as well as how to meet common challenges. Each workplace will implement UCaaS differently, so try it today and see the difference for yourself.
Cloud Softphone: An Industry-leading UCaaS Solution
Acrobits provides third-party and white-label access to clients for the Cloud Softphone, a UCaaS solution for businesses that need Android and Apple support, fast provisioning, A/V quality control, smart contacts, and more.
Are you looking to build or implement a powerful collaboration suite for your business? Find out why our white label softphone platform is the go-to choice for companies across the globe. Book your discovery call today to get started.
