Cloud-based communications platforms enable new business models.
Unified-Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) is poised for accelerated growth in 2017, analysts say, as organizations look to cloud-based platforms not only to improve communications but to drive a fundamental shift in organizational structure.
Executives worldwide are actively seeking to redesign their organizations to exploit a mobile workforce. With work and location becoming increasingly uncoupled, companies want to create a flattened hierarchy of interconnected, flexible networks of teams to improve agility and customer focus. In a recent Deloitte survey of more than 7,000 human resources and business leaders from 130 countries, 92 percent said they believe their structure must change.
UCaaS underpins the shift. A growing ecosystem of APIs is making it easier to integrate UCaaS solutions with other cloud applications such as Salesforce, Dropbox and Zendes. By facilitating communications between applications as well as between humans, UCaas enables the development of so-called “communications-enabled business processes,” or CEBPs, that boost the productivity of mobile workers.
Making Connections
The idea is to improve efficiency and productivity by allowing mobile workers to communicate by voice, text or email from within an application. One of the early examples of CEBP is the integration of customer relationship management (CRM) systems with UCaaS to improve recordkeeping, data entry and call handling. UCaaS has also been effectively integrated with office productivity suites so that users don’t have to break up their workflow by toggling between services as they perform regular tasks.
Additionally, features such as mobile extension or single-number reach make it easy for mobile workers to stay in touch with colleagues and customers. Anytime, anywhere access to essential data and applications make it possible to work seamlessly from the office, at home or on the go. A Global Workplace Analytics report finds that the majority of Fortune 1000 employees are already working more than half the day away from their desks, and the trend will only accelerate as tech-savvy Millennials become an ever-larger segment of the global workforce.
Many organizations have been reluctant to consider cloud-based communications solutions, either because of their investments in premises-based platforms or due to concerns about relinquishing control. However, analysts note that those barriers are crumbling as UCaaS and application integration enable new levels of mobile efficiency. Gartner says the UCaaS market as a whole is transitioning from the “early adopter phase” to the “early mainstream phase.” Transparency Market Research predicts the global UCaaS market will expand at an impressive compound annual rate of 29.4 percent from 2016 to 2024 to reach a total value of $79.3 billion.
Money Matters
Not surprisingly, the cost factor also makes UCaaS attractive to many organizations. Instead of purchasing, configuring, deploying and managing an on-premises solution, those costs and responsibilities are assumed by the service provider. For a monthly fee, users can simply access enterprise-class UC technology and applications on any Internet-connected device. Users enjoy a consistent UC experience anytime, anywhere, which allows for greater business agility and productivity.
UCaaS provides the flexibility to quickly scale services up or down according to business needs, creating operational efficiency by enabling organizations to pay only for what they need. Service provider data centers typically have more resiliency and redundancy than customer environments, making it possible to maintain high levels of performance and minimize the risk of downtime and data loss. Similarly, UC support is handled by the service provider’s team of IT specialists, which often improves the speed and quality of support.
Mobile, cloud and collaborative technologies are changing both the way we work and the workplace itself. To keep pace with these changes, business leaders around the world are rethinking their organizational structure. UCaaS is emerging as a powerful tool for enabling a mobile workforce to become more agile, engaged and customer-focused.
