How Unified Communications Delivers ROI

Even with the emergence of home working at scale and the Openreach ISDN switch off planned in 2025, there are still many companies across the UK with legacy, on-premise telephony.

So, why are there still plenty of companies out there that haven’t embraced hosted telephony and unified communications?

For some, there’s the illusion of technical complexity, and for others, there’s an assumption that more features and capability means more cost. Let’s have a deeper-dive into this issue as we discuss why moving to a cloud-hosted, unified comms solution will not only save money, but can actually deliver a return on investment back into the business.

What is UCaaS?

UCaas or Unified Communications as a Service is a cloud-based telecoms and collaboration solution which combines voice, video, instant messaging, call recording, online meetings, screen sharing and more, through a single platform, accessible from mobile and desktop apps. There are many commercial and operational improvements that can be gained though a UCaaS solution.

Improved Customer Experience

Improving customer experience is perhaps the quickest way that UCaaS can deliver ROI to a business. According to research by PWC 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for great customer experience. With more businesses than ever competing based on their ability to deliver positive CX, investing in the right communications infrastructure is essential. Through implementation of a fully-featured UCaaS solution, organisations can provide:

• Intelligent call routing and multi-level menus, ensuring customers reach the right agent, every time.
• Call queues and hunt groups to maximise agent efficiency.
• Integration into business CRMs to ensure agents have access to detailed customer information when they pick up the phone.

Ease of Communications

With UCaaS, you can enjoy a wealth of technical capabilities through a single application. A fully-featured solution combines voice, video calling and conferencing, instant messaging, document sharing, presence settings, and more. To make things even more straightforward, these can be accessed via desktop or mobile devices.

Being able to communicate and collaborate seamlessly via one system attracts a hugely positive ROI. Staff get work done quicker and easier and can achieve this from anywhere, which is more important now than it has ever been.

Put simply, it means people can work more effectively, take quicker decisions, and as a result they’ll feel more productive and happier.

Reduced Costs

Moving to a hosted telephony model enables you to implement a communications suite without attracting unwanted capital expenditure in the form of on-premises equipment that would need to be purchased or leased.

When you hold your communications in the cloud, the only hardware you need to consider is desk phones for users that want them, and headsets for those who would rather use a soft client or web browser on their laptop.

One of the more onerous costs of on premise telephony is maintenance. With your phone system being central to interacting with customers, colleagues and suppliers, you have no choice but to pay it. On-premise telephony usually requires a maintenance contract which can be both lengthy and costly, which should be factored in to your cost of ownership.

Added Resilience

Think about the impact of having a resilient phone system, versus not. What would happen to your business if your phone system isn’t resilient and you suffer an outage? How will that impact your ability to do business with your customers, and what could the cost be? It’s often the unseen costs that are the most expensive.

According to a recent Frost & Sullivan survey, 80% view increased uptime as a major benefit of the cloud. 80% also saw freeing up IT as a significant advantage.

Improved Agility

Your organisation’s ability to rapidly adapt to changes in market conditions has likely never been tested more than in the past couple of years. Because UCaaS is delivered via the cloud, it is fast to deploy, can be delivered to a distributed workforce, accessed from anywhere with an internet connection, and you can add new connections instantly, meaning your business’ communications can adapt to any change.

Compliance

For companies operating in financially regulated industries that need to adhere to compliance practices such as PCI and MiFID II, the cost of achieving compliance can be high.

Firstly, the cost to deploy and maintain on-premise recording technology is exceptionally high, especially when accounting for storage costs.

Secondly, on-premise solutions are not as flexible and technically powerful as their hosted counterparts in terms of the speed and accuracy with which information can be retrieved, analysed and reported on,

The quicker you can get the information you need, the cheaper it is to do so, both in terms of staff time and potential regulatory fines by not reporting breaches in a timely fashion.

About CallSwitch

CallSwitch is our market-leading UCaaS platform, delivering a powerful suite of cloud-hosted telephony features that enable employees to work from anywhere, on any device – from office and remote workers, through to contact centre and regulated environments.

With a host of ways to connect, through desktop clients, mobile apps, and traditional desk phones, CallSwitch is designed for office, home and hybrid working environments. Other benefits include:

• Voice, video, instant messaging, online meetings, screen sharing, and much more
• Integrated call recording
• Desktop and mobile Communicator applications included
• Out the box CRM integrations for streamlined workflow
• Included calling bundles to avoid any bill shock, all wrapped up in a simple monthly payment

For more information how we can help you with your digital transformation journey, call us on 01256 895895 or email us at [email protected]. We’re waiting to show you how we’re different.