How Important is Unified Communication for Remote Working By Janifha Evangeline

How Important is Unified Communication for Remote Working

Janifha Evangeline | Sunday, 25 April 2021, 06:48 IST

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To gain a better understanding and the significance of unified communications, the role of communication in an organization should be highly stressed since improper communication can put a business in great turmoil. Employees in an organization should not only be able to communicate and share information easily, but organizations should also ensure that the shared information is clear and accurate as this will help employees to collaborate better and guarantee enhanced productivity. Furthermore, UC systems, not only provide the highest degree of security from any sorts of breaches but it also ensures that any communication can be carried out fast, without causing a delay to the business activities, irrespective of the location of the users and they need not worry about the confidentiality of the data being shared.    

Let us imagine a scenario in which your business has signed a major project that needs the collaboration of numerous employees. But unfortunately, all employees are working from different departments or even locations.  

So, how do you ensure effective communication between the employees in such cases?

The chances of the project being unsuccessful increase when the employees are not able to share information and update each other about the current status of the project. Similarly, this can be applied to the everyday functioning of any business/organization. The aforementioned scenario proves that how easy it would be if all calls, text messaging and other means of communication are all performed on a single system instead of using and relying on multiple platforms. This is where organizations should consider Unified Communications Solution and this has been proven to be the best choice for businesses in such cases.

What’s new in Unified Communications Managed Services

A new partner business model has plans to make its mark by building, securing, and managing customers' cloud-based communication and collaboration platforms.

These Cloud communications specialists rose amidst the covid-19 pandemic and observed their prospects soar as customers tapped them for guidance on a host of platforms such as Cisco, Microsoft Teams, Zoom etc. Among other offerings, unified communications as a service (UCaaS) and desktop as a service (DaaS) are believed to have the staying power in the market.

“There is a new class of service provider emerging out of COVID,” said Andrew Gilman, head of marketing and alliances at NWN Corp., an MSP based in Waltham, Mass.

While NWN refers to organizations in this category as cloud communications service providers and considers itself part of that group, partners in this market may also describe their offerings as unified communications managed services or digital workplace services.

“There are a number of these partners who offer a range of managed services, primarily to SMB customers,” noted Kevin Rhone, a senior parenting consultant who covers the channel at Enterprise Strategy Group, a division of TechTarget.

Some of the traits of Cloud Communications partners are as follows

The partner model emerged in the early months of the pandemic, as businesses operating in “Triangle mode” adopted disparate cloud communications tools, Gilman said. Adopters eventually began to realize the complexities of running a distributed enterprise on various cloud platforms, and availability and performance grew into concerns.

“I can spin up an online meeting, but what happens if the application goes out?” Gilman said. “Who am I going to call as an enterprise?”

“Customers seek assurance that their cloud-based infrastructure will be ready to run and operates consistently -demands they place on other familiar utilities. Cloud communications specialists address this need with the willingness to provide availability and performance guarantees under a service-level agreement (SLA),” Gilman said. “Other key deliverables include security services and management and analytics tools,” he noted.

Lack of adequate tooling

NWN CEO Jim Sullivan stated the lack of adequate tooling as “one of the major gaps” for enterprises, government agencies, and educational institutions that adopt cloud-based communications platforms.

“Large organizations, for decades, have deployed tools for monitoring and managing on-premises communications systems and infrastructure. Those capabilities don’t necessarily translate to the cloud,” Gilman added.

Innovation in the Unified Communications Managed Services

Supporting remote workers using chatbots - One of the fortune 500 companies selling consulting and processing services offered cloud-based tools and related services under the “digital workplace” banner, even before the pandemic and remote working for employees began. The company’s internal audit team developed a Digital People Advisor (DiPA) and the DiPA chatbot, answers workplace questions on topics such as compensation and points them to new areas of learning and career development. This platform was built on Microsoft Bot Framework and Microsoft Cognitive Services and is hosted on Microsoft Azure.

“The workplace is distributed to remote workplaces,” said Karthik Narain, who leads Accenture Cloud. “It is a lot more dynamic and a lot more capability is required,” he added. Chatbots mark one area of expansion, Narain noted.

A rising volume of customer inquiries and online orders amidst the pandemic sparked use of this technology. Although chatbots support employees, they play a significant role in customer-facing. “The pandemic has put extreme pressure on many enterprises in terms of increased customer demands for service. Many turned to chatbots to handle rising call-center and order-entry volume,” said Narain. “Bots and self-service options helped organizations tackle the spike in remote users during the pandemic, Walsh added. “Bots, for example, can assist users with password resets or administrative issues such as filing an expense report,” he noted.

Emerging trends in Unified Communications in 2021

AI-enabled smart VoIP assistants will become the norm - A major reason why organizations are moving towards cloud telephony solutions is that they intend to render 24/7 service to their customers. Forward-thinking organizations are integrating Artificial Intelligence into their telephony systems to not only streamline everyday tasks but also routing calls or diverting calls to voice mails and deliver more personalized service to customers as Digital communication solutions equip professionals with the flexibility to address customer queries anywhere, anytime.

The combination of AI and VoIP has the potential to radically enhance the customer service offering of an organization. 2020 had already seen a spike in the adoption of AI-driven chatbots as companies struggled to deal with the increased number of calls and customer queries amid the pandemic. In the coming year, more companies will leverage chatbots and programmed voice responses to automate responses to basic queries. This will not only help them to save time but also save costs and human resources which can be applied for dealing with queries that are more complicated and urgent.

Unified Communications to enter the mainstream - Digital communications and collaboration took the centre stage last year owing to the pandemic and remote working situations. Amidst the social distancing mandate intensified by a growing focus on health and hygiene, organizations switched to video and audio-conferencing tools intending to streamline workflows and maintain business productivity. Therefore, the need and demand for a unified communication system, which integrates voice, video, and data channels, increased rapidly in the post-pandemic world more than ever before.

Furthermore, with organizations increasingly tapping into the limitless potential of innovative digital alternatives to physical get-togethers and meetings, this trend is anticipated to carry forward into 2021 and beyond and it will be complemented by the rising adoption of mobile VoIP systems enabled by SIP.

To effectively communicate with clients anytime, anywhere, more and more professionals using app-based virtual numbers, which is anticipated to be seen in the coming year. Also, new-age enterprises will be helped by the leading unified communication solutions providers to drive productivity. This will be achieved by deploying a host of features across integrated telephone systems such as caller ID, voice mail, call recording, call forwarding, scheduling, etc.     

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