It’s no secret the modern workforce is more interconnected but physically dispersed and “always on” than ever before. Studies suggest almost 22% of the American workforce will be fully remote by 2025, and flexible, hybrid alternatives are increasingly popular to balance the demands of employers and busy team members. 54% of people are even working on vacation, staying plugged into video meetings, audio calls, and messaging with team members.
This new era of work means leveraging seamless, accessible unified platforms to facilitate this always-on communication. When choosing a unified communications platform, consider integrations, multi-device accessibility, high-quality video and audio, robust security, easy deployment, and scalability for future business growth. All these capabilities play a role in enhancing communication and collaboration within your business.
Benefits of Unified Communications
A unified communications platform optimizes meeting attendance, enhances collaboration, and saves time and money; plus, 87% of surveyed employees even credited it with expedited decision-making.
By 2030, it’s estimated that over 75% of organizations will use a unified platform for calling, meeting, and messaging, and the US unified communications market is expected to grow 10.7% from 2024 to 2030, hitting $417 billion in value, with more and more businesses aggressively adopting these solutions. Investing now distinguishes your competitive advantage and future-proofs your organization.
When choosing a platform for all of your video conferencing needs, it might feel like you have a long list of features to vet. However, all of these play a crucial role in maximizing the benefits of unified communications, which can be business-changing improvements, especially in remote environments.
- Improved employee flexibility
- Easier and more affordable scalability with cloud-based providers instead of hardware
- Cost savings across vendor consolidation, equipment, maintenance, and travel expenses
- Increased employee productivity through less context switching and technology friction
- More seamless workflow and data integrations across departments and software
- More relationship-focused customer interactions
- Improved business continuity in the case of a disaster or network outage
1. Seamless Integration with Existing Tools
In today’s digital landscape, where the average SaaS-enabled worker uses over 34 different applications, new technology quickly becomes obsolete if it doesn’t integrate seamlessly with your existing tech stack. Without the ability to integrate across your business, communication platforms can become cumbersome and difficult to use, hindering product adoption.
A unified communications platform should offer real-time synchronization with the tools your employees use daily, such as Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Google Workspace, HubSpot, QuickBooks, and more. This improves employee productivity and streamlines communication by eliminating the need to switch between multiple applications. Additionally, look for a vendor that provides the flexibility of custom integrations.
Communication software should also seamlessly send and receive data to your customer relationship manager (CRM), marketing platform, sales system, email provider, and more. For example, recorded customer interviews might need to trigger an email marketing follow-up flow, or perhaps team members need to seamlessly attach a meeting room to an email calendar invite.
2. Multi-Device Accessibility
Employees bounce from their desktops to laptops to smartphones and tablets all in a single day. Multi-device accessibility is essential to ensure flexibility and connectivity for employees, whether they’re commuting to the office, working remotely, or even on vacation. The average employee spends 3 hours a day on their smartphone for work-related tasks, and 87% of companies have adopted policies to integrate personal devices into the workplace.
Not only does multi-device accessibility improve job satisfaction and quality of life for team members, but it also ensures consistency and standardization across teams and locations. Plus, easy accessibility improves employee productivity, allowing them to seamlessly communicate and participate while on the go, reducing project slowdowns.
3. Advanced Collaboration Features
Modern communication is so much more than a simple audio phone call. Advanced collaboration features like video conferencing, instant messaging, filesharing, and whiteboarding make virtual remote calls feel dynamic and engaging. Employees feel more engaged, and communication and collaboration improve when call participants can easily interact with each other without feeling the friction of technology.
When evaluating unified communications platforms, look for one that offers a comprehensive suite of collaboration tools, such as high-quality video conferencing, chat, and screen sharing. These features can help build relationships and foster connections through the screen, allowing employees and customers to seamlessly communicate and collaborate despite time zone, location, or geographic region. By eliminating the barriers of friction-filled technology, you can create a more productive and collaborative work environment.
4. High-Quality Audio and Video
While advanced collaboration is important to improve connectivity and engagement, high-quality audio and video are still the main foundation of communication. Prioritize a UC platform that offers exceptional audio and video quality.
There’s nothing more frustrating than glitchy audio or blurry video. Static, delays, and distortion all create barriers in online communication, leading to decreased team productivity. When facilitating customer and prospect calls, top-tier audio and video quality conveys a sophisticated and professional image, demonstrating your commitment to the latest technology.
High-definition audio and video enable participants to interact more positively face-to-face, fostering a seamless communication experience similar to that of a physical meeting room. Consistent streaming ensures that conversations flow smoothly and in real time.
5. Robust Security and Reliability
In 2023, 43% of data breaches involved small businesses, highlighting the need for robust security measures no matter your business size. With the increasing prevalence of remote work, companies are more likely to share sensitive data or financial information over messaging or video calls. Your unified communications platform must have top-notch security features to protect this data.
Essential security features include end-to-end encryption (which prevents third parties from accessing messages or data shared over the internet), secure logins, multi-factor authentication, password protections, and compliance with industry standards like HIPAA or PCI-DSS. Your UC platform should prioritize security and ensure that all communications are enterprise-grade secure and compliant, regardless of data sensitivity.
6. Scalability for Future Business Growth
As your organization expands and grows rapidly, your technology should grow with you. A unified communications platform should allow you to easily increase your number of users, length of calls, audience participants, and more. Outdated communications platforms come with hefty add-on fees and might even have firm limitations on audience size or number of users. As your business reaches more people, your communications platform should scale up seamlessly while maintaining enterprise-grade security.
For businesses expanding into a new physical region with a new office means hiring more employees, onboarding and ramping quickly, and kickstarting business continuity as soon as possible. Instead of burdening IT management with weeks of hardware setup and connections, opt for a scalable and cloud-based platform. This enables quick and cost-effective expansion, with users easily added or removed and usage scaled up to meet your growing needs.
7. Easy Deployment and User-Friendly Interface
94% of users attribute their initial impression of a software platform to its design, and this influences their likelihood of fully adopting a new system. Research even shows that one dollar invested in user experience results in a return of $100, highlighting the need for user-friendly workflows that make it easy for your employees to adopt new software.
If new software is confusing and hard to navigate, employees may resist integrating the new workflow and fully utilizing the system to its potential. Not only does this negate the original benefits of adopting a new technology, but it also eventually costs your business money in unused software, disjointed operations, and wasted productivity.
Opt for a unified communications platform that offers easy deployment and integration, ensuring a smooth transition and minimal disruption to daily business operations. This allows employees to ramp up quickly and accelerate their learning curve. It doesn’t take weeks or months of training and on-the-job learning to figure out how to work video calls, screen share, or record. Opt for a streamlined, simple design that is user-friendly, allowing team members to serve customers faster and at a higher level of client satisfaction.
Leading Organizations Power Unified Communications Through UCx with Webex
For leading organizations in healthcare, financial services, legal, retail, education, government, nonprofit, and other small businesses, unified communication improves productivity, supports scalability, and reduces software costs. As communication systems integrate more with automation and artificial intelligence, a singular platform will be even more powerful in bringing teams together.
While there are multiple communication platforms from which to choose, it’s hard to find one solution that encompasses everything mission-critical. Choosing the wrong platform is just as frustrating. Almost 50% of employees admit to not using software, resulting in $537 million of wasted software.
TPx’s UCx with Webex offers seamless integrations, easy accessibility, the latest in collaboration features and security, and a user-friendly interface ensure you’re not wasting time and money when implementing a solution no one uses. Instead of duct-taping different messaging and video platforms together, invest in a comprehensive solution for seamless unified communication. Not only is it more cost-effective than managing multiple vendors, but productivity, collaboration, and business growth also occur when technology enables workers instead of creating barriers.
Get in touch with the communication experts at TPx for a free consultation or product demo.