Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Communication infrastructures established in the ’90s are becoming increasingly incompatible with today’s connected economy. When it takes too long for partners to connect, or to fulfill customer needs, you know there’s a problem somewhere. For every problem, there’s a solution.

Unified Communications (UC) was born out of the need to enable faster decision making, but also to make collaboration more efficient. UC merges real-time communications (voice, video, instant messaging) with real-time data (presence, file sharing), and we often end up using the term Unified Communications & Collaboration (UC&C) to describe these solutions. Provided as-a-service, UC&C has a series of technical and financial advantages that make it a key asset for virtually any business today.

Hassle free

When a business relies on separate solutions to carry out communications, the experience is less than seamless. Information gets lost along the way, response times are slow, and let’s not forget that slow and complicated communication processes are a permanent source of frustration for employees and customers alike. VoipNow exists to fix all this. A cloud communications platform, VoipNow is used by services providers to deliver UC services, enterprise telephony (PBX), or for call center purposes – all in a single, role-based, multitenant architecture with an interface to match. It aligns communication and collaboration channels with business goals, and it even goes with you on the road 😉

ROI

Sloppy or unresponsive customer service is detrimental to a company’s bottom line. Use VoipNow’s call center features to make your customer service shine again. Create a virtual call center with Interactive Voice Response (IVR), have local and remote agents and of course supervisors, use a CRM integration, enable smart queues with history-based queue routing and other such features to improve quality of service, efficiency, maintenance, reach better return on investment (ROI) and of course, make savings.

Hosted

A hosted solution – whether it’s for communication, collaboration, or both – doesn’t require a lot of infrastructure on your end, and neither will you have to carry out maintenance. The provider takes care of all of that, including security, resiliency and performance. Your upfront investment is small, because you’re essentially buying server time. You don’t need to buy hardware, and you don’t need to beef up on IT staff to maintain it.

Versatility

Many UC services integrate instant messaging (IM) and presence, in order to interact with customers and staff. The ability to chat and to know who’s available streamline operations and give the company a competitive edge and a better image overall. Representatives are able to respond in real-time to customer inquiries, as well as target new audiences online.

Scalability

The virtual nature of a hosted communications platform makes it highly malleable, meaning you can scale it up and down in accordance with your business needs. Expanding your network is as easy as telling your service provider to flip a switch. It also uses just the right amount of resources, so you only pay what you use.

Reporting

The importance of being in control of your network can’t be over-stressed. Most UC&C tools come with reporting features and statistics that help manage time and resources. Our VoipNow comes with built-in reporting tools and two APIs that provide consistent access to call resources and operations. UnifiedAPI enables service providers to control real-time call management and collect info like answered calls, failed calls, busy calls, call duration etc. SystemAPI facilitates integration with provisioning and automation apps for system management purposes (users, features or call management related options).

Mobility

We mentioned this under hassle-free, but it deserves to be mentioned as a standalone UC&C perk. This is basically how VoipNow empowers users to free themselves from their desks. This is how you stay productive on the go. VoipNow Mobile is an extension of your business phone right on your personal device.

The list can go on and on, as these are just a few of the technical and financial advantages of UC&C. The main benefit is actually the sum of all these things. Outsourcing your communication and collaboration efforts to a service provider, instead of purchasing individual hardware, applications and services, will give you better results for a lesser investment.