Cloud-based Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) platforms have become increasingly more popular for businesses of all sizes. Enterprise spending on UCC tools grew to a $45 billion industry this past year, according to Synergy Research Group, with an average annual growth of 16 percent year-over-year.

Cloud-based UCC systems offer increased flexibility, enhanced productivity, and reduced costs while limiting the dependence on resource-intensive, hardware-heavy, on-premise services.

Jeremy Duke, Synergy Research Group’s founder and Chief Analyst, explains this trend: “Collaboration tools and solutions have become ever-more sophisticated over the last decade as technological advances have enabled new ways of improving communications and enterprise productivity. We are now seeing strong growth in segments that didn’t exist a few years ago.”

Here are six reasons why cloud-based UCC platforms are the future of workplace collaboration and why you should offer them to your customers.

1. Improve collaboration among mobile workforce

The prevalence of remote work (excluding self-employed individuals) grew 173 percent since 2005. Nearly 4.7 million employees work from home at least half the time, according to Global Workplace Analytics. What’s more, Buffer’s State of Remote Work report found that 99 percent of workers would like to partially work from home in the future.

According to that same Buffer report, employees enjoy remote work due to the more flexible schedule, ability to work from anywhere, and increased time spent with family.

Cloud-based UCC tools make remote work possible, offering secure access to communications from any location, given a strong WiFi/mobile connection and a laptop or any smart device. Therefore, employees can happily work from anywhere and enjoy the many benefits of doing so. 

2. Take advantage of the gig economy

Beyond businesses offering remote work for their full-time staff, cloud-based UCC platforms help with the booming gig economy, as well. Recent reports show that 57 million Americans did some freelance work in 2019. With cloud-based access, companies can tap into this unlimited pool of talent. Bring-your-own-device contract work combined with cloud-based UCC tools allow organizations to hire specialized, short-term talent, that can work from anywhere while staying connected with the company.

Additionally, UCC platforms provide easy access to your internal cloud-based workflow. This makes it much easier to onboard freelancers and have them interact and collaborate with your existing employees.

3. Meet the growing demand for conferencing

With the increase of remote work, contract workers, and even multi-location businesses, conferencing is becoming more valuable.

Thanks to cloud-based UCC services, companies no longer need expensive, hardware-laden systems to host meetings with employees or business partners. The advancement of cloud technology means that any business owner, solopreneur, or startup can host low-cost conferences with as many people as necessary, while taking advantage of all available features.

4. Collaborate with multiple stakeholders

UCC tools enable advanced project management that streamlines teamwork. Coworkers can connect on the same project or in the same document and see edits or feedback in-real time. Project management is made much simpler, with leaders having access to robust task-management platforms so they can see status updates as they happen.

Likewise, working in team based projects has been rendered more productive with the help of topic based communication.

5. Let your customers choose

In the age of anything-as-a-service, many business models rely on providing instant cloud-based access to their customers and clients.  

For example, our Hubgets platform gives you the freedom to put your customers on their cloud of choice, whether that be a public cloud like AWS or Azure, or even in your private cloud. By sharing secure cloud access, your customers can be contacted and access information whenever and wherever they like. 

6. Embrace the ability to scale

Last, but certainly not least, cloud-based UCC tools give businesses the opportunity to grow at any time. Without the constraints of on-premise systems or limits imposed by physical workspace, the cloud lets you expand and enables your customers to grow.

They can easily add new remote team members, bolster their workforce with freelance talent, or take on more clients, without the limitations of traditional processes.

Don’t overlook cloud-based UCC

Cloud-based UCC platforms make it easier than ever to manage a business and everything that comes with it, from communication to collaboration.

Unlimited, secure accessibility continues to open up new doors to business owners. Therefore you should not overlook this valuable technology. Help yourselves and enable your customers to grow their businesses even further.