At the beginning of 2020, an estimated 62 percent of full-time employees in the United States worked remotely at least to some degree, according to Owl Labs’ State of Remote Work survey. That number steeply increased in the wake of COVID-19. This escalation in working offsite requires the use of virtual communication tools to keep teams on the same page, despite shifts in workflow and location.
Months into the outbreak of COVID-19 and it has become evident that this pandemic will change how jobs are structured in the long-term. In fact, an estimated 25 to 30 percent of American employees could work from home a couple of days per week by the end of 2021, according to a Global Workplace Analytics prediction, with or without further lockdown.
Remote and flexible work is on the rise, with 40 percent more U.S. employers reportedly offering flexible workplace options than five years ago, according to Global Workplace Analytics. On top of this organic growth, the Coronavirus pandemic skyrocketed these stats in the second quarter of 2020.
Flexible work is no longer just a trend. And remote working — mostly from home during this pandemic — comes with a unique set of challenges. While none outweigh the overall benefits of distributed teams, leaders do need to shift their management and processes to get the best results from a remote workforce.
Gone are the days when companies had everybody working physically side-by-side and remote teams were scarce. The future of work is upon us, by choice or by context. And now more than ever, it has become vital for any business to streamline its communication flow and enable access to the company’s life to all their employees, regardless of where these are located.
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.
Business communications are getting a do-over. Moving to the cloud is not a new concept anymore. However, there’s plenty to consider. Especially when you move business communications to the cloud.
Business communications are, by all means, the living breath of any organization. They can make or break a business. Especially today. The amount of information sharing is, by all means, unprecedented. And getting ahead is, in fact, staying relevant.
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Studies show that Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) services represent a fast-growing segment in the broader cloud communications market. That’s not a surprise considering the increasing number of companies who expand their activities far from their traditional borders. But are their employees, especially Millennials, playing any role in this change? I’m a firm believer that this digital-native generation is fueling the change. And scientific facts seem to support this idea.
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Metaphorically speaking, Unified Communications (UC) solution vendors walk around carrying a long list of benefits for service providers who want to offer UC services for SMBs and other organizations (i.e. upgrade their business communication channels). The are many reasons and truth is this crusade against old technology is very justified. Any way you look at it, UC services, especially when hosted in the Cloud, knock the socks off any legacy phone network.
A call center is, in and of itself, a network of phones. Much of UC’s functionality actually originated in call centers. The only difference is that unifying these features enables Service Providers (SP) to take better advantage of resources with the end goal of increasing productivity and improving the customer service. So what better business to target with UC if not contact centers? And although every feature counts, it’s those that touch the customer directly that weigh the most
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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