Communication is one of the most important factors on which the success of modern-day businesses depends. Therefore, business organizations are on the lookout for ways that can help them achieve effective, smooth, accurate, secure, and fast communication. UCaaS systems provide businesses with the solution to achieve such communication in a cost-effective and efficient manner. They utilize the power of technology to address various communication-related challenges faced by businesses that use multiple apps and systems for communication. Furthermore, the UCaaS software systems help business employees and teams achieve unified, engaging, and efficient communication experiences.
Let’s gain knowledge about what Unified Communications as a Service systems are and how they help business teams communicate and collaborate in a better and more effective way.
What are UCaaS systems?
Unified Communications as a Service, also called UCaaS, is a cloud-managed communication system developed for business organizations. The system integrates and brings together different traditional communication systems and collaboration tools in one solution. These systems and tools include voice calling, video conferencing, instant messaging, SMS texting, and email.
UCaaS systems are accessible from various devices. They usually include features like unified messaging, call routing, file sharing and storage, analytics, and mobile compatibility. All these features are cloud-managed and need no local infrastructure for functioning.
UCaaS software systems are designed in accordance with how modern teams work, including remote, hybrid, or in-office teams. Easy to deploy, scalable, and with low IT overhead, the systems help businesses stay productive and connected without juggling between apps or managing servers. Moreover, their use aids in simplifying the user experience, decreasing deployment and management-related costs, and boosting the customer experience.
Voice over IP technology is the foundation technology on which UCaaS solution is based. Voice-related data in VoIP is transmitted over an IP network instead of analog signals. UCaaS enhances VoIP’s capabilities with the integration of voice communication into a unified and broader cloud-based platform. The platform also provides video conferencing, instant messaging, and file sharing, besides other business applications. This integration simplifies organizational workflows and elevates productivity of organizations by lessening fatigue caused by managing multiple apps by their employees. The integration provides a scalable and flexible system that can be accessed by various devices connected to the internet. Thus, the integration makes collaboration smoother for remote and in-office teams.
The combination of various communication and collaboration tools into a single, easy-to-use and cloud-based platform in UCaaS enables teams to communicate intelligently and more efficiently.
A UCAAS solution provider operates the cloud infrastructure that powers the unified communications solution. Therefore, customers don’t need to maintain an expensive telephony infrastructure like a PBX. UcaaS solution providers generally provide UCaaS solutions as a monthly recurring service.
As its infrastructure resides in the cloud, setting up and deploying a UCaaS system is simple. Being simple to deploy, many end-users can set up UCaaS systems themselves, while others can get deployment services from a UCaaS system provider after making the required payment. The cost for UCaaS deployment is a fraction of the cost incurred for deploying a legacy PBX system.
UCaaS replaces the traditional on-premise PBX system. Companies don’t need to provide analog lines for each handset, which makes UCaaS an ideal replacement for Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) lines. Moreover, it provides an increased level of flexibility for a distributed workforce that works from home. Connecting to the UCaaS cloud is as simple as connecting a phone to the internet. Once the phone is online, the UC will let it extend the enterprise’s business telephony functions to remote users.
The majority of UCaaS solution providers have multiple points of presence (PoPs) to service their UCaaS clients, which helps to provide redundancy. (Redundancy refers to the implementation of duplicate or backup components, paths, and devices to ensure the continuous availability of network architecture and its tolerance to faults.)
Soft phones, physical phones, and other collaboration solutions connect to the cloud of UCaaS providers to gain access to the service.
Here are the key functions of a Unified Communications Solution that are crucial for communication and collaboration in business organizations.
Critical Functions of a Unified Communications Solution
Enterprise Voice
Reliable and scalable phone service lies at the center of any reputable UCaaS system. Phones connect to the cloud, and they enable internal as well as external users to communicate over the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). Though UCaaS depends on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and cloud-based services, it uses PSTN access through methods like SIP trunking or gateways to connect to the traditional phone network for calls to non-VoIP devices and calls from these devices.
Users get Direct Inward Dial (DID) phone numbers for direct calling. The DID distributes calls to call center agents with a contact as a service feature. UCaaS systems usually support both physical phones and softphones. Softphones are software-based phones for laptops, desktops, and mobile devices that mimic physical desk phones. They are in the form of apps on mobile devices and computers. Softphones enable users to work remotely. UCaaS solutions generally offer end-to-end encryption, which makes voice communications secure.
A UCaaS forwards calls to mobile phones by using call routing features. Call recording enables enterprises to record and store calls securely in the cloud, which enhances customer service and satisfaction. Other important features include advanced call management, auto-attendant, and visual voicemail.
High-quality call management features also include CRM integration, click-to-dial, call logging, missed call notifications, and others. Due to all these features being in one place, each agent can access all the information they need from a single location.
Conferencing
UCaaS solutions offer many audio and video conferencing options that are integrated with the voice service. Video conferencing provides businesses and teams a way to connect face-to-face while working remotely.
UCaaS systems enable users to easily join conferences from any remote location through mobile devices and computers. Moreover, the systems incorporate passcodes for the prevention of unauthorized access and enhancement of security.
Conferencing through UCaaS solutions usually includes muting, lecture mode, and recording features. UCaaS solution providers provide conferencing solutions that enable both one-on-one and multi-person video calls. Voice and video conference recording is often provided as an additional feature.
The majority of UCaaS solutions offer integrations with various conferencing products like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, etc. The integrations are meant for customers who prefer to use their existing conferencing platform. As a result, users can access UCaaS features from their conferencing interface. There are also some platforms that improve call quality in third-party conferencing platforms. This resultantly makes your third-party conferencing solution better when it is combined with a Unified Communications platform.
Instant Messaging
The majority of UCaaS solutions come with an Instant Messaging (IM) option for communication and file sharing. Instead of using IM platforms that are being used by consumers, the IM solutions from UCaaS system providers are secure. When using commercial IM platforms that are offered by a UCaaS solution provider, companies can store their files in a safe manner on their managed storage devices rather than on their personal storage devices.
UCaaS systems also provide the presence feature that gives the ability to see if users are available on the platform. The presence feature involves the use of easy-to-understand icons to show which users are online. Moreover, the icons enable users to share their availability as well as the best communication channels to contact them. As an example, the icon can indicate whether a user is busy in a meeting or available for communication only through chat. These features thus enable quicker and more efficient communications over multiple tools. Moreover, they help to reduce disruptions at work and save time.
Instant messaging platforms can be integrated with customer chat functions for providing enhanced customer support. The combination of these features with a contact center solution provides extra value. The contact center agent stores the communication made with the customer in a CRM system integrated with UCaaS and CCaaS solutions.
Thus, instant messaging is an ideal communication solution for users who are looking for speedy and simple communication.
Collaboration
UCaaS systems provide various collaboration tools that are designed to enable users to work from laptops, desktops, and mobile devices. Apart from conferencing and video messaging, UCaaS solutions also provide file sharing, calendar sharing, and screen sharing capabilities. The solutions usually include project and task management features, thus making them a full collaboration suite.
UCaaS system solutions enable intelligent communication and collaboration not only by integrating multiple communication tools into a single, cloud-based platform, but also by leveraging various AI-powered features. Let’s gain more knowledge about these features.
AI-Driven Features for Intelligent Communication and Collaboration
Smart Summaries and Action Items
Meant for enhanced collaboration and meetings, smart summaries and action items use the power of real-time analytics to identify important action items, information, and tasks from communications. By automating overviews of meetings and conversations, they ensure follow-up tasks are captured and actioned. Smart summaries and action items help lessen administrative burden and achieve better organization in teams. Moreover, they help businesses make better-informed decisions and achieve improved overall team collaboration and performance.
Meeting Quality
AI-powered features like noise cancellation and intelligent framing also cater to improving collaboration and meetings. The purpose of these features is to help enhance the quality of hybrid meetings.
Noise cancellation utilizes AI to improve hybrid meetings in UCaaS platforms. It enhances hybrid meetings by extracting distracting background sounds like traffic in the street, the humming of HVAC systems, and typing on the keyboard. This consequently makes communication clear and improves the focus and professionalism of every meeting participant, irrespective of their location. By avoiding constant interruptions caused by background noise, the noise cancellation feature helps both remote and in-office participants contribute effectively, thus making meetings more fruitful and inclusive.
AI-enabled intelligent framing feature in Unified Communications as a Service platforms is also useful for collaboration and meetings. The framing feature adjusts camera focus in an automatic manner to keep meeting participants in view and at an optimal size. This thus ensures enhanced visual presence and engagement during virtual meetings. Intelligent framing aids in improving the quality of meetings by lessening distractions such as awkward camera angles. This consequently helps to create a more professional and inclusive experience that elevates collaboration and productivity across global teams.
Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment analysis is yet another AI-enabled feature in UCaaS systems for better collaboration and meetings. It offers real-time insights into the engagement of participants through facial recognition and other methods, thus allowing more empathic interactions. Moreover, sentiment-based analysis analyzes team dynamics and provides summaries of meeting dynamics, which boosts productivity and engagement. The analysis helps managers quickly identify any issues with the morale of the team. Moreover, the analysis helps businesses identify successful patterns of communication. Furthermore, sentiment analysis enables businesses to elevate their teams’ performance.
Chatbots and Virtual Assistants
Artificial intelligence-based intelligent chatbots and virtual assistants enhance teams’ communication efficiency in UCaaS systems in various ways. These include performing automation of tasks of a routine nature and providing instant support on a 24/7 basis. The other ways include streamlining call routing and analyzing sentiment to improve interactions with customers. By managing inquiries of repetitive inquiries, summarizing calls, scheduling meetings, and providing real-time translation, these AI tools make human agents free to look after more complex issues. Their use resultantly helps organizations elevating their overall productivity and customer satisfaction.
Real-Time Transcription and Translation
AI-driven real-time transcription and translation capabilities enable UCaaS systems to improve communication efficiency by eliminating language barriers and creating accessible and searchable meeting records. They thus contribute to improving productivity and allowing precise documentation. Consequently, global teams can collaborate in a smooth manner and immediately understand each other’s contributions. Transcription and translation capabilities help to lessen misunderstandings and save valuable time for business organizations. Moreover, they provide them with valuable references for future meetings and knowledge management.
Automated Workflows
AI and machine learning help improve communication efficiency in UCaaS by automating workflows. For achieving automation of workflows, artificial intelligence and machine learning centralize communication-related channels, facilitate intelligent routing of calls and messages, and offer automated insights from interactions. Automated workflows help to do away with manual tasks and make resolutions faste,r which saves time for employees. Moreover, they aid in streamlining the management of tasks and better response times. This eventually results in boosted productivity, collaboration, and customer experience.
Advanced Analytics and Security
AI provides businesses with deeper insights into communication patterns and performance. This resultantly helps businesses make better informed decisions, leading to better customer experience and employee productivity, and optimized team performance.
By continuously monitoring systems and data for suspicious activity and threats, AI helps businesses proactively recognize, resolve, and reduce security issues, threats, and risks. Moreover, it enables them to follow security policies within the UCaaS environment. This leads to the maintenance of enhanced security within the unified communications platform.
Benefits of UCaaS Solutions
After knowing how AI-enabled features in UCaaS systems facilitate intelligent communication and collaboration, it’s time to unravel the benefits of UCaaS solution development for your business.
- Flexibility for Hybrid and Remote Teams
UCaaS systems enable remote collaboration among teams that are distantly located and those following the hybrid work model. To allow collaboration among the remotely located teams, the systems provide them with accessible and dependable communication and business collaboration tools on various devices used by them, including tablets, laptops, and desktops. The access to these tools enables your employees to switch smoothly between devices and collaborate on a consistent basis from any place, including worldwide offices, home, or at the time of traveling.
- Cost-Effective
Businesses need to invest thousands of dollars or even more in traditional on-premise PBX systems. These include the costs for hardware, software licenses, and basic configuration, along with a per-user cost for phones. But in the case of UCaaS, companies are charged a reasonable per-user monthly fee that is without any upfront hardware costs, licensing fees, or extensive maintenance costs. The subscription-based and predictable pricing of UCaaS and the lack of unforeseen overhead enable businesses to save on their communication-related expenses. The cost of purchasing UCaaS software development solutions varies according to the user count, features, and the UCaaS solution provider.
- Enhances Productivity
UCaaS helps to improve productivity in workplace productivity by keeping various collaboration and communication tools in a central place, including voice, video, and messaging. Moreover, UCaaS elevates productivity by lessening switching between different apps and making organizational workflows smoother. The integrated approach helps to improve teamwork and overall efficiency and provides remote work capabilities. It also leads to decreased need to invest in expensive multiple on-premises systems. Advanced features like artificial intelligence-enabled summaries, powerful integrations with other tools, and connectivity that is always on further enhance productivity and collaboration of the team regardless of members’ location.
- Makes Implementation Simpler
As UCaaS services exist in the cloud, installing and deploying them is simple. Users usually configure them through a web-based GUI. The UCaaS solution provider can also help you with the installation and configuration of your UCaaS software system.
- Fewer Tools to Manage
Due to UCaaS solutions bundling multiple tools into a unified platform, you need not purchase many third-party tools for your team communication and collaboration. Moreover, this brings down the hassles of integrating products offered by multiple vendors.
In the event of your business favoring or needing third-party collaboration tools like Slack, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams, direct integrations can be performed between the tools and the UCaaS solution.
Moreover, UCaaS platforms are integrable with various vital business applications. These include software tools for project management, such as Trello, Asana, or Jira, and customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Robust integrations between the UCaaS software platform and different business applications, platforms for collaboration, and software tools for project management can make workflows smoother. Furthermore, the integrations can aid in improving the overall productivity of organizations and lessening redundancy.
- Elevated Business Agility and Scalability
UCaaS software development solutions can effortlessly adapt to evolving business needs by scaling up or down. Companies are allowed to add or remove users instantly. Moreover, they can manage new locations or expand services without making heavy infrastructure investments. Thus, they can maintain operational agility and responsiveness to market-related changes.
- Increased Performance and Dependability
The leading UCaaS providers ensure enhanced availability of UCaaS solutions through building multiple data centers, geo-redundancy, and the implementation of disaster recovery measures. Due to the cloud resilience, communication can happen in an uninterrupted manner, resulting in decreased disruptions and downtime.
- Security
UCaaS solutions are equipped with encryption and other essential security features. Security configurations are implemented in devices throughout a company that ensure devices meet compliance requirements and follow established company standards.
- Low Maintenance
The UCaaS solution provider is responsible for maintaining the infrastructure and signs a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with customers. The provider monitors the latency and uptime of the UCaaS system. Therefore, customers need not pay for maintenance costs and do not need to hire expensive on-staff telephony engineers. They only have to pay a reasonable monthly fee to the UcaaS provider, who will take care of the system’s maintenance through the cloud service.
Due to these communication and collaboration-related benefits provided by UCaaS, it finds use in various industries.
Communication Solutions Applicable to Various Industries
UCaaS systems can be helpful in increasing internal collaboration among different departments of the organization. Also, they can aid in improving the engagement and satisfaction of customers. For enhanced internal collaboration and customer engagement, the systems integrate various communication tools into a single cloud-managed platform. These tools consist of voice, video, messaging, and file sharing. The use of these systems results in smoother operations and increased agility in business organizations. Therefore, UCaaS solutions are applied across a wide range of industries. These include finance, healthcare, retail, education, manufacturing, and government organizations.
Steps to Follow for UCaaS Migration
Your transition to cloud-operated unified communications need not be a disruptive affair. To shift smoothly from scattered tools to UCaaS-enabled streamlined collaboration, you not only need the right preparation but also the right UCaaS solution development partner.
- Do Assessment and Planning
Perform an audit of existing systems: Evaluate various tools such as conferencing, PBX, chat apps, and mobile-based devices on which your teams rely for communication and collaboration. Additionally, assess your network and hardware for factors, including bandwidth, stability, and latency. This helps to ensure that they can support your real-time communication demands. This will help you gain an understanding of the capabilities and limitations of your hardware, network, and tools.
Moreover, you need to acquire an understanding of the requirements of your organization. This includes specific communication channels you need, such as video, voice, and messaging, as well as the integrations required with existing software like customer relationship management systems. Furthermore, you need to define clear objectives for the UCaaS solution’s implementation.
Map communication ecosystem: Perform documentation of all official and unofficial tools that are being used across various departments in your organization.
Define your pain points and goals: Find out the particular communication-related challenges being faced by your organization. Moreover, recognize and define what you intend to achieve with the UCaaS solution in terms of supporting remote work, streamlining tools, or slashing costs.
Manage security and compliance: You have to make sure that the UCaaS solution you choose is in alignment with the particular security architecture and regulatory compliance requirements.
- Vendor Selection and Planning
Research and choose a provider: Assess various potential UCaaS solution providers according to their feature set, scalability, reliability, and cost structure. Moreover, evaluate their proven cloud uptime as well as compliance with (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) PCI, (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) HIPAA, and other related requirements. Furthermore, assess if they offer in-built security features such as Transport Layer Security (TLS) or Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP) encryption.
Additionally, evaluate if the providers provide compatibility with desktops and mobile devices and perform native integration with communication tools like Zoom, MS Teams, etc., that you are currently using. Also, evaluate if they provide real support on a 24/7 basis that goes beyond chatbots. Evaluation and analysis of these factors will help you choose a specific UCaaS solution provider that is the right fit and best fit for your needs.
Build a project plan: Work with the provider you have chosen for your UCaaS software development project to create a detailed plan. Design and Integration:
Plan integration architecture: Here, the provider will determine how your UCaaS solution will integrate with your existing systems and applications. He will accordingly prioritize native integrations or APIs.Design the migration plan:
The provider will also be responsible for building a detailed phased migration plan. This includes a realistic timeline for migrating to the new UCaaS system and its implementation and testing. Moreover, the plan includes resource allocation and specific measures to be taken to minimize the disruption of your operations. The plan will also cover call routing, number porting, staff communication, and change management. Moreover, it will include working with IT and team leads to prepare devices, assign licenses, and perform validation of backups.
- Implement & Train
Ensure network readiness: Here, the UCaaS system provider will verify if your IT infrastructure is stable and can support the bandwidth requirements for the new UCaaS solution.
Perform integration with existing systems: The provider will perform the integration of the solution with your other software and services.
Train employees: The UCaaS solution provider will arrange and provide the necessary learning resources and training to all your employees before and during the deployment of the solution. This is required to ensure its successful adoption among your users. The learning resources may include video tutorials, live walkthroughs, and access to support documents. The training may involve using leaders within departments to field FAQs to employees and share quick wins with them.
- Deploy & Monitor
Roll out the solution: Before rolling out the solution for implementation, the provider will conduct a thorough test of the solution to evaluate its functionality and performance before full deployment. This includes running a pilot program with a small group of users. After the completion of testing, he will implement the UCaaS platform in phases to minimize disruption to daily operations.
Monitor performance: To identify areas for improvement in the UCaaS system, the performance, important metrics, and UC usage trends will be tracked. Moreover, user feedback will be gathered.
Manage costs and ROI: Here, usage-based billing and per-user licensing will be monitored for effective cost management. Moreover, your return on investment will be tracked.
- Make Continuous Improvement
Iterate and update: Based on the monitoring data and acquired feedback, improvements and adjustments are made to the UCaaS system and associated processes on a continual basis to improve return on investment and maintain long-term success.
Focus on adoption: Here, you need to encourage continued adoption and leverage the entire “unified” aspect of UCaaS to avoid disjointed communications among your employees.
Remain agile: Follow a culture that promotes continuous improvement in your organization and makes your employees remain adaptable to new technologies and the evolving needs of your business organization.
By now, you have gained a comprehensive knowledge of various facets of UCaaS software development solutions. This includes what these solutions are, the critical functions UCaaS systems perform, their AI-enabled features, and the various benefits they provide. Moreover, this includes their applications in various industries and the steps involved with UCaaS migration. This knowledge will help you make informed decisions regarding the UCaaS adoption and implementation.
If you have decided in favour of adopting a UCaaS solution for intelligent, streamlined, cohesive, efficient, and fast communication and collaboration in your organization, then you need a reliable and specialist UCaaS solution provider to help you achieve this.
Capanicus is a leading and proficient UCaaS software system development company on which businesses and industries globally rely for their UCaaS migration needs. If you too want to achieve a smooth, non-disruptive, and successful UCaaS system migration for your business organization, reach out to our unified communications experts to discuss your needs further
