Mobility is becoming imperative in the business world. Organizations that fail to acknowledge and embrace the trends in UC and the mobility benefits the technology offers, risk obsolescence.
The trend towards digital transformations is more than just the latest marketing phrase coined by technology providers. CIO defines digital transformation as “a foundational change in how an organization delivers value to its customers.”
So how is your business delivering value? Not only to your consumers, but your employees who are on the front lines representing your business to your customers? Unified Communications is just one piece of digital transformations – by enabling businesses to bring their communications into the digital future and expand the productivity of their employees and the accessibility for their consumers. Effective collaboration is essential to winning, and keeping, your hard-won clients. But how are the changing trends in UC affecting the face of collaboration?
Three Trends in UC that is Changing Collaboration
Subscription-based software wins – 90% of businesses were using SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) as of a Nemertes Survey from 2014. It is rare these days to find any software for purchase that still comes with an installation CD, much less computers with a CD drive. Physical software purchases are a thing of the past. The simplicity of the subscription-based service is enabling businesses to quickly and cost-effectively access enterprise-grade technology but without the huge capital investment in both equipment and human talent to manage.
Mobility for the masses – Gartner previously predicted that by 2018, twice as many personal devices will be used to perform work duties than enterprise provided devices. Along with this is the desire of these employees to be able to do everything they can do from the office from their personal device. This includes transferring calls, accessing voicemails, dial internal extensions, and even call outside of the network from their mobile device while appearing to be calling from their desk phone. The shift to BYOD, primarily driven by millennials, is helping drive the demand for mobile UC and has also provided businesses cost benefits by helping drive down the cost of providing technology for their employees.
Video is not just for virtual meetings any longer – While video conferencing is still the main use of video within the business world, the use is extending beyond just group collaboration uses. As more employees work outside of the physical office, it is becoming used as a regular form of communication as well. Employees needing to collaborate with an individual coworker are looking for the same “feel” of that in-person collaboration that you might expect when in the office, and video conferencing applications can enable teams to collaborate in real-time. As such, it has become imperative that mobile applications exist for use on personal mobile devices, giving employees the collaboration tools they need to do their job while managing their life.
Change the Face of Your Collaboration Game with Unified Communications
23 hours a week is wasted in meetings, according to a survey from 2007. We can only imagine that time has only gone up in the 12 years since. Even more time is wasted trying to track down coworkers in order to try to collaborate on a project. Stop wasting time with inefficient collaboration techniques and up your game with the collaboration tools built into Unified Communications Solutions.
