Stop Worrying About Your Phone System

To have a custom Hosted VoIP or Unified Communications solution designed for you by Jive...simply ask at the link below.

Custom Cloud Solution

Jive Communications provides enterprise-grade Hosted VoIP and Unified Communications to businesses and institutions. Jive’s hosted services run on Jive Cloud, a cloud-based platform built on open industry standards. The Jive Cloud architecture has been purpose-built to deliver the most reliable, powerful, and economical hosted communication services available to the enterprise market.

Jive helps put businesses on the map with better communications through its enterprise-grade Hosted VoIP and Unified Communications. Make the changes you want, forget about system maintenance, and focus on why you got into business in the first place.

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Recognition

Jive is the recipient of many industry awards, including Frost & Sullivan’s Entrepreneurial Company of the Year

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Jive is the highest-rated 

Cloud voice platform.

Jive consistently rates highest on third-party customer review sites. When world class technology meets professional implementation and dedicated support, everything jives.

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Simple

Users can take advantage of Jive’s simple online interfaces and quick setups. All Jive Voice phones come preconfigured for easy plug-and-play installation. Jive also has intuitive, drag-and-drop controls that allow administrators to control all aspects of their system with a single click.

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Affordable

It’s clear. Jive Voice offers a lower total cost of ownership when compared with traditional on-premises or legacy solutions. Jive eliminates the need for expensive licensing fees, annual maintenance contracts, separate service plans, costly upgrades, and proprietary premises-based equipment. 

 With Jive, you’ll always have the latest technology delivered seamlessly via the Cloud.

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Reliable

Jive solutions are delivered via Jive Cloud, our hosted services platform. Born in the Cloud, Jive doesn’t have legacy or premises-based distractions. Jive Cloud has industry-leading:

Performance. Housed in multiple SSAE16 datacenters across the world, Jive Cloud provides redundancy and high availability on a full distributed platform. 

Scalability. Jive can serve thousands of users on a single, consolidated system that has unlimited capacity for growth. 

Flexibility. Control all system configurations and make moves, adds, and changes in real-time using Jive’s online administrator portal. 

Interoperability. Based on open standards and commodity hardware, Jive provides API access and integrates seamlessly with leading CRM, ERP, and other third-party software.

Why Cloud Brokers Are The Future

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” goes the aphorism by Mark Twain. Looking at historical examples can be instructive. As an example, railroad development in the 1800’s was very similar to the network buildout of the 1990s and consolidation of today. We had only to look at history to see that overbuilding, lack of interchangeability, subsequent regulation and consolidation, and in some cases nationalization might be factors in national network build outs.

The Romans used to say, "to see the future, look to the past,” and it’s in the past we learn why the Cloud favors the broker model and will continue to do so. In 1771 Richard Arkwright assembled the first modern factory in Derbyshire, England.  Arkwright was known as the father of the industrial revolution not because of his textile related inventions and patents, but because of the factory system he created centralizing people and equipment. This centralized system turned out to be extremely efficient when compared to the cottage spinning and weaving each family or town craftspeople performed.  Centralized machinery meant fewer machinists were needed, spare parts were on hand, and the work was uniform and of high quality.

BREAK FIX REDUCED

Just like a factory, services in the Cloud do not require presence at the customer location to perform services. Service issues, settings adjustments, and upgrades can largely be performed by the provider which significantly reduces the need for on-site personnel. VAR models based on break/fix are now suffering because of this reality.

EMPHASIS ON MARKETING AND SALES

Factories created so much efficiency that by 1812 the cost to manufacture cotton yarn had dropped by 90% http://industrialrevolution.sea.ca/innovations.html!. The challenge now was how to sell the abundance of surplus produced which would require marketing and sales efforts. The Cloud has created a similar situation of abundance.  Software and computing cost almost nothing; the challenge providers have is selling and marketing their plentiful, high-margin product.

Cloud brokers focus on relationships and selling which are the primary services needed in a Cloud sales environment. These are the competencies of a partner that will be of primary importance to a Cloud services provider.

NOT EVERYTHING IS AUTOMATED

Some may argue the sale of cloud services will also be automated, and while that’s true for many apps you may buy personally, whenever there are complexity and choice, advisory services will appear.  As an example, look at the recent rise of “robo-advisors” like Betterment and Wealthfront which use algorithms to execute trades on behalf of customers.  Betterment has now added an advisory network as have the “robo” advisory services provided by Personal Capital, E-Trade, Vanguard, and others. While many things can be automated, not even Amazon has been able to automate the relationship provided by a trusted advisor.  

ADDITIONAL BROKER SERVICES

Customers will need additional services from third party advisors such as implementation and  customization services which will largely be advisory, software integration, and monitoring and management services. Some of these services may be provided by implementation specialists who will work with providers to create a custom fit for the customer.  Cloud brokers will either partner or will add this type of services to their offering as well as provide ongoing monitoring of service to ensure the quality of a customer’s experience and to ensure adoption and retain and grow customers.  

The modern factory’s product is purchased through marketing channels based on customer choice. lCoud services will be purchased through the channel the customer desires and based on the historical precedent and the trends we see today, that channel is increasingly the broker channel.

To have a custom cloud computing solution designed for you and YOUR specific needs...simply ask at the link below.

Custom Cloud Solution

How To Spot An Opportunity To Improve Your Contact Center Operations....Efficiency And Effectiveness

A contact center is an integrated, and usually automated, communications system that coordinates all telephone and electronic contacts between an organization and the public. The goal when talking about contact centers has always been to connect your business to your customer. Some of the questions you should consider as a business with a contact center are:

• What do you want your business to look like?
• How do you want your business to be perceived?
• How will people talk to you? Who should they talk to? How do you connect them?
• How do you measure your effectiveness?

HOW TO SPOT AN OPPORTUNITY FOR IMPROVEMENT TO YOUR CONTACT CENTER OPERATIONS

Customer experience has become the new battleground for competitive differentiation. When you look at customer needs they involve social media, self-service, mobility, texts, chats and email. These are all newer methods of communication, not usually associated with call centers, but nowadays call centers are really contact centers. In the past businesses have competed through products and pricing, but they now find themselves having to compete through service. One of the key factors for a business is the need to be able to interact with its customers in a manner which makes the customer want to interact with them. Therefore, the cloud contact center industry is expected to grow within the next three to five years as more businesses start to move into the cloud in order to be able to offer the features, functionality, and the type of customer experience their customers are demanding.

If you are unsure whether you have a contact centers with opportunities to improve operations, or if you don’t know what an opportunity looks like, the tips listed below will help you. 

• Most contact centers will have an 800 number, and this will be one of the easier ways to find out if there is a functioning contact center behind your business. By simply calling the number you will be able to figure out what what your functionality looks like, feels like, and if it makes sense. If the logic and the routing makes sense to you then you are most likely in good shape, but if it is confusing to you just imagine how it would be for a regular customer who is not technically inclined.
• If your business has a website, specially with chat or email functionality, that is another sign a contact center exists with an opportunity to improve.
• If your business uses a large amount of bandwidth it's likely Your existing contact center consumes a good portion of that...this is another opportunity for improvement.

Some other tips to consider when evaluating your contact centers for improvement:

• Contact centers are more of a business outcome discussion. This mean you will want to have this discussion with somebody in the C-Level or someone who is in operations.
• Always remember that moving contact centers to the cloud is a business culture, economic, and business outcome decision.
• If during your discussions you find you are moving other items to the cloud, the contact center might make a compelling argument supporting shift to the cloud.
• With AVAYA filing for chapter 11, there are a lot of businesses who are nervous about this and what it means. Many businesses might have antiquated AVAYA architecture in this premise space, so moving off of a premise system and into the cloud makes more sense.
• Some of the benefits of moving to the cloud for a contact center are:
• an increase in revenue;
• cost reduction;
• customer satisfaction improvement;
• true business agility.

If you are comfortable when it comes to looking for the opportunity to improve, and know what to look for but don’t know how to start the conversation, here are some conversation starter tips: 

WHY INCONTACT? 

The inContact business model consists of having professional contact center experts in their direct sales and engineering departments who team up with their client partners. 

Q&A 

Q: What is it that the cloud provides to contact center and to SMB that perhaps people don’t know about? 

A: When you move the contact center to the cloud, much like other missing business technology services, you get tremendous efficiency gains. Often times when you look at a premise space contact center, you’ve got a lot of people that are tasked with running it. They are tasked with break fixes, upgrades, and more, in order to keep the contact center running. All of this is very labor- and cost-intensive so that when you need to make upgrades or changes it will take days or even weeks as opposed to the cloud where these can be made instantaneously. In the cloud you can scale your business up and down based on business demand, which means that you are paying for what you are using as instead of overbuying technology. For companies with multiple locations or at-home agents, the cloud is an ecosystem for the contact center and enables greater efficiency. Another great thing about the cloud is that it gives you the capability to right-size your business based on customer demand.

Q: What can inContact bring to the table to help a client determine an ROI story their company leadership? 

A: Part of inContact’s sales model is providing an ROI analysis. This analysis consists of looking at what the client currently has, finding where the gaps in efficiency are, and using that information to put forth inContact’s proposal for service. You can see right away what the you have been paying, what you are using, what you are getting for your investment versus what inContact can do. Some of the cost savings associated with the cloud deployment are so sizable that the ROI is almost immediate.

To have a custom InContact call center solution designed for you...simply ask at the link below.

Custom Contact Center Solution

How Every Global Business Can Find The Right Voice/Data/Cloud Network Solution For Them...Anywhere In The World

If you're an international business, doing business around the globe, then International Carriers are something that has become more important to your business in this age of a global economy. Below we'll talk about some key differentiator and questions you need to be thinking about when deciding just how to design the right international voice/data/cloud network for YOU. 

Your best options for these carriers have been split up into two different groups for this discussion, United States based carriers and international carriers.

UNITED STATES BASED CARRIERS

When we say “United States based”, we are referring to companies with the nexus of the ownership structure in the United States. These carriers are important because these companies will bill you directly, so if you want your bill in the United States and in US dollars, these will be your best option. Typically one portion of the solution you’re going to buy through them is going to be tied to the United States...so whether it’s a network, or a few locations for broadband access, you are going to have some type of nexus in the US when dealing with these US carriers.

• AT&T - Serves thousands of customers on six continents, including all of the Fortune 1000.
• Verizon - Provides businesses and governments around the world with leading IT, security, communications, network, and mobility services.
• CenturyLink - Provides data, voice and managed services to business, government and wholesale customers in local, national and select international markets through its high-quality advanced fiber optic network and multiple data centers.
• Level 3 -  Strong international player especially in Canada, Europe, and Asia as a result of their acquisition of Global Crossing a few years back. Global Crossing was almost entirely focused on the international market space.
• Masergy -  Owns and operates the largest independent Software Defined Platform in the world, delivering hybrid networking, managed security and cloud communication solutions to global enterprises.
• Cogent - A multinational, Tier 1 facilities-based ISP, consistently ranked as one of the top five Internet backbone networks in the world.
• Zayo -   Provides lit and dark fiber bandwidth infrastructure solutions and carrier-neutral colocation. Currently providing their services in seven countries.
• Global Capacity - Multi-site, multi-state, multi-country network solutions – Global Capacity’s One Marketplace network takes the headache out of sourcing and managing multiple suppliers across divergent geographies - delivering services with one MSA, SLA, and invoice no matter the location or access solution.

INTERNATIONAL CARRIERS

The second group is made up of carriers who are truly international, meaning they are not US based. These companies have headquarters in foreign countries with maybe a field office in the United states. They can bill in foreign currency and directly,  they can also set up a network in those countries. These carriers usually don’t buy wholesale from other places. They operate around the world and also have domestic presence in their respected countries.

• China Telecom - They have a huge presence in South America, and China along with the best rates.  
• NTT Communications -  Known as the “gateway to Asia” with total ownership of submarine cable infrastructures and the lowest latency from APAC to the US. 80% of the Global Fortune 100 use NTT for their mission critical global infrastructure and IT needs.
• TATA - If you have Data Centers or Contact Centers in India, Tata is the one you’ll want to talk to. They also have a huge presence in the Philippines.
• Telia -   Also called Telia Company, Telia Carrier is a company that  provides network infrastructure and services to more than 1,200 customers in 80 different countries worldwide. Their IP network, AS1299, has grown from being the largest IP network in Europe to being the second largest IP network in North America and the second largest in the world.
• GTT -  A global network integrator providing a broad portfolio of Wide-Area Network (WAN), Dedicated internet access and mobility services. GTT combines multiple networks and technologies such as traditional OC-x, MPLS and ethernet, to deliver cost-effective solutions. Their focus is on voice and cloud-based services
• Expereo - Expereo manages over 2500+ providers across 200+ countries to provide fully managed internet services with standard Ethernet handoff, static IPs, feet on the street, SD-WAN, in a single partner to help support you in the US or globally. They are headquartered in the Netherlands.
• Telstra -  A leading telecommunications and technology company offering a wide range of services globally, with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region. They have around 3,000 employees based in 22 countries outside of Australia providing services to hundreds of business and government customers. Telstra provides technology solutions for business and government customers, including data and IP networks, network application services such as managed networks, unified communications, cloud, industry solutions and integrated services.

These are the companies that can get you access, which means internet access, MPLS, SD-WAN, and field techs. The second group of carriers we discussed are the ones who will have the most field techs, while the first group of carriers are going to be the ones that rely on their foreign partnerships to get some of this work done. It’s important for you to know that because a lot of the times when work orders are handed off from one provider to another provider it creates some issues, but when you go right to the provider who is providing the service, everything happens a lot faster. 

MAIN CONSIDERATIONS 

Below we have listed some of things you should take into consideration when you’re deciding the design for your international network.

• Point to Point - Is one of those locations in the United States or not? For example if you’re going from Dubai to Japan then you have to look at the second group of carriers who are the true international carriers. If at least one of those points is inside the United States then the first group of carriers who are United States based will be your best bet.
• MPLS- If most of the locations are in the United States and just a few outside you will want to go with one of the United States based carriers. If majority of the locations are foreign and you only have one or two connections in the United States, the second group made up of truly international carriers will be your best choice. Of course than after the choice is made you will have to look into which carriers are available in the specific area you are in. The best way to start it out is just to narrow it down by country.
• Stand-alone Internet Access - If you’re looking for stand-alone internet access anywhere outside the United States you almost always have to go directly to the second group of international carriers. It is very rare to get stand-alone DIA because that's regulated under the local government regulations according to the particular country. Stand-alone internet access has to be done by a carrier who is native to that country or a carrier that has Nexus in that country.
• Last Mile - There are two different ways that carries can get last mile overseas... 1)  A type two connection, which means they have network to network interface agreements with that company. This is very expensive and technical. Companies like Level3 and Global Capacity have a lot of NNI’s.  2)  If you want to go from dozens to hundreds of options you actually have to just buy the last mile, in some cases retail which means the customer will have to go out and buy the last mile and route that back to their network. This opens them up to a lot more options.
• In-Country DID Numbers - There are many countries that will allow DID Numbers so your client can have an in-country number, but there are also many countries that do not. There are carriers in the portfolio above that don’t offer voice at all or local DID number. A good way to figure out which carriers offer DID numbers and which don’t....just ask us.  {see link below}
• Billing - If you’re a company that does not want to pay their bill in U.S. dollars you will have to find a carrier that has a nexus in your country. Nexus meaning an operating unit that has been registered with the local government that can actually bill in native currency.  Again, for help just ask us at the link below.
• SD-WAN - Some of the carriers don’t have their own native SD-WAN or even resell it yet. It’s important for you to understand what companies can do it and which can’t, specifically which carriers have equipment on standby so if something breaks you don’t have to FedEx a new unit out to the country.  Again, just ask us at the link below.
• Cloud and Colo Access - We talk a lot about Comcast, Level 3, CenturyLink and their ability to provide cloud connectivity directly into Azure or directly into AWS. What that is code for, is the ability to deliver connectivity directly into the data center in the United States where Amazon and Microsoft are co-locating their equipment. This applies overseas.

PUBLIC CLOUD ZONES 

All previous cloud connectivity discussions have been focused just on the North America, but as you can see from the image below Amazon has cloud zones in Brazil, Europe, and now they’ve also brought in Indonesia, Australia, China, and Japan. It’s important to know what you are intending to do in the public cloud, be we can also help build private clouds {just ask at the link below}.

In the image below you can see the zoning for the public clouds in the Microsoft environment. You’ll see that they’ve got a pretty comparable footprint with Amazon.  Microsoft has locations in Silicon Valley, Central US, North Central US, South Central US, and East US. They also have Brazil, Ireland, Amsterdam, and a good footprint across Asia, China, Japan, Australia, Singapore.

It is very important for you to be aware that today there is more need for connectivity internationally than there ever was before because internet and cloud access is worldwide technology upon which everyone is standardizing. Knowing the different types of international carriers, and what they can and can’t offer, is a great way to differentiate your network and help your business grow.

To take advantage of FREE quotes and support for design of international voice/data/cloud networks anywhere in the world...simply ask at the following link...it's easy as 1, 2, 3.

Free Network Design Support

A Cloud Network Solution For All Seasons...Do You Know What It Is?

With the emphasis in today's world on a global economy, the demographics of the workforce continue to change. It’s very clear that more and more people are now working outside of their offices more often, which means people looking for ways to stay connected with their customers. An industry first, the 8x8 Communications Cloud empowers everyone in your enterprise to be more connected and productive no matter where they are....anywhere in the world.

The rapid shift to Cloud is happening because of a number of factors. The reality is on-premises implementations require IT teams to work on various activities at each location, but with cloud solutions administration is centralized. This saves time on daily activities allowing the IT team to focus on strategic efforts. Results-driven companies rely on the 8x8 Communications Cloud to reduce complexity and cost, improve individual and team productivity and performance, and enhance the overall customer experience.

As of 2017, there are about 400 million telephony users globally, by most estimates this market has been tapped into less than ten percent. From 2016 to 2018, Cloud Communications users will grow at 65 percent a year. This is a fifty billion dollar market which has forty billion dollars of UCaaS opportunity and ten billion contact center opportunities. It’s a very exciting time to be in the Cloud Communication space....for both providers and end users.

 

Back in 2002 when 8x8 began offering Cloud Communications, they catered mainly to small business customers, but soon they began to see interest growing within midmarket customers. About two years ago 8x8 noticed a real change in the market, it was no longer about whether the enterprise customer would go cloud or premise, but about which cloud. Today only 5 percent of the large businesses in the US  have adopted UCaaS, which means there is huge opportunity gap in this space.  Early adopters have leaped out in front of their competition.  That competitive gap widens more the longer an enterprise delays migrating to a cloud network environment.

WHY 8X8?

8x8 is a global communication provider with over 47,000 businesses and over one thousand employees mainly between their San Jose, CA headquarters and their UK, Romania and New York facilities. They are the only communication vendor that has been a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for five years running. 8x8 went public in 1997; they have been growing 20-25 percent a year since and have been profitable for about twenty seven consecutive quarters. They are the only Cloud Communications provider with a single solution. Some unique benefits only 8x8 provides:

• Single Solution & Single Provider: Not Reliant on thirdparty. Seamless platform integrations and single source of resolution.
• Global, Secure & Enterprise Grade: Most secure platform in industry (HIPAA, FISMA, PCI, and more), 12 data centers, 120 plue counties geo-routing, end-to-end SLA.
• Advanced Reporting & Analytics: Every call scored, reporting from every device, and industry leading analytics (SFDC, supervisor, and more)
• Quality Management: Intelligence from every call, quality management, address gaps in skills, surface issues.

Enterprise customers need integrations whether that’s with SalesForce or their proprietary CRM solution, 8x8 leads  the pack in the ability to provide these integrations. A very interesting market these days is the chat market. When you look at an enterprise customer base you will notice they use various chat vendors in different parts of the organization. 8x8 can now provide a conduit between all of those chats so all parts of the organization can talk seamlessly amongst themselves while still using their favorite chat platform versus trying to get them all converted into a single platform.   

To learn more about what 8X8 specifically can do for your enterprise cloud network efforts...and to learn what other options may be a good fit for your needs...simply ask us at the link below. Our assistance is free...and as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Cloud Network Solutions

How You Can Have A Personalized Cloud Solution AND White Glove Service Anywhere In The World

RapidScale was founded in 2008 and is now known as the number one managed cloud services provider with a global footprint. They strive to be the most customer-oriented managed cloud services provider in the industry. Their objective is to understand your organization’s long-term goals around delivering, supporting, and managing IT. RapidScale’s personalized cloud solutions reflect the understanding that no two businesses are the same and their cloud solutions shouldn’t be either.

WHITE-GLOVE SERVICE

To make it easy for their customers, RapidScale has a full suite of white-glove services, not just from starting the conversation but also through service delivery. RapidScale provides exceptional attention to detail, assurance of a smooth transition and managed migrations. They also provide 24x7x365 support, with complete end-to-end management and monitoring of a client’s environment. Rapidscale is focused on building long-term relationships with their customers.

THEIR CLOUD SOLUTIONS

CloudServer (Infrastructure as a Service)

When people think about cloud, infrastructure as a service is one of the first things that comes to mind. For RapidScale, that’s what a lot of their customers go to them for, it is one of their number one revenue generating platforms.

Some of the CloudServer benefits are:

• Simplicity - Replace on-premise servers, support, upgrades and backups with CloudServer.
• Economics - Pay as you go consumption pricing.
• Scalability - CloudServer services are hosted in multiple data centers in the United States, Europe, and Asia for maximum scale and geographic diversity.
• Performance - Ability to add vCPU, vRam, and storage on-demand to ensure optimal application performance.
• Security - Customers are isolated in protected resource pools and VLANs to ensure maximum physical and virtual security.

Detailed Service Description and Deliverables:  

• RapidScale Provided Virtual machines
• Virtual Machines include:
• Operating system as specified on order
• vCPU, vRam, and Storage as specified on order
• Unlimited Data Transfer (Internet Bandwidth)
• Public and/or Private IP Addresses
• Public IPs must be justified per ARIN standards
• Admin Access to operating systems and provisioning portal
• Monitoring, emergency reboots, connectivity, 24x7 support

Standard and Management Features:

 

CloudDesktop (Desktop as a Service)

When you take the end user into consideration and how they interact with an environment and applications, you realize that more and more end users are working from home. RapidScale can provide a desktop as a service solution in a secure way across any device.

The Benefits:

• Security - Lock down legacy PCs by forcing them to RapidScale’s CloudDesktop platform, and we take care of support, patching, backups, and virus protection
• Productivity - Users can access their CloudDesktop from anywhere at any time, while administration is centrally controlled
• Performance - RapidScale maintains the highest performance enterprise infrastructure available on the market today - 10G Core Network, Cisco UCS Compute, NetApp All Flash Storage
• Scalability - CloudDesktops can be upgraded on the fly with little to no impact to the end-user

Standard and Optional & Management Features: 

CloudOffice (SMB Bundled Solution)

CloudOffice is a bundled, multi-tenant virtual desktop solution that includes a Windows 10 desktop experience, company file share, user profile storage, Microsoft Office 2016, as well as many other common productivity applications. Self-service provisioning of desktops and applications via a robust portal is also a key feature of the CloudOffice service. 

CloudMail

RapidScale’s fully managed CloudMail offering allows businesses to enjoy the benefits of Hosted Exchange without the server management, troubleshooting, device setup, and much more. Managed cloud customers also have access to their 24x7x365 customer support for time help.

Features:

• Benefit from the latest version of Microsoft Exchange
• Automatic updates with ActiveSync across all devices
• Built-in integrated email archiving, retention and discovery capabilities that save costs and simplify the process of preserving business communications
• 50GB per mailbox

Standard and Management Features:

CloudRecovery (Disaster Recovery as a Service)

Benefits of CloudRecovery:

• Increased uptime and data protection for business critical applications
• No capital expenses
• Predictable costs
• Low RPO/RTO times

Standard and Optional Features:

To have a custom Rapidscale cloud solution designed for you simply ask at the link below....it's as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Personalized Cloud Solution

When Considering Transitioning To A Cloud Based Network Infrastructure....User Experience Matters!

When it comes to transitioning to a cloud based network infrastructure, here is why you should worry about user experience first and think about price last because it takes care of itself. 

You can’t afford to not move your organization to cloud based collaboration.

The power of Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCaaS) is becoming more and more recognized.  As companies consider the move to UCaaS, I see them starting with a financial model and a worry that the move might be too expensive to accomplish.  I understand cost is always a factor in business, but often the benefits of these solutions are under measured. In fact, at a recent meeting with RingCentral, they showed a success story with Box Inc. and the leadership at Box says they had achieved 80-90 percent of the cost of the solution in the savings they had achieved by consolidating the spend they were already making. 

57% of IT professionals surveyed who work in companies with 1,000+ employees said they believe the benefits of moving their communications to the cloud are either clearly identified or underestimated.
—The State of Cloud Communications, No Jitter Industry Insights Report

So, if cost isn’t as big of a factor as we may have thought, what should the factors in the decision be?  This answer makes sense if we consider one thing — How do we impact and monetize the workflow of our customer's organization? 

USER INTERFACE

Start with user interface! The user interface isn’t just one of the decision factors; it is the most important.  The user experience drives adoption, drives usage, and drives new ways to use technology that hasn’t been thought of before. It drives everything.  As you examine these solutions, make sure you are considering the mobile clients, the desktop clients, the desk phones, the headsets, the video applications, the collaboration engine, and the ability to connect to external applications and critical systems. 

INTEGRATION PLATFORM

After you get the interface selection right, the next step to consider is the integrations that will have the most impact on the organization.  As UCaaS is evolving, many of the leaders are creating platforms that will enable deeper and more custom integrations with company’s custom or purchased solutions.  The adoption of this is increasing quarter after quarter.  This critical component is easy to overlook if your trusted advisors are focused exclusively on voice replacement.

Over a quarter of survey respondents said their organizations already are or will be taking advantage of communications APIs and communications platform as a service (CPaaS) offerings in the next 12 months.
—The State of Cloud Communications, No Jitter Industry Insights Report

COLLABORATION

Collaboration is perhaps the most immediate benefit of installing a UCaaS solution in your business.  The ability to quickly share information, connect on customer issues, and communicate with team members allows employees to get out of their email inbox and back to the customers and projects that make the company successful.  The consolidation of other meeting, messaging and video solutions are often the place where cost savings are achieved.  The combination of the impact of standardizing on a single tool and eliminating alternative implementations creates huge value and benefit.  An effective video and document sharing component is crucial as more and more employees are traveling, working from home, or in other remote working situations.  Selecting the right tool reduces complexity and simplifies operational costs and provides a much more scalable and agile technology solution for users.

CALL CENTER FUNCTIONALITY

Call center functionality if often considered the domain of large organizations and brings visions of large cubicle farms of people in operator headsets.  While this is a good use for cloud-based communications, the agility of the cloud allows companies of all sizes to consider call center functionality to better support workgroups, sales groups and other teams small. There is also a benefit from the routing, measurement, and follow-up of a call center solution.  The integration of these features into a cloud based UCaaS solution lets organizations large and small benefit from the scalability and pricing of adding just a few call center seats to meet the needs of their customers and their business. It also allows partners to ensure value and increased adoption which drive the value of the solutions being offered.

PRICING

While it isn’t the first factor pricing is an issue and should be considered.  Cloud based pricing can be difficult to navigate, and fees and usage billing can be hard to estimate and understand.  As you shop for solutions, look for transparency and simplicity.  Ask about hidden fees and understand any items not included in the per seat price. Also understand toll-free pricing, international calling, and the included geographies.  Another factor is handsets; this diminishes if your company moves toward soft clients and web or mobile implementations, but handset cost can be monthly or one-time charges that need to be considered. 

USING AN EXPERT

The case to move communications and collaborations is strong and makes sense to achieve a more agile and modern approach to business communication.  The power of this also means that the selection of the right or wrong solution can have long and lingering implications either positive or negative.  Engaging an expert broker who knows how to navigate these solutions is crucial.  Our expertise and tools are unsurpassed in the industry.  A combination of selection technology and experience will be invaluable in helping your selection

For help designing a cloud based network infrastructure which best fits the needs of YOUR organization simply ask us at the link below.  It's as easy as 1, 2, 3....and our help is FREE. 

Custom Cloud Solution