The Advantages of Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)

The promise and potential of unified communications (UC) is probably obvious. When all your business communication streams (e-mails, voicemails, calls, texts) are visible in one spot—rather than diverted to their own separate silos—you can cut down on the time it takes to track down information, and the anxiety of wondering whether you missed something. And if you need to collaborate quickly with multiple team members, UC makes it a breeze. At a glance, you know who’s available and can set up an impromptu screen share or group chat in just seconds.

But don’t you need a PBX system or other expensive hardware to make UC work? In traditional UC, the answer would have been yes. But with Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) solutions getting better and better, that’s no longer the case. Don’t get us wrong—a PBX can offer a ton of customizability for a company in the right circumstances. But you also need a large capital investment, not to mention internal expertise and time to maintain the system. Plus, you’d better have a lot of faith in your forecasting, because buying hardware capacity way less (or way more) than what you actually need can be an expensive mistake.

UCaaS tools eschew the traditional architecture in favor of cloud-based tools and software. The most obvious benefit is cost savings and certainty, since you no longer have to buy, install, maintain, and eventually upgrade expensive equipment—you just pay a low monthly fee. But there are other big advantages:

• It’s way easier and cheaper to scale upward or downward (adding and subtracting uses, lines, and licenses, etc.) as your needs change.
• It’s also usually easier and cheaper to add or subtract features and services (video, mobile integration, unified messaging, etc.)
• Offloading time and responsibility from your internal IT team so they can focus on more profitable endeavors.
• Improved security and reliability in most cases, and often 24-hour support from your provider.
• Many UCaaS solutions are cross-compatible with major PC and mobile devices (Apple, Windows, Android, iPhone)

If you’re already moving more and more of your business essentials to the cloud—and most companies are—UCaaS is an easy and smart choice to help you boost collaboration and productivity and keep your employees on the same page, even across multiple office locations.

At TelDesigns, we leverage our relationships with dozens of companies and providers to create affordable and effective customized UCaaS solutions that exceed our clients’ expectations. To find out more, give us a call today at (616) 965-2030.