Busy professionals, like everyone else, use their smartphones to communicate in a variety of ways, including voice calls, SMS, instant messages like Telegram, dedicated communication channels like Slack, and multiple email accounts, including checking only one. once a week. The problem is that with so many disparate platforms and potentially multiple accounts on each, all of this communication is significantly fragmented. Enter UCaaS, which stands for Unified Communications as a Service, which integrates this communication through a cloud model and cloud-based software applications.
Why are communications unified?
For a long time, a company's electronic communications consisted of two main elements: the telephone and, later, email with the rise of the Internet. The work of these two business communication giants has worked for most companies and has been contained in one building or one company: on site. The communication needs of today's businesses have changed, but their focus hasn't gone and won't go away due to certain security requirements in certain industries. At one point, the communication channels grew and became more varied, and the more communication was shared, the more difficult it became to synchronize everything within the same company. The third giant, instant messenger, has grown enormously since the late 1990s, when a small Israeli team made the distribution of ICQ available to the public. Since its launch, emails, calls, video conferences, group discussions, etc., have allowed everyone to communicate remotely with reduced centralization. Therefore, it was impossible to see everything, control everything and analyze everything in the same place. On this basis, the concept of UCaaS appeared. We take calls, discussions, and videos and bring them together in one service. Therefore, companies should not buy these separate services from ten different providers, but can now use a single provider for all services. The UCaaS concept has worked particularly well in the development of "cloud systems".How does UcaaS work?
UCaaS is a variant of the "as a service" cloud computing model, like the popular software as a service, better known as SaaS. UCaaS over the cloud simplifies implementation, as a large IT team is not required because server-side support is provided for a monthly service fee to the provider. UCaaS offers the ability to integrate multiple communication methods through a single cloud provider, including corporate messaging, phone communication, and video conferencing, facilitating team communication. It can then be integrated into call center services, such as call routing, and call centers, with additional features when combined with call center software. contact management.
Companies have a great opportunity to offer better interaction with their customers. Whereas a decade ago all business communications were mostly done over the phone, interaction between SMS has increased dramatically – for example, a 2015 survey found that 80% of employees use SMS for professional reasons. However, only 14% of companies currently communicate with their customers via SMS, although many customers prefer this mode of communication. Since many people tend to pay more attention to texts and respond to them more quickly than email or other methods, some companies tend to focus more on text interactions, thus creating more opportunities. What favors the UCAA. For example, some call centers, which typically only interact by voice, have now embraced text messaging with their customers, with the promise of faster support and better response. Greater customer engagement, at a lower cost.
Types of UCaaS
UCaaS is divided into two types: single tenant and multi-tenant. In the single-tenant (also known as multi-instance) design, there is a custom software platform that connects to the on-premises applications. Although this is the most expensive solution, it generally offers a higher level of security because each customer's data is kept separate and downtime from another customer does not affect other customers. . Another downside to single-tenant UCaaS is that upgrade costs are the responsibility of the customer due to the need for custom software. The other type of UCaaS is multi-location, where the software is hosted in the cloud at the UCaaS provider's data center, and not on-premises. In a multi-tenant setup, all UCaaS customers share a single software platform. This offers many benefits, including increased reliability, lower cost, and the ability to offer more support, including software upgrade provisioning. The downside of multiple leases, compared to the single lease model, is that it offers fewer customization options. Between the two extremes of single-tenancy and multi-tenancy you are in the middle of a hybrid approach. This is a viable option in cases where the company needs to further protect its sensitive data in a single-tenant environment, while leveraging or making a multi-tenant setup more secure. away from existing communication platforms. They are still used in his business.
UCaaS in the workplace
The adoption of UCaaS has also been helped by the abandonment of traditional telephone systems. Many businesses use PBX (Private Branch Exchange) systems, which allow multiple users to share a limited number of outside telephone lines through a system that provides each user, including devices such as fax machines, with an extension, which saves money on instead of having an individual computer. Dedicated phone line for everyone. There are additional savings with internal phone calls between users. However, with a PBX, the company must purchase the PBX hardware, with purchase prices of several thousand dollars, and then take responsibility for taking care of it internally. The most modern solution that replaces the PBX is UCaaS, which is known as Business VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), also called Cloud PBX (although some argue that VoIP and Cloud PBX are not synonymous, in the current offerings so similar that the line between them is essentially blurred). In this configuration, all the phones connect via the Internet only, without any direct wiring between them. The company outsources all maintenance and software to the enterprise VoIP provider. This enables traditional PBX features like older systems, such as the ability for multiple users to share a limited number of lines and internal calls between extensions. However, being cloud-based enables additional features, including direct phone number activation, group intercom paging, voicemail to email. and internet fax. Just as important, it also enables integration with the most popular business platforms such as Skype for Business, Zendesk, Salesforce, and Outlook; the latest integration allows a user to make a phone call directly in the body of the email. RingCentral Office's offering, which offers unified communications with "enterprise VoIP capabilities," is an example of a UCaaS provider. It offers a multitude of features, including local, international, and toll-free numbers, an automated receptionist, music on hold, and calls. monitoring, desktop service, call reporting, internet fax and user templates through its hosted PBX service, as well as mobile functionality through the available iOS and Android apps. There are also plenty of call management features such as call forwarding, call park, call tracking, call logs, message alerts, and notifications. Lost calls. It also offers a modern version of voicemail with options including greetings, visual voicemail, and voicemail to email. Business SMS is also included, with the ability to send and receive text and multimedia messages from the business number, via a smartphone, tablet or even a desktop computer. RingCentral Office also connects to other cloud applications including Box.com, Desk.com, Dropbox, Google, Microsoft, Okta, Oracle Sales Cloud, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Zendesk for greater unification.
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