UC Service Management, or “UCSM”, is becoming an increasingly important consideration for all business leaders. Making the most of an evolving ecosystem of communication tools in the age of hybrid work and digital transformation means being able to monitor, provision and optimise the technology you implement, anywhere, at any time.
UCSM solutions can be powerful tools for empowering your workforce, boosting business efficiency, and even reducing costs for many brands. The question is, how do you know what kind of vendor you should be working with?
Here’s your guide to choosing an effective UC Service Management vendor for 2022.
Step 1: Consider your UC Ecosystem
The first step in choosing the right UC Service Management vendor is knowing what kind of tools and systems you need to be able to manage. Start by considering the endpoints your current workforce is going to be using. Many IP phones, headsets, cameras, and other devices provided by leading companies like Logitech, Poly, and Cisco already come with tools to help you track and monitor their performance from a distance.
Suppose you’re offering your employees more variety in personalising their UC experience. In that case, you may need to look for a solution allowing you to monitor endpoints from various providers in one unified space.
It’s also worth considering the cloud environments you need to track and monitor. Suppose you’re building a UC environment with multiple clouds or environments. In that case, your UCSM solution needs to adapt to allow you to configure, monitor, and analyse those multi-dimensional environments.
Step 2: Know Your Feature Requirements
Once you’ve evaluated your existing ecosystem and determined what tools, software, and connection points you need to monitor, the next step is to consider what you need most from a UCSM provider. Think about the goals you want to accomplish when implementing this new technology. Do you want to simplify tasks for IT teams by making it easier to provision, onboard, and support team members wherever they are?
Are you looking for a solution capable of giving you insights into technology usage levels or tools that can help you analyse your communications environment and predict issues with call quality before they happen? Knowing precisely what you want to achieve with your UCSM solutions will help you to choose the most appropriate vendor for your needs.
At the very least, your technology should make it easy to provision, deploy, and configure tools remotely in a single pane of glass environment. This will be particularly important for companies in the hybrid and remote work age.
Step 3: Consider Service and Support
Vendors take different approaches to the amount of hand-holding and support you’ll get with your UCSM solutions. Many tools provide business leaders with simple self-service portals that can easily monitor and manage several devices and tools in the same space with minimal effort.
Other vendors can also offer specialist services to help take some pressure off your business leaders and IT teams. These vendors might be able to take over specific tasks for your company, like monitoring the quality of connections in real-time and keeping you up-to-date on any security or compliance issues you need to tackle.
