Choosing your UCaaS Service Provider: Where to Begin

UCaaS has quickly emerged as an essential tool in any company's digital transformation project.

UCaaS has quickly emerged as an essential tool in any company's digital transformation project. After all, without the ability to communicate and collaborate effectively, businesses struggle to innovate, thrive, and grow.

With Unified Communications delivered over the cloud, business leaders can unify their team members, align departments, and minimise inefficiencies without spending a fortune on distributed tech. As a result, interest in UCaaS solutions is increasing, with the market set to reach a value of $69.93 billion by 2028.

The growing UCaaS space doesn't just deliver excellent opportunities to end-users and enterprises. It also provides resellers in the technology space with a new way to delight their customers and generate higher brand loyalty. However, before companies can discover the benefits UCaaS offers, they must figure out how to choose the right UCaaS service provider. So, what first initial steps does a reseller need to consider?

"At this stage of the Unified Communications industries development, most businesses and customers are aware of what is available to them. It's our job to provide the best technology available and to offer resellers the simplest yet most effective way to deliver them to their customers. We are always working tirelessly to ensure we remain flexible and easy to do business with, providing solutions that are fit for the market. It's also our job as a Service Provider to simplify the process and empower our partners to effectively support the businesses they work with."

Scott Rixon - Solutions Director at Evolve IP

Step 1: Consider Workplace Trends

One of the core reasons many companies have begun investing more heavily in UCaaS solutions today is their need to empower an increasingly distributed team. Hybrid and remote work are now the new norm for countless companies, and digital workers are everywhere.

While offering UC solutions through the cloud is a great way to support this new age of work, it's also important for resellers to think about how the features offered by their service provider can further augment and enhance distributed teams.

For instance, some customers may need to be able to access UCaaS solutions on mobile devices and leverage a range of endpoints, from webcams to microphones, when connecting with teams. Some businesses may need to consider how their UCaaS solution can integrate with conferencing solutions and meeting tools to bring hybrid workforces together.

Effective service providers act as a one-stop-shop for reseller empowerment. They provide their resellers with the tools they need to create the ultimate solution for each individual customer, allowing them to take “ownership” over the customer, and build loyalty with their own branding, exceptional service, and be able to offer a unique approach to packaging technology.

Step 2: Prioritise Scalability and Flexibility

Technology partners within the UCaaS landscape understand that communication and collaboration needs can change rapidly. As a Reseller’s business grows, they may find themselves in need of more advanced tools, increasing numbers of licenses, and better solutions for reporting, monitoring, and analytics. As such, every UCaaS reseller should prioritise working with a service provider offering exceptional scalability.

Resellers should be able to adapt their service packages to suit the needs of each individual company. For instance, the UC requirements of an SME may vary significantly from the requirements of a multinational enterprise.

Many leading UCaaS service providers offer flexible licensing solutions, which allow resellers to deliver the resources their customers need according to their changing requirements, with minimal cost issues and complexity. They also provide transparent insights into costs and SFTP billing, so partners can adapt their pricing packages to boost profit.

It's also worth ensuring the service provider of choice can deliver technology capable of flexibly working with the tools and technologies companies may adopt over the years. Most brands have an ever-evolving collection of legacy tools, third-party applications, and other systems they need to work cohesively with their UC solution. A service provider with an open, extensible, and API-ready platform will ensure partners can adapt to suit their clients.

Step 3: Ensure Reliability and Business Continuity

Finally, today’s resellers looking for UCaaS solutions to improve their services productivity, efficiency, and performance must feel confident that their solution will perform consistently. Any communication outage can significantly threaten a company's revenue, customer relationships, and overall ability to grow.

To maintain a good reputation and preserve strong relationships , resellers must ensure they're choosing a service provider with proven reliability. Searching for SLAs that offer peace of mind and service providers with business continuity solutions and failover systems can help companies strengthen their position in the market.

The best UCaaS service provider will keep up to date with the latest evolutions in the UCaaS space and provide consistent support and guidance. Resellers need to serve their end users effectively.

Step 4: Support

For resellers, few things are more important than having access to the right support and guidance from their chosen service provider. service providers don’t just offer resellers the technologies and tools they need to create a powerful product for end users. The partnership between the service provider & resellers is to encourage business growth and empowering the reseller to accomplish more.

Reliable service providers collaborate with their resellers, offering them access to valuable marketing tools, resources, training and guidance every step of the way. It is this phenomenal approach to support that allows resellers to perform at their best, building long-lasting relationships with the reseller’s customers, and opening the door to ongoing revenue.

Resellers should search for a service provider that can commit to offering comprehensive assistance, with technical support and advice, as well as a partner focused team.

“When we talk about a partnership, the connotations are that it is done and completed. We’re partnering with our resellers, which better reflects how we work as a business. We work to ensure that the technology is relevant for all parties, including the end user and our job is to support and educate the resellers so they are best placed to support their customers before, during and post every process. As a team, we have developed a support system that ensures our reseller has a dedicated partner manager and a solutions consultant, so the service level remains high quality and we can easily support our resellers at every stage.”

Jamie Hughes – Sales Director at Evolve IP

Step 5: Flexibility

Finally, as the worlds of work and business communications continue to change, resellers need to keep their eye on the future. Choosing a service provider that offers access to a highly flexible, customizable ecosystem ensures resellers can always expand their packages, introduce new features, and discover new ways to delight end-users.

For instance, a platform with an open API solution will allow resellers to design custom-made bespoke packages, specifically attuned to the changing needs of their employees. Service providers can also ensure resellers have access to native integrations with useful tools companies already use, such as Microsoft Teams or Cisco Webex. They can even make it simple to integrate powerful security tools into the ecosystem, such as MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) services.

When it comes to taking advantage of the flexibility a service provider can offer in the UCaaS world, it’s also worth paying attention to the approach the company takes to licensing and billing. An agile billing management system and pay-for-what-you-use approach will allow resellers to keep costs low and profits high as their solutions transform.

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