The world of unified communications (UC) has evolved significantly in recent years. Trends like remote and flexible work, evolving communications technology, and new customer expectations have left IT teams struggling to manage increasingly complex operating environments.
For many organizations, there’s no one-size-fits-all UC solution. In fact, the majority of companies, and especially large enterprises, use multiple platforms from an ecosystem of vendors for customer engagement, calling, video conferencing, messaging, and file sharing. These complex ecosystems are made up of more than the base UC platforms from Cisco, Microsoft, Zoom, Avaya, etc.- encompassing complementary solutions that enhance the communication experience. Some even use a combination of cloud and on-premises services to enable extensive customization, advanced data control, and cost containment.
Unfortunately, while diverse UC toolkits can improve productivity, efficiency, and even customer service outcomes, they place significant strain on UC managers, who struggle to keep track of multiple solutions at once. Fortunately, there is a solution: Multi-Vendor, UC service management software for provisioning and automation.
5 Ways IT Automation Empowers UC Managers
UC Service Management software eliminates the need for companies to manage each individual communication platform and tool through its own native interface. These solutions bring multiple applications and tools together in one environment, giving UC managers a single pane of glass solution for provisioning, security, and more.
According to Micah Singer, CEO from Kurmi: “UC Service Management software has the potential to revolutionize how large enterprises provision multiple UC solutions and their ecosystems, support users, and optimize their UC investments.
It streamlines countless tasks, improves scalability, and can even help preserve security and compliance.”
With a service management solution, UC managers can automate repetitive tasks, maintain comprehensive visibility into their UC environments, and, most importantly, reduce operational costs. Here are some of the top ways service management empowers UC managers.
1. Simplifying the Management of Complex Environments
As mentioned above, IT and communications systems are often highly fragmented. Most companies need to manage a broad spectrum of critical cloud-based and legal applications from a range of vendors.
Without a service management platform, UC managers and IT teams need to configure, monitor, and maintain each platform individually. This leads to greater complexity, much higher requirements for individual system knowledge and training for IT staff, as well as wasted time and resources pressing extra buttons and navigating different types of authentications.
A UC service management platform bridges the gaps between these ecosystems, allowing companies to manage their entire environment with a single application. They can handle everything from provisioning users, endpoints and resources to IT tickets in one space, significantly improving efficiency, and maintaining service agility.
2. Enabling Comprehensive Automation
Repetitive, manual tasks, such as provisioning numbers and services to users, or handling “moves, adds, changes, and deletions” in a UC ecosystem are time consuming for UC managers. An IT automation solution enables many-step workflows across multiple vendors and technologies. UC managers can save time by performing tasks in the same centralized place - automating, reporting, and more.
Some solutions even enable bulk administration for larger teams, enhance zero-touch provisioning for remote and field-based workers, and even streamline the process of tracking service metrics. With an all-in-one solution enabling end-to-end automation, UC managers can spend less time on repetitive work, and more time focusing on valuable, strategic projects.
They can simply accomplish more with less. According to Metrigy, a UC service management platform reduces provisioning time by 47% and reduces management costs by up to 37%.
3. Preserving Security and Control
Security and control are often the single most important issues for IT administrators to consider. A UC service management platform doesn’t just help UC admins ensure they’re allocating the correct resources to team members based on department, location, or other criteria. It can also help to reduce the risk of security and compliance issues. UC management tools ensure IT teams can provide each user with the right permissions to access certain tools and services, based on their specific needs.
Additionally, they offer access to role-based access control, which allows companies to assign management access according to rules for internal security compliance so that common UC tasks can be delegated. They also offer a holistic view of the UC ecosystem, enabling the creation of comprehensive audit trails and analytics that can provide insights into potential security and compliance risks.
