In today’s digitally-transforming world, relying entirely on outdated phone and email services to keep your team connected could limit your organisation’s potential, and make it harder for you to compete. Today, many mid-market firms rely on mobility, cross-functional collaboration, and platforms designed for enhanced customer experience (CX) to stay ahead of the curve. This means that they need a unified communication and collaboration (UC&C) strategy primed for success.
UC&C not only allows organisations to tap into the flexibility and scalability of the /, but it also makes them more agile, innovative, and creative too. When you connect your entire workforce under a single collaborative platform, you can simultaneously improve both customer, and in-house exchanges, with faster response times, easier file sharing, and more.
If you’re ready to discover how UC&C could serve you, the following steps will help you to design an effective business case.
Step 1: Know Your Goals
The first step in establishing your business case for Unified Communications and Collaboration, is understanding what you want to accomplish by implementing UC&C tools. After all, like any element of digital transformation, your new technology should have a specific purpose and ROI. For instance, you might want to implement UC&C because:
- Productivity in your mid-market company is suffering and you need to get people back on track: When all the tools your team needs are in one place, it’s much easier to stay productive
- You need more business agility: Because many UC&C solutions are hosted in the cloud, you’ll have the opportunity to adjust and scale your strategy as necessary
- Enhance engagement: When staff members can work more seamlessly together, they feel happier and more satisfied at work
- Reducing communication expense: A single UC&C solution can be far less expensive than investing in various forms of communication hardware and software
- Better customer experience: When your employees are better-connected with UC&C, they can access insights from their co-workers faster, solve problems quickly, and enhance customer satisfaction
Step 2: Understand Your Workforce
Once you know what you want your UC&C strategy to accomplish for your business overall, the next step is aligning your corporate goals with the needs of your employees. The more you understand your workforce, the easier it will be to choose specific UC&C tools that are suited to support their day-to-day tasks. For instance, ask yourself:
- How much of your workforce regularly performs administrative tasks?
- What percentage of your team is responsible for sales and advertising roles
- How many of your workers are mobile and need access to cloud-based resources?
- Does your team prefer to collaborate over video or audio?
- What tools are your workforce already using, and which UC&C solutions might integrate best with them?
- Does your team use their own devices, and are those devices compatible with the software you’ve chosen?
Step 3: Consider Your Technical Environment
Finally, it’s time to think about your existing IT infrastructure, and how the investments you’ve already made can fit in with your new UC&C investments. After all, just because you want to upgrade your communications strategy, doesn’t necessarily mean that all the equipment you’ve already bought for your team should become redundant. Many UC&C solutions take a hybrid approach that allows some technology to remain on-premises, while other solutions move to the cloud.
Think about your network as it exists today, which parts you’ll want to update, and which should stay the same. For instance:
- Do you want enterprise-wide instant messaging?
- Will you need to upgrade your voicemail and call recording strategy to store data in the cloud?
- Can you make certain processes more secure by moving to the cloud or staying on-premises?
- Will your existing technology integrate with a specific UC&C strategy?
- Do you want to continue using on-premises technology like deskphones?
- How do you want employees to share information and files?
Put the results of all your research together, and you should have a solid future-ready business case for UC&C.
