The communication landscape is rapidly evolving, driven in part by the new demand for employees to work from home and on the move. Professionals can’t remain shackled to the desk any longer. We’re on the move at all times, and we’re using our mobile devices to stay connected.
For years, business leaders have looked at unified communications as the ideal solution for connecting various channels for immersive conversations. In the new mobile world, that also means creating a comprehensive environment that includes mobile devices too. Mobile unified communications, or MUC, extends functionality to cover wireless networks and mobile devices.
While the concepts and facilities of UC remain the same, companies do have additional concerns to address with mobile UC, such as performance management, wireless network availability, and even security. So, how do you approach mobile UC the right way?
1. Understand Your Mobile UC Needs
The first step is thinking about what you need from a mobile unified communication solution. You need more than just a system that keeps employees connected when they’re using mobile devices. Today’s business leaders need a robust plan to ensure ongoing productivity and efficiency.
The mobile solution needs to work well with the operating systems that today’s employees are using, and it needs to provide the right quality of service. Choosing a vendor with a good uptime rate and a positive strategy for resilience will help to take some of the weight off your shoulders.
Companies will also need to think carefully about the kind of mobile experiences they want to enable. Do you need your employees to have access to a global business number from their phone? Collaborative tools for teamwork? Perhaps even instant chat for customer service will be an option.
2. Explore Mobile UC Standards
It isn’t easy to know whether you’re accessing the right unified communication solution if you don’t know what kind of standards you should be looking for. A basic understanding of things like WebRTC and VP8 formats will help you to determine which vendors can offer you the right support when you’re shifting to the mobile landscape.
Consider how your UC provider hosts your technology on the cloud, and how easy it is for you to provision new users and make changes to accounts. An intuitive back-end system that gives you complete control over everything from the numbers your employees can access, to the applications they use will be crucial for better security.
Don’t forget to assess bandwidth requirements to ensure that you have the right connectivity wherever your employees are too. Companies investing in 5G may be worth further consideration.
3. Consider Necessary Features
The “unified” aspect of the Mobile UC environment means that you’ll need a solution that connects with the rest of your contemporary communication stack. It’s also important to have access to extra tools for things like reporting and analytics on a comprehensive level. When looking for the right mobile UC, consider things like:
- Messaging: Will your employees be able to access the right messaging services, including texting (SMS), instant messaging over social media, and other chat services. Access to all of the right environments will make adoption easier for your employees
- Voice and video: Ensure that your employees can easily access the same voice and video solutions they use every day in the office. VoIP, voicemail, and even video conferencing will be crucial considerations for businesses embracing UC
- File and document sharing: Does your UC solution provide a reliable way to manage documents and files? Consider the content you create with project management, productivity applications, images, and even recordings of crucial conferencing sessions and calls
- Management: Your mobile unified communication solution needs to include crucial management tools for onboarding, identity management, provisioning, configuration, and even usage monitoring
4. Prioritise Security
As companies focus more heavily on remote and mobile working environments, security is the biggest concern for many market leaders. It’s essential to ensure that you can provide the same level of privacy and protection to customers and employees when connecting through a mobile device.
Management tools within the Mobile UC solution ill help with this. These tools offer things like provisioning and identity management services where you can adjust permissions for each individual user. However, it’s also essential that your UC provider has the right levels of encryption and secure storage practices in place.
Find out whether your Mobile vendor can help you to remain compliant with the latest regulations, including things like GDPR, HIPAA, and other complex concerns. The right mobile vendor will give you plenty of ways to enhance your security, privacy, and compliance efforts.
5. Remain Flexible
Moving your unified communications strategy into a mobile environment is the first step in building a highly agile and flexible workforce. However, it’s important to ensure that you can continue to grow at the pace that suits you.
Start by making sure that your vendor can support integrations with the tools and devices that your employees already use. Integrations and federation are important when it comes to making it easy for your business to move into a new age of communication. The right vendor will help you to migrate easily, without leaving important investments behind.
Once you have your mobile unified communication system set up, you should be able to implement new functionality and users whenever and however you choose. Thanks to the flexibility of the cloud, adding new features will be as simple as pressing a button or calling your vendor.
The Growing Demand for Mobile Unified Communications
Businesses have always needed reliable, easy-to-use, and agile communication tools. However, the demand for flexible ways to remain connected on the move gives rise to a new kind of unified communications strategy. This strategy integrates various communications standards under a single secure umbrella. Now that mobility is becoming a table-stakes part of the landscape; it’s time for IT experts to take full advantage of mobile unified communications. Figuring out how to manage and scale mobile UC could be the key to transforming your business.
