Like most companies today, Professional Services brands are facing the increased pressures of greater competition, higher customer expectations, and low budgets. To survive in this environment, these brands are discovering a need to digitally transform. Many brands are embracing new technologies to boost efficiency, performance, and earnings.
Unified Communications tools are quickly emerging as one of the most lucrative and beneficial platforms for businesses in the Professional Services space. These tools allow distributed teams to work more effectively together, while synchronising knowledge and technology. With UC solutions, business leaders can reduce operating costs, while improving “TX”, (Total Experience).
Of course, before many Professional Services brands can truly discover the benefits of UC, they first need to develop a business case capable of selling the solution to stakeholders. Here’s how you can start building your business case for UC.
Step 1: Focus on Productivity Enhancements
Improving productivity is one of the most important goals for any modern Professional Services team. The more business leaders can empower their workforce to work quickly, and effectively, the faster they can serve clients and build brand loyalty. UC has proven power in this arena, with studies showing the right tool can boost productivity by up to 52%.
According to Forester, the average employee can even save as much as 8 hours of wasted time per user, per week, just by implementing the right UC tools. With a single pane of glass environment for accessing communication tools, knowledge and insights, teams can reduce the time they spend searching through apps for the right solutions.
When building a business case for UC, look at the amount of unproductive time currently eating away at workforce productivity. If your employees are currently struggling to collaborate conveniently with colleagues, or unlock knowledgebase insights, the right UC solution could be the perfect solution.
Many of these ecosystems can even be enhanced by disruptive technology built specifically for productivity. AI bots capable of offering agent assistance, as well as workforce management tools designed to empower supervisors and managers can make a significant difference to everyday workflows.
Step 2: Prioritise Agility and Growth
Despite the challenges facing all businesses today, Professional Services companies still have a lot of opportunities for growth in an increasingly digital landscape. Companies are becoming more comfortable with the idea of leveraging remote and distributed teams to help with everything from financial management to HR strategies. As such, Professional Services brands can easily spread across global borders.
However, to unlock these growth opportunities, the right tools need to be implemented. Professional Services brands need to access agile, flexible tools in the cloud to build a transformative team. UC solutions like UCaaS ensure staff members in a distributed global environment can access the same tools as their colleagues, wherever they are.
With a UCaaS strategy, you can pave the way for future growth, and enable your business to scale with growing demand. Teams can even take advantage of the skillsets of specialists all over the world, through remote working practices. With UC, there’s no limit to how far a business can grow, or the level of expert support it can access worldwide.
Even in a world of global skill shortages, UCaaS ensures Professional Services teams can keep up with the needs of their clients.
Step 3: Look for Cost Saving Opportunities
Unified Communications doesn’t just make Professional Services teams more efficient, it can also reduce the operating costs companies need to deal with every day. As brands continue to look for new ways to improve cashflow and minimise expenses, UC allows companies to cut down on in-office expenses and hardware maintenance.
UC solutions provide teams with fewer bills to worry about when building a comprehensive technology stack. Subscription-based models for technology ensures brands can scale their services up or down according to changes in demand. What’s more, cloud-based tools reduce office overheads by allowing more team members to work conveniently from home.
UCaaS solutions can even help companies to save money in other ways, by allowing them to provide their customers with the same level of service, without the need for expensive travel. As the world of Professional Services becomes more contactless and digitised, companies will be able to serve their clients efficiently from a distance, with minimal disruptions.
Thanks to the end-to-end overview into business operations offered by UC tools, companies can also more easily determine where opportunities might exist to reduce costs. You can easily spot roadblocks and issues in your processes which could be leading to lower efficiency.
Step 4: Be Ready to Prove ROI with Analytics
For many companies, building a successful business case for any new technology relies on an ability to deliver a proven “Return on Investment”. Stakeholders and business leaders want to see clear results from every purchase. Fortunately, many UC tools come with analytical features built-in, to help track your most crucial metrics.
Teams can capture data about their customers, to drive better decisions about how to serve clients and improve customer lifetime value. At the same time, in-built workforce management tools in UC ecosystems can highlight areas where employees might benefit from extra training and support. End-to-end insights help Professional Services teams to optimise their performance across the entire consumer support cycle.
UC solutions can even offer AI enhancements to make spotting trends and patterns in service demands easier. What’s more, companies can often implement integrations with CRM tools, ERP systems and other technologies, to get more comprehensive insights in a single space. The more information these companies have, the faster and more effectively they can grow.
Step 5: Demonstrate Opportunities for CX
Finally, one of the most important focus points for any Professional Services team today, is the demand to improve customer experience. Every client, particularly in the B2B sector, is demanding more from the businesses they work with. With UC solutions built in a flexible cloud environment, there are endless opportunities to improve customer support.
More aligned and informed agents will be able to deliver service and support at a faster rate, with access to colleague assistance through collaborative tools. What’s more, many UCaaS solutions are now evolving to allow connections with CPaaS and CCaaS environments too. Some Professional Services brands are already building all-in-one communications platforms.
With the right UC technology, Professional Services brands can pave the way for phenomenal customer experiences, better CSAT scores, and end-to-end customer insights. The right tool will transform everything from the initial customer onboarding experience, to ensuring long-term growth with customer success campaigns.
