In a matter of weeks, companies in the unified communications and collaboration industry scaled up to support millions of new remote workers across the globe. All this, in response to the novel Coronavirus pandemic.
And the fact that these companies could scale up so fast, showcases how critical it is for enterprises to have such flexibility. Al Castle, Vice President of Engineering and Products, Flowroute, told UC Today during an interview, he believes companies of all sizes should be able to shift from employees working in an office to the comfort of their homes with little-to-no complexities, adding:
“They are doing so with few hiccups, and it is unprecedented. Meetings continue to happen and calls are now routed to remote contact center agents working from home”
During this period, several new UCaaS solutions have also gotten introduced to the market. Thanks to the newfound demand for remote working technologies, Avaya and RingCentral, along with others, introduced UCaaS offerings. In the case of Avaya/RingCentral, the wheels of this deal have been in motion for some time, but COVID-19 likely gave the duo some inspiration to finish the offering and release it while demand was hot.
The entire situation has forced companies to reconsider the future of work, and what it might look like for employees. And it’s raised some serious questions, such as are offices necessary? COVID-19’s prompted many companies that didn’t have work-from-home policies, to scramble and put them in place, which many experts forecast will extend into the post-COVID-19 period.
“These changes aren’t temporary, and they’ll have long-lasting impacts for years to come.” The way Castle sees things, this will enable companies to scale WFH strategies to drive workflow and cultural developments that we’ll feel for years to come, changes that allow people to remain engaged, productive, and safe.
Over the next few months, he predicts, we can expect to see more tech companies and communication providers expanding offerings to better support enterprises looking to connect the growing remote workforce and their collaboration efforts. “This includes integrating desktop tools and software to support video, chat and online collaboration globally,” he added.
During the first week of large-scale remote work, most companies officially and quite forcefully entered the digital age, taking to UC&C software like Microsoft Teams, which failed to provide a solid user experience for users across the globe when the popular collaboration software experienced outages.
Outages like this are why Castle says investing in a reliable provider with the network and infrastructure that can handle various failure scenarios is paramount. He told me, business leaders should do this to keep operations running during critical times, adding: “Not only during times of higher call volume and increased communication needs, but this should remain a chief priority to ensure consistent reachability, carrier-grade quality, and reduce downtime.”
Castle recommends planning for all contingencies and acknowledged that even great systems fail on occasion. Providing counsel for enterprises hoping to enable remote work, he said, “Pair with providers to optimize for today and prepare for an uncertain tomorrow.”
