Unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) solutions are often praised for their ability to enhance operational efficiency, boost business resilience and improve both employee and customer satisfaction.
The advantages of UC&C can be felt almost immediately. For instance, IDC found over 60% of organizations that have partially adopted cloud-based UC&C report saving IT staff time, while 70%-90% experience enhanced business agility.1 To fully capitalize on these benefits from the start, it’s helpful to understand UC&C platforms along with the components and benefits they offer.
Know Your Platforms
UC&C platforms integrate various communication tools into a single, collaborative system to enhance a team’s ability to work together and streamline communication. Utilizing features like real-time communication, collaborative tools and integration across multiple devices, these platforms offer increased productivity, more flexibility, cost-savings and improved satisfaction amongst businesses, their employees and even their customers.
A few of the most popular UC&C platforms include:
- Microsoft Teams: Integrates chat, video conferencing, file storage/sharing and applications
- Zoom: Known for its video conferencing capabilities but also offers chat, webinars and phone systems
- Cisco Webex: Provides video conferencing, team messaging and file sharing
- Slack: Focuses on team messaging and collaboration with tool integration options
- Google Workspace: Includes Google Meet for video conferencing, along with Gmail, Google Drive and other productivity tools
Each of these platforms offers unique features to enhance communication and collaboration within your organization, and chances are, you’re already utilizing one of them or trying to decide which is best for your business.
Master Your UC&C Platform Components
Each UC&C platform option consists of several key components designed to enhance your organization’s communication and collaboration. Your business needs will dictate the components you look for. What components are available determines how much you can enhance productivity, increase cost efficiencies, improve internal (and external) experience and further collaboration, flexibility and agility.
The components across UC&C platforms can vary, but in general, they consist of options like:
- Audio and video meetings
- Chat
- Cloud calling
- File sharing and storage
- Collaboration tools, such as whiteboarding
- Screen sharing
- Calendars and scheduling
Utilizing these components (and more, depending on your platform) means organizations are able to benefit from the features and collaboration potential available. For example, 49% saw measurable success in cost savings and 66% gained increased productivity just by investing in unified communications technologies.2 Understanding your platform and its components is crucial to hitting that measurable success, but being aware of your options and how to navigate the transformation journey help ensure you can maximize their potential
Understand Your Options
Organizations that invest in unified communications technologies, like Lumen Unified Communications and Collaboration solutions, have seen significant improvements in savings, productivity and revenue.
UC&C is a game-changer for businesses, even at its simplest, but the real magic of cloud-based platforms lies in their constant evolution. Although you might have initially adopted UC&C for teleconferencing, there’s a treasure trove of other features waiting to be discovered. Plus, unified communications technologies often offer extra training to unlock your team’s full potential and component capabilities.
Companies who consolidated their UC&C apps with Lumen can see an improvement in employee user experience ratings, along with benefits such as:
- Simplified management with a single vendor rather than multiple service providers to coordinate
- Transitioned to the cloud without disrupting day-to-day operations and shorter lead times
- Freed up IT resources for more strategic work
Ready to start your journey with unified communications and collaboration? Learn more about how Lumen UC&C solutions can set you up for success.
1IDC research. UC&C Cloud Migration: A Journey Worth Embracing. June 2022.
2Metrigy Research, Workplace Collaboration. 2023-24.
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