A Unified Communications Platform Can Improve Your Efficiency

Kevin V. Nguyen

March 01, 2019

You can define unified communications in just a few words. It is bringing together all of your communications into a single, powerful suite of tools. Whether you need business phone services, collaboration and virtual meetings, or enterprise-ready contact center solutions, all of these can be integrated into a single unified communications suite.

Advantages Of Unified Communications Platform

Explaining the advantages and functionality of unified communications (UC) takes a bit more explanation.

Uniting People And Locations

Flexible and scalable, your UC system starts by connecting everyone to a single unified communication platform. This empowers everyone in your business by giving them access to the same tools regardless of where they are or how they connect. The right unified communications system can support remote, mobile, and home-based workers and connect with customers at any time in their preferred method.

Changes to your unified communications platform can be made quickly using an online admin portal. There is no reason to wait for days or weeks for phone company personnel to come on-site to make physical changes. It is so easy to make changes that you do not need a dedicated IT team to manage your systems.

Lower Total Cost of Ownership

A cloud-based unified communications system combined with VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) can cut your phone costs by 50% or more compared to traditional services available from the phone companies. You can eliminate the high operating cost and capital expenses of supporting and maintaining dated technology. With no monthly fees for leased phone lines, no long-distance fees, and one low monthly bill, you can control your communications costs.

Want to estimate how much you can save by launching a unified communications strategy for your business? Use this ROI calculator to estimate your savings.

Increased Efficiency

If you operate in a similar manner to most businesses, your employees will spend more than 67% of their time interacting with colleagues or customers. When you have separate systems, or incompatible tools or software solutions, this inefficiency is lost productivity. A lack of integrated systems causes teams and teamwork to break down and frustrations to fester.

A UC strategy creates more effective interactions among team members. Email, chat, voice, text, or video conferencing can make for quicker communications. It can help eliminate phone tag and the time it takes to get questions answered. With the availability and status monitoring, workers will know the best way to reach others before making contact.

Faster connections can speed up decision making. can be made more quickly. On one platform, any employees can be included in the discussion, including remote workers and even at-home workers. Meetings can be scheduled or held in an impromptu fashion. With a unified communications system, everybody on the call will have access to relevant information and documents. Projects can be collaborative by the group with file sharing.

Integration with other internal software solutions, databases, filing systems, and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software can facilitate a single system to manage nearly all aspects of your information storehouse.

Speeding up the process improves response times. Case studies on UC deployments have shown an increase in response times by 20% or more. The better a unified communications application is, the greater the overall return in efficiency.

Unified Communications = UCaaS

A cloud-based, hosted and managed service brings together your communication connections in a UCaaS (Unified Communication as a Service) and SaaS (Software as a Service) platform. 8x8’s unified communication systems can enhance your organization by providing the latest tools.

Employee & Team Tools
Mobile Applications
Team Messaging
Video & Audio Conferencing for up to 100 Participants
Call Recording
Personal Call Analytics
Integrations (SFDC, Zendesk, NetSuite, Dynamics)
Operator Switchboard
IVR (Interactive Voice Response)
Multi-channel Contact Center
Predictive (or Progressive) Outbound Dialer
Supervisor Tools
Supervisor Analytics
Call Quality Reporting
Granular Search Analytics
Graphical Call Display
Post Call Surveys
Quality Management
Speech Analytics
@ Mentions for Real-Time Agent Feedback

Unified Communications Are Key

Your business needs every cog in your machine to be as productive as possible. With 8x8's Team Messaging System your business gets the unified messaging it needs without the need for multiple disparate systems. Call 1-855-980-4541 or fill out an online form to request a no-obligation quote from an 8x8 product specialist.