How UCaaS Facilitates Work from Home During COVID-19 and Beyond

Are you looking to enhance operational efficiency and improve the productivity of your remote workforce? 

Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) can help you streamline your internal processes and support your employees working from home by enabling access to business communications from anywhere, anytime. 

We’ll explain how, plus give you an overview of the global UCaaS market and explain the increase in demand for unified communications products and services. 

Why Should You Consider Unified Communications? 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, 41% of people who transitioned to remote work reported a change in the way they collaborated and communicated with coworkers. 

To support employees in home offices, businesses have turned to UCaaS platforms to close communication gaps and improve operational efficiency. 

According to Frost & Sullivan’s whitepaper, these are the other key reasons why businesses around the world often decide to deploy communication and collaboration to the cloud:  

• To free up IT staff to focus on business innovation (80% of businesses) 
• To eliminate the hassle of integrating multi-vendor solutions (78%) 
• To better manage environmental costs and impact (77%) 

• To support business agility/market responsiveness (75%) 
• To shift costs from capital to operating budget (74%) 

Many companies will see the increase of hybrid remote models in the post-pandemic era as well. For example, two days working from the office and three days working from home, because employees will continue to demand more flexible arrangements. 

This means that, more than likely, you’ll want the same level of security, compliance, privacy and access control from a communication and collaboration platform for your company, even when the pandemic is over. 

(How) Are UCaaS Solutions Helpful for Small and Mid-Size Businesses? 

You don’t have to run a multinational corporation to benefit from unified communications systems integrated in your business. 

In fact, the majority of mid-size companies have turned to these solutions to address the urgent need to support employees in home offices. 

As the research about UCaaS adoption in the COVID-19 era from Frost & Sullivan showed: 

• Small businesses quickly embrace cloud solutions due to their flexibility and fixed costs 
• Mid-market organizations – with 100 to 2,500 users – choose from a broad array of offerings tailored to their specific needs and evolving requirements  
• Large enterprises with complex legacy infrastructure take a bit longer to migrate to the cloud  

This means that, no matter your business size, you can benefit from unified communications or VoIP phone systems during the pandemic and beyond. 

 Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, refers to calls and messaging made using a broadband internet connection instead of analog lines.  

The purpose of unified communications and VoIP systems is to integrate cloud-based phone, video, audio, messaging, conferencing, screen sharing and collaboration solutions into business operations. 

Let’s take a look at what that means for your business. 

Key Benefits of Using UCaaS While Managing a Remote Team

First and foremost, transitioning to an all-in-one cloud communications platform means more effective IT management and saving time that your IT team would otherwise invest in hardware, system configuration, network maintenance, monitoring and upgrades. 

In addition, unified communications tools can help you:    

• Stay agile, responsive and resilient even in times of crisis 
• Streamline internal and external communications 
• Increase productivity and improve workflows 

• Level up operational efficiency 
• Accelerate decision-making processes 
• Evolve into a highly collaborative organization 
• Use the most cost-effective solutions with robust functionalities 
• Efficiently manage your work-from-home (WFH) workforce 

• Achieve a competitive advantage by using advanced solutions 

Instead of managing multiple third-party technologies and applications like Zoom, Teams, Slack and others, you can unify all of your text, audio and video communication channels by using a single cloud-based platform.   

This will help you to further streamline communications and ensure your team is on the same page. 

And last but definitely not least, UCaaS can help you improve business continuity and achieve your long-term digital transformation goals.  

If you are looking to integrate cloud communications in your day-to-day business, be sure to start with a carefully crafted work-from-anywhere strategy to set the ground for advanced services.  

Then, find the best platform for your business. 

How to Find the Best UCaaS Solution for Your Remote Team 

The choice of a UCaaS platform will depend on your business type, the number of employees, your specific business requirements and your future growth plans.  

When looking for the right fit, ensure you find the platform with a subscription plan that includes the right-size employee feature for your business. Also, be sure that it offers enough flexibility and advanced features to fulfill all of your business needs. 

To be more specific, look for a unified communications provider that offers:  

• A variety of pricing structures or feature bundles for various company sizes 
• Customized dashboards that give you an overview and insights into user environment 
• Safe and secure third-party software integration or open APIs to streamline your operations 
• Simple and/or guided migration to the cloud with robust onboarding systems in place 

• Custom-made solutions to provide specific features tailored to your business needs 

To help you decide, here are key components you need to assess:  

• Reliability: Look for a platform with a reliable and robust system and a proven track record of success stories 
• Security: Ensure that your chat, SMS, email, video, audio and any other type of communication will be securely encrypted end-to-end 
• Scalability: Think about your long-term business plans for growth and try to find a scalable platform that has various solutions in its portfolio   

• Extensibility: Choose a platform that can expand functionalities by integrating third-party applications like Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Zendesk and others 

While searching and comparing different solutions, consider all of the options and functionalities that different platforms and providers offer, as well as their strategies for future growth. 

UCaaS and a VoIP Phone System for Home Might Be Exactly What You Need for Your WFH Workforce  

As mentioned, the pandemic-induced lockdowns accelerated digital transformation for companies of all shapes and sizes around the world. Since an influx of employees began working from home, the demand for communication and collaboration platforms grew exponentially. 

With an aim to provide high-quality UCaaS service and a managed VoIP phone system for our clients’ remote team home offices, we are offering DS Voice Elevate, a cloud-based unified communications platform with:  

• 90+ enterprise-level calling features 

• Excellent network call quality and uptime 
• Call reporting managed from a single web-based portal 
• Flexibility to communicate in the way that works best for your team 
• Recorded voicemail options and messages automatically transcribed 
• Synchronization across web servers and desktop and mobile devices 

• Real-time backups and point-in-time file restoration for quick recovery 

Whether your customer support team is distributed across the country or you outsource an offshore contact center, this platform enables you to manage the voice, chat and email queues in a single omni-channel platform. 

UCaaS Market Growth: How Has Work from Home Fueled an Increase in Demand? 

Since many employees started working from home due to COVID-19, video conferencing, web conferencing, collaborative meetings, mobile telephony and VoIP phone systems have become some of the most sought-after tools. 

Organizations have started looking for alternative solutions to replace office technology and the traditional VPN scenarios with secure cloud connectivity and managed communications services.  

The global UCaaS market size was around $23 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach almost $60 billion by 2027. The growing demand for unified communication products and services are likely to drive the market growth even further. 

UCaaS For Remote Work: Key Takeaways 

Businesses around the world have been increasingly adopting unified communications solutions since the COVID-19 pandemic started, in order to support working from home and enhance operational efficiencies, employee productivity and customer service. 

If you are looking to deploy your communications to the cloud and start using managed UCaaS and VoIP phone systems, be sure to thoroughly evaluate available solutions and find a provider that can support your needs. Specifically look into the solution’s reliability, security, scalability and extensibility. 

Some of cloud-based platform features your company can benefit from include: 

• No hardware to buy, install, manage or replace  

• The cloud-based network built for reliability  
• Redundant data centers to reduce latency  
• Voice and data consolidated into one platform 
• Seamless interaction with your corporate phone system  
• Voicemail transcripts to text and email 

• Integrated chat, SMS, video messaging, screen and file sharing 
• Simple set up and system configuration  
• Secured, end-to-end encrypted communication  

The bottom line: if you’re considering UCaaS and VoIP solutions to help you manage your remote team more efficiently, now is the perfect time to get started and DS Voice Elevate might be the right solution for you – its robust all-in-on platform can help you reduce costs and simplify team management.