You’ve probably heard about unified communications (UC) before. But why are other organisations (and your competitors) moving towards centralised cloud-based comms platforms? What are the benefits?
Chances are your existing office switchboard uses ISDN lines to make and receive calls. Although this technology has been the industry standard for decades, it’s now considered too limited and costly for modern business demands.
More importantly, ISDN is being phased out by telecoms operators; it’s due to be fully retired by 2025. The successor technology, SIP trunking , is IP-based making it more scalable, cost-effective and flexible, better able to meet the changing needs of your business – and delivers a much better experience for you and your customers.
Switching to a unified communications platform allows you to take full advantage of the benefits of SIP – and gives you features that make it easier for customers to contact you, and staff to contact each other.
Business communications have evolved in a number of different directions. The humble telephone has been joined by email, SMS, video conferencing, instant messaging, social media and document collaboration (among others) as ways of communication between teams and customers.
All this choice is great news for customers – and a headache for you. Many businesses have tried to accommodate client demands for new channels by bolting together various different standalone apps and services. But the multi-tool approach not only increases management overheads, it fails to offer a seamless way to switch customers between channels or to capture and record details of each interaction.
As the name implies, unified communications not only broadens the number of channels available to your team, it also unifies them in one system. Everything is available through one interface so you can easily route between communication types – and nothing falls through the gaps.
When was the last time you reviewed your phone bill? If you’re still using a traditional system, or you’re relying on multiple services for different channels, it’s likely that your organisation is paying more than you should. Factor in the costs of managing and maintaining an older phone network, and a handful of messaging and conferencing services, and that figure will only increase.
By centralising your communications channels, UC dramatically simplifies the process of managing them all. And because it’s built on SIP technology, calls and line rental are dramatically cheaper than your existing ISDN system. The best bit? Shifting to the Gamma’s unified communications platform has helped customers save hundreds of thousands of pounds over the first three years.
Using new communication tools also allows you to change the way you do business. Any time, any place comms means that your employees are no longer tied to their desks for instance, making it much easier to offer them flexible working arrangements. They can collaborate more both when in the office and away, which is great for boosting productivity.
Additionally, as your business grows you can attract the best calibre of candidates because you’re no longer tied to the local geographical region. The same is true of opening branch offices across the country, or even internationally.
All opportunities that are just impossible to realise with a traditional ISDN-based PBX.
It’s time to join the future
