For longer than anyone can remember—in fact, ever since the day Alexander Graham Bell famously summoned Mr. Watson by phone—public switched telephone networks (PSTNs) have been the gold standard in enterprise voice communications. Now, though, sweeping change is afoot. With costs skyrocketing, the availability of copper-wire phone lines dwindling, and reliability declining, many businesses are seeking better options.
New unified communications as a service (UCaaS) offerings promise better pricing, richer features, and support for a wide variety of use cases ranging from customer contact centers to integrated email, chat, and SMS messaging capabilities. As organizations rely more heavily on digital technologies to support collaboration between hybrid, remote, frontline, and offshore workers—along with those in the home office—a modern communications strategy is becoming a cornerstone of the foundation for business success.
Growing numbers of legacy enterprise communications systems are reaching end-of-life. According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the number of PSTN lines in use within the U.S. decreased from 122 million in 2010 to just 32 million in 2021. Maintaining this infrastructure for an ever-decreasing user base is becoming more and more difficult for carriers, driving price increases. On average, per-line costs for wired phone service jumped 36% from 2010 to 2021, while mobile phone rates decreased over the same period.
PSTN costs have climbed even more sharply since then, with the FCC having removed a price cap that limited what local exchange carriers could charge for analog services. With maintenance and support costs on the rise too, it often makes financial sense for businesses to switch their remaining PSTN lines to voice over internet protocol (VoIP) or wireless connections. Most have already done so for the majority of their human voice telephony needs.
VoIP-based business communications solutions can be delivered from the cloud, making it possible to add features and integrations while reducing costs. But UCaaS takes this approach one step further, enabling true omni-channel collaboration to drive location-agnostic productivity.
According to Gartner, unified communications as a service (UCaaS) is a cloud-delivered unified communications model that supports six different communications functions:
These capabilities are delivered from the cloud, with infrastructure that’s owned, operated, and maintained by the provider. Provisioning, management, and reporting is usually available through a self-service web portal, and the services are licensed for a recurring monthly subscription fee.
Since the pandemic accelerated adoption of remote and hybrid work, organizations have been shifting their investments away from unified communications (UC) solutions—an on-premises approach—towards UCaaS. It’s estimated that more than 75% of enterprise employees won’t use a desk phone by 2025, up from just 30% in 2020.
Organizations are embracing UCaaS because it offers several key advantages over legacy telephony and communications approaches. Implementers gain immediate access to the near-infinite scalability of the cloud, while eliminating the need to purchase or maintain hardware. This reduces upfront costs as well as operational expenditures over time. It also means that communications services are available everywhere there’s internet access, making it easier to meet the needs of work-from-anywhere employees, along with field teams, frontline workers, and even partners and vendors. Plus, flexible licensing arrangements can readily accommodate rapid business growth.
The benefits of modernizing your enterprise communications strategy go far beyond cost savings and flexibility, however. And success demands more than the mere adoption of new tools. Most enterprise communication transformation journeys will begin with getting rid of outdated on-premises equipment, but empowering end users to maximize the potential of modern collaboration platforms also requires much more, including training and attention to workplace cultures. Stakeholders will need to think carefully about how employees communicate—both internally and externally—as well as what their preferred ways of working look like (in-person or remote? synchronous or asynchronous?). They should also ask themselves whether there are any environments within the business (such as customer contact centers) that would benefit from multi-channel integrations.
Today’s collaboration platforms incorporate voice calling functionalities, but their capabilities extend much farther than this. Platforms like Microsoft Teams and Zoom are creating comprehensive experiences for end users, not merely processing voice workloads.
In modern blended collaborative environments, voice communications are seamlessly blended with email, chat, SMS messaging, web conferencing, and multiple other modalities. Generative AI-powered assistants can instantly transcribe conversations, making it even easier to move them between channels. Application integrations put relevant information right at the fingertips of the employees who need it, so that they immediately understand the context around important interactions.
Because UCaaS (Unified Communications as Service) & CCaaS (Contact Center as Service) providers solutions are mature, cloud-delivered technologies, available features are constantly evolving. As technology’s development advances, cloud solution providers are continuously testing the boundaries of what’s possible. Not only can UCaaS and CCaaS customers be confident that their systems will always be on the cutting edge, but they can rest easy knowing they can access the enterprise-grade security that large service providers can deliver.
UCaaS and CCaaS customers also enjoy the ease of use and simplicity that comes with adopting a holistic approach. If on-site conferencing, meeting rooms, digital signage, voice calling, chat, text, email, and customer care are all integrated within a single provider’s platform, you’ll experience the cost benefits of vendor consolidation, but you’ll also reduce your internal team’s administrative burden.
Communication is at the heart of what makes us human. Leading UCaaS and CCaaS providers are delivering increasingly personalized solutions that make it easier for employees to build the strong collaborative relationships that enhance productivity.
In today’s age with plethora of platforms and solutions available can be both a blessing and a challenge. Careful planning is essential to identify what aligns best with your organization’s unique requirements while also future-proofing your operations. At Netrix, we’ve been assisting our valued customers in this transformative journey, serving as their trusted advisor. Want to learn more about how Netrix can help? Get in touch with us today.
2024 Netrix, LLC | All Rights Reserved.
