Unified communications crucial in coronavirus era

How busi­ness­es com­mu­ni­cate and oper­ate has had to evolve at light­ning speed, fuelled by remote work­ing. What would have tak­en years to artic­u­late has occurred in as many weeks, with uni­fied com­mu­ni­ca­tions now becom­ing a life­line for organ­i­sa­tions. This is set to con­tin­ue.

“In the last two months we’ve seen a vast increase in deploy­ment. Com­pa­nies are upgrad­ing their solu­tions to include full, uni­fied com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Bring­ing video and audio con­fer­enc­ing, desk­top shar­ing, data access, with both fixed-line tele­pho­ny and mobile, inte­grat­ed togeth­er under one roof,” explains Alan Mack­ie, chief mar­ket­ing and prod­uct offi­cer for Gam­ma, a leader in uni­fied com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

“Access to an organisation’s resources remote­ly via the cloud isn’t a nice to have any­more, it’s vital if com­pa­nies are to sur­vive beyond the pan­dem­ic. Right now, busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity is at the top of everyone’s agen­da. Com­mu­ni­ca­tions with clients and col­lab­o­ra­tion between work­ers must car­ry on unhin­dered if com­pa­nies are to thrive. Stay­ing con­nect­ed, but apart, is cru­cial.”

Busi­ness­es will need to inte­grate all their com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion tools into the big­ger busi­ness pic­ture

Uni­fied com­mu­ni­ca­tions are the new essen­tials. With more than 49 per cent of the UK work­force now work­ing from home, accord­ing to the Office for Nation­al Sta­tis­tics, employ­ees are demand­ing new ways of doing busi­ness. Zoom and Microsoft Teams, both US imports, are now house­hold names.

Yet one British firm is under­pin­ning this huge shift in how we work, pro­vid­ing tools and ser­vices that are keep­ing the econ­o­my run­ning and com­mu­ni­cat­ing dur­ing unprece­dent­ed times. Gam­ma has more than six mil­lion busi­ness users in the UK alone.

“We’re the uni­fied com­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny few have heard of, in part because we main­ly sell through a larg­er net­work of resale part­ners. Yet behind the scenes we’re pro­vid­ing sup­port to NHS trusts and cen­tral gov­ern­ment in White­hall, major banks and super­mar­kets, includ­ing many high street retail brands, large enter­pris­es and over 140,000 small and medi­um-sized enter­pris­es (SMEs). We’ve been doing so since 2006, but nev­er before have we seen such a shift in con­scious­ness,” says Mack­ie.

“In the last few months, many com­pa­nies have put in place a stick­ing plas­ter to answer their com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion needs. That’s why video-con­fer­enc­ing tools have gained a lot of press. Some might pro­vide a good ser­vice, but they’re short-term fix­es. Busi­ness­es will need to inte­grate all their com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion tools into the big­ger busi­ness pic­ture, which includes pay­ments, sales, cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment (CRM) and more.”

Many are now look­ing for flex­i­bil­i­ty because the future is uncer­tain and the land­scape for busi­ness oper­a­tions requires an agile and nim­ble approach. The good news is how employ­ees work in an office can now be eas­i­ly repli­cat­ed when every­one is dis­persed remote­ly, with lit­tle con­straint in terms of access to resources and com­mu­ni­ca­tions, both inter­nal­ly and exter­nal­ly. Such is the pow­er of uni­fied com­mu­ni­ca­tions as a ser­vice, or UCaaS.

“We’re see­ing not only a con­ver­gence of touch­points – mobile, video, sales calls and CRM – but also data. This allows busi­ness lead­ers to direct their effort going for­wards. UCaaS via the cloud is par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful when it comes to man­ag­ing peo­ple and gaug­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. That’s why we’ve seen demand grow,” says Mack­ie from Gam­ma, which is also active in the Nether­lands and Spain, and is expand­ing else­where in Europe.

“More com­pa­nies are now look­ing at staff effi­cien­cies. As we start to emerge from the pan­dem­ic and face a harsh eco­nom­ic real­i­ty, the C‑suite will want to know how effec­tive teams are in sup­port­ing cus­tomers and the busi­ness, espe­cial­ly with more flex­i­ble work­ing. There­fore, they’ll need to see assets all in one place and analyse them with the lat­est report­ing tools.”

The main chal­lenge, par­tic­u­lar­ly for small­er busi­ness­es, will be get­ting new cus­tomers. Vast num­bers of com­pa­nies have had to move to a dig­i­tal-first approach. With shut­tered stores and no in-per­son sales vis­its, the shift to online has fast-for­ward­ed many into what they thought was the future.

A recent sur­vey by Gam­ma of 400 IT deci­sion-mak­ers found only 18 per cent of UK busi­ness­es are thriv­ing in the dig­i­tal age, while 79 per cent agree get­ting busi­ness com­mu­ni­ca­tions – tele­pho­ny, mobile and net­work ser­vices – right makes the dif­fer­ence between sur­viv­ing and thriv­ing.

“This was before lock­down. The move towards inte­grat­ed dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions and col­lab­o­ra­tion is now on steroids. The com­pe­ti­tion is going to be fierce going for­ward. Every­one will have to work hard­er to get new cus­tomers or keep their exist­ing ones and do it remote­ly. It’s not just your busi­ness that’s changed the way it works, but every­body else’s has as well. The lat­est tools will be cru­cial,” says Mack­ie, adding that Gam­ma has one of the largest fixed-line tele­pho­ny net­works in the UK and was AIM Com­pa­ny Of The Year in 2018.

Omnichan­nel com­mu­ni­ca­tions is also a greater issue now and not just for big­ger busi­ness­es and those in retail. SMEs in busi­ness-to-busi­ness sec­tors are see­ing a shift as well. Sales can come from Face­book Mes­sen­ger or What­sapp, a web post or chat­bots. Only hav­ing a fixed tele­phone line as a point of con­tact is not enough for many organ­i­sa­tions.

“Every­one wants to com­mu­ni­cate how they want to com­mu­ni­cate. The chal­lenge is how do you gath­er all that infor­ma­tion togeth­er and have a sin­gle source of truth for the cus­tomer, when it comes via mul­ti­ple chan­nels? How do you sup­port busi­ness­es that have to com­mu­ni­cate in many dif­fer­ent ways? They need to be able to deal with every request and can­not afford to lose any leads, espe­cial­ly post-coro­n­avirus. This is where UCaaS comes in,” says Mack­ie.

“If busi­ness­es don’t have uni­fied com­mu­ni­ca­tions in place, it’s best to do an audit first. What are your needs? Where are you today? Where do you want to be in the future? Find­ing the right uni­fied comms part­ner is cru­cial. Every­one needs to make the right invest­ment in these chal­leng­ing times. The future is already here.”

For more please go to Gamma.co.uk