The Business Case for Switching to Hosted UCaaS [Use Cases & Examples]

The pressure is always on for CIOs and IT leaders to make smart use of their budget and employees.

A 2020 TechRepublic Premium poll of CIOs revealed that 62% of survey respondents will tighten their 2021 IT budgets because of the pandemic. However, the top three priorities for their budget were security, cloud services, and remote technology.

Gone are the days when IT departments were mostly focused on setting up hardware and help desk issues. Now, CIOs and IT leaders must build their strategy and budget around managing a digital workforce, compliance requirements, and delivering a seamless internal and external user experience. And doing all that within the confines of keeping the network and resources secure.

CIOs and IT leaders are more responsible for business operations and the customer experience than ever before, but now with less budget. How can they accomplish more with less?

A cloud-based solution like Hosted UCaaS (unified communications as a service) may be the right solution. It can deliver the services IT departments need to help them positively impact their organizations while delivering cost savings.

4 Benefits of Hosted UCaaS that Boost Your Bottom Line

Before we get to the benefits of hosting UCaaS, it’s important to start with what it is and the old, traditional status quo it is meant to replace. 

Historically, businesses have relied on premise-based PBX and PRI technology for calling and communications. These solutions worked for years, but have become outdated as telecommunications has innovated by using Internet Protocol (IP) resulting in much more flexibility than Time Division Multiplexing (TDM). 

Legacy PBX and PRI systems rely on physical infrastructure like phone lines, technician visits to fix outage issues, and cannot be scaled to include multimedia communications such as video and screen sharing. In short, they’re an outdated technology misaligned with the realities and business practices of the world we live in today.

Hosted UCaaS takes advantage of leaps in telecom technology. The cloud, data connectivity, instant messaging, collaboration tools, and more are all parts of a comprehensive hosted UCaaS solution. And as CIOs and IT leaders are pressed to have a greater impact on their companies, hosted UCaaS solutions are an essential tool to put to use. 

Knowing this, let’s look at the business case for switching to hosted UCaaS.

1. Reduce the Costs of Legacy Systems and Multiple Platforms

Legacy systems require expensive costs to maintain and upgrade because they rely on physical infrastructure. They can also consume lots of time to deploy. For example, you may have to wait 30-45 days for a telecom provider to start upgrading your connection. And when something breaks or there is an outage issue, it requires physical work to get those systems back online.

Additional costs show up whenever you want to add employees; you must add new phone lines, numbers, and the actual phones themselves. There’s also the time cost to your IT and communications departments to maintain and oversee your legacy system.

By moving to a cloud-hosted UCaaS platform, you can better use IT & communications resources while reducing costs. But reduced costs don’t mean you get the bare minimum. UCaaS solutions are trivial to customize to ensure you get what you need without overpaying for services you won’t use.

Plus, the decreased burden on your IT team means they can look for smart investments in technologies and services to enhance and optimize operations.

Use Case: Customer Success Teams

Customer success teams play a critical role and have a lot of responsibilities:

• Answering customer calls
• Finding solutions to customer issues
• Looking up customer information
• Routing customer or prospect inquiries to the right person
• And much more

In many organizations, customer success teams must rely on multiple disparate tools — phone, computer system, instant messaging, etc. — to do their job. It can slow them down when they really need to work as quickly and accurately as possible. 

Unified communications can tie together everything customer success teams need in one platform. The upside is no more information silos, streamlined communication between employees, and the capabilities to ensure customers and prospects have a positive interaction with your company.

Related: 6 Reasons to Move to a Cloud Contact Center

2. Eliminate the Need to Purchase & Maintain Hardware

Physical phone systems have become obsolete recently and require patches and repairs over time to maintain them. Maintenance and support become more difficult with age, and eventually you wind up in a cycle of constant replacement and upgrades, if you can find the parts and certified technicians who know what to do!

UCaaS operates through desktop software and on apps for tablets or mobile devices. There is no requirement to purchase expensive phone systems, new computers, or other hardware in most cases. 

UCaaS can be rolled out to employees across your organization seamlessly overnight. This contrasts with the need to physically install new programs on computers or switch out phone systems and equipment.

For instance, I had a community college client who had a premise-based PBX and PRIs in March 2020. As the global pandemic took off, people no longer came to the campus and worked from home. Over a weekend, we were able to setup accounts for their people, who could then download an app to their mobile device/desktop computer. The softphone enabled them to make/receive calls, transfer, conference and place calls on hold. Just like they were in the office! The only cost was the seat or license for the app to access our UCaaS switch. 

Use Case: Remote and Hybrid Workforces

One of the biggest challenges for CIOs and IT leaders post-COVID is in managing remote employees. Before 2020, most companies could get away with one-off solutions for the very few remote workers they had

Not anymore. For companies adopting a remote or hybrid workplace model, hosted UCaaS is the cheat code for ensuring employees have what they need to work efficiently and effectively from home.

Instead of purchasing and shipping expensive equipment to employee homes, they simply need instructions for logging in and setting up work software on their personal computers, tablets, and/or mobile devices.

3. Much Easier to Scale as You Grow or Transition to a Remote Workforce

Scalability is a core strength of hosted UCaaS. Instead of the physical process involved with setting up new employees at a workstation, it’s an all-digital process. Your IT staff can add new users in a fraction of the time from a central admin hub.

There’s also no limitation caused by waiting for hardware to arrive. The setup process is as easy as adding a new employee to the active directory and installing programs or apps on their computer remotely.

Use Case: Scaling Up a Team

Perhaps you need to add customer support staff or sales reps in response to an increase in business. Hosted UCaaS makes it easy, even if your new employees are remote or travel frequently.

Without the need for hardware, your IT team sets up new employees in your UCaaS platform and ensures they have access, logins, and setup instructions for the software they need. Additionally, they can provide insight on any apps needed for tablets or smartphones as needed.

4. Simpler and Cost-Effective to Manage for IT Administrators

Is a hosted UCaaS solution easier for IT teams to manage than legacy PBX or PRI systems? Yes, for a few reasons.

1. Your IT team collaborates with your UCaaS partner’s professional staff members to create an internal-outsourced hybrid IT team.
2. Administering the platform occurs in a central hub versus being spread across multiple platforms (add user to PBX, then add user to voicemail system, setup access to conference call service, etc.). Your IT team only needs to be on one platform to address file sharing, instant messaging, or softphone issues.
3. An added benefit: you can commit more IT resources to important organizational initiatives. Instead of needing 3-4 employees managing day-to-day operations, you only need one or maybe two, depending on your company’s size.

Use Case: IT Administration for a School District

While school districts differ in size, many of them have over 1,000 users spread across multiple buildings. In a traditional IT and communications setup, district IT staff would spend most of their time setting up new phones and computers on-site. 

Implementing hosted UCaaS can reduce the number of IT staff needed to oversee the communications needs of teachers and school staff. Plus, hosted UCaaS reduces costs of purchasing and maintaining phone systems & hardware.

Choose the Leader in Hosted UCaaS (Since Before it was a Thing)

Finding an experienced hosted UCaaS provider is essential. Atlantech Online started offering UCaaS services in 2004, and we’ve been expanding offerings ever since.

Atlantech Online has helped all sorts of businesses across industries make the transition to hosted UCaaS successfully. How? Because we promise to get the basics right: customized solutions, fast responses, reliable connectivity, unparalleled service

Request a quote to start the conversation about migrating your company from a legacy PBX or PRI system to a hosted UCaaS solution today.