UCaaS Can Make a Real Difference
You’ve been putting it off for a long time, thinking that your aging or on-prem phone system is doing well enough.
And most of the time it may very well work well enough. But every so often you’ll need to pull together multiple people, using different devices, on a single call – and it’s… harder than it should be. Every so often your PBX goes down, and your IT team spends days trying to find and fix the problem.
It’s the classic death by a thousand cuts. And it’s in this “everyday” where UCaaS shines. UCaaS is “unified communications as a service” – expanding communications to include messaging, video, fax, whiteboard, and yes, voice too. From project meetings to client presentations, reliable and robust virtual connectivity is critical for your success.
Here’s a look at a typical day at a typical enterprise, and how UCaaS helps erase one annoyance after another. First, the annoyances:
A Day in the Life of a Software Firm without UCaaS
8:00 AM – Morning Stand-Up
(sound familiar?)
Jane, the lead developer, jump-starts her morning with a virtual stand-up meeting that includes her coding team and two contractors. She fumbles in her attempts to connect with the entire team – they’re using different communication platforms and are having connectivity issues. Since not all information reaches everyone on her team, she sends out emails, hoping that everyone comes away with the same message from this disjointed communication.
10:30 AM – Sprint Planning
(sound familiar?)
Ancient conference tools usually work, but today they disrupt sprint planning. Participants struggle to understand each other through audio cut-outs, and video freezes. Once again, just to make sure, Jane sends follow-up emails and makes additional calls to (re)communicate crucial project details.
12:00 PM – Code Deployment
(sound familiar?)
While some team members are aware of a bug in the code, not all are. And since there’s no centralized communication platform, coding becomes confused, and resolving this feels like a heavy lift.
2:00 PM – Client Demo
(sound familiar?)
Alex, the sales manager, is trying to access the project data for a customer demo, but he needs to swivel-chair the data because his company uses too many incompatible systems. Meanwhile, he has missed a call from the client and shows up unprepared.
4:00 PM – Task Management and Resource Allocation
(sound familiar?)
The operations team struggles with multiple systems, and the project’s milestones aren’t consistently updated everywhere. This leads to unnecessary work, manual coordination, inconsistent data, duplicated efforts, and reduced productivity.
5:30 PM – Day End Review
(sound familiar?)
Jane spends additional hours manually compiling her report, as data is scattered across different systems. She doesn’t have real-time insights, so she doesn’t really know where the project stands with any accuracy, and certainly cannot proactively lead her team.
The Solution: Unified Communications
It’s not easy to quantify the multitude of improvements that result from a fully unified communications platform. We do know that when your company’s voice, video, chat, SMS, contact center, and third-party applications are all integrated into a single platform (and are augmented by AI capabilities) – the manual, clunky, and frustrating experience described above is suddenly seamless. That’s the beauty of UCaaS. Let’s look at it:
8:00 AM – Morning Stand-Up with UCaaS
Since a strong UCaaS system integrates different platforms (and, ideally, a Tier 1 Internet backbone), Jane’s stand-up meeting experiences zero latency, and any connectivity issues vanish. She uses this integrated UCaaS platform to share updates on software development sprints with her team. Everyone is aligned.
10:30 AM – Sprint Planning with UCaaS
Jane conducts sprint planning with a UCaaS video conferencing feature. When video, messaging, and screen sharing are synthesized into a single solution, everyone – in-house and remote team members alike – can participate actively. Plus – no follow-up emails are needed because they whiteboarded the project’s next steps right there in the videoconference. They’ve just enhanced the project’s outcomes.
12:00 PM – Code Deployment with UCaaS
Real-time full-team messaging in UCaaS allows the firm to coordinate an immediate fix to an unexpected coding bug. They efficiently coordinate resources, engage developers, and push notifications to alert the entire team. They speedily debug the software and avert a potential failure.
2:00 PM – Client Demo with UCaaS
Alex uses the integrated UCaaS mobile app to access project updates. Further, when his client calls, it gets through so he knows exactly what the client expects from his demo. He’s always connected, both in the office and at the client’s location. Alex’s client knows he’s connected and important.
4:00 PM – Task Management and Resource Allocation with UCaaS
The operations team uses a UCaaS solution to manage tasks and allocate resources efficiently. And they have their choice of communication channels. UCaaS’s omni-channel communication allows the operations team to coordinate and update status via chat, phone, or SMS. It’s all immediately seen by the entire team, so they can collaborate easily.
5:30 PM – Day End Review with UCaaS
Jane reviews the day’s work with UCaaS’s AI-powered analytics and reporting tools. She understands the project’s status. She can easily identify areas for improvement, manage the data, and strategically plan for tomorrow.
Zayo’s UC+ With RingCentral – Partners that Pack a Punch
When you find a communications partner that combines the most flexible management options, the largest feature set, and the most intelligent AI integrations, you’ve found a gem! Zayo found a partner in RingCentral, and we’re so pleased to offer our customers a fully unified experience with our Zayo UC+ offering.
When we studied what our customers were solving for, we saw some common elements:
- Hybrid and distributed workforces spread all over the world
- Inherited and outdated phone systems that are a mix of on-prem and cloud-based (or non-existent)
- Call centers that needed to evolve into contact centers – more fully functional with phone calls, texts, web chat, and email routing to help them communicate with their customers
- Many, many vendors in the mix
- Multiple video platforms – Zoom, but also Teams, but also Google, used for meetings (and sometimes, but not always, for voice)
- A disjointed security strategy
- No central management of all of this
When looking for a managed communications partner, we looked for the best of the best. Like many of our customers, we turned to the Gartner Magic Quadrant as part of our research, and, like Gartner, landed on RingCentral as a clear leader in their space, an accolade granted by Gartner to RingCentral for eight consecutive years now.
With the power RingCentral, Zayo UC+ shines:
- That mishmash of communications platforms? No more! We combine all those disparate elements natively under the same umbrella so the experience is cohesive and simplified
- Your service is fully cloud-based – a service that combines voice, video, chat, SMS, fax, and contact center (with AI features) into one intuitive platform
- Your many third-party applications like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce, and many more – the apps we all use – are all integrated into the platform, so productivity flows uninterrupted
- You can start a video call on your laptop in the office and take it with you to the car and home. It’s mobile
- Its advanced AI features operate beautifully – saving you and your customers valuable time
- You’ll have a system that will grow as you grow
- You’ll have a partner in Zayo with over 20 years of managed service experience
But is it secure?
We understand. Moving from on-prem to the cloud, or from disparate systems to a unified one, should raise security questions.
Zayo UC+ with RingCentral is committed to data security, privacy, and compliance. Our approach delivers “always-on” information security protection, data encryption, and data privacy management that keeps you safe and compliant with the law. And our platform provides a comprehensive toolset for your administrators and users with a breadth of dynamic and real-time controls. Read more about UCaaS security here.
Most importantly:
Your entire connectivity portfolio – your voice, transport services, IP services, etc. – can all operate on a single well-performing fiber network.
Zayo UC+ is much more than a vigilant management team and fabulous software. The Zayo group of companies operates a global fiber optic network – more than 145,000 geographic miles of fiber – over which we offer our customers our many networking services, from dark fiber to wavelengths to Internet to Cloud to managed SD-WAN and SASE services.
When your unified communications services are integrated with all of your other voice and data networking services, that’s where the magic happens. With Zayo’s UC+ with RingCentral:
- You’ll enjoy 99.99% uptime
Zayo’s robust network and platform ensure high availability and low latency - From design to delivery…
We have over 20 years of experience in managed services. We map your unique goals and requirements for the project. Delivery is on-time, painless, and exactly what you need
- …and throughout, we’re with you
We’re available 24x7x365 to provide a white-glove experience, no matter what you may need, no matter when you need us, for the length of your contract
- You’ll be working with a solid partner
Best of all, with Zayo, you have the option of a complete networking solution – from Internet to cloud to voice – all backed by Zayo’s expertise and a single end-to-end SLA
You’ve created a unified platform that simplifies management and streamlines operations. You’ve brought together all aspects of business connectivity onto one powerful platform. The result is a seamless, secure, and efficient flow of communication that empowers your organization to thrive and grow.
If you’re ready to move past “good enough” and into “Wow! We had no idea what we were missing!” – learn more here, or contact Zayo here.
