Every organization wants the advantages of unified communications (UC) technologies like video conferencing, team chatting, advanced analytics, and custom calling.
Perhaps it’s a one-woman consultancy conducting real-time conferences with clients on another continent. Or, maybe it’s a 25-seat tech startup using a rich suite of cloud-computing apps and tools. Then again, it could be a 200-employee software company integrating sophisticated call-center technology with an advanced CRM platform.
Small and midsized organizations can use UC technologies to elevate customer service and collaborate with vendors in far-flung locales. They can ensure all their employees have always-on connectivity to data and documents that help them succeed. They can give salespeople immediate access to rich customer data that help them call more prospects and land more contracts.
It all sounds fine on paper, but there’s a hitch: Most small- to mid-sized organizations don’t have the resources to corral all these technologies and fine-tune them for optimum performance. And that’s why so many partners with experts like those at CBTS, who have decades of experience configuring and managing high-end communications systems for companies of every size, in every industry.
Partnering with a UC expert has three fundamental benefits:
1. Saving money
UC systems must be designed, purchased, installed, and tested. Servers, switches, phones, mobile apps, PCs, tablets, and other components must be carefully coordinated and customized to meet a company’s precise business needs. Then, somebody needs to monitor, manage, and update the system.
For years, these hurdles discouraged smaller organizations from investing in UC technologies. They simply couldn’t afford the time, payroll, and equipment costs. Moreover, they did not want to deal with the distraction from their core business goals.
The advent of cloud technologies shifted this paradigm. Today, managed services experts like those at CBTS can deliver all these capabilities to just about any organization — all for a predictable monthly fee. CBTS partners gain access to best-in-class technologies and pay only for the resources they use. The CBTS advanced team of certified experts handle all the hardware, software, and security patches.
2. Scaling to meet business growth
A traditional PBX and phone network requires companies to purchase additional handsets, servers, and bandwidth capacity when their business grows. But if economy contractions or marketplace changes make these tools redundant, companies get stuck with plenty of old equipment that nobody wants.
Seasonal businesses like retailers that land most of their sales around the winter holidays might have to buy enough technology to handle their busiest shopping days, then let all those tools collect dust the rest of the year.
With UC hosted in the cloud and managed by a third-party provider, companies can scale up or down quickly, limit their costs to actual usage, and stop worrying about technology becoming obsolete the day they install it. And they can leave the intricate technical details to experts who can quickly adapt a company’s technology to its current needs.
3. Making better use of your people’s time
If you’re unfamiliar with a technology, you can tie up hours, days, and weeks tweaking settings and patching software—and still end up with subpar performance. By contrast, certified, well-trained technology experts can fix problems and improve outcomes quickly because they’ve solved the same issues a dozen times before.
The complexity of UC technologies requires people with years of experience and a passion for squeezing maximum performance out of hardware and software. The question is whether your business can afford to devote time and payroll to areas outside your core mission.
For smaller organizations with limited resources, it makes much more sense to keep your employees focused on your biggest business challenges and to leave the technical work to UC experts who can optimize performance at a lower cost.
Case study: CBTS helps distiller focus on growth
A Northern Kentucky distillery is tapping into the region’s boom in bourbon tourism. The startup has two dozen employees and is growing quickly after three years in business. CBTS delivers a fully hosted UC solution that helps the company stay focused on communicating with its core audience of bourbon sippers.
Read the New Riff Distillery case study here.
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