Righting the wrongs: Level set your UCC strategy

Now is the time to optimize your UCC platform to support the move to a hybrid workforce model.

Eliminating duplication of platforms and functionality

In the rush to address challenges, some organizations let their teams quickly self-select and adopt the technologies they felt would help them maintain ‘business as usual.’

It’s clear this empowerment led to a significant amount of duplication in terms of expense and technology. For example, many organizations that increased their use of collaboration tools are still using a different provider for voice communications or have legacy file-sharing applications still in use.

Some organizations even utilize entirely different UCC platforms across different departments, teams, or geographic sites. This could be a waste of budget and can create unnecessary overhead on the IT and support teams.

Consider the following steps to level set your UCC strategy:

Audit your existing environment

Start by reviewing the existing collaboration and communication tools in your environment and take stock of why they’re there. You might realize you have too many tools, or that the ones you do have are no longer fit for purpose or don’t talk to each other. Either of these scenarios will cause confusion for your end users and end up costing your business in the long run.

Rely on strategic consulting

Leveraging a trusted resource that understands technology and how it plays into specific environments is key to creating an effective UCC strategy. SHI is entrenched in the day-to-day releases and updates to hardware products, applications, and service providers. Our teams can properly vet technology solutions to create a strategy that supports both office and remote workers.

Optimize and streamline

True up on your existing UCC technologies by leveraging services like SHI’s SaaS Cost Optimization, or consider streamlining communications systems into one platform. Many UCaaS vendors offer a hybrid approach to help you utilize existing hardware or move to the latest and greatest.

Fostering user adoption through communication, training, and
platform configuration

There are many reasons organizations struggle with adoption. With the onslaught of newer technologies and platforms that support remote and hybrid workforces, this is a challenge organizations can no longer afford. For many businesses, consumption isn’t the concern – they know their users are utilizing the technology, but realize they’re not leveraging it properly or to its full advantage. Consider the following when looking to maximize user adoption:

Leverage utilization reports

Utilization reporting can help you understand your environment and your end users' habits by allowing you to see if your investment is being used as intended. Organizations can use it as a tool to achieve that optimal state by identifying targets and re-educating end users. For example, if you find there’s only 5% utilization for a collaboration tool, you know it’s not being used to its fullest potential and that there are opportunities to maximize the value of this investment. Take this information and identify ways to skill up your end users.

Empower your workforce with end-user training

Many organizations purchase applications, roll it out to their end users, and stop there. This is a common pitfall as this step can be overlooked, or because training costs weren’t factored into estimates before adopting new technologies.

To ensure proper adoption, and for these new technologies to be successful in your company, there needs to be ongoing end-user training. There is no one size fits all to this approach, which is why we often need to work with organizations to discover their unique needs and deliver custom training programs while offering a flexible and effective plan for end-user adoption.

Integrate UCC platforms into other mission-critical applications

By making the experience more seamless for your end users, you’re already a shoo-in when it comes to adoption. To enable teams to function more efficiently and support seamless workflows, organizations will integrate platforms like management tools, voice platform options, and contact center with collaboration tool plug-ins – boosting collaboration and communication while achieving a unified goal across the organization. SHI supports our customers by helping them build out custom communication workflows to increase productivity and adopt the right collaboration platform.