5 Ways Unified Communications Can Save Your Company Money

5 Ways Unified Communications Can Save Your Company Money

You’ve probably heard by now that Unified Communications is the future of the telecoms industry. But that doesn’t mean much to you. As a business manager your main concern is the bottom line, so today we’re going to have a look at the black and white – how exactly can Unified Communications save you money?

1. Cutting call costs

There are several ways Unified Communications and VoIP in general can cut your call costs:

• Cheaper call rates. Because VoIP routes calls over the internet, very few PSTN circuits need to be opened to deliver calls to their destination. Each PSTN circuit opening presents a cost to your carrier, which is passed on to you. VoIP carriers do not have to bear this cost, so are able to provide cheaper call rates to their customers.
• Sign in to your system from abroad. If you’re on a business trip abroad and need to call home, Unified Communications systems provide an app you can sign in to. Once you do this, all calls you make will be originated from your UC platform in the UK – you’ll therefore be charged for the calls as if you’re dialling from your office rather than paying extortionate international dialling fees.
• Mobile and remote workers can use the app as well. This represents a huge saving for many businesses. Mobile calls are significantly more expensive even than PSTN – by signing in to a UC app with their smartphone, your mobile users will be able to dial numbers from your office phone system, taking advantage of the cheaper rates.

2. Unifying your Communications

Unified Communications puts all your communication tools under one umbrella. One of the chief advantages of a UC platform is that the platform as a whole is much cheaper on a monthly basis than paying separately for a dozen or so communications tools. Even ignoring the functional benefits this provides, the cost savings here can be truly enormous.

3. Save your staff time

In a business your workforce is undoubtedly your biggest expenditure. Any steps you can take to save your staff time throughout their day are therefore worth considering. Unified Communications can improve workplace efficiency in a few ways:

• Less time hunting for the right tool or app. It may only take a colleague 30 seconds or so to find and open an instant messaging app, but multiply this by the number of times they do it in a day and the number of staff in your office and you will quickly arrive at the conclusion that this wastes a lot of time. With all tools in one app, your staff won’t have to worry about their colleagues being logged on and will never have to search for the right app ever again.
• Improve response times to customer queries. By being able to get in touch with the right colleague or department very easily, your staff will be able to answer enquiries from your customers a lot quicker. Not only will this save your staff time, but it will have a huge impact on your customer satisfaction – a win-win.

4. Improve mobility

Improving your workforce’s mobility is one of the key challenges facing businesses. Unified Communications platforms can help in several ways:

• Save on travel costs. The video call capabilities of Unified Communications can allow you to attend outside meetings without leaving your office. There’s no need to travel to a client’s office, and therefore no need to buy expensive tickets.
• Unlock more options for working from home. With a UC system in place, why not set your staff up with a VPN to the office and let them work from home? All collaboration and communication tools are available right at their fingertips, so this is no longer the hindrance to productivity it once was.
• Do you need such a big office? If you’ve got more of your staff working from home, do you need such a big office? Many of our customers have been able to downsize their premises after installing our UC platform.

5. Technical improvements

In much the same way that a new car costs less in maintenance and repairs than an old banger, hosted UC platforms don’t need much, if any, engineer time to keep them up and running. The advantages here are threefold:

• No more engineer visits to your site. If you use a hosted platform, there’s no kit for a supplier to install or maintain on your site. All technical support can be performed remotely – all you need to do is plug your phones in.
• No risk of obsolescence. Hosted systems are updated regularly by the provider at no cost to the customer. This means you’ll never have to worry about whether you’re running the latest version of your system and won’t have to pay a provider to send an engineer to your site for a software upgrade.
• No interoperability concerns. Save your own IT staff a lot of time by using a platform that already has all the communication tools you’ll need straight out of the box. Your engineers won’t have to spend any time making sure your IM client plays well with your file or screen sharing application.

Is Unified Communications the future of your business’s telecoms? All you need to get started reliable internet connection; get in touch with us today to explore your options. You can call us on 01494 523 523 or email sales@5gcomms.com.