The return on investment of IT projects is more relevant than ever in the current economic context. Modernisation projects, while becoming critical to maintaining a sustained pace of innovation, nonetheless remain subject scrutiny.
To meet the challenges of new ways of working, CIOs are faced with investment choices in communications and collaboration solutions, and more and more of them are turning to UCaaS unified communications as a service) to modernise their tech stack while respecting budgetary constraints.
What’s the state of hybrid work today?
The latest figures show that 44% of UK workers report home or hybrid working (source: ONS). As hybrid work is now the norm, companies must rethink the way they collaborate and define the tools best suited to these new ways of working. Working from anywhere, and often remotely, requires benefitting from adapted solutions to collaborate easily and maintain strong relationships with both clients and colleagues.
The advantages of hybrid working, such as saving time, better work-life balance, attracting talent and optimising office space, should not mask the fact that this new, more mobile and flexible method can also complicate operations. The security of the communications system is also at the heart of current challenges for IT departments, and it requires specific devices in this new hybrid work context.
What are the top challenges of new working methods?
IDC and Shure asked hybrid workers about their top concerns working this way. The research found that hybrid employees do face a number of difficulties that companies would do well to resolve if they are to make the most of this way of working.
The top challenges according to IDC are:
- Poor communication and collaboration abilities
- low attention levels
- Technology shortfalls that impact collaboration
(source: IDC and Shure report)
For Cyrille Chausson, Senior Research & Consulting Analyst at IDC, existing communications infrastructures are not adapted to modern work. They were designed for in-office workers, making remote connection difficult, especially since the environment is often locked down, making it difficult to automate and add intelligent processes. Additionally, the ability to regulate activity peaks is limited.
Fortunately, the movement is underway towards the cloud: to meet all these challenges, many companies have decided to invest in UCaaS, which brings together all communication channels (messaging, telephony, videoconferencing etc).
How can UCaaS investment lead to an increase in ROI?
UCaaS solutions offer CIOs numerous economic advantages. First of all, they enable real estate savings by reducing the physical spaces dedicated to communication equipment, thanks to the digitalisation of services. Additionally, adopting UCaaS helps reduce costs related to server maintenance and data centre management as these responsibilities are handled by service providers.
In terms of business continuity, UCaaS offers better redundancy in the event of an outage and allows you to create a more efficient Business Continuity Plan (BCP). This helps reduce costs associated with business interruption and ensures optimal communications availability. At RingCentral, thanks to our redundant architecture of more than 30 data centres around the world, we are committed to an unrivaled SLA rate of 99.999%.
From a security perspective, UCaaS offers better data and communications protection through advanced security measures put in place by service providers. This reduces breach risks and costs related to security incidents. RingCentral is committed to a wide variety of the most demanding standards and certifications, including IPSOS 27001, SOC2, GDPR and C5. It is also possible to activate end-to-end encryption of exchanges on demand for videoconferencing, calls and messaging.
UCaaS also eliminates the need to manage outdated PBX systems, which are expensive to maintain and can pose issues with spare parts and limited resources. Finally, UCaaS offers modern features and increased flexibility as innovations become available, allowing businesses to adopt communications solutions more suited to their specific and evolving needs, without requiring additional investments to advanced features.
All these advantages help to limit the total cost of ownership while providing a modern and efficient communications infrastructure. The results for RingCentral customers are convincing : they see a reduction in telecom costs of 23%, a reduction in hardware costs of 20%, and more generally, a reduction of 16% in IT expenses.
The value created by cloud communications systems
An ROI calculation would not be complete if it did not include the value provided by the acquired system. With UCaaS, the sources of value are found in the time saved and in the operational efficiency obtained through integration with existing tools, and through the innovations brought by AI.
Very concretely, thanks to the integration, employees save time by avoiding navigating between several applications, and they can easily go from a message to a call, then to a video in one click, without losing the context of the exchange, which improves the efficiency of interactions, both internally and with customers. The integration with Microsoft Teams, offered by RingCentral, contributes to this productivity, again avoiding changing applications to make a phone call, for example.
The integration of artificial intelligence features that automate tasks and provide conversational intelligence also saves time and increases productivity, for example through automatic transcription of conversations and automatic generation of reports. Finally, the advanced reports offered in the RingCentral platform make it possible to improve management, better allocate resources and monitor employee usage, which also contributes to optimising the value of the communications system.
With all of this, RingCentral customers have seen an increase in meeting efficiency by 37%, an increase in employee productivity by 42%, and a reduction in time spent navigating between applications by 29%. (source: RingCentral Customer Success Metrics)
Faced with the economic situation and new working methods which force companies to rationalise their investments in communications systems, UCaaS therefore provide a response by reducing the company’s TCO while providing more value, through greater great operational efficiency and better productivity, and they therefore generate better ROI from its IT stack.
Originally published Apr 12, 2024
