Three Reasons Large Companies are Investing in Cloud-Based UC

After a wave of adoption for cloud-based UC among small and medium businesses, large enterprises are embracing change themselves and ramping up investment in Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS). Synergy Research Group found that the number of enterprises using UCaaS rose by 57% in 2018. Meanwhile, Gartner recently predicted that 90% of IT leaders will no longer purchase their UC systems on premise.

What’s driving this change among large businesses? As we’ve said before, the move to UCaaS isn’t for everyone, at least not right away, but adoption is clearly on the rise.

There’s no single reason, but three drivers, in particular, are at play:

• Modernizing the employee experience

Until recently, the bulk of employee communication was done over the phone or via email. But this has changed drastically. In companies big and small, workers prefer to communicate as they do in their personal lives, using instant messaging platforms and SMS, on top of traditional methods. UCaaS is ideally suited to supporting collaboration across all these platforms, making people happier at work, more efficient, and better equipped to serve customers as a team.

• Managing the skills crunch

Good people are harder than ever to find. From the technology industry to the legal sector, businesses are struggling to fill open roles with the right talent, and IT skills are arguably the most difficult to find. Cloud-based UC requires minimal maintenance and IT expertise compared with on-premise systems, which means businesses can focus on hiring talent to drive their core functions rather than spending time and money trying to find IT experts in a high demand, low supply market. 

• Keeping costs in check

The cost benefits of cloud are well documented, particularly the fact that companies don’t need to invest in new infrastructure every time an upgrade is necessary. The economies of UCaaS are particularly attractive for large companies, who are still trying to shake the limitations of their legacy IT and are hungry for a more agile way of working.  There’s also an opportunity cost savings here – instead of upgrading once every several years and watching the competition overtake them, businesses running on cloud always have the latest version the software installed, keeping them on the path of continuous, seamless improvement.

Cloud systems have begun to pay dividends in all corners of the organization, from the back-office to marketing, to customer service, and companies are feeling encouraged to unlock their potential in new ways. Employee collaboration is an exciting use case because it touches so many critical elements of the modern business, from efficiency and cost savings to better customer experiences, and ultimately revenue. We are still in the early days of adoption, but as Gartner has pointed out, change is coming quickly.

Click here to learn more about Stack8’s UCaaS expertise and check out Parlay, our cloud-based UC offering for Cisco and Broadsoft users.