Large portions of the workforce have moved from the office to the home, a shift expected to persist to a large degree for the foreseeable future. Under these new circumstances, the need to stay connected virtually has become increasingly acute. When teams are in the office, finding an answer to a problem can be as easy as popping your head over a cubicle wall. When teams are spread across different locations, organizations need to find more effective ways to facilitate seamless communications.

It’s been no surprise that more and more businesses are planning their migration to cloud communications, and the requirements of a distributed workforce stand to quicken the pace of the move to cloud-based communications. According to Markets and Markets, the Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) market — that is, voice, unified messaging, conferencing, and collaboration platforms and applications — is predicted to grow to $25B by 2024 in the US alone.

If you’re an IT stakeholder, you’ve likely had to make many unexpected and quick adjustments over the last several weeks. Moving your communications system to the cloud should be a top priority in an effort to maintain seamless and productive communications going forward.

Legacy phone systems are boat anchors compared to today’s cloud communications options that give your users the features they need, on the devices they want. The efficiencies derived from cloud communications translate to a more cohesive workforce with higher productivity and higher job satisfaction.

Especially in today’s environment, migrating to cloud communications should be a 2020 key objective.

Here’s why:

• Video, messaging, and conferencing are key communication tools for any business. Now, they’ve become mission-critical as teams working from home need to be able to connect as easily as they would in the office.
• Cloud eliminates the need for an on-site PBX. Fewer boxes mean fewer maintenance windows and fewer headaches.
• Automated attendants can route calls to appropriate extensions or departments, provide important information to callers, and deliver custom routing options or messages after hours or during holidays.
• Employees are increasingly using their own mobile devices — you need to provide them with the apps they need to do their job.
• Communication systems can integrate seamlessly with other tools and solutions to enable productivity. Having instant access to tools like G suite, Microsoft Office 365, and Slack enables real-time collaboration across multiple channels.
• Cloud solutions come with cloud pricing — pay for what you need, not what you don’t.
• Central control means you can manage your service any time or anywhere, simply by pulling up an app. See who's on the phone and who's available, know when to transfer calls or have a message taken, or pick up a call ringing on a coworker's phone.

Migrating communications to the cloud (UCaaS) offers several benefits to businesses. Geographically dispersed organizations can use UCaaS to replace infrastructure that was previously expensive to build and complex to maintain. With UCaaS in place, companies have access to a single, unified approach with all the components of typical, on-premises unified communications solutions, but now in a low-maintenance, lower cost cloud package.

Once you’ve migrated to UCaaS, you’ll have an entirely new slate of services available to your users. Some of the key elements include:

Cloud PBX: Offering all the capabilities of an on-premises PBX without the hassle of maintenance and facilities costs; and you have crystal-clear voice and video.

Unified communications: Employees can call, message or meet from their desk phone, mobile or tablet, from anywhere.

Team messaging: Employees can organize and share information on workspaces, track projects, archive documents and collaborate in real-time.

Virtual meetings: Everyone gets a virtual meeting space that they can use from their desk, mobile or even a conference room.

Leveraging cloud communications can result in a truly unified workforce from anywhere. See how we can help.