{"id":5835,"date":"2019-06-25T11:00:18","date_gmt":"2019-06-25T10:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"\/gb\/en\/blog\/?p=5835"},"modified":"2023-01-17T10:27:06","modified_gmt":"2023-01-17T10:27:06","slug":"are-uk-businesses-embracing-unified-communications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/gb\/en\/blog\/are-uk-businesses-embracing-unified-communications\/","title":{"rendered":"Are UK Businesses Embracing Unified Communications?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In today\u2019s era of digital transformation, more organisations are realising the need for a single unified communications (UC) experience to streamline their workflows.<\/p>\n

Unified communication<\/a> enables a transformation in the way people collaborate, share content, and manage projects. It offers an integrated experience across voice, video, online meetings, app integrations, contact centre<\/a> and more, with team messaging at the core \u2014 whether employees are using their mobile devices, sitting at their desktops, or gathered in meeting rooms.<\/p>\n\t

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\r\n\t\t\tRingCentral Office<\/span>\r\n\t\t\t

Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)<\/h3>\r\n\t\t\t

RingCentral Office\u00ae offers a complete unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solution with enterprise VoIP<\/a> capabilities.<\/p>\r\n\t\t\tLearn more<\/a>\r\n\r\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n\t\n

Ultimately, UC allows greater agility and productivity across global workforces, all through one simple user interface. To gain insight into whether UK organisations are embracing UC, RingCentral ran a survey at UC Expo<\/a> 2019 asking professionals about their company\u2019s current communications environment.<\/p>\n

Over 90% of survey respondents reported that they will be moving to cloud and hybrid UC in the future. <\/a><\/span>Click To Tweet<\/a><\/span><\/blockquote>\n

The status of UC in the UK<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The results of the survey indicate that UK businesses are in the process of transitioning to the cloud and can do more to consolidate their communications. We received over 100 responses, of which 46% comprised of organisations with 500+ employees, 3% with 250 \u2013 499, 17% with 50 \u2013 249, and 32% with less than 50 employees.<\/p>\n

Over 90% of survey respondents reported that they will be moving to cloud and hybrid UC<\/a> in the future<\/em>. This is consistent with recent industry trends and Gartner\u2019s prediction<\/a>: \u201cBy 2021, 90% of IT leaders will not purchase new premises-based UC infrastructure \u2014 up from 50% today \u2014 because future cloud UC offerings will be far ahead in terms of features, functions, portals, analytics and dashboards.\u201d There was a relatively even split between companies currently<\/em> using on-premise, cloud, and hybrid UC technology.<\/p>\n

\"UC
UC Technology the respondents currently use versus what they will be moving in to the future.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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In addition to types of UC technology, we asked survey respondents what types of communications tools they are currently using. Voice, video conferencing, team messaging and collaboration were the most popular. However, when asked how many providers are used to provide those services, over 73% of survey respondents reported to be using more one provider.<\/p>\n

While there may be a variety of different reasons for this, using multiple vendors to provide communications solutions introduces friction if the services are not tightly integrated. Cloud providers like RingCentral enable businesses to consolidate and deploy a single phone, fax, web meetings, video, and audio conference solution<\/a> across the entire organisation, for a truly unified experience.<\/p>\n

This not only centralises management but eliminates shadow IT tools and applications to help mitigate cybersecurity risks at both headquarters and remote locations.<\/p>\n

\"Communications
The communications products organisations use.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Why are unified communications so important?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

A global survey of 2,000 knowledge workers<\/a> across all industries found disparate workplace apps to be more disruptive than one may think. Seventy percent of respondents said their communications volume is a challenge to getting basic work tasks done and that they toggle between different apps up to 10 times an\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad hour.<\/p>\n

\"The
The number of vendors supporting your communications products<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To end the workplace chaos, 66% of workers want a single platform that integrates all their communications. They believe a unified platform would help them achieve better workflow (67%), be more productive (65%), and help work feel less chaotic (62%).<\/p>\n

In a different survey by No Jitter<\/a>, enterprise IT professionals indicated that the overwhelming majority of their workers use disparate solutions for audio calling\/conferencing (81%), video conferencing (83%), content sharing (86%), and messaging\/chat apps (88%).<\/p>\n

By streamlining communications and enabling a truly collaborative culture, UK businesses will be empowered to work more productively and as one unified unit. <\/a><\/span>Click To Tweet<\/a><\/span><\/blockquote>\n

The inability for users to collaborate from within a single, unified solution creates unnecessary barriers and hinders effective teamwork. Both individuals and teams bring in their own tools of choice, which only amplifies the problem and hampers productivity in the modern workplace.<\/p>\n