Gartner suggests that Unified Communication as a Service (UCaaS) will increasingly take centre stage. Zoom, Teams, Ringcentral and WebEx are all now a regular part of daily life and the communication bridge that kept us connected when the world started working from home during the pandemic.
In the rush to ensure that employees could stay in touch many organizations implemented these collaboration and communication platforms. Enterprises need to understand:
- What platforms and licenses are people actually using?
- What implications does this have on traditional telecom and mobility usage?
- What best practices can be implemented to monitor and optimize expenses?
- The first step enterprises need to take is to gain a holistic view of their UCaaS environment. This begins with consolidation of all the UCaaS data in one place, standardising the data and developing usage reporting. Centralized management with API integration into a system that gathers UCaaS data in one centralized repository with reporting automates discovery and ensures a complete picture. This visibility enables comparison of UCaaS consumption and unlocking relevant insights.
- Once there’s an understanding of UCaaS usage, look for displacement of traditional telecom or mobile services. According to Gartner, by 2024, 75% of enterprise workers will no longer require a desk phone, up from 30% in 2020. Again, centralizing all the information in one database is the most effective way to discover redundancies.
- Implement Technology Expense Management (TEM) software with a Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) Expense Management module as part of its platform. This will consolidate UCaaS data and gather traditional telecom and mobile information to provide a comprehensive view of the entire communications estate. It will provide valuable information to manage and optimize variable and fixed costs associated with UCaaS programs. Integrating this with wireline and mobility data will also help to show the impact of enterprise adoption of UCaaS.
- Finally, identify where control is needed, and automate these functions. This creates speed and agility, a requirement in an ever evolving and fluctuating communications environment. Having purpose-built tools that manage data collection and reporting allows you to effectively manage your UCaaS licenses and achieve the greatest level of control.
As communications environments continue to evolve, so will the need for holistic and accurate TEM management. Consolidation enables enterprises to evaluate, automate and optimize services and expenses. This is critical to establish and maintain control with UCaaS as an integrated part of the new hybrid environment.
