Many businesses have attempted to avoid the winds of change by resisting the benefits offered by unified communications (UC) solutions. The familiarity of traditional telephony and email made it difficult to see the value in the new range of collaboration tools.
In early 2020, due to the pandemic and mandatory work from home policies, cloud based UC phone systems experienced a dramatic acceleration in interest and adoption.
Organizations that have a PBX in their building now have a solid case for finding a suitable alternative fit for work in a digital age.
In this post, we discuss a few challenges that need to be overcome for conducting a successful implementation. And while we will not go into great detail for each point, as every business is unique in their requirements, we provide some of the most common challenges we have seen businesses face.
Recognizing Proper Resource Collaboration Efforts
Successfully implementing unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) requires you to unite all of your resources.
A unique blend of specialized knowledge and experience from both legacy voice and your new IP network are the secret ingredients to a smooth migration. Bringing together a combination of in-house and external expertise will ensure that you see the road ahead from multiple vantage points and avoid any unnecessary mistakes.
For example, to deliver an enhanced quality of service and scalability, you must understand the impacts that congestion management and control will play in your provider's network and how it routes IP traffic.
A team that consists of your network service provider, telecom company, and in-house knowledge can help ensure a smooth transition from an on-premise PBX.
Not Enough Bandwidth
We are living in a digital age where users just expect technology to work. Anyone that has experienced buffering videos on YouTube or struggled with applications that freeze at crucial moments will confirm how quickly tensions can rise.
When implementing a cloud-hosted PBX solution, ensuring that your network can handle the additional bandwidth is essential. Insufficient bandwidth is the cause of choppy voice, echoes, jitters, and even dropped calls.
RingCentral for example, is a provider of cloud-based communications and collaboration solutions, states that an accurate method is to determine the peak traffic load from logs or network data. Alternatively, a bandwidth and capacity calculation procedure can be used (Bandwidth and LAN / WAN Link Capacity Determination).
VoIP can also be a significant burden on your corporate network. These are just a few reasons why it's essential to select the right support partner and platform to ensure you have a stable, high-quality connection that also has built-in redundancy to avoid costly downtime.
Understand the Importance of Voice & Data Security
Defending against the constant threat of cyber-attacks is now top of mind for every business. Implementing a Cloud PBX system can be a great way to tackle threats to your phone service.
But you must choose a provider with security in mind. Bolstering your defenses in your physical and network security infrastructure should be a standard feature. Session initiation protocol will also provide endpoint security to both your phones and devices.
Preventing hackers from infiltrating your network, intercepting communications, and eavesdropping on your conversations requires a proactive approach. Many make the mistake of using default passwords and weak encryption tools.
Having secure foundations in place for your business communications should be a vital part of your migration planning.
By choosing the right vendor, a secure implementation can be easily achieved and dramatically lower your risk of being a target.
The Challenge of Staff Training & Acceptance
Implementing a cloud-hosted PBX will unify communications across your entire company. It will also empower employees with greater agility, flexibility, and mobility. But for many staff members, they will initially see it as an unnecessary disruption to their daily routine and deliver more frustration than making their lives easier.
With any new technological solution, there will be a learning curve. Providing a single training session and expecting all employees to master the platform is not an effective support transition strategy.
The key to making the migration process as painless as possible is investing resources to help get every user up to speed on the relevant features to their department.
Inevitably there will be technical problems around phone and headset compatibility issues during rollout too. When combined with some employee's reluctance to change and belief that their old phone worked perfectly fine, it could quickly result in disaster.
Obtaining buy-in from all business stakeholders will play a critical role in bringing every employee along the journey of change rather than making it feel forced on them.
Thankfully, clunky web portals have been replaced with user-friendly support systems with click and drag techniques that make it easier for teams to adapt the phone system to their needs.
Ensuring you choose the right support partner that has these features in place will remove the frustration from implementing your cloud-hosted PBX.
Closure
Over the last few months, it has been either the best of times or worst of times for businesses. Which side of the fence they found themselves depended on the industry and business continuity plan they had in place. In this time, many organizations have adapted to having a remote workforce.
Vacant open-plan offices and unused desk phones highlighted how something needed to change.
How many employees and businesses will want to use their traditional setup in a post-pandemic world?
Predictably, we will begin to see more organizations revise their business continuity plan by implementing softphones, smartphones, and headsets. You can reap the benefits of finally unifying your business communications to overcome the challenges before you begin your journey.
Contact us to get the conversation started.
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Suellen Meyers: December 21, 2023
