Centralizing management of your UC stack in the age of WFH

2020 is over, but working from home certainly isn’t.

As the world reels from a second wave of the pandemic, more and more businesses are looking for ways to simplify their communications.

Especially with everyone out of the office, and away from their on-site networks, PBXs, and connections.

Business challenges of 2021

One of the key questions being asked by employers and employees alike is along the lines of, “what will our work life look like when we can safely return to offices?”. We’re wondering as well.

It’s a broad question that poses a huge challenge for businesses looking to get a hold of their office life and communications this year.

There are some aspects of this that have already become clear, however, as the concept of the ‘hybrid office’ continues to look to be the new norm.

The hybrid office

The hybrid office is more of a theory than a practiced business model.

The idea seems to have come from the increased usage of collaboration tools, combined with the fact that business has gone on mostly ‘as usual’ since people have started working from home.

The ‘Hybrid Office’ concept seems different depending on who you ask but tends to have these common hallmarks:

• People combine working from home and the office. And everywhere in between
• Need to connect everything from the browser to the board room – internally and externally
• High quality and secure connections are more important than ever before

Your comms stack

With the Hybrid Office and remote working slowly becoming a reality, the demand for cloud-based tools has exploded.

Now your average tech stack is growing, and so are the costs, with tools like these being introduced and added rapidly:

• Contact Center Solutions
• Video Conferencing
• Internal Comms
• In-App Voice & SMS Capabilities

The problems, the solutions, and the drawbacks

Remote working then presents a number of problems when it comes to modern business comms.

These products are going to be cloud-based so your workforce can access them when remote working. That means you’re likely using the SIP connections they have as part of the parcel.

But while having the telephone service plans that come with these solutions is convenient in the short run, a premium cost is added for that convenience in the form of margin stacking.

Basically, the services like the above are using their own choice of SIP/carrier services, so you’re going to be paying extra without being able to hold those suppliers accountable.

Incentives…but not for you

The incentives that carriers give out (reduced cost at higher usage) are geared towards supporting the platforms you’re using, and even if you’re the biggest customer for, for example, your contact center provider, you still might be getting a raw deal.

Why? Well, the more SIP providers and resellers there are in the chain, the higher your costs are likely to get as each link in the chain adds a margin of its own.

Centralizing your SIP with BYOC

Switching to a BYOC alternative can reduce that expense by allowing your chosen carrier to handle your telecom needs, while your video conferencing, contact center, etc providers continue taking care of your software and facilitation.

By doing this you get to use a single network supplier for all your different platforms, eliminating any margin stacking and allowing you to control the network quality you’re getting.

The ability to ‘Bring Your Own Carrier’ to these platforms means you can:

• Maintain control of your call routing
• Extend coverage to more markets
• Get greater assurances over connection quality
• Get more value from your UCaaS/CCaaS/CPaaS

Maintenance costs are also likely to fall as you are dealing with a single provider, thus eradicating the long lead times for support and troubleshooting that are introduced when you deal with multiple upstream providers.