Don’t be ashamed if you’re getting out of breath trying to keep up with the pace of the telecommunications race. It seems as though there are more technologies emerging at a constant rate. And the ones that are established are gaining more traction within the market and continuously advancing.
Specifically, the unified communications (UC) market seems to be experiencing the most growth as of late. In fact, recent research revealed that the UC market is expected to reach 75.81 billion by 2020, a rapid increase from its current earnings. Thus, more and more businesses will be adopting UC into their phone systems to realize benefits such as heightened collaboration, productivity, not to mention sizeable cost savings.
You need to capitalize off of this reality for your IT / Managed Services Provider ASAP. If you’re clients are still communicating via a legacy PBX because they are afraid of making the transition to IP telephony, there’s no better time than now to be that IT Hero. After all, if you don’t start planning an IP transition now, you run the risk of being left behind while your competitors experience the aforementioned advantages of sophisticated telecommunications.
So what is holding you back from offering a robust method of communication? Perhaps the transition and installation itself is what seems most daunting—after all, the thought of halting business and losing precious productivity can cause great anxiety, especially if your customers cannot afford to take on unnecessary losses.
Thankfully, that is where IT / MSP centric UC providers out there that can make your transition and installation quick and painless. In fact, an IT / MSP centric provider will allow you to take your IP transition as gradually as you’d like giving you all the resources your staff needs to succeed not just internally but for your clients too.
So even if the UC market is growing rapidly, you can still take your transition as slowly as you see fit according to what works best for your business. Additionally, utilizing the robust features of UC can be done little by little as well. While your provider most likely offers an out-of-the-box solution, which includes features such as instant chat, Web conferencing, presence and fax or voicemail-to-email, you can get acclimated to the function and operability of each one at your own pace.
For example, instant chat is oftentimes the simplest for users to become most comfortable with first. This feature enables employees to collaborate over an SMS service. It’s a touch less formal than email and allows for the rapid sending and receiving of thoughts and ideas. This way, employees can connect with each other more frequently and over a more familiar setting—as most people these days are comfortable with and often prefer text messaging to other communication methods, like phone or email for instance.
Don’t worry, there’s time for you catch your breath and win the race all at once. By simply transitioning to IP-based telephony with UC capability, you’ll already be one step ahead of so many others.