Why your Business needs Cloud Communications
Matt Archer
June 22, 2021
Cloud Communications are Important to Businesses of All Sizes
With so much uncertainty caused by the covid-19 pandemic, businesses have been shifting more of their operations to the cloud due to cost flexibility, ease of management, and scalability provided by doing so. This is especially true for communications, which are such a vital part of most businesses, and doubly so for small businesses. Whether you’re a solopreneur or your company has 100+ employees, now is a good time to examine the viability of cloud communications for your business.
What are Cloud Communications?
RingCentral, a leading cloud communications provider, defines cloud communications as “…internet-based voice and data communications tools for businesses to manage applications, storage, and switching—all hosted by a third party on the cloud.”[1]
Cloud communications tend to get combined together under one service known as UCaaS, which stands for Unified Communications as a Service. We discussed the UCaaS at length in a previous article, but to summarize here, UCaaS allows all of your cloud communications services to be streamlined and managed together under one umbrella.
Why Choose Cloud Communications?
By combining these commonly used services together and having them managed from the cloud you can save money from owning the services individually, save time in not having to manage and maintain the individual services in-house, and allow those services to scale up or down organically based on your company’s needs. All of this adds up to more time communicating and more money in your pocket.
When Should I Make the Switch?
The Short Answer
With all the changes and uncertainty in the world today, any time is a good time to research bringing cloud communications, such as UCaaS, into your business.
The Longer Answer
Each business is unique and has different priorities to consider when making a decision of the importance of implementing cloud communications. Below are a few of the key factors to consider when deciding on a time to make the switch.
Budget
For smaller businesses, cost is almost always going to factor into decision-making. It’s important to determine what kind of budget you have available for communications tools (now and for the near future), and how much you are currently spending on those tools (if it’s different than your budget).
Depending on the feature-set you require (such as phones or other physical devices), UCaaS systems may have a noticeable up-front cost but in the long-term businesses tend to save money due to the scalability of the services and having all their services in one place.
Feature-set
UCaaS comprises a lot more than just phone and fax services. With an app like RingCentral, you have the ability to set up video meetings, instant messaging, a contact center with data analytics, and more.
It’s important to examine what feature-set your business needs to help keep things simple for yourself and your team. Thankfully, in many cases all of these options are included out of the box, but can be adjusted and switched off if needed.
Needs
Finally, it’s important to determine what your needs are. Since most businesses function through selling goods and/or services to their clients, communication is at the heart of the sales process.
You may already use a service that works adequately for you at the moment and this just isn’t a good time to make any major changes. However, with the impacts caused by much of the world shifting to a virtual/remote work model during the past year, it’s important to consider the potential impacts of future events on your business.
As they say, it’s better to be safe than sorry, so we recommend taking the time to at least plan out what your needs are, so you have an understanding of how you can make the shift to cloud communications, if needed.
Final Thoughts
Positive Results™ is a training development and cloud services company that analyzes the business processes of organizations and helps deploys the appropriate solutions to solve for any gaps we find.
As a partner and Value Added Reseller of RingCentral, we focus on helping small businesses because we believe communication is integral to growth. One of our goals is to help clients understand the power that unifying their communications tools in the cloud can provide for long-term growth and scalability, while maintaining cost flexibility.
If you have additional questions or need support, contact us at:
Positive Results™ Custom Business Solutions
440.499.4944
[1] https://www.ringcentral.com/us/en/blog/cloud-communications-for-startups/
