Remote work has become the new normal for many businesses and employees.
According to Global Workplace Analytics, 70% of the workforce anticipate working remotely at least 5 days a month by 2025.
In social media management company Buffer’s State of Remote Work Survey, 99% of remote workers would like to continue working remotely at least part-time and 95% of remote workers would recommend this workplace arrangement to others.
But with remote work, businesses had to adjust the way they operate and serve customers.
Services had to be delivered using contactless methods, meetings had to be conducted online, and all collaboration efforts had to be done virtually.
A big concern was how operations can run efficiently online if people were used to operating offline.
In today’s remote work world, having a unified communications solution can help with collaboration and productivity.
Why is a unified communications solution important?
Having a unified communications solution standardizes communication protocols and streamlines collaboration. This is especially important for remote work – all communication takes place via digital channels.
Instead of using multiple tools, a unified communications solution allows employees to communicate and collaborate using one single tool that combines all the necessary features.
A unified communications solution increases workplace efficiency and productivity, reduces errors of miscommunication, simplifies the customer experience, and enables effective remote collaboration.
Without such a solution, it’s easy for communication to get lost, sensitive information to be misplaced, and friction to arise between teams and employees.
Choosing the right unified communications solution is important.
To choose the right unified communications solutions for your remote office, you need to understand and assess the communication issues that your employees might face.
Some important questions to ask include:
- What is the communication challenge we are trying to solve?
- How does the problem impact the workplace?
- What are the different solutions available?
- What are their benefits and drawbacks?
Asking the right questions allows you to identify how your employees like to work, what kind of communication and collaboration challenges exist, and what the best solution is for your business.
When we transitioned to being remote at SHEA Global, we relied on Microsoft Teams for all our communication, collaboration, and client needs.
The messaging and video conferencing features on Microsoft Teams not only allow our employees to virtually speak face-to-face, it also helps with online events such as tradeshows and hosting webinars.
Built on Microsoft Azure and the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform, Microsoft Teams was also a huge help in ensuring our correspondence was secure.
Since we work with sensitive client information, security was one of the top priorities in identifying our unified communications solution. With Microsoft Teams, we were assured that our internal communication was secure, and our clients information remained confidential.
If you’re looking into unifying your communication and collaboration systems, we can help. Connect with us to explore the solutions available to you. We will help you identify a strategy that works best for your business, so that you can also succeed at remote work.