As companies continue to invest in a wide array of unified communications and collaboration tools, UC service management platforms are growing increasingly crucial. Offering companies a comprehensive environment for managing licenses, tools, and software, these solutions deliver many benefits. They can reduce operational costs, help boost productivity, and reduce compliance risks.
Growing demand for UC service management (UCSM) solutions has prompted the rise of countless innovative vendors, delivering flexible tools to growing teams. This means comparing your options and choosing the right solution can be complex.
Based on our experience in the UCSM landscape, here’s your guide to effectively comparing UCSM vendors and optimizing your technology stack.
Step 1: Examine your Communication Ecosystem
The Unified Communications landscape has evolved drastically in recent years. Companies are now relying on a wide range of tools, from legacy telecommunications systems to innovative cloud-based platforms like Microsoft Teams.
Organizations increasingly invest in multi-vendor environments that can be extremely difficult to deploy, manage, and provision without the right resources. The best UC service management platforms should help you to navigate this transformation. Based on your examination of your current communication landscape and your future goals, consider:
- Your future cloud strategy: How will you manage your transition to the cloud? Do you need a UCSM solution that supports multi-vendor, hybrid cloud, and on-premises environments? How can your provider help to minimize and eliminate complexity?
- Migration support: If you’re transitioning into the cloud, how will your vendor support you with this migration? How easy do they make it to provision licenses and technology to hybrid and remote workers while maintaining complete visibility into your technology stack?
- Integrations: How will your UCSM vendor bring all the components of your tech stack into one environment, from collaboration platforms to call monitoring and recording tools, CRMs, and more? Do you need a solution that supports expansion with open APIs, a vendor-agnostic platform, and simple integrations?
Step 2: Assess the Simplicity UC Service Management Platforms
The core purpose of the top UC service management platforms is to simplify the process of managing your communication technologies. This means ease of use is paramount to making the right decision. Look for a vendor that provides access to a comprehensive, single-pane-of-glass environment that supports remote patching, zero-touch provisioning, and analysis.
Many of the leading UC service management tools can also allow companies to build dedicated employee portals, allowing staff members to rapidly access troubleshooting tools and new features. Look at how simple it is to leverage various features such as virtualization and centralization, SIP trunk management, gateway management, and more.
Think about how your UC service management platform makes it more convenient to track important metrics and even automate certain tasks, such as provisioning and de-provisioning, license migration, and custom reporting.
Step 3: Prioritize Advanced Analytics and Insights
One of the core benefits of UC service management platforms is their ability to offer comprehensive visibility into your technology stack. The more advanced your reporting, monitoring, and analytics tools, the easier it will be to optimize your UC investment.
The leading UC service management tools can offer historical reporting features and real-time insights into your communication ecosystem. They can give IT staff the tools they need to resolve problems with jitter and lag instantly. They can also automatically notify employees when they encounter issues with security, privacy, or compliance.
Advanced analytical solutions in UCSM platforms can even leverage AI, machine learning, and predictive insights to help you preemptively mitigate issues. Plus, there are leading UC tools that can help reduce costs by helping you track underutilized licenses, optimize network bandwidth usage, and identify opportunities to renegotiate contracts.
Step 4: Look for Flexible Automation in UC Service Management Platforms
Another significant advantage of UC service management solutions is the ability to automate various crucial tasks and processes. Leading UC service management platforms allow companies to automate everything from provisioning and de-provisioning to reporting and analysis. They can even ensure IT teams are instantly notified about service disruptions or issues.
With the most advanced UC service management platforms, companies can build custom workflows that align different components of their technology stack. You’ll be able to automate processes that connect your UC and contact center tools, as well as recording and analytical platforms.
Some innovative vendors even offer access to AI-powered automation tools that can proactively detect issues with devices and software. These tools monitor your ecosystem for you and then immediately resolve issues without the need for human intervention. This not only improves user experiences and SLAs, but it can also reduce unnecessary downtime and costs.
Step 5: Consider your Security Needs
Most UC service management vendors provide business leaders with tools for improving privacy, security, and compliance. The top UC service management platforms enable visibility into your entire ecosystem. This makes it easier to spot anomalies in your technology stack and investigate problems before they lead to disastrous results.
Some solutions can track potential organizational risks, like fraud or data theft attempts. Many will also provide access to role-based access control solutions, as well as tools that allow companies to remotely de-provision users.
When choosing the right UC service management platforms, consider the level of support they can offer with security. Look for assistance with tracking compliance risks, managing remote devices, and alerting IT teams to potentially suspicious activities.
Step 6: Look for Scalability and Innovation
As the UC landscape continues to evolve, the best UC service management platforms will evolve with it. Innovative vendors already experiment with powerful solutions to support businesses as they embrace new communication channels and tools.
Some companies are using AI to help them access predictive analytics, self-healing solutions, and more advanced analytical tools. These tools can even monitor valuable information. Showing you how often employee devices and meeting rooms are used to ensure intelligent decision-making.
Other solution providers give companies comprehensive control over networks and bandwidth allocation. This helps business leaders to empower, augment, and support mobile workers just as effectively as in-office teams. Make sure your vendor’s approach to innovation matches your strategy for long-term growth and communication optimization.
Choosing the Right UC Service Management Platforms
As communication ecosystems grow increasingly complex, UC service management tools are becoming a must-have investment for businesses of all sizes. The right UCSM platform should be flexible, scalable, and designed to help you optimize your communication strategy.
It should offer the perfect blend of ease of use, rich insights and analytics, and comprehensive tools for automation and AI enhancement.
This post originally appeared on Service Management - Enterprise - Channel News - UC Today.