As a result of the pandemic, the way people are working and collaborating has changed. Companies are incorporating hybrid working so that employees have greater flexibility in how and where they work. With 63% of workers now preferring flexible or remote ways of working, it is key for business leaders to support this change if they want to retain staff and win top talent in the future, says Giorgio Migliarina, product and services director, Vodafone Business.
This move to permanent hybrid working means the way we communicate and collaborate needs to change. People need to be able to switch between the office, home or another location without any issues or unnecessary downtime and businesses need to be able to support that.
To navigate a distributed workforce and power an effective hybrid workplace, organisations must utilise technology to enhance communication between employees. Investing in technology that is specific to their business needs will help organisations to build an infrastructure that will support flexibility. And this means an infrastructure that’s secure and reliable and able to connect staff and business applications around the world.
Taking control of communications
Due to the pandemic, businesses needed to quickly adopt a variety of tools and apps to allow teams to communicate remotely. These tools for many businesses were patchworked together to get people up and running quickly in the short-term rather than approached with a long-term strategic direction. These quick fixes have worked up until now, but as hybrid working remains, organisations need to find a way of bringing these tools together in order for them to work effectively.
In the hybrid workforce, it is imperative that a company’s infrastructure can support communication systems for their employees day-to-day. Transforming operations and the management of the communications infrastructure can be made easy through Unified Communications (UC). This connects different communication systems and collaboration tools, bringing a mix of platforms together on one interface. This includes voice and video calling, messaging, integrated apps, file sharing and much more.
It’s no surprise that UC systems are growing in popularity as they bring together globally dispersed workforces and simplify the employee experience. It’s great for organisations that want to expand their global talent pool too, as it minimises the limitations of where employees are based enabling teams to connect despite location. As communication becomes less of a point of concern, collaboration becomes easier and employees can focus on getting the job done.
A more flexible solution for customers
Getting the best out of a UC platform means picking the right tools to increase productivity, reliability and mobility when working remotely or when on the move. Not only will this improve employee performance and motivation, it will also enable customer problems to be solved faster, improving the user experience.
Businesses can integrate their existing collaboration, CRM, contact centres and cloud-based applications simply and securely. With the platforms combined, customers can be redirected from one communication channel to another, receiving the service they expect, and organisations have a full view of customer service operations. Which can lead to improved services, unlocking new ways for them to operate and grow.
A mobile-first platform
By bringing together Vodafone Business’ mobile approach with RingCentral’s deep UC knowledge, we are able to combine all preferred modes of communication including team messaging, video meetings, and cloud phone into a single intuitive app that is accessible on any device, anywhere. Everything works in sync, so the features can be run standalone or integrated with various business applications such as Microsoft 365 and Helpdesk services. The intuitive features and real-time analytics make communications systems easy to use, especially when boosting efficiency as it saves users time previously spent switching between devices that weren’t connected to each other.
Vodafone’s mobility and 5G capabilities give businesses more flexibility, choice and simplicity on features and subscriptions. It integrates easily with current infrastructure, giving users access to hundreds of APIs, a large developer community, and hundreds of integrations to mainstream cloud applications. So with our solution, third party integrations are easy to set up and can create a premium experience on any device.
While real-time and historic analytics, extensive call management, team collaboration and task management capabilities will pave new paths to productivity and engagement around the world. Unified Communications is also helping organisations approach hybrid working in a way that will set them up strategically for the future.
Building the workplace for the future
To build the workplace for the future, we need to look back at the extraordinary challenges that the pandemic has caused for business leaders. Creating a new remote workforce culture will be critical to maintaining a healthy workplace and as more organisations adopt UC to help with remote management, the technology needs to focus on how to best support this way of working, while also enhancing the employee experience. There will be a demand for tools to not only be safe and flexible, but also inclusive and insightful. For example, there can be additional care for employee wellbeing as managers get better insight into employee performance.
UC will also help companies to explore how to be more socially conscious. It can be integrated with multiple communication platforms, and it is only a matter of time before it will be able to integrate with the Internet of Things (IoT). As IoT becomes more intelligent with advancements in artificial intelligence, there will be new efficiencies that UC leaders can start to look at including how to be ‘greener’.
So, improving their UC strategy will help businesses to remain competitive in the market whether it comes to growing their talent pool or building relationships with customers, partners or suppliers. To ensure high-quality experiences, investments need to be made into communication tools, security platforms and applications.
The author is Giorgio Migliarina, product and services director, Vodafone Business.
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