Medium-sized businesses failing to tap potential of unified communications

SMBs failing to tap productivity benefits of unified communications, citing cost

Medium-sized businesses in the UK are not taking full advantage of unified communications systems and, as a result, are failing to reap the full productivity benefits.

At the same time, while only around half of businesses have implemented unified communications, just one-in-five are "very satisfied".

That's according to a survey by cloud and data centre specialist Node4, published in a report entitled UC Deployment Amongst Mid-Market Businesses in 2017, which examined the unified communications priorities of companies with a turnover of between £15m and £800m.

Some 56 per cent of mid-market companies claim that workforce productivity is one of their top priority, according to Node4's survey, but only 52 per cent have invested in a unified communications system.

The majority - 70 per cent - are missing out on the full collaborative potential of unified communications, according to Node4, partly on account of the expense.

As well as being too expensive, mid-market organisations also complain about sub-optimal audio-conferencing facilities, poor data-sharing abilities and a failure to integrate with corporate social networks.

Of the organisations that haven't implemented unified communications yet, 17 per cent are running a pilot, 12 per cent are planning a trial in the next 12 months, and a further 12 per cent are considering various unified communications options for their business.

Furthermore, the survey also indicates that the mid-market is just beginning to embrace unified communications as-a-service (UCaaS), which represents one-in-ten unified communications deployments in the survey.

"Mid-market companies are expecting to create thousands of new jobs by 2020," said Node4 commercial director Paul Bryce.

He continued: "Many of these employees will expect to be able to move seamlessly between multiple communications types to collaborate with colleagues. Being able to meet their needs will be crucial to recruiting and retaining the right talent.

"Yet our research shows that the mid-market is still a long way from realising the full potential of unified communications for employee collaboration. This is partly because enterprise-class unified communications systems have been unaffordable and inaccessible for the mid-market.

"However unified communications as-a-service, is now available meeting an obvious market need for advanced, fully-featured unified communications systems at an affordable price."

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