Buyer’s guide to selecting the right UCaaS provider-
Here are some helpful questions to consider as you evaluate if UCaaS will provide value to your business.
1. To help businesses evaluate the merits of moving voice to a hosted solution, we have provided a list of questions to help you evaluate the best solution for your company.
Do we need multiple communication services to help our employees do their job?
- Voice
- MMS
- Email
- Chat
- Mobile App
- Video
What are the Geography and Regional requirements of this deployment?
Are there any Regulatory Requirements that I need consider regarding how we communicate with customers or the need to have recorded calls with our customer support center?
Security Requirements- As I increase my ability to collaborate with customers and employees what additional security challenges will occur and how do I control the flow of digital information?
Will I need to look at an additional Data Loss Prevention solution?
What potential Application Integration and/or Application Developments do I need to consider as I evaluate hosted voice? Simple examples include integrating your CRM to your call center application.
Does a hosted voice solution augment our ability to realize our Customer Experience (CX) goals?
Does our Operations or call center team have an Omni-Channel goal and how can UCaaS support this goal of Customer Experience Continuity?
Does our company have some of requirements that make us a good fit for deploying hosted voice?
- Limited IT Staff ability to support on premise voice.
- Mobile work force
- Multiple Remote offices
- Screenshare and video conference requirements
- Potential integration with call center and CRM application
2. Business Requirements
Cost Avoidance- Can I save money by not paying for screenshare applications like Webex, by integrating that function into my UCaaS solution?
- Operational Considerations
IT Staff – Will our team benefit from not being solely responsible for on premise PBX hardware and would the managed service element of this solution provide measurable efficiency gains?
- Financial Considerations
CAPEX- Does our business prefer to buy solutions and amortize the expense?
OPEX- Do we prefer to have predictable costs and to use Operating budgets rather than Capital budgets?
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)- When we evaluate the TCO are we considering all of the factors from support, bandwidth costs, redundancies, potential overage fees, re-training employees and any application migrations that need to occur?
Other Factors:
- Business Type
- Multiple Locations
- Remote Workers
- Application Integration
- Custom Application Development
- Mobile Devices
- Contact Center
- Business Needs
- Revenue Generation
- Cost Avoidance
- Operational Considerations
- Technical Staff
- Location/Network Availability/Cost
- Financial Factors
- Direct Costs
- Indirect Costs
- Monthly Recurring Charges
- Non-Recurring Charges
- Equipment Costs
- Installation Charges (Circuits, SD-WAN, Routers)
- Programming/Project Management
3. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) consists exclusively of measuring the hard or empirical costs associated with acquiring, implementing and maintaining a solution. It is very helpful to compare an existing solution vs. a new solution or comparing multiple new solutions to understand the financial deltas.
Return on Investment (ROI) consists measures rates of return on money invested in a solution in order to decide whether or not to undertake an investment. While TCO is an empirical measurement, ROI is more complex because it attempts to predict return based on a predefined set of factors and their performance of time. For example; investing in a new UCaaS solution for the sales team that makes it much easier for customers to reach each salesperson could result in a sales increase of some percentage which can be extrapolated a metric that shows the rate and amount of return for the solution.
Additionally, where ROI looks at metrics over time, it doesn’t evaluate adoption rates, cross-functional impacts, Net Promoter Score, ability to react to changing market conditions and demands.
4. Can you cite examples of how UCaaS advanced functionality can translate into a business benefit?
- Collaboration amongst employees who want to chat, instant message or screenshare with co-workers
- Video Conference- sharing screens, a great way to bridge the distance gap between employees and customers.
- Contact Center- To help your call center, your phone application needs to integrate seamlessly and provide the functions required to quickly service your inbound calls.
- Mobility- Roll your phone over to your mobile number, utilize a soft phone on your laptop and never miss a call.
5. What application integrations would you recommend for customers who want to utilize UCaaS?
CRM applications are the most common integrations. Salesforce.com, Microsoft CRM Dynamics, and ConnectWise are three of the most popular integrations…it isn’t about click-to-dial…it’s about Customer Experience Management…creating great customer experiences…building relationships and having the ability to monitor, measure and adjust creating a mash-up…creating an integration to send the UCaaS interaction database to the CRM Business Analytics database to create reports and dashboards in the CRM interface.
6. How big is the risk of moving voice to an internet based solution from the traditional POTS solutions?
Defining your desired outcomes includes your tolerance to risk when (not if) there are problems with your current or new phone system or UCaaS solution. Understanding the potential of the various components required to deploy any voice solution is essential to designing a solution that meats your risk mitigation needs.
7. Is SD-WAN a required part of the UCaaS deployment? Are SD-WAN costs factored into the ROI?
SD-WAN solutions are not required, but highly recommended.
Most customers want high quality voice conversations AND many desire communications continuity/high availability for connectivity to their UCaaS service provider.
A good SD-WAN solution provides both and, as an added bonus, you get monitoring and diagnostic tools to make life with a cloud solution more productive and less stressful.
8. Do you recommend proof of concepts for UCaaS?
We will work with you to determine what outcomes you need to achieve and then to evaluate the service providers that have the highest probability to deliver those outcomes with the least amount of business disruption.
Your POC might have a goal of evaluating functionality, user experience, software integration, contact center, the implementation process or customer support. You might run a POC for one service provider to validate your decision to subscribe to their service. Or you might run several POCs to compare service providers to help you determine the best fit to deliver your desired outcomes.
9. Should a business test their use of UCaaS with a subset of their sites?
Yes. We recommend testing your systems on a subset of sites before any large scale rollout.
10. What should buyers look for in the auto-attendant feature?
- Routing Options…overflow, timing, time of day, conditional routing
- Music on Hold…defined, customized
- Membership…groups, overflow, individuals
- Identity or Intent based CX tools
- Business Analytics
- Presentation of Information…to the telephone, differentiated answer, software/hard phone/application integration
11. Contact Center integrations- How hard is this process? Is it worth the effort to migrate to the contact center solutions provided by UCaaS vendors?
Many customers start their migration to cloud services in stages. Contact Center services often are part of the first stage of this migration and can have a huge positive impact for your business.
Remember, you can move your contact center services to the cloud without disruption your current phone system.
Help avoiding surprises in costs when selecting a UCaaS vendor:
12. What is the biggest cause of unexpected expense for companies who buy UCaaS?
There are several factors that contribute to unexpected expenses in your UCaaS project:
- Not creating a written desired outcomes document to use as your guide to success.
- Incomplete statements of work that add to monthly recurring and non-recurring charges
- Shipping charges
- C hange fees
13. How does a customer know if their plan is truly unlimited?
You should get a copy of the “terms and conditions” for the service provider and review it closely to make sure there are no hidden charges.
Some background information to help you evaluate the best fit for your environment.
There are 4 major deployment choices today for Unified Communications:
1. Traditional VOIP Unified Communications Onsite-Based Solutions (UC-O)
2. Unified Communications as a Service – Public (UCaaS)
Internet Circuits (“over-the-top” with and without SD-WAN)
Private Circuits
3. UC Managed Service – Private (UC-M)
Option 1 – Traditional UC-O in a datacenter, managed by an Managed Service Provider or by the customer
Option 2 – UCaaS service provider hosts a dedicated, non-tenanted instance for a specific customer
4. Hybrid UC/UCaaS
Option 1 – UCaaS as the foundation, networked to UC-O via SIP protocol
Option 2 – UC-O as the foundation, networked to UCaaS via SIP protocol
