ON THE ROAD AGAIN: A ROADMAP TO FINDING THE RIGHT UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS PROVIDER

Expect the Unexpected: Making a Plan to Protect Your Network

With a cloud-based UCaaS model, you are not tied to a single location – and as a result, your network is inherently resilient and redundant.

Milepost 4: Rapid change: Integration, Disaster Recovery and Self-Serve Control.

The home stretch is in sight! You have been driving for what seems like weeks, and you can feel your journey come to a close. You start to think to yourself "Wow, that was quick and painless" … and then it happens. Your had to take an unexpected detour. And then, the car starts to rumble and shake and the smell of burnt rubber fills the road. Flat tire: disaster has struck. You get out of the car in a panic to see that your left rear tire no longer exists, you're fuming mad because everything was going along so smoothly. There goes your great time, and who knows how much it will cost to fix.

Thankfully, you and your co-pilot are prepared. You guys had played out this scenario and developed protocol to mitigate this issue by having a spare tire and jack ready to go for this occasion. Accidents happen, but having a contingency plan and the right support behind you makes the unexpected obstacle easier to manage. Very little, if any, time or money lost and all of your important data remains intact.

Unforseen Twists and Turns

A bump in the road – we’ve all hit one or two. The road to modernizing communication can be full of several road blocks and detours. We’ve made it pretty far on this roadtrip, and now we’re dealing with some unexpected detours. We’ve all been there, but having a plan – a map, if you will – is the best way to maneuver through those unforeseen twists and turns. Here, we’ll learn how to mitigate risks to navigate around hazardous occurrences in your cloud-based communication platform.

It is no secret at all that creating communications resiliency has been difficult with traditional PBX infrastructures. How would your business be affected if your communication assets failed? Without a recovery plan in place, even a routine issue could result in a mass loss of revenue. A more severe outage might even render your business out of commission completely.

Mitigate Risk to Your Network

According to a study by the Hartford Financial Services Group, 43% of businesses that experience a disaster and have no emergency plan never reopen. Of those that do reopen, only 29% exceed two years. Simply put, you must have a Disaster Recovery plan. With a cloud-based UCaaS model, you are not tied to a single location and as a result is inherently resilient and redundant. With this solution, you have the ability to pre-program multiple routes to ring alternate endpoints in the event of an outage (these things happen).

Another unique feature you gain with a self-serve UCaaS portal is the ability to integrate your other cloud-based platforms. PBX Integration always gets an eye roll and reasonably so. Your aging PBX is just that … OLD. It simply does not have the capabilities or smarts to sync with other web-based platforms. UCaaS, because it is a cloud solution, can talk with your other applications and see what can work together to make you more efficient.

Take, for example, integrating with a CRM that you might have in place, such as Saleforce.com or Zoho. Enabling this allows the end user a way to view customer information and recent actions via a screen pop, and this will also be available when they call, email, or send a message. Integrations can also be made for mobile field workforce systems and trouble-ticket systems.

However you're connected, UCaaS can be integrated.

Long story short? UCaaS can integrate into your already-mobile third party systems to make you more efficient and effective.

You should treat your network communications with the same amount of caution as you would that flat tire. By setting up multiple routes of redundancy in your network, you can ensure minimal to no down time – and that will save you and your company time and money.

Roadtrip Playlist: "Gimme Shelter" By The Rolling Stones