For many companies, the pandemic was a catalyst for prioritizing digital transformation, with investments in cloud solutions advancing to keep business processes in motion. Teams found ways to support collaboration through cloud communications, but it has often been found wanting.
The disconnect is that too many teams have attempted to simply move their same processes to the digital realm – without getting the full benefit of the tools available. In order to get the most mileage out of cloud technology, companies should be examining workstreams to gain maximum efficiency, cost savings, and productivity.
Collaboration Tools: Video conferencing is a great place to meet, but it is not effective for collaboration on its own. As teams view spreadsheets, product management schedules, or presentations in a video conferencing session, all goes well. But when it’s time to share documents or try to work with the most updated version of a spreadsheet, things can get complicated.
To truly collaborate in a digital setting, teams need integrated tools that allow for shared solutions to serve the team’s needs.
Communications: Communications is another area in which digital transformation sometimes falls short of actual transformation. There may be updated email and chat apps, but companies don’t take the harder step of examining their communications needs and integrating them for maximum effectiveness.
Consider a contact center in which agents are forced to toggle between chat, email, phone calls, and text to follow the progression of a customer’s unresolved issue. While they have all the tools to communicate in a variety of formats with the customer, there’s no cohesive quality to the communications stream. The customer is forced to wait while the agent pieces together their prior interactions with the company.
A comprehensive, integrated solution like contact center as a service (CCaaS) offers communications tools that seamlessly fit with other customer service solutions. Agents are able to view prior conversations, ask a question of the billing department, and retrieve past order information, all within a single, integrated solution. The customer receives better and faster service.
Unified communications as a service (UCaaS) is another technology with advanced tools that allow for shared workspaces and integrated communications. Teams are able to make decisions faster because they can even view the status of members to see if they can discuss options and move a project forward. With all communication occurring through a single, cloud-based app, the workstreams are significantly more efficient.
Education Leads the Way: An example from education helps illustrate the possibilities in collaboration and communications for businesses. When school became virtual-only in 2020, many teachers went far beyond simply video conferencing their regular teaching approach. While video was a useful technology, they employed more insightful solutions to create a highly engaged virtual classroom environment.
Teachers created immersive experiences for their students using virtual classrooms with presentation-sharing options, real-time chat, and user-friendly tools. Students were able to collaborate in their virtual classrooms, accessing shared tools and interacting with one another.
In order to make the most of emerging collaboration and communications technology, teams should drill down to business processes for improved workstreams. Contact us at Cloud Source for help in getting started with these truly disruptive solutions.