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4 steps to implement UCaaS for small businesses
UCaaS and small businesses go hand in hand because of their complementary agility and flexibility. But, before picking a UCaaS product, SMBs must assess their needs.
Small businesses face unique challenges when implementing unified communications and collaboration tools. While large organizations tend to have significant budgets and diverse IT support staff, smaller companies cannot dedicate the same resources toward UC services.
Like other cloud-based technology, UC as a service (UCaaS) offers smaller organizations the benefits of a flexible platform without the headache of extensive deployment and support.
This article offers guidance on finding and selecting the ideal UCaaS product for your SMB, enabling you to streamline the buying process and deploy an effective service that your users can appreciate and use. Here are four quick steps that small businesses can take to find the right UCaaS software to enhance their business communications tools and operations.
1. Begin with a needs assessment
Start your project with a needs assessment that includes clear documentation about the existing communications services and your goals. Note the hidden costs of a nonintegrated, disorganized communications strategy that relies on disparate tools and department-specific deployments.
Use the following task list to organize your assessment:
- Understand your current system by taking inventory of existing products, analyzing current workflows and gathering utilization metrics.
- Engage stakeholders to identify must-have and nice-to-have features. In addition, recognize any specific challenges associated with the current communications platform.
- Assess your organization's technical readiness for UCaaS, especially network and internet capabilities. Remember, UCaaS is a cloud-based platform, so you need a strong internet connection.
- Establish cost vs. ROI requirements.
- Define success metrics and KPIs.
- Define specific integration and compliance requirements. Note any that may be specific to your business or industry. Don't forget data sovereignty compliance.
Once you complete the information-gathering phase, document and prioritize your findings. Review and validate your needs to ensure a complete picture of business requirements, and identify specific features or challenges to address.
2. Define key evaluation criteria
Once you know what features your UCaaS system must provide and what challenges it needs to solve, you can start to research possible products. Consider the following capabilities and factors as you start shopping:
- Flexibility and ease of administration for standard tasks, such as adding or removing users. Evaluate support for on-premises and remote users.
- Cost and cost structure, such as annual subscription or pay per use.
- Reliability and quality-of-service statistics.
- Security and compliance, especially in the context of any business or industry requirements that apply specifically to your organization.
- Scalability as your organization grows or as you need to add features in the future.
- UX and user adoption statistics, including success stories and white papers.
- UCaaS provider reputation and support options.
- Advanced features, including future expandability and usage analytics.
One unique concern is international support. Not all SMBs conduct business internationally, but for those that do, consider call and video conferencing network quality. You must also work with vendors to establish service-level agreements that address international communication, compliance, security and localization challenges.
3. Understand pricing models
UCaaS has various pricing models. One of the most common structures is a per-user subscription. This approach scales easily and usually consists of multiple tiers for service options, enabling greater customization. Research whether you can add specific features to your plan that match your organization's unique requirements.
Pricing varies, but you can expect the following general fees:
- Basic tier. $15 to $20 per user, per month.
- Mid tier. $20 to $25 per user, per month.
- Top tier. $35 to $60 per user, per month.
Consider whether annual or monthly billing works best for your company. Some vendors offer discounted subscriptions for annual plans.
4. Choose vendors and select offerings
Many vendors offer support for SMBs needing UCaaS, so you have plenty of research to do. However, here are a few possible UCaaS platforms to begin with:
- RingCentral.
- 8x8 Work.
- Nextiva.
- Zoom.
- Microsoft Teams.
- Cisco Webex.
Many other products exist, so be sure to investigate beyond these examples.
The vendors listed above offer several beneficial features, including the following:
- Transparent and scalable pricing to meet various needs along with pay-for-what-you-use options.
- Deployment and management interfaces that require minimal IT knowledge and resources.
- Integrated tools covering video, messaging, voice and collaboration.
- Customer and UX support.
UCaaS, small businesses make sense together
SMBs have distinct needs and limited resources compared to large enterprises -- that makes the SMB market perfect for UCaaS, and vice versa.
When shopping for a UCaaS system, understand your current implementation, and identify its weaknesses. Combine this information with a needs assessment that defines what you would like the communication infrastructure to provide. In other words, know where you are and where you want to go.
From there, define a feature list to shop for. Be sure to include cost requirements, as these are always a key component for SMBs. Remember the importance of the digital employee experience. Work with vendors to find the best cost with the required feature set and future scalability your organization needs.
It's time to consider whether a UCaaS platform is right for your SMB. It could be a change that frees up resources and enhances business communication.
Damon Garn owns Cogspinner Coaction and provides freelance IT writing and editing services. He has written multiple CompTIA study guides, including the Linux+, Cloud Essentials+ and Server+ guides, and contributes extensively to Informa TechTarget, The New Stack and CompTIA Blogs.
