7 UCaaS Integrations that Deliver Success

Microsoft and Cisco UC Solutions

Today, it’s not a choice of when you are going to adopt a unified communications solution, it is a question of which UC solution works best for your business. The final decision often comes down to integrations and ease of implementation.  

When considering all that is needed to deliver a complete UCaaS solution in your business, we have identified 7 key integrations that maximize the impact of adopting a Microsoft and/or Cisco UC solution.

1. CISCO AND MICROSOFT UC INTEROPERABILITY

When it comes to devices, Cisco has 52% marketshare with over 72 million IP handsets, and when it comes to fast track market growth, Microsoft states, its UC solution, Skype for Business, is on-target to exceed 100 million enterprise seats by 2018. 

Many companies have invested a significant amount of resources into Cisco hardware, training, and deployment of Cisco handsets.   The dynamic workforce within those companies are choosing to go with a Skype for Business solution. The biggest issue has been the ability for these two communication systems to work together to maximize collaboration within the company as a whole. This innovative hosted hybrid solution enables shared directories and cross-platform dialing within a hybrid user environment and a hybrid enterprise environment.

The ability to extend a unified communications solution to road warriors, home offices and a dispersed workforce revolutionizes the way business gets done.  With Synergy, seamlessly accomplishes this by integrating the industry’s leading UCaaS solutions, increasing overall functionality without shifting the paradigm of your existing business culture.  

2. CONTACT CENTER AS A SERVICE (CCaaS)

A cloud-managed contact center provides management for calls, IMs, emails, web chats and other communications with your customers, employees or partners.  The integration between the Contact Center and UC solution drives higher productivity by enabling calls or IM's to live outside the contact center agent client.  

What does this mean for your business? You get a contact center that extends the functionality of Skype for Business or Cisco CallManager expanding the capabilities of the communication platform you already have the expertise to manage. This allows you to take full advantage of your UCaaS solution, while ensuring your users and support staff are not forced to learn an entirely new product. 

3. CRM INTEGRATION

Who likes data entry?  One of today’s most innovative UCaaS assimilations delivers the powerful resource to organize, track and manage all of your customer information, activities and conversations by integrating with your CRM. Not only does CRM integration save valuable time for professionals who interact with customers and prospects, it elevates the way business is conducted by streamlining CRM interactions and delivering what once was only available to the Fortune 1000.

4. CALL RECORDING

Call Recording supports organizations to better manage risk and compliance, improve quality assurance and increase productivity.  Whether this is a requirement today, or not, the ability to provide this integration is key to future proofing your solution. The solution should allow you to record not only voice calls, but record video from your desktop phone, along with support for mobile endpoints including, voice, video and instant messaging delivering a true UCaaS collaboration recording solution.

 5. VIDEO ROOM SOLUTIONS

The marketplace has been asking for higher quality, less expensive video conferencing with a consistent user experience across all devices.  Earlier this year Microsoft announced an extended partnership with Polycom that delivers a new series of video collaboration solutions purpose-built for Skype for Business unified communications.  The tight integration and Video room solutions for Skype for Business are built for small huddle rooms, including mobile workforce options, to large boardrooms.

 6. SD-WAN

Global IT organizations today are burdened with several challenges. A growing proportion of users are distributed globally, requiring reliable global connectivity for effective collaboration. SD-WAN is a technology used to connect enterprise networks over large geographic distances. The solution provides local and global businesses with enterprise-grade, reliable performance for real-time applications like voice and video.

For those opting for alternate legacy connectivity technologies like MPLS, the solutions are rigid, requiring anywhere from 60 to 120 days in most regions around the world to set up—a major hindrance to agile business execution.  SD-WAN can be deployed within a week! What does this mean for you? You can expect 40% lower network capital and resource costs and 95% bandwidth savings with data de-duplication and compression.

SD-WAN is also cloud-agnostic, enabling improved performance even when voice applications are hosted in any cloud environment. At the end of the day, SD-WAN delivers lower costs with more bandwidth in a fraction of the time.

7. UC ANALYTICS

UCaaS advanced reporting and analytics deliver real-time operational intelligence to help you make decisions faster. There is a growing need for organizations to have access call analytics that goes beyond a standard Call Detail Report.

UC Analytics provides you with granular details that enable you to more productively achieve company goals. You’re able to dive into IM/Presence reporting, activity by medium and my meeting type. You are even able to build and schedule your own reports based on business needs.

UCaaS Integrations play a key role in how your solution will accomplish your company goals.

Ready to learn more?  Join the UC Journey today and gain more insight!