How to Set Up a Unified Communications Platform

What is Unified Communications

Unified communications allow your team to collaborate in powerful ways. If you’re an enterprise looking to move into the Unified Communication space, read our guide to setting up a UC platform. Your team will have excellent communication tools that allow them to connect with each other or customers in their preferred method, all in one easy-to-use platform.

Key Features of a Unified Communications Platform

  • Video and voice calling 
  • Instant messaging
  • Collaboration
  • File sharing
  • Video and audio conferencing 

Why Unified Communications

Unified communications (UC) gives your team powerful and easy-to-use tools that enable them to connect with each other and your customers quickly and easily.  The software runs on most devices, so your team can use their device of choice. The powerful administration tools that a UC platform provides give you control over the settings used and ensure a secure deployment to a user’s device.  You can track all usage, updates, and issues through robust reporting.  Easy rollouts and cleanup means you can quickly and easily provision and retract accounts.  You can expand quickly and give your team powerful tools that roll out to the devices they have with solid security and an easy-to-use app.  You get fully managed control, your team gets great communications software on the devices they love.

Planning your unified communications platform implementation

If you’ve decided that a Unified Communications platform may be right for your business you need to plan out how to implement the software.  The good news is that the administration tools are powerful and robust and make the end-user experience simple.  You can provision users and groups and have full control over the configuration and details of an account.  For the end user they simply log in with their credentials and the app conforms to your settings on your team member’s device. You get detailed logs and statistics, while your team gets an excellent user experience. 

How to begin implementing a unified communications platform

How to approach a rollout depends on your business. Are you a large enterprise with departments and thousands of staff that needs to roll this change out in phases? Or are you a small or medium-sized business that can make this change for your whole team at once? Either way, a small pilot for a percentage of your users may provide valuable learning.  You can identify a portion of your team that are early adopters or love technology and change and use them as a pilot group. You’ll get the benefit of learning how to deploy the software, identifying any roadblocks and challenges in your particular circumstance, and building a great set of knowledge for when you roll out to everyone.  You can use the pilot group to create a playbook for rollout and identify any tricky bits in the experience.  You’ll also have the pilot group as advocates for the new solution and as power users to help onboard others.  One strategy you may consider is picking a key member from each department so when it comes time to roll out the entire solution you have a key member in each department that can serve as your advocate on the ground.

Things to consider when analyzing a unified communications platform

As you plan how to roll out this solution, here are a few questions you might consider:

  • Does your whole team need access right away, or are there high-priority users that should be addressed first?
  • What devices does your team have today?  Will they be compatible?
  • What are the key tasks for your users?
  • Is your workforce mobile, remote, or office-based? Will they need access to cloud-based resources?
  • What are the key activities your team will need to do every day, and how will you prioritize learning around those tasks?
  • Is there any new hardware (headsets) that would improve the experience of your team?
  • Do you have security requirements that need to be configured and tested?

Change management on a unified communications platform

Change can be complex and painful in organizations if it is not managed well.  Everyone loves something new once they’re used to it and know how to use it.  However, that first moment a customer calls and you don’t know how to answer the call or transfer them to a teammate it can be very frustrating.  The pain caused by those moments of frustration can be hard to overcome.  However, if you communicate, train, and roll out well your team will love the new technology and all the features it brings. Ensuring you have orientation, training, and practice sessions built into your plan, with clear information and dates will improve the experience. Building a great plan is an essential step in rolling out new technology.  Here are a few aspects you should consider in your change management:

  • Ensure you have executive alignment – support from the top
  • Identify your key goals (why are you making this change – new functionality, greater agility, cost savings, etc) 
  • Use those key goals to plan and drive measurable outcomes
  • Build a plan that includes timelines, goals, expected outcomes
  • Communicate the plan to your company
  • Explore the fit with listening sessions
  • Update your plan based on feedback and concerns
  • Roll out your pilot
  • Evaluate effectiveness based on measurable outcomes
  • Update your plan and communicate any changes to the company
  • Roll out your changes enterprise or company-wide
  • Explore the effectiveness of the rollout with listening and feedback sessions
  • Make any changes or innovations required to respond to the feedback
  • Send out details on usage and success metrics 
  • Identify any issues that need to be covered by policy or training 
  • Do a post-implementation review to see what you can learn for future projects. 

Rolling out the unified communications platform

Now that you’ve got your approach sorted out, your change management process in place, and the scope of the rollout sorted it’s time to roll out software. Bria Enterprise allows you to roll out your solution in a quick, consistent, and repeatable process.  You can invest your time setting up an SIP client and configuring your accounts once, then as soon as your team logs in with their credentials the app settings are configured and the team can begin making calls. You keep central control and can review security, and roll out updates and patches all from a central administration screen. If you have regulatory or compliance needs, to show how long your team spends on calls or the numbers they call, robust reporting brings you all the information you need. You can provide your team with a convenient, cost-effective solution that doesn’t take up any space on their desktop and can go with them everywhere. 

For further information on how to get started with your Unified Communication platform rollout, download our whitepaper, and speak to a solutions expert today.