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SMBs Use UCaaS to Save Money and Outperform Competitors

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To make their dollars go further, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) could avoid many cloud-based solutions. But the right unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solution isn’t one of them.
 
UCaaS provides the SMB continuous, automatic feature upgrades and enhancements—updates so efficient and unobtrusive, they happen without the business even knowing. There’s none of the downtime competitors wish upon the SMB. And there’s no need for technician visits for regular maintenance.
 
UCaaS pushes all infrastructure and complexity into the cloud, relieving the SMB’s IT manager of repetitive maintenance tasks that would distract from strategic initiatives that drive real value to the business.
 
UCaaS is also a great way for an SMB to ensure the maximum effectiveness of its IT resources — not to mention ensure competitiveness in its market. According to ZK Research, a UCaaS solution boasts a five-year total cost of ownership that’s typically 30-40% lower than an on-premises PBX. That’s after you factor in the endless hardware costs, the associated cooling and space costs, the challenge of application integration, and, again, the demand for IT support.
 
A reliable UCaaS solution offers a 99.999% uptime SLA to assure the SMB that if opportunities get lost due to the solution itself—to competitors or otherwise—the provider will take some responsibility. The UCaaS design is well-conceived—with individual point products like video meetings, team messaging, visual voicemail, and many others all residing on a single, easy-to-administer cloud stack. So much so that the SMB never has to establish relationships with multiple product providers.
 
In the point-product approach, each user needs a profile set up on each system. That means the SMB’s IT manager has to oversee multiple accounts for every team member instead of (again) devoting attention to more strategic work. For example, like beating the competition.
 
Good UCaaS Providers Don’t Think Solely in Terms of Cool Features and Crackle-free Calls
UCaaS providers take a more sophisticated view of their product, laser-focused on saving the SMB a bundle on its business communications. Heck, maybe even a lot more than a bundle. You might’ve noticed a theme here—a pretty clear one.
 
The right UCaaS solution for an organization pointedly strives to empower the SMB to reinvest their savings where they need it most. Savings, for example, to use for hiring business development managers and pitching to new clientele.
 
This helps avoid losing to competitors all the talented team members in which the SMB has invested so much. Any SMB owner will tell you: New ways to out save the competition are as hard to come by as a must-have cloud-based solution that makes the dollars go further. But when the SMB actually finds this solution, you can’t overstate its value to their competitiveness.
 
Check out the Vonage eBook: “A Half-Dozen and One Ways SMBs Use UCaaS to Beat Out Competitors,” featuring this and other articles designed to help small businesses find the right cloud communications solution for their needs!