There are a lot of benefits to UCaaS: making business communication seamless, enabling employees to work from anywhere, providing the same experience regardless of device and allowing a business to scale up or down easily. And yet, one of the most significant and least talked about benefits of UCaaS is vendor consolidation.
How Many Business Vendors Support Your Communications?
In my experience, businesses have a large number of vendors supporting their communications efforts. If you look at a single business with five locations and take a profile of their current technology, here’s what you might find:
- 3-5 different phone line providers
- 3-5 different Internet service providers
- 1 backup Internet provider
- 2-3 long distance phone line providers
Phone Service and Maintenance Vendors
Plus, then you get into service and maintenance. Many businesses have a few different brands of phone systems within their different locations. For instance, some locations have Mitel phones and others have Panasonic phones. For each brand of phone, the business can have:
- Individual service contracts
- Individual maintenance contracts
- Individual manufacturer warranties
Data Infrastructure Vendors
Then, there’s your data infrastructure. Typically, these include firewalls and switches per location. These will also have different vendors and have been purchased from different brands. Each one likely has a separate maintenance and service contract. So, for data infrastructure, you can be looking at 5-10 more vendors.
When all is said and done, a single business with five locations can easily have 17-30+ vendors keeping their communications up and running. In fact, it’s more common than you think.
How Many Business Vendors Do You Have with UCaaS?
One. All of the pieces I listed above can be handled under a single UCaaS contract with Marco. No side vendors, no hidden fees, no need for your company to patch together a solution in a time of need. Consolidating business vendors can add a level of ease to your business that many leaders don’t know is possible. Imagine how easy it could be if you had one contract, one invoice, one person to talk to when something went wrong. How do you get there? By working with a technology advisor. They can get you there.
