With today’s modern, dynamic, and mobile workforce becoming increasingly disjointed due to time constraints and geographical boundaries, the need for an effective communications solution is greater than ever. Fortunately, the emergence of new digital technologies in the business communications market has led to the production of cutting-edge solutions like unified communications (UC) and cloud-based platforms in conjunction with software and developer tools (like APIs) that enable businesses to customize workflows, boost employee efficiency, and enhance overall productivity.
In this article, Scott Gode, the Chief Product Marketing Officer at Unify Square, shares with SourceForge why unified communications have become a necessity for many businesses and further highlights how their innovative PowerSuite solution (in conjunction with Skype for Business) is fulfilling the communication needs of today’s dynamic and mobile workforce.
The Importance of UC for Business Communication
Communication in today’s office environment takes place through various devices (including landlines, desktops, laptops, and smartphones) and channels (phone calls, conference calls, emails, and chat). These varying businesses communication efforts push today’s companies to leverage unified communications in order to bring together all devices and channels under one single platform. Through a unified communications solution, businesses and their employees can connect, communicate, and work effectively without worrying about the threat of communication silos that form due to the use of third-party applications or tools.
First and foremost, the purpose of a UC solution is to integrate various real-time and other communication services into one convenient package, thereby helping businesses save time and resources while reducing costs by keeping everything under one umbrella. So how can UC help to support and drive businesses to greater successes? To help businesses reach these goals, Unify Square offers SOF-certified PowerSuite, helping businesses easily foster growth in their company via lower overall costs, fewer risks, and better agility overall.
Powered by UC-Core technology, PowerSuite has the following directives: deliver operational excellence, keep Skype for Business (SfB) users productive and happy, and allow businesses to manage more sites with more efficiency (regardless of whether these are deployed in the cloud or on-premise).
Scott Gode, VP of Products at Unify Square
“In regards to the software itself: companies said they loved it, but it would be so much easier if Unify Square could run software for them…so managed services arose out of this need, where Unify Square can remotely take over the entire Skype for Business infrastructure with the “three 9’s”, and the company possesses the expertise to do so,” said Gode.
What to Consider when Choosing a UC Solution
“When it comes to Unified Communications (UC), most of these IT people and companies that are either planning for [a transition] or are in midst of a transition to UC are not simple users,” noted Gode. “They have done their homework and understand all of the elements involved in a network, and have figured (or at least road mapped) all of these [requirements] out.”
Because every organization has different communication needs, businesses need to be careful when choosing the right communication tool to ensure that the solution matches the needs of their company. Gode discusses two important factors that businesses often forget to take into consideration when looking for a reliable UC solution:
- Companies often do not budget for software telemetry or software that can help them unearth what is going wrong with a communications system. “Realistically speaking, none of the UC providers today have it all out of the box, and [network monitoring] isn’t something you can get for free,” mentioned Gode. “IT needs to purchase extra software for UC monitoring and network health upkeep, and often times they either don’t understand or don’t budget for it. Instead, they are reliant upon generic operation management software which continuously streams a broad set of data which is hard to corral and action.”
- There’s no universal standard for UC. “Look at something like Bluetooth: the same standard just works,” noted Gode. “But with UC solutions, if everyone is running the same system then life is great; but if companies are running different UC systems, standard phone calls still work but video interoperability and app sharing just takes a lot of machinations to come off seamlessly.”
According to Gode, employing a UC solution can be a challenging endeavor for a business. “Oftentimes, if vendors or companies are talking about all inter-company communications, then UC works well,” said Gode. “However, once businesses try to bridge the divide to the world outside of the corporate space, it’s not as easy as it should be. This falls back (to an extent) on the end user experience issues but still falls back to UC vendors and the industry at large.”
Gode believes that taking advantage of a robust UC solution will make the switch easier for businesses to enhance their efficiency and boost their communication experience. And Unify Square’s solution offers these advantages to their customers. “Unify Square excels in understanding the technology behind Skype for Business, and knows how to connect it to corporate PBX systems to make it work effectively,” said Gode. “We wanted to come up with tools to expedite and accelerate processes, and these tools ended up turning into full-on software applications.”
Enhancing Business Efficiency and User Experience with Unify Square UC Solution
As a leading provider of unified communications software, Unify Square helps businesses and their customer base enhance productivity and boost end-user satisfaction through their innovative UC solution and integrated Skype for Business operations suite, PowerSuite.
“With the PowerSuite, it has become easy for companies to install the solution and get up and running in no time,” said Gode. “And once running, it acts as a single pane of glass and a single source of visibility, where [companies] can see what is going on with Skype for Business. Which leads to one of the big values that Unify Square provides to customers: actionability.”
PowerSuite offers actionable items ie. here’s how to stack rank the severity of problems; here’s how to tackle your current issues; and here’s where you go to address these problems (network, user, etc.). All of these “resolution paths” are provided so that businesses and IT teams can save time by zeroing in on the issues. And in return, the company gets a higher return on investment (ROI).
Unify Square delivers operational excellence, makes users happy and productive, and allows businesses to be more aware of any potential or lingering connectivity issues in the following ways:
- Artificial intelligence or intelligence augmentation. “Unify Square’s solution goes through the network and says, ‘based on not only your environment but by also including multiple environments, here’s what’s going on with your system’ and then ‘here’s a path/source back to the origin of the problem’,” revealed Gode. “This type of in-depth reporting is not seen often in the market.”
- End-user focused. The other unique thing about PowerSuite (when compared to other solutions) is the focus on the end-user. “Within the consulting organization, the biggest focus remains to be user adoption services,” said Gode. “The focus is not just in making sure Skype for Business is architected correctly, but also that it is successfully rolled out and deployed and that the end users are being trained and provided with the correct devices to meet their needs.”
- Helpdesk Support. PowerSuite solves the issue of end user support and the need for a dedicated team of specialists in the company who are manning phones or email support as an internal help desk or IT. Without the PowerSuite, troubleshooting can become a time-consuming, trial-and-error experience.
Aside from these direct benefits, Unify Square is also placing a focus on their new User Feedback Loop (UFL) technology, which is currently in the early stages of development. “The concept of the UFL is that the software picks up on problems that are being recorded that are end user-specific (such as unoptimized headsets) and provides feedback to end users by scanning through the specific data to see what devices they are using and more,” said Gode. Plus, UFL can send out an email to specific users and display problems, even adding considerations for new devices so that users can get ahead of potential future problems.
Highlights of the PowerSuite
PowerSuite is made up of different solutions that work together to draw a great picture of what is going on in an environment: sometimes the solutions work together, other times they work in isolation on a specific problem they are trying to solve.
Some of the key capabilities of Unify Square’s PowerSuite solutions include:
Service Health Solution. “Think of this [solution] as the IT executive who is trying to see the overall health of their Skype for Business system,” said Gode. If there is a problem anywhere, it helps businesses drill down and connect to the issue. This is tested on three core KPIs that are used to roll up and judge the service health:
- Service Availability (synthetic testing and synthetic transactions). This means making and receiving calls between the Skype for Business server and various internal and external calling points to test to see if the system is working. Essentially, it is a synthetic version of the ‘can you hear me now’ test to make sure the system works in and across all scenarios by also incorporating voice, video sharing, and more.
- Voice Quality. Call quality can lessen the overall user experience, reduce employee productivity, and produce lower than expected ROI for businesses. With PowerSuite, businesses can easily address poor connection and sound quality issues through its Operations Dashboard solution.
- User Satisfaction. The first two points are more of a standard in terms of vendors, but user satisfaction points back to the user experience. “At Unify Square, we have a survey mechanism that allows us to utilize instant messaging as part of Skype for Business to communicate with individual end users on a rotating anonymous basis,” said Gode. “We’ll send a message that asks users to rate their satisfaction with Skype for Business system. This cycles through and tests user satisfaction, and can be used as a leading indicator or trailing indicator that might relate to a specific site or a location of a problem.”
- Device Management Solution. This addresses all of the endpoints the end users are using (such as IP phones, desk phones, headsets, plug-in devices, etc.). The Device Management solution allows businesses to monitor these phones and headsets for call quality and connectivity. “The solution helps ensure that there is an easy way to push any new firmware down to these phones and other devices to update them appropriately,” said Gode. This solution also allows for one to many configurations (ie. how to put the correct e911, etc.) and pushes that data down from a single IT point/node rather than an IT person having to individually go to each phone and configure it accordingly.
How Unify Square Addresses UC and Mobility Issues
According to Gode: “The mobile experience is great for remote employees or the ‘work from home’ generation. But the bottom line is that there is a high degree of additional responsibility placed on a platform and the pieces that surround it to help troubleshoot and to get it right for mobile and remote workers. It is almost a never ending battle because companies can get these fantastic internal networks set up, but as they connect outside vendors and suppliers, there are going to be new problems to consider.”
“We are always talking to customers who are looking to do more with ‘work from home’ or ‘work remotely’ because it is easier for these end users,” continued Gode. “In lieu of this, Microsoft is redoubling efforts to make mobile clients more end user-friendly and more equal in functionality and usability, especially Skype for Business.”
Part of the struggle that the UC ecosystem is forced to deal with is that UC is held to a higher standard overall. And the best way to go about keeping up network reliability and voice quality through UC is to continue isolating as many unique use cases as possible through better UC system performance and operations management.
Accelerating Global Skype for Business Adoption with Unify Square + Arkadin
In line with the company’s mission to accelerate unified communications and collaborations (UC&C) in addition to enhancing global Skype for Business adoption, Unified Square recently partnered with Arkadin, one of the largest and fastest growing providers of UC&C services.
Through this partnership, Arkadin will be given access to Unify Square’s PowerSuite and become the first UCaaS provider to integrate Skype for Business in their platform. Through Unify Square’s top quality monitoring and optimization of Skype for Business, Arkadin can further elevate their focus on delivering and maintaining a superior user experience for their customer base.
“Unify Square is experiencing accelerated innovation and growth like never before,” said John Case, the Chief Executive Officer of Unify Square. “Joining forces with Arkadin will help us to further capitalize and accelerate our market potential while continuing to deliver unparalleled service to all of our customers.”
Whether your business is up and running, or just getting started, Unify Square can help improve the overall performance of your organization with their cutting-edge unified communications solution. To learn more about the PowerSuite and Skype for Business services, please visit Unify Square’s website.
About Unify Square
Unify Square is a privately held technology solutions company that develops software for managing Microsoft products such as Microsoft Lync and Skype for Business. Founded in 2008, the company started as an outgrowth of folks who were employed at Microsoft and saw a rising business opportunity coming out of the new technologies and products that Microsoft was offering. Today, Unify Square’s software, consulting, and cloud managed services power the world’s largest Microsoft Skype for Business (SfB) deployments. The company’s software and services deliver value to more than 5 million Skype for Business seats in over 275 global enterprises across more than 50 countries.