UCAAS Blog

Municipalities and Local Governments Look to Jive and 8x8 For Voice and Contact Center Evolution

Legacy telephony and contact center solutions municipalities and local governments use today have minimal analytics capabilities, making it impossible to effectively monitor contact center performance and collect and action citizen feedback.
Neither can these legacy systems accommodate the needs of the modern, mobile workforce. Many municipal employees work remotely, and many would prefer to use their personal or mobile devices for work purposes.

Read Part 1

Local Governments Migrating To The Cloud To Meet The Needs Of Their Citizen Customers

The United States is experiencing unprecedented urbanization. According to the University of Michigan, about 82% of the U.S. population lives in urban areas, up from 64% in 1950. By 2050, that number is expected to surpass 90%. At the same time, the population is getting older. By 2035, the U.S. Census Bureau projects that 1 in 5 U.S. residents will be over 65, outnumbering those younger than 18 for the first time in history.

Manufacturing in Transition: How UCaaS Leaders RingCentral and 8x8 Are Taking On the Challenges of ‘Industry 4.0’

North American manufacturers face many challenges. According to Deloitte, the skills gap resulting from an aging workforce and a shortage of skilled labor may leave an estimated 2.4 million U.S. manufacturing jobs unfilled between 2018 and 2028, with a potential economic impact of $2.5 trillion.

UCaaS leaders 8x8 and RingCentral address common technology themes in disparate U.S. and Canada Healthcare markets

The difference between the U.S. and Canadian healthcare systems seldom fails to provoke a lively discussion. 

In Canada, federal legislation mandates that every resident is entitled to basic healthcare, and the public sector finances about 91% of hospital expenditures and 99% of total physician services. In contrast, almost 28 million Americans do not have health insurance. And healthcare is more expensive in the U.S. — $11,916 per capita (16.9% of GDP) versus $5,782 in Canada (10.4% of GDP).

Can Technology Leaders RingCentral, 8x8, and Mitel Meet The Challenge?

RingCentral, Mitel, and 8x8 are all heavyweight providers of UCaaS and contact center solutions. RingCentral made early 2019 headlines with its acquisition of contact center provider Connect First. Mitel is also on a roll, recently announcing 23% year-over-year growth in recurring clouds seats. And 8x8 just received the coveted TechTarget award for Cloud Communications solutions. But can these three technology leaders meet the many business challenges facing companies in the Financial Services industry?

How do UCaaS Providers RingCentral, 8x8, and Jive stack up for retail customers?

RingCentral and 8X8 are both designated as ‘Leaders’ in the Gartner Group’s 2018 Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), and both offer cost-effective voice solutions and proven collaboration solutions. Their competitor Jive is getting a lot of attention since its acquisition by LogMeIn in 2018. So how to retail organizations juggling cost-containment, building omnichannel capabilities, and transforming the customer experience choose a UCaaS solution?

Step 9 - Support & Innovation

This blog series has just about run its natural course. I have talked about my experiences and thoughts regarding best practices for the UCaaS or CCaaS Projects that many organizations undertake or are thinking about undertaking in the future as they update their business-critical systems and infrastructure.  

Step 8 - Hand-off to Support

My blog series has now led us to this point: our project has gone live and is performing as expected. At this point, someone usually raises the question of transitioning the project to support. 

Find all 9 steps of UCaaS project HERE

Step 7 - Installment

In my previous blog posts about UCaaS project topics, we covered all the required steps to plan, provision, deliver, test and train. This installment will cover the all-important go-live step. This is when we prove that all the work has been done correctly as we take the solution live in the production environment. In theory, this should be a routine event with no drama or unexpected outcomes. We say that because of the preparation and testing that gave you the confidence to go-live in the first place.

Find all 9 steps of UCaaS project HERE

Digital transformation doesn't happen overnight

When Mitel acquired ShoreTel in 2017, they inherited not only a great premise solution but also a market-leading true multi-instance cloud solution. These solutions also shared a software platform, which made them unique in the market as they were the only solutions to allow customers to run a hybrid cloud solution with the same user experience. Additionally, Mitel had to take on board over 35,000 ShoreTel Premise customers and over 600 ShoreTel partners who provide technical support for those customers.