7 Key Advantages of Moving to a Cloud Communications System

As with many cloud applications used to run mission-critical parts of the business, UCaaS has come of age. The rapid adoption by businesses of all sizes attests to its reliability. In addition to carrier-grade reliability for your business phone calls, a cloud communications and collaboration phone system like RingCentral Office® offers dramatic advantages over on-premises systems. These include benefits for your business and employees, as well as your network, data infrastructure, and IT resources. A full-featured cloud communications solution also offers all the integrated capabilities of team messaging, meetings, and contact center to address the challenges of today’s business environment.

1. Unifies communications across your company

The typical company with an on-premises PBX uses a patchwork of business communications tools—stand-alone fax machines, individual internet fax accounts, third-party audio and video conferencing, and web meetings, and now team collaboration. This approach typically lacks connection or synergy among the various tools. In addition, as the service accounts have accumulated over time, you may need to manage multiple, and sometimes redundant, bills from the various providers.

RingCentral Office integrates phone, video, meetings, and messaging into one reliable, easy-to-use solution. It also integrates with cloud and back-office business applications. This one stop service not only saves costs and delivers the synergy of linking various modes of communication, but also eliminates the management, unwieldy billing, and cost tracking associated with multiple vendors.

The RingCentral solution also unifies the image that your organization presents to the world—a single identity. All employees, whether they work in an office or on the road, make or receive calls from a single business number. This give your company’s communications a consistent and professional appearance. Even remote workers’ outbound calls are routed through the cloud and appear as if they are calling from the corporate location. It eliminates the need for a salesperson to have to provide a personal mobile phone number to continue with business when out of the office. When employees leave the office, calls automatically follow them to their smartphones via the RingCentral mobile app.

2. UCaaS simplifies multi-location management

Maintaining and administering phone systems at multiple locations—especially where there are PBX hardware and phones
from different vendors at the various sites—can present a management nightmare for IT. However, by having the entire phone
system in the cloud, RingCentral enables any IT person to manage the phone system from any location using a simple web interface or mobile app. This means you save the cost and headache of sending an IT person with telephony experience to remote locations to perform maintenance or make simple changes, such as adding numbers and provisioning new employees. Or, it can eliminate calls to a local service provider and the frustration of waiting for changes or repairs to be made on their schedule, not to mention the high cost of service calls.

The cloud RingCentral phone system allows you to quickly startup a new location. And for new or existing locations, it does away with the cost and complexity of managing MPLS or other business exchange line connectivity between sites. Instead, all voice traffic travels over the internet backbone.

3. Flexes when your business flexes

When you are growing or simply competing in today’s competitive markets, you cannot afford anything—including a business
system—that holds you back. You can’t wait for a service provider to add a new number, or send an IT person to a remote location every time you add an employee. And you cannot afford to be locked into inflexible systems.

As your business grows or your business needs change, the RingCentral cloud phone system adapts. For example, whether
it’s adding retail staff during the holidays or adding tax preparers during tax season, plugging a phone in to an Ethernet jack and making a simple change on the dashboard is all it takes to onboard a new phone user.

Additionally, you can’t predict where your business will be in two or three years, how many phone lines you will need, or how many locations you will have. A cloud system is inherently flexible and scalable. This isn’t the case with on-premises IP PBX that still needs PRI lines, for example, and each line is limited to 23 simultaneous calls. The RingCentral system provides instant access to virtually limitless inbound and outbound call capacity.

4. Reduces infrastructure management headaches and costs

Buying and installing a new premises-based system can cost tens of thousands of dollars, or hundreds of thousands for multiple locations. RingCentral hosted VoIP eliminates the need for up-front investments in costly PBX hardware, as well as separate building wiring for phones and data, and maintenance items such as additional cards required for adding new employees. Also, few companies can afford to invest in or support a PBX at every site.

With RingCentral Office, the entire infrastructure for your phone system resides in secure, redundant, and geographically
distributed data centers where telephony experts manage the system 24/7 (which results in carrier-grade reliability). This becomes an even bigger cost advantage with multiple locations as you eliminate more than one piece of PBX hardware, along with costly MPLS, PSTN, or other business exchange lines. You no longer need skilled IT staff to manage one or more PBXs, or the expense and distraction of traveling to remote locations or calling a local service provider to make changes or repairs.

Many customers also consider investing in IP PBX, as it offers an option that enables IP connectivity, and having one on premises may appeal to managers who feel it gives them more control over their systems. However, before making a purchase decision, it pays to roll up all the necessary costs, including outlays for network upgrades, which can be significant. RingCentral Office requires no upgrades to the network core, except for a QoS-enabled router where one is not already installed.

5. Connects mobile and remote workers

Premises-based phone systems inherently lack direct connectivity to remote and mobile workers, and more advanced systems can charge you separate licensing fees. With RingCentral Office, workers at remote locations or home offices are connected in the same way as employees in the main corporate office. Additionally, the RingCentral mobile app—which works on any iOS® or Android™ device—essentially transforms a mobile phone into a desk phone and a powerful communications device.

Calls automatically follow workers wherever they go, and customers always see your business number rather than the employee’s personal home or mobile number. For example, rather than mortgage brokers at a bank providing their personal
mobile numbers, they give customers the corporate number. This offers customers greater confidence; and if the broker leaves the company, the number is easily transferred to residing staff. Therefore, customer loyalty is retained with the company, not the individual. Additionally, all of the employee’s valuable contact information resides in the cloud, where it can be easily retrieved by your IT department, rather than on an employee-owned device.

Mobile and remote workers also have access to voicemail, fax, email, and all other company communications as if they are working in the office. The conference calling and HD video meetings included in the RingCentral service further enable mobile and remote workers to easily and cost-effectively work from any location. Finally, the single RingCentral system eliminates the
nightmare of accounting for hundreds or thousands of personal phone bills, which can be onerous for employees, their managers, and corporate accounting.

6. Instant access to the latest features

Some legacy PBX systems come with a limited feature set, and more advanced products may charge extra for basic features
such as voicemail or the latest UC tools as they become available. With RingCentral Office, the latest features and capabilities are continually integrated into the system.

RingCentral R&D continually works to create the latest innovations in business communications. Your IT team can rely on RingCentral to anticipate your company’s future business communications needs, and implement new features the moment they become available.

7. Greater control

While having your phone hardware and software on premises might seem to offer control, having it in the cloud actually affords a greater element of control that includes easier management. For example, with cloud VoIP, you no longer need to be in the same physical location as the phone system to manage it. When traveling or at home, you can make urgent changes to the system via a simple web interface using your laptop or smartphone. This direct access to the system also means you no longer have to deal with a third party or wait for them to make adds, moves, or changes. For example, any IT person can add a new number in seconds using the web interface.

Conclusion

Aging hardware and the antiquated model of the PBX-based business communications system are driving more and more
enterprises to switch to a cloud communications and collaboration system. A solution such as RingCentral Office offers the perfect way to move all of your communications and collaboration systems into the modern world. It unifies voice, fax, text, video conferencing, and audio conferencing into a single network. Unlike full analog systems, it also integrates seamlessly with the latest cloud and back-office business applications. The result is a full business communications and collaboration system that delivers:

• Flexibility to adapt quickly to business change
• Manageability that frees IT resources and time while reducing
  headaches
• Greater control and service mobility—move, add, or change
  phones and numbers almost instantly
• Unified business communications and collaboration that
  streamline the way you communicate inside and outside your
  company while simplifying everything from management to
• Integration and collaboration with other applications such as
  CRM systems
• Reduced infrastructure costs and management headaches
• Support for a mobile and distributed workforce

UCaaS does all this without the operational overhead, capital expenditures, IT resource requirements, or headaches of
maintaining your own hardware and software on premises. RingCentral manages the entire infrastructure in secure, redundant
data centers, which includes handling network maintenance, software updates, and system upgrades. In addition, behind the
scenes, RingCentral continually innovates the system to improve reliability and add new capabilities.

Let Symplicity Communications, Inc. help you find the right UCaaS solution for your unique business needs. Contact us today for more information or to schedule a consultation. Interested in learning why we like partnering with RingCentral? Read some of their case studies here .

(Source: Thanks to RingCentral for sharing this excerpt of their white paper, 7 Business Benefits of Moving from an On-Premises PBX to a Cloud Communications and Collaboration System)