Ed Grant is COO and co-founder at Solgari. After ten years in Corporate & Investment Banking at Citi working in European Tech Media & Telecoms, Ed entered the private equity world focusing on SaaS investments, which led to the launch of Solgari, the global provider of compliant, integrated omni-channel cloud communications services.

As cloud communications are becoming more widely accepted around the world and more integrated into daily business operations, the potential of unified communications and the capabilities of cloud communications services are drastically being explored. Compared to traditional communications services, an integrated approach offers increased scalability, reliability and significant cost savings to businesses that embrace it.

At Solgari, we’ve witnessed an increase in the number of clients in diverse sectors needing integrated cloud services due to market demand for all the modern communications channels in addition to onerous regulatory and compliance requirements. An integrated omni-channel cloud communications platform can benefit a business by presenting all the channels including voice, video, chat & SMS and automatically addressing MiFID II, GDPR and PCI DSS, achieving immediate digital transformation.

In a world of ever-changing regulations and simple to use communication services, companies need to focus now more than ever on technology and innovation to stay ahead of the curve to stay relevant to customers and ensure compliance. Here, we’ve addressed the benefits of adopting modern-day integrated cloud services to ensure you and your business are reaping the rewards.

INTEGRATED CLOUD SERVICES EXPLAINED

Integrated cloud-based software is transforming the communications industry. For years, businesses around the world have been putting up with the pain and costs of disjointed, unintelligent communication systems. But the cloud has changed everything with the following capability:

• All customer interactions, regardless of the communication channel, can be handled across integrated cloud software platforms.
• All the communications can be recorded and archived for compliance, regulatory, or internal reasons.
• The interactions can be search and retrieved in chronological order instantly.
• Providing a single data view of all communications and opening up unlimited reporting and analysis options.

THE BENEFITS OF INTEGRATED CLOUD COMMUNICATIONS SERVICES

As well as offering all digital communications channels to your customers, embedding WebRTC capability in your business’ website, your customers will be able to communicate with you more proficiently and in a cost-effective way. Here are the other key benefits of using integrated cloud communications services.

AUTOMATICALLY MEET SECURITY & COMPLIANCE NEEDS

One of the most crucial benefits of integrated cloud communications services, especially in today’s business landscape, is automatically meeting security and compliance regulation.

With businesses, particularly those within the financial services sector, facing increasingly heavy regulations, cloud services record and archives all communications types in a military grade encrypted environment.

Instant search and retrieval, reporting and speech analytics allow businesses to address all regulation requirements through a cloud software solution. Compared to traditional communications services, this reduces the need to address each channel individually – saving you time and money.

CUTTING COSTS

As mentioned, another benefit of integrated cloud communications services is cost reduction. This will provide your business with an opportunity to increase revenue and subsequently invest in other areas of the business.

Growing companies have multiple communication needs, from business telephony, video, chat, SMS, compliance, security – all the way up to advanced omni-channel contact centre functionality. The traditional approach is to invest in multiple programmes and solutions to meet these requirements separately. However, by adopting an integrated approach, your business will be able to address all or any of these requirements conveniently through one simple and integrated solution. This will of course save your business time as well as money.

INTEGRATION WITH CORE IT SYSTEMS

Cloud communications makes it possible to integrate applications and communications into one seamless experience for users such as using CRM as the central database.

By integrating your CRM with an omni-cloud communications service, you can also provide your employees with a full end to end view of all customer interactions, associated actions and unlimited intelligence in identifying the inbound customer regardless of the communication channel. Equally, outbound communications can be launched with a click from within the CRM driving further efficiency and productivity gains.

IN SUMMARY

By integrating your staff across all location with an omni-channel, compliant cloud communications service, your business is fast tracked on the road to digital transformation while either addressing or future proofing compliance requirements.

Within five years, most companies will have moved from silos across their customers communications to platforms that can deliver all the channels and a single data view of all interactions.

Source: businessleader