Versatility in your real-time communications system helps a business succeed.  While a series of smaller third-party solutions do the job, unified communications as a service packages come with business VoIP service, and makes calling, voicemail, chatting, and conferencing more streamlined.

With the right package, enterprise communications with customers and colleagues will improve, and some packages include features for contact centers as well. Unified communications packages also integrate better, which makes the user experience more efficient. In this article, we’ll share some other critical statistics that will help you understand the value of unified communications.

 

Where Does Unified Communications Stand in 2021?

There’s a reason for the level of consistent growth and adoption in unified communications – technologies like voice, video conferencing, and chat have become integral for modern businesses. Regions like India and North America have embraced the bring your own device (BYOD) trend, which places business unified communications apps on personal devices and has become a driving force for adoption.

Telepresence is also driving a unified communications boom. It’s a collection of technologies that allow users to feel as if they are present at a remote location. Telepresence is a critical aspect of the unified communications market since technologies like screen sharing, video conferencing, and VoIP calling are all designed to bridge the gap between remote users. The need for telepresence is guaranteed to increase in 2020 since the novel coronavirus COVID-19 forced most businesses to social distance.

2020 is quickly becoming the year where unified communications are making their largest strides. Here are a few statistics that illustrate this:

  • BYOD is expected to drive the demand for unified communication systems by 2023
  • 40% of the global video conferencing market share In 2019 will be accounted for by telepresence.
  • 34% of workers that were previously commuting now work from home using telepresence since April 2020.
  • 42% of companies have increased cloud application and unified communication adoption.
  • 67% of organizations are moving significant portions of their unified communications solutions to the cloud.
  • 85% of the world’s leading companies feel that APIs that extend business communications for both employees and customers are crucial to business growth.

Sources: Allied Market Research, Global Market Insights, MIT, Nemertes Research, Nemertes Research, Apigee

 

UC Trends that Affect Business

UC is a fluid technology that’s increasing in adoption throughout industries. For a business that’s looking to optimize, it’s critical to keep an eye on emergent trends. For example, it’s imperative that you find a unified communications technology that embraces the favored mobile platforms of your employees. 

File sharing and chatting as well as calling that’s done on desktop softphones, apps, and browsers need to be available on Google and Apple smartphones. A reliance on smaller screens means that your business can’t afford to have mobile UC applications that are short on features.

Additionally, workflow tools designed to make processes more efficient are also experiencing an uptick in adoption. In the next few years, these will experience heavy use across industries. This is becoming more readily apparent by the number of Slack alternatives present on the market like RingCentral Glip and Fleep.

These statistics illustrate how these trends are changing the UC landscape:

  • Smartphone traffic is set to exceed desktop PC traffic by 2022.
  • 61% of businesses with traditional phone systems adopt VoIP phone systems at the end of their contract.
  • Trendsetting organizations were found to be 150% more likely to use mobile communications solutions than follower organizations who tend to play catch up.
  • 70% of teams will rely on team communications tools like Slack by 2022.
  • Tools like Slack, Cisco WebEx, Microsoft Teams and Zoom have seen a significant uptick in usage since the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Mobile video in unified communications is 2x more likely to improve the customer service experience.
  • Video conferencing is the second most preferred method of communication between teams with the first being in-person meetings.
  • 75% of CEOs predict that video-assisted meetings will eventually replace traditional conference calling.
  • 34.3% of businesses have reduced IT spending by an average of $161k a year by eliminating redundant apps and shifting to cloud-based unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solutions. 

Sources: Cisco, Blueface Business Communications, Aberdeen, Gartner, NoJitter, Aberdeen, Owl Labs, PGI, Nemertes Research

 

Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) Trends

Collaboration tools like Slack are also seeing increases in usage for both small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs) and enterprise users. These solutions make having meetings or one-on-one chats a very simple process, and most allow for users to scale a chat up to a conference and vice versa. Here are a few stats to illustrate the growth of UCaaS in 2021:

  • As of 2020, Slack, which is the leading team communication and collaboration software, has 12 million users using the platform daily.
  • Microsoft estimates that users of Microsoft Teams use their collaboration solution for more than 2.7 billion minutes each day.
  • Businesses are reducing their need to hold in-person meetings by an average of 30% by communicating using collaboration tools.
  • 81% of employees feel that collaboration apps improve the overall productivity of the company.
  • Only 33% of research participants and IT leaders are fully on-premises with their UC solutions today. The rest are either using all cloud-based solutions (29%) or a hybrid of on-premise/cloud solutions (38%).
  • 50% of employee turnover is reduced by the presence of an effective communication system.

Sources: Mashable, Microsoft, Nemertes Research, Bradio, Nemertes Research, Clear Company 

 

Statistics: Global Unified Communications Conferencing

Video conferencing has become a mainstay of modern business that allows coworkers to communicate daily when team members are working remotely from one another. This technology is reliant on cloud private branch exchange (PBX) technology, which uses remote servers that employ redundancy to provide high global uptime. This is particularly important when a business has multiple offices spread around the world.

Video conferences, chat, file sharing, and voice calls all bring teams closer together, and new technologies are being incorporated consistently. Here are a few stats to consider:

  • More than 70% of the workforce is engaging in remote work for a day a week or more.
  • 169% growth each year is being experienced by Zoom, especially with high-budget customers with multiple offices. 
  • For employees, mobile video is 2.5 times more likely to reduce travel costs.
  • 87% of attendees see value in using a virtual assistant during online meetings.
  • 80% of all internet traffic will be done using video by 2021 based on current estimates.
  • 76% of attendees using video conferencing for collaboration while working remotely report experiencing enhanced work-life balance.
  • 70% of all online conferencing meetings by the year 2022 will be huddle-room meetings. 

Sources: CNBC, TechCrunch, Aberdeen, Cisco, Cisco, Lifesize, Frost and Sullivan, 

 

Statistics: How Poor UC Affects a Business

Poorly implemented unified communications has its own issues that affect the efficiency of any business. For example, it’s important to weigh telepresence vs web conferencing – they aren’t precisely the same. If you just need an easy medium in which to communicate with colleagues, then video conferencing does the job. On the other hand, if you need high video and audio quality for all calls with clients and customers, consider a unified communications package designed with telepresence features.

Contacting customers or colleagues on software that has poor quality is damaging, so it’s critical that the right software is selected. Unified communication software should be easy to use and have the right quality for the application. Here are a few stats to consider:

  • 85% of participants of online meetings experience issues with the software and staying connected.
  • 42% of individuals attending online meetings will become frustrated before the meeting begins because they can’t join a meeting easily.
  • Poor conference calls lead to lost revenue that amounts to $34 billion a year.
  • 17% of respondents stated that starting video conferencing meetings is where the most frequent issues arise.
  • 86% of business owners consider workplace issues to be the direct result of inadequate communications tools.

Sources: Cisco, Cisco, LoopUp, Owl Labs, Salesforce

 

How Can You Use UC to Enhance Your Business?

In a world where working from home and remote work tools are becoming more critical, unified communications is going to be more than just a convenience – it’ll be a requirement. Each technology presented here helps streamline day to day operations. 

So, what are the benefits of unified communications? The advantages include:

  • Easier collaboration through a single platform using file sharing, chat, and conferencing
  • Reduced Administration and maintenance costs via cloud providers
  • High reliability since most service providers have 99% or greater service level agreements (SLAs)
  • Flexibility for employee collaboration from within the office

The world of team collaboration software is ever-expanding. Check out our guides, which are complete with tables and provide the pros and cons of several platforms.