Back-office technology – survival boat for UC firms in 2021

Today business and technology are more intertwined than ever before. Technology has a substantial impact on every business process you can ever imagine. From the supply chain to graphic design to marketing, technological tools and strategies play an essential role in many professionals’ daily responsibilities.

Several organizations have been quick to implement new technologies into their front office operations and back-office processes such as accounting, IT, and human resources. Thus, implementing these developing technologies into your back-office operations can enhance communication and collaboration, efficiency, and productivity.

The big bang is on. There are thousands of managed service, cloud, UCaaS (Unified Communication as a Service), and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) providers worldwide.

These days it is effortless to enter the market as everything is scalable and available through a platform. One can quickly introduce his business with little capital and a few consumers. About 30 million small businesses are operating in the US alone. This is because the majority still rely on a cable company or traditional telco for their network services. Thus, making them targets for UC firms and next-generation service providers.

We all know that it’s easy to enter the market, but really hard to survive in the market. There are so many solutions accessible in the market today with a lower price and better promotional offers.

It’s all about back-office

Let see what it is and why it is important!

We all might have heard that the front-office is the consumer-facing side of the business in which customer service, marketing, product, and sales live. On the other hand, back-office is a little less glamorous. It is the spinal cord or foundation of unified communication (UC) provider’s operations – where sales efforts are transformed into profitability.

Limelight on a few critical components of a service provider’s back office:

  • Reporting and analytics – in this component, we experience how a service contributor produces actionable data and performance dashboards.
  • Vendor quote management – here, one sees how service providers obtain price quotes from carriers for wholesale network services, including cross-connects, access, IP transport, and others, which are resold to the service provider’s end-user consumer.
  • Usage management – here, the service provider is responsible for managing and optimizing network assets.
  • Order/provisioning management – in this management procedure, a service provider can track and create network services orders.
  • Vendor contract management – it is all about how a service provider ensures vendor compliance and contract competitiveness.
  • Network inventory management – in this management service, service providers are allowed to track the status of “in use” network services and make sure proper billing is done for them.
  • Invoice management – in this procedure, the service provider makes sure it is appropriately billed, with a reduction of costs, dispute charges, and benchmarks.

Here are three emerging technologies that can streamline back-office operations in UC firms:

1. Cloud

The concept of cloud technology is not new. As per an International Data Group research, about 73% of enterprises are using cloud technology in one capacity or another.

In daily work operations, cloud-based tools make organizational communication much more manageable. Team members can share documents in real-time using cloud-based tools. Communication cloud-based technologies encourage employees to work more collaboratively. Thus, it reduces time and increases productivity.

2. Automation

Automation is a significant part of modern businesses. The use of automation in your back-office processes encourages employees to spend little time on an everyday routine or repetitive activities.

For instance, Samanage publicized that present employees lose about 520 hours per year to repetitive tasks that could be automated. Automation could be applied to streamline several functions for your back-office professionals, such as filing tax information or screening candidates for HR professionals.

3. Digital assistants

Artificial intelligence (AI) driven digital assistants such as chatbots were quickly integrated into several front-office activities. But recently they are arriving in back-office functions too.

Chatbots are known for their role in consumer service-based scenarios, where they act like a human representative. These digital assistants are being implemented into back-end resources.

For instance, several business applications are being used by various back-office professionals, such as customer experience (CX) systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and human capital management (HCM), now include digital assistant capabilities.

Makeover with digital transformation

A new makeover is a must for UC firms by implementing back-office systems and its process to compete in the market. And the only solution for this makeover is currently trending and hot topic in UC firms – “digital transformation.”

For VoIP carriers, UCaaS providers, MSPs (Managed Service Providers), and cloud-based service providers, the back office is often an Achilles heel for the whole organization. These organizations have glamorous front offices with sophisticated online lead generation, automated marketing capabilities, and social media integration. In contrast, in the back-office, the organization relies on spreadsheets, emails, and texts just because they are available for free of cost.

As organizations help their consumers be more productive via unified communication, they hosted cloud-based services or VoIP PBX services. However, organizations have not found the full benefits of the digital transformation of their back-office until now.

Makeover with digital transformation could be expensive, but you don’t have to worry because there is a most popular solution, i.e., SaaS applications.

With robust SaaS applications, there are many options available for next-generation service providers. There are comfortable, lightweight, and scalable options available to implement back-office software applications. For instance, gpxcloud is a SaaS platform for complete telecom lifecycle management.

Benefits of back-office technology in UC firms

  • Proper management of operational costs and advanced business performance
  • Workforce efficacy via automated and skills-based routing
  • Connected systems, employees, and workloads to offer continuous workforce optimization
  • Employee empowerment and engagement

It’s a wrap-up

There is no excuse for unified communication organizations and other service providers to invest in back-office software. It is an easy way to make sure a solid foundation for profitable growth and consumer satisfaction. However, it is essential for developing firms to enhance their back-office technology to survive in the market.

To know more about download our latest whitepapers on unified communication and UCaaS.