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Last week, one of the last of the remote work holdouts, Zoom, finally ordered workers living within a radius of 50 miles to return to the office at least two days per week.
The move confirms the ongoing trend across organizations to move from remote to hybrid working models — a change that is having an impact on the kind of technology favored in the digital workplace.
Controlling UCC Sprawl
Organizations are juggling numerous unified communication and collaboration (UCC) platforms that either operate as standalones or are the result of an intricate integrations of many different tools and apps over the past three years. The result is a tangled web that is causing operational inefficiencies and increasing costs.
"We’re seeing a lot of organizations with multi-vendor, multi-system unified communications and collaboration architectures right now, either from implementing new tools rapidly during the pandemic or because of long-term on-premises to cloud migration projects," Micah Singer, CEO at UCC management provider Kurmi Software, said.
Still, having multiple UCC platforms is not necessarily the root of the problem, Singer said. Rather, the issue is the efficiency loss that stems from having redundancies and poor integration.
“The future of unified communications will continue to be complex ecosystems, with multiple UC applications deployed often from multiple vendors," Singer said. "Organizations will be in a constant state of migrating from one to another or implementing a new tool from scratch."
The key to operating successfully in that environment, then, requires getting smart at managing the array of tools and applications.
Getting the UCC platform sprawl under control can seem daunting at first. A good place to start, Singer said, is by running a holistic assessment of what is available in the organization: identifying all applications and noting their purpose, their features and the end user groups that utilize them.
Then, Singer said, identify application redundancies by answering key questions such as whether there are two teams using similar platforms and, if so, could one of them migrate?
There are a few ways to go about this assessment, depending on the size of the organization. Small businesses will find that they can run through this exercise sufficiently with a spreadsheet, Singer said, but enterprises and other large organizations with more than 1,000 UCC end users would benefit from implementing a UCC management tool that can identify existing user profiles and regional rules across multiple applications.
Communications Needs
Many different communications platforms exist because they all cater to varying customer needs. Suppressing them could interrupt effective business process workflows among some teams by taking away functionality critical to their roles, Brett Nuske managing director at Qubisoft, said.
Companies often reconcile tools to bring all the information into a central hub and avoid missing or losing important content. But rather than doing away with certain apps and forcing everyone to use specific communications platforms, Nuske said integrating the platforms so that information can be automatically shared between systems can be a more effective solution.
Slack, Teams, Zoom, Jira, Trello, Monday, email and SMS are among examples of different communications platforms that a business can unify by integrating them, he said.
The easiest way to do that is to use "out of the box" integrations provided by various providers such as Zapier or Mio, where the integration app will walk you through connecting the required applications together and configuring what tasks should be executed when events occur.
Sometimes, however, a more customized approach to integration is required, and Nuske said those companies may find value in taking an easier approach by using webhooks.
RedHat describes webhooks as an HTTP-based callback function that allows lightweight, event-driven communication between two APIs. They are used by a wide variety of web apps to receive small amounts of data from other apps but can also be used to trigger automation workflows in GitOps environments.
Many communications platforms have webhooks that allow organizations to configure and integrate them with others. “Webhooks allow for custom integration applications to be developed (with only your imagination as the limiting factor), where information is shared to many different applications,” Nuske said.
Deciding on the best integration method, and even hen solving other business problems, he recommends first walking through a process of defining "problem statements." These, he said, will help identify the highest priority issues as well as those that have the best return on investment.
Related Article: Too Many Collaboration Apps Are Bogging Employees Down
Getting to the Root of the Problem for You
Moving forward with integration without first identifying the problem for a specific organization usually doesn't solve anything, Quickbase SaaS Product Management Executive Debbi Roberts said.
While you can integrate communications tools, the issue is not about the integration of different platforms as much as it’s about being able to easily access the information employees need to do their job.
A recent Quickbase survey of 1,000 business decision-makers found that 67% are spending 10 to 20 hours per week chasing information they need because it is sprawled across multiple platforms. Respondents said they, in fact, regularly use 77 different tools each week to get the work done.
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Companies would need fewer communications tools if their teams could better see, connect and control the information they need to get their work done every day. She advises companies in that situation to take three steps:
1. Observe
If employees had a single source of truth for project and work information, they wouldn’t need to jump into multiple systems, send files over email or ask in a chat where information is located. They could and should access it all in one place, she said, from project information and work status, to financial reporting and compliance information.
2. Connect
Instead of adding new systems to the mix, she advises organizations to focus on connecting the ones they have through pipelines and intuitive workflows to automatically push and pull information fluidly between tools. This, she said, leads to less duplicated work, fewer user errors and better collaboration across teams, as they can trust that they all have the same up-to-date information.
3. Control
With the right governance policies in place, companies can better control who sees what across a company, so there is less risk of something being sent over chat or email or in a collaboration tool that shouldn’t be.
Platforms That Should Be Integrated
While the thought of integrating all platforms to streamline communication is enticing, the decision to integrate, consolidate or eliminate is contingent on a range of factors, Natalie Andreas, digital strategy consultant and university lecturer, said.
These factors include: first evaluating functional redundancy to determine if different platforms provide unique functionalities tailored to specific communication requirements. Then, considering user experience and ease of use, as managing multiple platforms can lead to reduced productivity and frustration among users.
Organizations should also look at the integration capabilities of their platforms, as well as the cost implications of maintaining multiple platforms, including licensing, training and support expenses.
She notes that beyond the financial sense of integration, companies should be aware that making these kinds of changes can have an impact on employee morale.
“Implementing changes to communication tools can influence employees, necessitating effective change management strategies to ensure a smooth transition,” she said. “Some employees might have attachments to specific platforms, potentially leading to resistance if those platforms are abruptly eliminated.”
Finally, future scalability is also another factor that warrants attention. It’s important, she said, to assess whether the platforms can accommodate evolving communication needs over time.
Ultimately, a balanced approach is advisable.
This involves identifying key platforms that offer essential functionalities, while also evaluating whether the elimination of other platforms would significantly impact communication workflows. “Conducting a comprehensive assessment of the organization's specific needs, coupled with input from relevant stakeholders, can facilitate an informed decision-making process regarding how best to address the challenge of communications tool sprawl,” she said.
Related Article: How to Develop an Internal Content Ecosystem
'It's the Economy, Stupid!'
While productivity and efficiency with app usage are key drivers in integrating platforms, the economy is forcing many companies to act.
With fully remote work quickly becoming a thing of the past, employers now face a unique work landscape that includes remote, hybrid and in-office structures, which has increased the need for solutions that facilitate and enhance collaboration, said Nucleus Research Manager Evelyn McMullen.
However, economic forecasts are gloomy globally, so organizations are looking to consolidate many high-cost elements of the digital workplace, including their technology costs.
As collaboration continues to be essential for organizations, the key is being more discerning when assessing what tools drive value. Point solutions are at risk of being lost in the fold and eventually retired, so unified platforms that cover a wide breadth of capabilities or standalone solutions that are easily integrated with existing business systems are best suited to survive this culling.