Over the past year, many organizations scrambled to roll out new collaboration technologies and end-user devices to enable their employees to remain productive while they worked remotely. These efforts were necessary, and they bridged a gap to keep businesses up and running during an unprecedented period. However, they often resulted in one-size-fits-all solutions that did not adequately account for the differences in how business units and individual employees use collaboration tools.

As we head into the “next normal” — a period when many people will return to offices even as hybrid and flexible work schedules remain common — it will be important to optimize collaboration environments. One way to do this is by understanding and developing end-user personas.

2020 is over. And while it was an unprecedented year, the As a Service companies like Five9 helped make the widespread adoption of remote work a reality. For more As a Service information, check out my other blog series.

It takes a catastrophic event to stress test a system. Last year was just that event, as we saw massive amounts of internet traffic, cloud services up and down and sometimes degraded. Through it all, Five9 continued to function and moved forward with mergers and acquisitions.

We still don’t know when or how the COVID-19 pandemic will end, but one thing seems certain: The workplace is unlikely to ever look the same.

While it has become clear that most businesses will maintain physical office spaces, the majority of employers say they will give their employees some choice over where they want to work once the pandemic is over. The likely result? A hybrid workforce made up of employees who split their time between home and the office, depending on their roles and their to-do lists on any given workday.

Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) platforms are uniquely suited to support such an arrangement, offering the following benefits:

The COVID-19 pandemic has been called the world’s largest forced proof of concept for collaboration technologies. Last spring, organizations across industries scrambled to deploy collaboration suites and get workers up and running from their homes. Already, these technologies are beginning to transform company cultures and workflows.

Many frontline healthcare workers, of course, have bravely donned their personal protective equipment and stayed in the field to deliver care. But collaboration technologies have revolutionized the work of a large number of clinicians and other healthcare workers, and we expect these solutions to have a lasting impact.

Here are five predictions we feel confident making about the future of collaboration in healthcare:

This past year has been one of the busiest of my professional life.

In previous years, leaders at some organizations that purchased new collaboration tools thought they couldn’t afford to include adoption services as well. But now, with employees largely working from home, many organizations are discovering that they can’t afford not to invest in an initiative that helps users leverage new solutions in ways that will enable them to overcome fragmented communications and work together effectively — no matter where in the world they happen to be.

Here’s why 2020 was the year when many business and IT leaders discovered just how essential adoption services are — and why these services will continue to be in demand in 2021 and beyond.

Not surprisingly, many organizations in 2020 were concerned about maintaining communication between their team members and customers (and continue to be). I’ve had to change how I interact with my customers entirely and am now finding great value in using Cisco’s Webex Desk Pro to work with them. Discover how CDW services and solutions can…