Why Unified Comms is so hard to achieve [Infographic]

Communication can make or break a business. You've recognized this otherwise you wouldn't be looking for our messaging apps infographic. 

Without the right communication and collaboration strategy in place, you don't have a cohesive workforce.

Evolution in the digital world is helping modern businesses eliminate silos in the workplace with more efficient real-time communications.

With tools like Google Chat, Microsoft Teams, and Slack, companies connect and collaborate in real time and accelerate business results.

More Collaboration Tools = More Friction?

The disconnected nature of this enterprise collaboration vendor environment means that businesses are now struggling to unlock the real power of "unified communication."

The average company today now maintains 3 or more chat apps 429.

If a UC interoperability strategy is not carefully put into place, this hybrid vendor environment can lead to more friction in workflow and result in siloed communication.

For example, if your company primarily uses Google Chat or Microsoft Teams, but engineering departments still use Slack, will everyone need to monitor both apps? Will someone who doesn’t use Slack have to resort to emailing an engineer?

What's Causing the Siloed Workplace?

In any workplace, employees will naturally prefer to use the apps most familiar to them.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of options.

The average enterprise accesses over 210 collaboration tools and 76 file-sharing tools.

Reports suggest that the larger a company is, the more apps they're likely to use, with 91% of business use at least 2 tools each day.

When it comes to real-time messaging, businesses have more choice than ever. 75% of teams use group messaging apps regularly and collaboration tool usage is up to 271%.

This is an increase of 19.4% from 2017. It's no surprise when you look at the sheer number of tools on the market. According to one report, 32.9% of companies use Microsoft Teams, 21.1% use Webex and 14.5% use Slack.

Winning the Internal Messaging War; Connecting the Apps

Ultimately, today's employees expect their IT managers to set them up with the tools they need for success. 66% of workers say that connected work tools are critical to their productivity levels.

The problem for many businesses isn't that their employees want to use different tools in their digital workflow.

It's that none of these tools seem to mesh together effectively. The services designed to simplify communication are often making it harder to keep data flowing in the same connected stream.

What’s worse?

When employees can’t rely on their tools at work to get things done, they’ll seek out other options. 

In fact, 85% of working millennials turn to non-approved apps like Instagram, Facebook Messenger, SMS, & Snapchat. This leads to compliance and security issues as a result of Shadow Messaging.

It's easy to see why 16% of time each week is spent searching for information across dispersed environments.

Unfortunately, trying to implement a "one-size-fits-all" enterprise chat app doesn't work. IT and UC managers are left wondering how to bridge the gap between users on apps like Google Chat, Slack, Zoom, Webex Teams & Microsoft Teams.

Messaging Interoperability is the Answer

If today's companies are ever going to discover the true potential of enterprise unified communications, they need to eliminate the issue of messaging app fragmentation.

Around 65% of companies say they're turning to the cloud to further connect various SaaS apps, and 13% of businesses are experimenting with APIs.

The good news is that there is a more straightforward solution.

With Mio, companies can make Google Chat, Slack, and Microsoft Teams interoperable, finally bridging the gap between their siloed groups.

With Mio, your Microsoft Teams users don’t need to change platforms and will still be able to chat with colleagues on Google Chat, and vice versa.

Mio is simple to set up:

• Connect all the chat apps your teams use by creating your Mio Hub
• Import all users and channels at once, or select them one by one
• Team members in your Mio Hub can immediately chat in DMs or groups with members on other platforms
• File sharing, threaded messages, reactions, and the ability to edit and delete messages are all supported with Mio
• New conversations will be auto-synced in the primary chat platform each employee prefers to use

To find out more about Mio’s interoperability solution for Google Chat to Microsoft Teams or Google Chat to Slack, Learn more at m.io.