Employees are an enterprise’s biggest asset, and having tools and strategies in place for effective collaboration is critical for business growth. This doesn’t change whether teams work remotely or have returned primarily to the office. They need a platform that enables them to work efficiently, and communicate with colleagues, customers or partners wherever they are.
Enterprises that deliver such a people-first collaboration platform will find that it drives productivity and business-wide success. Speed and agility improve, and ideas spread faster, when employees can communicate effectively and securely. Conversely, poor, confusing or unreliable collaboration tools create misunderstandings, waste time and hamper productivity.
A 2024 report by Morning Consult for Zoom found that inefficient collaboration cost organisations an estimated $16,491 (£7,295) a year per manager, or up to £874,000 annually for a business with 1,000 employees.
Unified communications (UC) tech has become the glue holding geographically disparate teams together, and AI is having an impact too, as more organisations leverage AI agents to accelerate and automate communications tasks from within their collaboration platforms. A robust, performant platform enables smoother collaboration and knowledge sharing. It enhances employee experience and aids retention. Poor, unreliable and unsecure connectivity hampers both everyday communications and the potential effectiveness of generative and agentic AI tools.
A resilient, high-performance platform
Such advanced functionality requires a UC platform that can handle these data- and bandwidth-intensive workloads. Luis S. Martínez Arnal, principal consultant at Colt, says: “Unified communications is a relevant topic both for enterprises and individuals, and it’s heavily dependent on the network all the data is going through.” An optimised, secure and resilient network infrastructure is now a key requirement, minimising latency and maximising throughput. “Being able to provide redundancy and resilience is absolutely essential while at the same time not impacting the quality of the user experience,” he adds.
The easiest and most cost-effective way to make this platform a reality is to work with a partner with a robust, secure, high-performance core network already in place, combining a high-bandwidth core with local reach. And while cloud-based infrastructure offers flexibility and cost efficiencies, some enterprises may require more of a hybrid approach. Here they run core components of their UC platform in the cloud, but have redundant alternatives in an edge location, ready for use in the event of an outage.
A software-defined infrastructure harnessing AI can also help, ensuring users get a smooth experience without downtime or disruption. Telecoms providers and enterprise customers are building digital twins of their UC network, so that they can model what happens if components fail or demand spikes suddenly. Bringing AI into the process can not only accelerate testing and modelling but enable UC networks to be managed in a more predictive way, with automated self-optimisation and fault mitigation. AI can even enable infrastructures to be built and run more sustainably, aiding providers in identifying opportunities to use more efficient hardware or select the most efficient resources for the task at hand. “There are plenty of possibilities,” notes Martínez Arnal, “ and some of them are already being explored.”
Crucially, working with the right partner can help enterprises develop a collaboration strategy focused on how they work today – and how that might evolve over the long term. Colt combines high-performance network infrastructure with deep expertise in UC and digital transformation. Their experts can help businesses assess their needs and build a resilient collaboration platform; one that empowers employees, sustains momentum on complex projects and builds stronger relationships, both internally and with customers and partners.
With the right tools and foundations in place, collaboration can be more than just a process. It becomes a competitive advantage.
Discover how Colt’s deep expertise in unified communications and high-performance networking can power seamless collaboration across your business: colt.net/solutions