Almost every business owner is aware of the impact artificial intelligence is having on communication and collaboration, but what about the potential for AI in UC management?
Artificial Intelligence isn’t just a great tool for automating tasks and streamlining meetings; it can also help reduce the friction involved in managing a range of complex UC services, licenses, vendors, and solutions. AI might not be ready to automate the complete UC lifecycle yet, or handle comprehensive technology overhauls, but it can transform how teams tackle day-to-day tasks.
From monitoring UC systems in real time to enabling proactive issue-resolution strategies and even automating complex tasks like onboarding and offboarding, AI in UC management is saving companies time, money, and headaches.
The Impact of AI in UC Management
Consistent, reliable communication and collaboration systems are crucial for any business, but as companies continue to implement a wider range of software solutions, hardware, and systems, managing everything is becoming increasingly complex. Every manual step, from provisioning users to troubleshooting issues and planning configurations across platforms, creates friction.
AI in UC management and powerful automation tools solve a host of problems. They don’t just help companies put more processes on “autopilot;” they can also reduce errors, improve efficiency, cut costs, and even provide teams with deeper, more valuable insights.
AI-Powered Automation: Saving Time and Resources
Manual provisioning and configuration tasks are serious pain points for companies adopting UC systems, particularly when they combine multiple platforms or apps. That’s why many companies are already turning to UCSM (UC service management) platforms to connect the dots.
Most of the top UCSM vendors offer access to automated solutions that automate onboarding and offboarding employees, assigning licenses, renewing subscriptions, and more. According to Kurmi, some companies even reduce provisioning times by around 24.8 percent.
With AI in UC management, the potential of automation goes even further. For instance, AI tools can reference specific role-based policies, immediately assigning solutions to employees based on their needs. They can adjust UC settings in real time based on current business needs, alert business leaders to misconfigured networks, and even suggest ways to personalize solutions for each user. This gets employees up and running faster.
However, it also means that employees get better experiences from the systems they’re working with, improving engagement and satisfaction. Plus, since AI tools can monitor usage rates for licenses and tools, they can offer real-time insights into where companies can cut costs, consolidate apps, or renegotiate contracts with vendors to save money.
Proactive Problem-Solving with AI in UC Management
For years, UC management has revolved around “reactive” processes. Employees report an issue after it has disrupted their workflows, and the IT team tries to fix it. This leads to extensive (and expensive) downtime for many teams.
AI enables proactive UC management strategies. Intelligent monitoring tools built into UCSM systems can sift through call records, meeting transcripts, and usage logs in real time to identify trends and problems before employees notice them.
As soon as these systems detect anomalies, like increased dropped calls or login failures, they can issue real-time alerts to IT, so they can start fixing problems faster. Some cutting-edge UCSM platforms even provide access to solutions that can implement fixes automatically, adjusting network settings or features to counteract common problems.
This proactive approach means that companies can more effectively counteract problems before they negatively impact team performance, engagement, or even customer experience. Some AI solutions can also highlight opportunities to optimize for business leaders, showing them where they need to upgrade bandwidth or access new capabilities.
AI Self-Healing Capabilities (Reducing Downtime)
Downtime is a major problem for companies. A single network outage can cost more than $6,000 in lost productivity every minute. No matter how effective an IT team is at troubleshooting and fixing issues, every problem takes time to solve. With AI in UC Management, companies can hand some of the work over to intelligent systems.
Self-healing systems can automatically apply corrective actions based on irregular behaviors or issues. The system intervenes the moment a usage pattern deviates significantly from the norm or an unexpected configuration change threatens service quality.
Some platforms can reroute traffic, increase bandwidth allocation to high-congestion areas, or restart a failing service, all in real time. While AI can’t automatically resolve every issue yet, many vendors are experimenting with new ways to make “everyday” communication problems a thing of the past.
In the future, AI solutions could even implement self-healing strategies to help businesses comply with industry regulations or avoid security issues, bridging the gap between UC service management and overall business governance.
AI Diagnostics for Valuable Insights
Beyond standard benefits like automating tasks, tracking, and fixing issues, AI in UC management also unlocks access to new, valuable insights. UC systems generate tons of raw information that can help businesses make intelligent growth decisions.
AI solutions can scrutinize interactions in real time and use sentiment analysis to introduce ways companies can improve customer or employee experiences. They can highlight which systems, licenses, or applications get the most use so businesses know where to invest their budget to empower their team.
AI technologies can even suggest new “automation” opportunities, highlighting bottlenecks in common tasks that companies can quickly fix with a custom workflow. All of this leads to better experiences (for employees and customers), greater cost savings, and improved revenue potential.
What’s Next for AI in UC Management?
Just as the potential of AI in Unified Communications and collaboration apps is evolving, the opportunities for AI in UC management are growing too. The rise of agentic AI could lead to UCSM platforms that include agents capable of handling multi-stage tasks. For instance, an agent could deal with everything from onboarding and provisioning to gathering employee feedback, updating license requirements, and configuring UC platforms.
Companies like VOSS are already experimenting with machine learning in UCSM platforms to improve call quality. These tools can suppress background noise, reduce jitter, and instantly improve clarity without human input. The existing AI features in UCSM tools will evolve, too.
More advanced AI systems will be able to learn over time and automate more tasks, from rolling back updates when they cause performance dips to rewriting configuration scripts on the fly. They’ll be able to diagnose and repair a wider range of complex problems, optimizing entire network segments or spinning up backup servers in seconds.
We may even see AI deliver more personalized experiences to individual users, optimising everyone’s technology stack for their job role and communication style.
The Future of AI in UC Management
Effectively managing UC ecosystems isn’t easy, particularly as companies continue to transform and experiment with new vendors and tools. UCSM solutions can already reduce some of the complexity, but when these tools are paired with AI and advanced automation capabilities, the opportunities are endless.
The companies that embrace AI in UC management now will have the simplest, most cost-effective, and agile journey into the next era of communication and collaboration.
Ready to discover the true potential of UC service management? Check out our complete UCSM guide here, or find out how to choose the best vendor in this UCSM comparison guide.
This post originally appeared on Service Management - Enterprise - Channel News - UC Today.