Businesses love nothing better than to change the way they operate if they end up seeing tangible benefits. Thanks to the ever-innovative tech industry, unified communications technology presents serious levels of improvement to revenue streams, employee productivity, and customer care, among other things.
However, many businesses have failed to adopt the technology as they’re not precisely sure what is unified communications. This can make it hard to identify any value that’s being missed out on, as everything is still relatively new and most businesses already have a “workable” system in place.
To give you a hand in making an informed decision about unified communications solutions, we’ve compiled some useful information and 4 benefits for you to take a look at. Alternatively, you can head to our Leadership page to find more of our blogs and articles.
Unified communications in a nutshell
If you currently think of unified communications as a predominantly telephony based subject, clear that out of your mind completely. It’s best to think of unified communications solutions as an all-in-one system for a range of tools, such as phones and voicemail, video messaging and conferencing, instant messaging, emails, faxes, and more.
In terms of streamlining a business, it makes sense to have all of these valuable utilities fall under one “unified” umbrella. However, it’s important to note that there are some providers out there that simply won’t cater to the exact needs of your business. But, by picking the right system, you’ll see a predictable improvement in many areas of your business.
What are the uses and benefits for businesses?
Due to the expansive nature of larger, multi-site business, there’s a general requirement across most industries for unified communications solutions. However, as workplaces have evolved, developing trends have created a need for smaller and medium-size businesses to implement unified communications systems of their own.
Two of the more recent trends driving this change include: the growing need for businesses to have seamless communication channels between their onsite and remote employees, and the requirement for communications tools to work hand-in-hand with a company’s BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy. However, it’s fair to say that there are many other reasons for an uptick in unified communications adoption and your company may have your own specific objectives.
In terms of benefits, there are many factors governing what will be had, but there are some generally accepted benefits that every company should expect to reap, including:
Reductions in costs
Having the ability to consolidate all of your communication avenues into a single system is going to massively reduce your operating costs. But, why exactly? Well, firstly, the financial upkeep for individual software applications and hardware does mount up over time.
But, more importantly, video conferencing has the ability to dramatically reduce the costs associated with both internal and external meetings and conference calls. For example, travel costs and employee downtime can be lessened as much as possible.
Increased employee productivity
Finding the key to increasing employee productivity is somewhat of a holy grail for most businesses. Thankfully, unified communications networks give employees the ability to communicate with their colleagues as and when they need to.
Emails, for example, are notorious for wasting time and adding to already large workloads. But, with the right system in place, employees can quickly send instant messages between one another and switch to video chat in order to clarify information quickly.
Superior customer service
Treating customers right by way of an excellent service offers an immeasurable amount of benefit to companies, both directly and indirectly. More often than not, customers will feel mistreated if they phone a company and do not get the help they require. With unified communications solutions, a customer care agent can quickly tend to individual queries by routing incoming calls to specific employees or departments.
Communication is simple to manage
Your IT department probably already has a huge amount to deal with and a disjointed communications network is only going to add to the workload. With unified communications, specific applications can be developed for company networks that secure company data and make bandwidth monitoring/management far easier to handle.
As mentioned before, the BYOD policies that many companies are moving towards can make the security and management aspects of IT harder to deal with. However, a unified system mitigates this by pushing all users into the same, secure company communications network.
Are you still unsure exactly what is unified communications? If so, we’re here to help. Simply get in touch with a member of our team to learn more about how your company can make the switch to a unified communications system and start to see some of the benefits we’ve listed here.
