Unified Communications: Just another Buzzword or Business Revolution?

June 28, 2016 Off By David

Apart from sounding like a secret military organisation from an American disaster movie that both starts and then has to fix the monster-destroying-New-York thing, unified communications also sounds like a massively jargon-esque business buzzword… and it kind of is. But don’t let that distract you from what it actually stands for and how it might just revolutionise your business.

What is it?

It really is what it says on the tin; it unifies your communications… simple, huh? In a nut shell it gathers together your instant messaging, emails, phones, voice conferencing, desktop sharing, voicemails, SMS, faxes and the tech-y things that even I don’t understand fully. You may be thinking that if you already have all of these things why would you need a software (or collection of software) that monitor all of them? There are other perks as well. Read on for more information…

How it Can Help Your Business?

For starters, unified communications is obviously going to make your communication processes much more streamlined due to it being able to hold everything under one banner, so to speak. How else does it help?

  • Because it opens up potentially new avenues of communications, UC can help to cut travel costs and time due to the ease at which you can hold meetings from anywhere without having to travel halfway around the country … or the planet.
  • You can get sign up for analytic support from companies like codesoftware.net which will be able to monitor your unified communication usage and see where things can be improved. This means that you can find out if your employees are wasting the businesses time, and, if so, who is doing it. This allows you to make changes which will – to get back to the title – revolutionise your business by allowing you to make sure that everyone is working at the optimum level.
  • It will allow you to monitor the quality of the calls and other network elements, which again, will allow you to fine-tune the business.
  • To reiterate what all the three above points mean, in a language that you entrepreneurs and CEOs can understand: by adopting unified communications, you will save money; simple as that. You will also be able to provide your customers with a much better quality of service.

What are the Potential Risks?

Luckily, with these types of software and business practices, the gains far outweigh the risks, but I need to give you all the facts before you can make a decision on whether or not unified communications is for you. There’s only one risk you need to be thinking about and that’s the problems that come from monitoring your staff to find weak links. They will understand the need, but they won’t be happy about it. If you have a staff that on the whole do the bear minimum, then fine, but if your staff spends an hour on the phone for a personal matter but then also does an hour’s overtime every day, then you need to cut them some slack. It’s important that you’re monitoring your staff, but just let them know that there is great leeway and that they shouldn’t be looking over their shoulder for Big Brother to come a-knocking at any moment.