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Unified Communications Will Allow Your Business to Travel

Today’s smarter business capitalizes on advances in communication technology to optimize business processes. Good communication improves employee productivity. It means employees are more responsive to the needs of customers, partners, and colleagues. Great communication really can take your business to the next level.

What is Meant by Unified Communications?

No single communication tool delivers everything on its own. Unified communications is the key. Here, all communication tools using the TCP/IP network are integrated into one consistent user interface. This drives more efficient business, reducing overhead and increasing profits.

Communication tools can deliver in either real-time or non-real-time. VoIP telephony, video conferencing and desktop sharing are real-time tools, delivering instantaneous communication. Voicemail, Twitter, email, and text, however, are non-real-time tools. They can have a delay between send and receipt of perhaps hours or days. For these, the recipient accesses the message at their own convenience.

Unified communications allows users to send messages using one medium and have it received by another. For example, you might VoIP someone and leave a voicemail message that’s picked up later.  Or you might send an email that’s returned later from the recipient via a VoIP call.

The Unified Communications Web Portal or Dashboard

For optimized efficiency, it’s important to integrate unified communications into your business processes software. An end-user web portal or dashboard ensures a consistent user experience. A lot of data is accessible, including presence information.

At a glance, the user can see whether the colleague he wishes to communicate with, whether elsewhere in the office or remotely, is available. The amount of time this can save is astonishing.

Firstly, the sender can decide whether to engage in real-time or non-real-time. He can choose to video chat if the colleague is accepting calls. Or he can opt to send a non-real-time message, such as a text, which the recipient can access through his cell phone or PC.

Saving Time and Saving Money

It’s said that as many as 70% of business phone calls fail, with intended recipients uncontactable. Such human latency inefficiencies can result in anything from the loss of a few minutes to a failure to meet project deadlines.

Integration of unified communications slashes time wastage, resulting in cost savings and increased efficiencies. Unified communications can also reduce costs in other ways. Calls from mobile devices can be sent via the WLAN, instead of the cellular network, reducing service provider charges, for example.

Web Collaboration

It’s perhaps in the sphere of web collaboration where most cost savings are made. Unified communications shrinks the world. It allows remote communication with colleagues, customers, suppliers, and other business contacts.

Videos conferencing reduces the need for travel, together with the associate costs. It allows group and individual discussion, with the full range of visual signals. These group discussions can even be accessed remotely through mobile devices or desktop PCs from other offices.  Documents and other media can be shared between all devices at the click of a button. There’s no need for arduous updating and sending between users.

Trust Affinity to Bring Unified Communications to Your Office

The flexibility of Unified Communications is remarkable. It’s impact on collaboration is significant, leading to more efficient problem-solving and decision-making.  There’s no doubt that Unified Communications allows your business to travel further and faster. Talk to us about how you can have unified communications unifying your entire organization.