Why You Should Consider Unified Communications

Business communications is undergoing a rather dramatic evolution. Today it has expanded to a broader universe of 'messages' which may take the form of e-mails, video clips, faxes and more. These messages are becoming available from more locations using more types of devices-from desktop phones to the computers to mobile phones and PDAs expanding the fast growing world of unified business communications. Underlying this expansion is a unification of sorts: unified communications, a system that makes voicemails, e-mails, faxes and other types of message available for a single 'inbox' on a variety of devices, such as desk phone, cell phone, or PDA.
Two benefits of unified communication are:

• Return on investment (ROI)- investments include both deployment and training, when IT staff deploys a new communications tool, that technology is managed separately from all the others and requires users to become familiar with yet another process, ROI is therefore diminished by larger overhead and maintenance costs
• Productivity- not only does deploying siloed communications technologies threaten ROI but it can also hurt productivity, every company wants a quick return on the resources it invests in, and for those resources to boost productivity

Unified Communication (UC) solutions also reduce training costs, since employees only have to learn one system, once. Not surprisingly, UC also positively impacts productivity by providing a simpler, unified interface for employees to access frequently used communication services.

Finally, UC boosts productivity by tying together applications like mobility, presence and messaging. This means employees can be productive no matter where they're working and that customers can quickly and easily locate the right person to answer their questions.