I recently had a fascinating discussion with a group of Chief Information Officers (CIOs), the guys who advise on technology in organisations, on the topic of Unified Communication.
Their enthusiasm to adopt this new communication trend seems to border on fanaticism as they explained the benefits of unified communication to me, and how they are having challenges to convince their management to move to this next big thing in business communication.
Communication is an integral part of the business process, which enables the smooth flow of transactions from one stakeholder to another.
It allows businesses to deliver information whenever and wherever it is needed.
Hence, it is important that communication lines remain open and accessible to all concerned users in a particular business group to ensure efficiency of operations.
It is therefore no surprise that unified communications —touted as the second coming of business communication tools, taking after PBX (Private Branch Exchange) carriers— has seen greater adoption among companies over the years in developed countries.
Seamlessly integrating different communication channels in a single pipeline has produced significant effects on business productivity and operational costs.
In a 2008 survey conducted by Vanson Bourne, a specialist research-based technology marketing consultancy, as commissioned by IT services provider Dimension Data, it was found that on average, companies save 10 per cent of communication costs using unified communications solutions, causing a 21 per cent improvement in customer satisfaction.
I think of all the talk about the benefits of unified communication, it’s the ability to integrate different pieces of communication systems and technologies that makes it attractive to most companies.
This is the integration of real-time communication services such as instant messaging (chat), presence information, telephony (including IP telephony), video conferencing, call control and speech recognition with non-real-time communication services such as unified messaging (integrated voicemail, e-mail, SMS and fax).
But there is some level of investment that firms have to make to move and take full advantage of UC.
Probably the first is to move form the current systems and move the entire communication systems into an IP Telephony system and this is where a lot of organisations get stuck.
But looking at the benefits that come with UC, I think organisations should listen to their CIOs and consider making that investment and reap the benefits of UC – you wont regret it.
