Since the mid 2000’s, unified communications within organizations of all industries has been increasingly popular, mostly because of just how effective they can be. Companies that have embraced multiple forms of unified communications are simply more productive than their competitors that do not have or utilize collaboration solutions and strategies. What’s shocking is that despite the success stories of major organizations within various industries, less than 50% of organizations have unified strategy solutions in place and fewer than 34% don’t even have a plan for the future.
Realistically, you’re probably already using at least one form of unified communication within your organization. The unified communication plans aren’t just a single facet of communication though. The term unified communications is dedicated to a set of products, solutions, applications, or processes ensuring thorough collaborations among members of a company. Let’s take a look at some of the more popular pieces of unified communication.
Conferencing
Absurdly important to collaborative products within an organization is the ability to have a conversation among coworkers that may not be in the same location. Perhaps you need to speak with members of your team that are traveling or are permanently located in another town, state, or country. Both video and audio conferencing can be leveraged to improve your productivity, positively influencing your business continuity. Rather than waiting on emails or risk an potentially unfortunate misunderstanding, having a live conversation is a must when it comes to group work. No matter where team members are located.
Instant Messaging
Over the past few years, business IM solutions have really blossomed and taken over offices everywhere. Business instant messaging has allowed us to have immediate contact with coworkers without bothering nearby employees by having a phone conversation. Messaging also helps ensure your coworker will respond in a reasonable period of time, meaning you won’t have to wait for them to review their growing email inbox.
Mobility
Giving employees the ability to report in while they’re on the go has been invaluable. Employees can now collaborate by using their cell phone’s connection from anywhere in the world. If they need to get on the computer to remote in to work and do something, no problem. Just make your cell phone a hot spot and connect to it with the PC, no matter where you are! As long as you have signal, you’re connected with the office.
Collaboration Tools
Perhaps a slightly underrated piece of unified communication is the use of collaboration software tools. There are solutions available to us that will allow us to post power points, excel documents, videos, or other media for other members of our team to see and edit at their will. You can assign tasks to people of the group or leave comments. These software solutions come in all sorts of different packages, you just need to decide what is best for your situation.
These are just four of the many different pieces of unified communications. It’s best to get on board now. There is a good chance that some of your competitors have already figured out how to leverage a unified communication plan to be better than you at teamwork and collaboration, ultimately leading to improved productivity and business continuity.
Fidelus Technologies is a Professional and Managed Information Technology Services company focused on customer success and business efficiency . Our services provide seamless networking, data center, wireless, security and unified communications expertise for medium and enterprise sized businesses. We have a consultative life cycle approach that includes requirements gathering, assessments, solution design, planning, project management, engineering, adoption and evolution (training) services to fully support the IT needs of your organization.
If you’re looking for more information on how Fidelus can help with your organizations technology please contact us here.
