Each week a staggering 56% – that’s over half – of employees are unable to contact co-workers on their first attempt, according to findings from Sage Research. The question is: what damage are those missed or delayed conversations doing to your business?
This is where unified communications can help. It lets you integrate all your applications including telephone, Instant Messaging (IM), email, text, web and video conferencing on a single platform. Using this platform, your staff can then contact anyone else in the business from a centralised desktop contacts list and choose the best communications channel on which to reach them.
The basis of unified communications is a single converged network that carries voice and data. This means you can benefit from Voice over IP (VoIP), web conferencing, voicemail, unified messaging and IM, with some solutions allowing you to use Microsoft Outlook as your main platform.
The end of trading voicemails?
One of the key technologies, Presence, allows your team to view the status of each staff member – who’s available, and the best way to contact them. ‘I might be in a meeting and find I have four voicemails and one call that comes up as private,’ explains Ann Wood, BT General Manager for Networked IT. ‘Presence will display “Anne is on the phone now” and indicate as soon as I’m available. It puts people in control so they’re not wasting time.’ The value of knowing when people are available and how to reach them is key in cutting out the delay and damage to business processes.
Tailored to your business need
Wood says unified communications can be taken up according to requirements. ‘It’s simply about looking at what’s there and not chucking everything in the bin and starting again.’ Unified communications brings your business one network, one application and one web portal running all communications. It allows you to coordinate multiple communication channels, adding value to existing communication servers.
‘For a lot of customers trialling it now, unified communications gives them some order to their communication. It saves money too,’ Wood points out. For example, IM is personal and instant and it can save you making a mobile phone call. Online collaboration, which gives unified communications users a shared workspace, can save costs and travel, and increase productivity as people work from home.
‘Unified communications applications enable smarter communication,’ says a spokesperson for Sage Research. ‘Employees can consult the best method for reaching co-workers before initiating contact, thereby improving efficiency in their interactions with others.’ Put simply, unified communications can immediately save your business time and money as employees are more productive and communicate faster and more effectively. So, maybe it’s time you thought about keeping your business talking.
Developing the right solution for your business
The two worlds of telephony and business applications are colliding at speed, with indications of the merge including the raft of products now available to knit together the two sides: online team collaboration tools; dual handsets that can access a single set of contacts and diaries; and, of course, video and Voice over IP.
These technologies, which save costs and bring teams closer together, rely on the sort of high-availability networks for which BT is renowned. And at the root of BT’s unified communication offerings is the 21st Century Network, a core networking infrastructure based on Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology.
One easy number
Long-standing partnerships with Cisco, Nortel and Microsoft have contributed to the simplicity of the unified communications package. Through its partnership with Cisco, BT delivers its convergence platform, IP Converge, which supports unified communications applications. With IP Converge you can use one phone number, one phone – a Nokia Dual Mode handset, and one messaging system, with access from anywhere via Wi-Fi or broadband.
IP Converge can also support your BlackBerry or other PDA devices, and allows you to make cheaper phone or video calls over a Virtual Private Network (VPN). The package is highly scalable, and ideal for supporting geographically dispersed workforces, connecting them into the same IP VPN at home and abroad. According to analysts Sage Research, unified communications solutions such as IP Converge can save 55 minutes per day for traveling employees.
Ready for the future
BT’s partnership with Nortel and Microsoft also allows businesses to bring their telephony and communications system up-to-date. By converging your network onto BT and Nortel’s unified communications platform, and using the latest software technology from Microsoft, you will benefit from a solution that is futureproof. Users will also enjoy the familiarity of Microsoft Office to communicate more effectively using IM, email, conferencing, Presence and collaboration tools from their PCs and mobiles.
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