Unified Communications – What is It?
“Unified Communications integrates real-time and non-real-time communications with business processes and requirements based on presence capabilities, presenting a consistent unified user-interface and user experience across multiple devices and media types.”
– Blaire Pleasant, President of UC Strategies.com
Essentially, the goal of Unified Communications (UC) is to increase revenue, decrease costs and improve customer service. It is important to note that UC is not a single product but a whole solution made up of a variety of communication tools. Through UC, all communications stems from a single platform that provides contact capabilities that extend beyond the phone, boosting business productivity and efficiency. UC dramatically cuts down total communication costs since it is provided by a single source. It allows easy mobility for users who work from home or on the go and can be pipelined to and from a single phone number.
UC is also a powerful tool for client relationship and management – able to integrate with any CRM, allowing users to seamlessly escalate an inbound call from chat, to call to video conference. UC makes any user accessible so long as they have a phone or device handy, helping to ensure no downtime.
Presence is the cornerstone of a UC solution – and has been called, “the dial tone of the future.” Presence enables users or software applications to determine whether someone is available to communicate – either by telephone, instant message or even mobile phone. Streamlining communications and reducing “telephone tag.”
The more advanced presence tools can find a person based on role, skill or knowledge and can also present differing “presence” indications to different audiences available to a team or client, but busy to others simple and efficient.
UC Benefits Include:
- Cutting down time spent searching for information and people.
- Ability to seamlessly multi-task between tools and devices.
- Switch from chat to voice calls to web conferencing within the same session.
- Elimination of lag time and quick response ability to customers and sales revenue.
- Real-time systems getting immediate processing and response after input. Examples are conferencing, call screening, instant messaging, paging etc.
- Transactions made online, such as e-commerce, applications and online banking.
With all the perks UC has to offer, users will have a business that’s always ‘on’ and able to respond in an instant from anywhere and anytime. Thus promoting strong team collaboration, client relationships and a reliable company.
For more information visit: www.UniVoIP.com
