You may be hearing about Unified Communications, one of the technology industry’s latest catch-phrases. It’s quite possible that one of your competitors has already moved to this communications platform, and you may be considering it, yourself. To really understand whether or not this concept is going to help your business, let’s examine what the term means, what business purpose has driven its development, and what cost of ownership considerations are involved. Moving to this platform will involve complex technology choices, but the underlying concepts are clear and understandable.

Unified Communications (UC) is a technological architecture that enables us to have “transparent presence". For you to be truly transparent in your presence, your communication methods must be streamlined and free of device dependence. The beginnings of this concept can be traced to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology, and what was referred to as “Unified Messaging", where you could retrieve your phone messages from your e-mail. But, UC enables functionality far beyond messaging.

Phone calls, e-mail messages, Instant Messaging, video, Internet, and other content delivery methods traditionally require specific devices to work. For example, you need a telephone to make a phone call, and the person you are calling needs one too. The phone that you call is the one that they answer. However, in a UC environment, our goal is device independence.

When looking at the phone call example, on a UC platform, we would just think of the phone call simply as a communication, and it’s not limited to just being a phone call, it could be an Instant Message, or anything else, and the device that is used is whatever is most convenient. So, when we free up our dependence on specific devices, and consider our availability to others as our “presence", then we are able to communicate on a much higher level of efficiency, with greater ease of use, and at a reduced overall cost.

For the business, Unified Communications often translates into better customer service, increased competitive advantage, and reduced communication latency. Real-time collaboration can exist when previously, there was a lag. Service organizations, such as financial institutions, healthcare and insurance companies are the first to embrace and adopt the technologies that enable Unified Communications. Providing a universal presence to your customers enables opportunities for excellent service delivery and faster results.

On a well thought out and functioning UC platform, the communications problems often experienced with having a distributed workforce practically go away. Whether it is home-workers, road warriors or branch offices, the architecture provides for highly efficient work-flow, with all functioning together over a seamlessly inter-woven combination of methods and devices.

Adopting this concept at your business will undoubtedly require a technology investment. The underlying foundation to enable Unified Communications is primarily your computer network and the Internet. The devices that you use are highly dependent on your business purpose and personal choices, and some will be better than others for you. Workflow efficiency, customer turnaround times, energy use, and travel expenses are all good places to begin an evaluation of Unified Communications for your business.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

- Bill

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Bill Bowman
Senior Technology Advisor
Centrend, Inc.
508-347-9550 ext 135
bbowman @ centrend . com