These days, there are various means through which people can get in touch with a business. They might use the traditional method of calling, but there are also the options of email and SMS. Interactions with other firms, meanwhile, are possible via video conferencing and team messaging.
However, introducing more and more communication platforms for your company’s routine use could also risk them forming a tangled and complex web that leaves your workers wondering what they should use and when. Fortunately, it is possible to integrate all of these mediums into one.
What does ‘unified communications’ mean?
Gone are the days when a business would need to pick up physical handsets to answer a call, only to then have to turn to a completely different machine to respond to faxes or emails. Today, a business phone system lets you weave all of these communication methods and more into just one platform.
This arrangement can pay dividends for your workplace efficiency, with the entire system being hosted on the cloud for access from multiple channels and devices, as Business News Daily explains. This means that even as particular corporate responsibilities are handed over between workers and devices, the transition can remain a seamless one without the major potential to interrupt productivity.
What’s the technology behind unified communications?
Unified communications (UC) can work like magic in your workplace, but what’s the technology powering it all under the hood? In short: VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and the cloud.
Before either, businesses relied on what we now call ‘traditional’ phone systems that used private branch exchange systems and were maintained on-site. However, all of the communications tools of a UC system use the Internet, rather than traditional phone lines, to send and receive data.
As a result, to implement a UC system, you only need an Internet connection and the hardware to use it for UC: a computer or IP phone. The result is a win-win situation that streamlines costs while bulking out the range and power of features available.
How could you augment a UC system?
Key to the beauty of a UC system would be your ability to tweak and customise it as your corporate requirements dictate. Small Business Trends cites one example of how UC can foster mobility: a single phone number can be assigned to multiple devices and locations, allowing a call to follow its intended recipient without having to be disconnected and then reconnected in a convoluted fashion.
However, so deep is the treasure trove of UC, that you could too easily overlook some of its more obscure – but potentially imminently useful – strands of functionality. Consider, for example, how a professional switchboard could take calls with your company name and then pass those calls to you.
This is possible with virtual offices that are available to book from BE Offices. If your business is still based at your home, then paying for one of these offices would also give you a professional-looking business address without the added cost of renting physical space each month.
