Question: What is Unified Communications?
Common Asked Question
Communication has always been an important part of any business’ success, but over the years how we communicate with one another has evolved tremendously. Gone are the days where “communication” simply meant making and receiving phone calls. The Internet brought with it emails, instant messages, video chats and more – all of which are leveraged in a professional capacity daily.
But sadly, traditional business phone systems have failed to respond in kind. They still put the focus on those calls, leaving everything else to fall by the wayside – if it’s even offered at all.
Thankfully, unified communications (or UC for short) has gained popularity over the last decade by filling in a lot of the gaps that those “old school” phone systems leave behind. As the term suggests, it’s a concept that describes the integration of enterprise communication services into a single platform, all of which are available to employees from anywhere, at any time.
But unified communication is not a single product – instead, it’s many. But because all of them are designed to work together, they provide a consistent and enjoyable user experience across both many devices and media types, all at the exact same time. This also creates an enormous number of advantages for any business, all of which are more than worth a closer look.
The Core Components of a Unified Communications System
One of the major benefits of this type of business phone system is that it is inherently flexible. Because there are so many different types of technology at play and things can be heavily customized to account for the needs of the end users, even the term “unified communications” itself can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. There really is no “one size fits all” solution, nor should there be as no two businesses are created in quite the same way.
Having said that, there are common components that most business phone systems share. These include functions like:
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- Telephone service. This is very similar to a traditional phone service in that employees are free to make and receive calls at will. Most UC providers offer both a local and toll free number to their users.
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- Conference calling. All the best business phone system providers also give their users the ability to host their own conference calls via something called a conference bridge. The number of people who can be on a single call at one time will obviously vary depending on the provider, so you need to make sure that you choose a package that can meet your needs. Some allow as few as five or 10 people, while others have an infrastructure that can support hundreds of simultaneous users.
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- Video and web conferencing. In conjunction with a computer that has a camera and microphone, this allows employees to host video meetings whenever they want. Some providers offer additional features like screen sharing, which can be ideal for situations where everyone needs to see the same document during a meeting or if everyone is collaborating on a project at once. Features like this have become particularly important over the last few months, when more people are working remotely than ever.
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- Instant messaging capabilities. While free instant messaging services have existed for decades, most unified communications providers offer business-centric services to organizations so that their employees can quickly communicate with one another via text. Think of it as being similar to a service like Google Hangouts, but with a business focus and that only your employees can use.
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- Text messaging. Where instant messaging exists entirely on a computer, text messaging is also commonly offered by UC providers so that employees can send SMS text messages to one another from their business lines. This is especially helpful since it lets employees send text messages to customers, too, all without having to use their personal telephone numbers.
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- Faxing. Rather than forcing you to go out and invest in a standalone fax machine, many unified communication systems also allow you to send faxes over the Internet. All you need is the recipient’s email or fax machine number and you can send information in seconds, directly from the platform.
With additional features like these, it’s clear that unified communications offers raw functionality that a “traditional” business phone system simply cannot match. But the key thing to understand here is that the technology is more than just the sum of its parts. All of these elements come together to form something that allows people to not only be productive from any computer or device with an active Internet connection, but they can do so on their own terms as well.
The Powerful Advantages of Unified Communications
If two employees are collaborating on a project with one another, they don’t necessarily have the time to be on the phone to ask simple questions all day long. But thanks to unified communications, they don’t have to – they can send instant messages or text messages to get the insight they need. Or if they do want to make those calls they can do that, too – the choice is finally theirs to make because they have more options than ever before.
If a department leader needs to have a meeting with the 15 people working under him, he doesn’t necessarily need to call everyone into the office when he can hold that same meeting via web conferencing. You don’t have to force a client to drive to your location (or you drive to theirs) when you can give them the updates they want via a conference call.
But more than that, all of these features are available from anywhere, at any time, no exceptions. Employees can be just as productive in the comfort of their own homes as they can be in the office. They can still participate in projects and collaborate with one another, even if they’re halfway around the world on vacation at the time. They don’t have to worry about missing an important call on their business phone just because they’ve gone home for the weekend because every phone becomes their business phone by default.
For many organizations, the major advantage that unified communications brings with it is right there in the name – “unified.” Even if an organization offered a lot of these services in the past, they were probably provided through a myriad of different vendors. One company many have provided the VoIP phone system, while another was responsible for teleconferencing. A third was responsible for video calling, and so on and so forth. Not only did this mean many different contracts and monthly bills to contend with, but it also made it difficult to figure out who you were supposed to call if something went wrong.
Unified communications systems, on the other hand, tie absolutely everything together into one simple-yet-sophisticated platform. When everything is offered by the same vendor, it’s all integrated and managed in a way that makes sure the various components are always able to work together.
This, of course, creates the most important benefit of all: a situation where you and your employees can stop worrying so much about your technology and can instead use it to do better and higher quality work for your own customers on a daily basis.
