What are Unified Communications?

Unified Communications refers to the way different sorts of communication tools within the digital workforce, interact, and collaborate. There are various communication channels available, here are just a few of the collaboration tools commonly in use:

  • Email
  • Telephony (fixed-line, mobile, VoIP-based phone system)
  • Audio / video conferencing
  • Instant Messaging
  • Status (as an example, consider your list of contacts on Facebook, and the relevant icons that show individual contacts to be online or away)
  • Social media (think Twitter, Facebook, What's App, Instagram, and so on…)

Some of these communication channels are of the “store-and-forward” type, in the sense that the information is delivered in one direction, and remains accessible (almost) indefinitely for the remote parts to view at their leisure; e-mail is the grand-daddy of this communication style. Others, however, are “real-time” and require rapid response (often interrupting other tasks); a phone call is the obvious largest contender in this category.

Each of these different communication solutions typically requires an “app” to access the information being exchanged. As the number of solutions needing attention increases, the harder it becomes to manage them all efficiently.

So What is UNIFIED Communications?

Unified Communications, often abbreviated to simply UC, is a generic hold-all term to describe the market’s efforts to integrate all the “apps” (and therefore the communication channels) to allow the user to have all this information easily accessible, irrespective of when or where it is accessed (home, work, in a car, on a train…), or on what device (laptop, tablet, smartphone…)

A Unified Communications solution effectively blurs the demarcation lines between the communication channels. For example, a user can receive a voicemail message and can choose to access it through email or any phone. The sender’s status can be seen through presence information, and if online a response can be sent immediately through text message or video call.

The objective of UC Solutions is to unify and streamline business communication, in order to improve the customer experience and allow employees to boost productivity.

To Summarize

The term Unified Communications does not describe a technology or even a group of technologies, but rather it defines the ongoing process of convergence that is happening in the market, bringing together vendors, technologies, applications, processes, and users – Unified Communications is the integration of all separate communications components into a homogeneous, efficient, productive user experience. Recap on the benefits:

  • Increase agent productivity
  • Improve business reputation
  • Reduce costs with a cloud-based system
  • Enhance user experience

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