Integrating your communicationsThink of all the methods of communication you use as a business. Not only are there lots of them (email, phone, fax, Instant Messaging, VoIP, etc.), but you want them to work to best effect. That means allowing you and your staff to be contacted in the right way at the right time, in the most practical way for the message being sent. What’s the point of integrated communications?According to Microsoft’s Mark Deakin, spoken, written or visual communications can - and are- all being helped by technology - but up until now that technology hasn’t been sufficiently linked together. He says: “Whenever you email, phone, instant message, fax or try and communicate with someone, you tend to find the technology you use is disconnected. “For me to escalate an email to a call, for example, requires me to manually type in your number on the phone. Then, seven out of ten phone calls go to voicemail because people don’t know if the other person is available.” “With unified communications technologies, I can see someone is available to speak to and call them by clicking on the ‘call’ button, and I know they’ll be there. The key conceptsLet’s revisit the above example. There are two essential concepts here: | • | “Presence”. Presence, just like “being in a room” means availability. You’ve already used presence technologies if you use Instant Messenger. The little green icon which shows that someone is online and available to talk is central to what integrated messaging is about. Neither emails nor ordinary phone calls use presence- and that’s why you end up talking to a voicemail so often. With presence icons, you know when someone is free to talk with you (or any number of other options, like “Away, Offline, Be Right Back etc.) | | • | “Trickledown”. To really make integrated messaging work, different systems are starting to work together, so that you always get the message in the most convenient way for you. Voicemail is a form of trickledown: if I am unable to speak to you when you call, the next option is voicemail. Innovative services in Outlook 2007, for example, then convert voicemails into text messages or emails, effectively allowing me to take phone messages as emails. It’s all about giving me my communications in the most effective way. |
Technology to stop technology getting in the wayPutting together presence technologies and trickledown technologies creates a very helpful environment for doing business. Mark continues: “This helps us to communicate using exciting new technologies - without those technologies getting in the way! When I click on someone’s name in an Instant Message conversation, and immediately open up a VoIP call to them, I simply don’t have to remember their phone number.” So why should a small but growing business need these ‘bells and whistles’? Mark says: “These software solutions allow small business to communicate and respond to customers as effectively as a large organisation. It’s not about having lots of people manning the phone, it’s about ensuring the people that you do have can effectively communicate.” Presence alone means that you can be free to take calls when you’re properly equipped to deal with customer enquiries, and unavailable at other times- for example when you’re working on that big proposal. United we stand: Mark’s top tips for integrating communications in a growing business| • | Offer various modes of communication, email, phone, fax (people do still use it), text and instant messaging. The ‘youngsters’ of today are the customers of the future and many prefer to converse online or by text than use the phone. | | • | VoIP is an important topic but remember there is more to communications than just voice. Look at using unified communications with VoIP as part of the solution, rather than the whole picture. | | • | Don’t think of instant messaging as being a bad thing that only your children would use. IM can be more appropriate than email or a voice call for incidental conversations. | | • | And remember that to tie all these disparate methods of communication together, you really need a server. Sure, IM can live on desktop PC’s, but to integrate resource-intensive applications like VoIP and Email for several staff at once, a dedicated server is definitely the answer. |
Leading the wayMost of the heavily publicised examples of companies using unified messaging tools are larger organisations. So are smaller companies and individuals using these services? You bet they are. Director of Midlands advertising agency emediates, Anil Varma, agrees that integrating your communications makes excellent business sense. “For us, it comes down to common sense. I need to be able to speak to my clients, staff and suppliers as and when, and to find the best way of doing that. I’m not interested in people having to chase me - they need to know where I am and what I’m doing. “If they can’t reach me one way, then they can try another. The prospect of voicemail messages being converted to text messages through Outlook 2007 is very exciting to me as is the idea of someone seeing whether I’m available by checking out my ‘online status’ through Instant Messenger. “Getting all of this stuff through one device is a pretty impressive and dynamic business tool - with a smartphone for example, you can get IM and email. When I think back to the days of when I started out and we were faxing information or sending it by post, it’s mind-blowing.” If you want to find out how you can integrate your email, faxes, voicemails and IMs your IT expert will be able to tell you if there’s more technology can do to ‘join-up’ your communications.
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