As employees juggle communication devices, this juggling opens up vulnerabilities. The complexity carries the risk of potentially missing critical calls or messages. To thrive in the digital age, businesses now need unified communication.

Organizations can no longer have employees tethered to their desks by wires or physical locations. Work is no longer confined to a desk, laptop, computer screen, or office. Markets are global and we work in a hybrid work environment. These shifts have prompted an influx of fantastic communication technologies in the enterprise, designed for every touchpoint in the average business. The communications revolution has been so rapid that it could be overwhelming for enterprises.

What is unified communication?

Unified communication is a suite of applications and services designed to seamlessly connect every major communications channel across the enterprise in one secure and easy-to-use system.

Unified communication ensures better communication and interaction in a globally dispersed workforce and breaks down silos that impede enterprise teams. Unified communication incorporates messaging, voice calling, video conferencing, file sharing, team collaboration, and more and ensures the workforce can access a secure system irrespective of where they work.

The complexity of communication in the enterprise

Communication complexity has increased in the enterprise today with the emergence of a dizzying mix of platforms. Digital transformation and the rise of the digital workforce have also compelled organizations to identify new ways to access tools that drive performance in a location and device-agnostic manner. Organizations are also accelerating their move to the cloud and agile adoption while breaching global boundaries.

Unified communications strategies lead to better connections and productivity.

Some of the complexities that impact enterprise communication that are solved by unified communication are:

The communication split

Communication in the enterprise is now split between multiple devices and applications. Smartphones, desk phones, web apps, IM apps, collaboration applications, and good old voice mail make communication fragmented.

Keeping track of all the usernames, passwords, and log-in details can be error-prone. Plus, a sandboxed environment when these communication channels can’t communicate with each other makes things more fragmented.

Unified communication provides access to all communication channels such as phone calls, messaging, video chat, and web conferencing in one place, all with one phone number, user id, and identity.

The IT Conundrum

The burden of managing rapidly proliferating apps, devices, and services is keeping the IT department awake at night. Setting up devices, provisioning applications, and training employees on these applications is only a part of the challenge.

IT also has to ensure tighter control permissions and guarantee security by ensuring that employees do not download whatever communication apps they please. IT also has to ensure that employees do not share critical enterprise data in environments they cannot control.

Unified communication solves this challenge by helping IT provision user accounts from a central location while making sure that employees are sharing data and communicating using secure and authorized channels with centralized permission controls.

The communication chasm

As the hybrid work environment and globalization become a mainstay in the enterprise narrative, ease of communication and elevated communication experiences become business drivers. The days of the old-fashioned conference calls with people dialling into a bridge, unintentional interruptions, poor voice quality, etc. are happily behind us.

Unified communication helps bridge this chasm and helps organizations leverage the plethora of solutions that make communication seamless.

What organizations need is the capability to integrate the plethora of unified communication solutions available by different providers such as Microsoft Teams, Cisco WebEx, VIDYO, Zoom, Polycom, Clear one COLLABORATE Space, and many other popular providers to meet the unique needs of today’s enterprise.

To improve the communication experience organizations also need to make sure that they extend a one-touch user experience for collaboration, conferencing, and environment control for meeting, conference, and huddle rooms, and other collaboration spaces.

Unified communication and the hybrid workplace

Ease and utility of communication will play a big role as an enabler of efficiency and productivity as we move deeper into a hybrid work environment. Conference and meeting room solutions have to be seamlessly designed keeping enterprise-wide needs in mind. Enabling high-quality video conferencing, ease of content sharing, and ensuring that attendees can use the full range of Microsoft Teams /Zoom Room for Business conferencing features while having access to AV control from the same interface become essential consideration points.Optimal cable management systems are key enablers. These must allow AC device control, touch panel-led controls for conference functions. They must also provide an interface for adjusting environmental settings and an appropriate audio system for sound reinforcement with ceiling tile speakers/ Table Microphone with DSP delivering consistent sound levels across the listening area. This is critical for driving communication and collaboration in the hybrid workplace.

It is also important that the unified communication solution intuitively combine conferencing such as Zoom Room / Microsoft Teams System conferencing with intuitive AV system control for elevated user experience. Delivering ease of content sharing by enabling HDMI and VGA source connections at the table along with BYOD wireless connections and allowing content to be shared from mobile devices wirelessly are all important.

Organizations also need the capacity to display content simultaneously from multiple personal BYOD devices, decode and play IPTV streams over the network, and easily play content from media players by using internal memory, network shares removable SD card & USB storage to facilitate clear and easy communication.

To drive seamless unified communication across the enterprise, organizations need the capability to design the right solution powered by the right tools and technologies. Additionally, it is essential to enable easy integration with centralized management software employing a control processor to make AV resource management simpler, organized, and accurate.

With unified communications, organizations have the opportunity to completely redefine the way they communicate, collaborate, and share ideas. Connect with our team of experts to integrate innovative audio-video solutions into your organization and sail into the workplace of the future.