Enterprise communications. The phrase brings to mind everything from desk phones, smartphones, instant messaging and email to conference calling, video conferencing, unified communications, and social media. For most businesses, these communication services are provided to employees and are considered to be nothing more than an expense item. Companies need to realize the impact on their businesses and the productivity that could be enhanced through better implementation of communications and collaboration services. Therefore, they must evaluate how services are provided and used.
Surprisingly, many enterprises have never asked themselves this question. They know they need to provide communication services to their employees, business units, and potentially to their customers, but they don't know why.
At the highest level, communication services provide four basic functions:
Enterprises across the world use communications services in basically the same manner. Digging deeper shows that the way in which communications are used directly impacts productivity, efficiency, revenue, and profitability.
Recent studies have confirmed the significant role that communications play:
No matter how you look at it, you can clearly see the direct impact on business. The ability to affect these areas is worth investigating.
One of the latest business requirements to improve engagement is the need to have communications features such as voice, video, and messaging embedded into applications, devices, and tools that employees, business groups, and customers use on a daily basis. This requirement can be met through contextual communications, which brings together various IP communications services that employees and clients use, while enhancing communications with contextual information.
Contextual information indicates factors such as whether an employee is in the office or mobile, time of day, environment, location, current social status, activity, or application/device in use. Contextual communications enhance relationships by allowing customers to interact with the business in a more engaging and satisfying way, leading to a rise in repeat clients and new customers. It also 'humanizes' the customer experience, leading to increased customer satisfaction. Communications become a function of the company's business processes, instead of an additional application that must be opened. The net result is an improvement in enterprise business processes, employee productivity, and customer satisfaction.
Transforming communications into a corporate asset requires more than just making additional communications services available. It requires a fundamental shift in how the enterprise defines and uses communication services. To transform communications companies must take the following steps:
Once a thorough analysis has been completed, the process of transforming communications services into a corporate asset can begin.
Communication services are a critical and often overlooked component that directly impact an enterprise's efficiency, productivity, and profitability. Finding new ways to develop, deploy, and utilize these services can have a significant effect on the business. Enhancing enterprise communications services will help increase productivity, provide the enterprise with new ways to engage customers, allow the enterprise to take advantage of new market opportunities, drive new revenue, and help expand the customer base.
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