More space for communication with Unified Communcation

Unified Communication (or ucc) responds to the growing need to communicate effectively and quickly within a company, especially by facilitating real-time and remote exchanges.

Entrepreneurs, managers or employees: whatever your position or hierarchical level, this dimension of your work cannot escape you. Without efficient communication, there can be no collaboration or productivity!

By centralising all means of exchange in a company on a single online interface, all conversations become more fluid.

Are you tired of juggling chat, email, telephone, video conferences? Does your company have several locations and do your employees work on the move? Are you looking for the perfect internal communication tool?

We invite you to discover what Unified Communication is, its challenges and a selection of solutions suitable for SMEs.

See all software Unified Communications

Unified communication: definition

We often hear the term Unified Communication (UCC). At the heart of this is the revolution in traditional business telephony, thanks to Voice over IP (VoIP) technology and the IPBX infrastructure.

Thanks to a web solution, different communication channels can thus be combined under a common interface and accessed from different devices (workstations, smartphones, tablets):

• real-time communication means such as IP telephony, instant messaging or chat, collaborative meetings (video conferencing, audio conferencing)
• collaborative tools (real-time monitoring of presence and availability, web conferencing, document sharing, etc.)
• IT tools, such as e-mail, shared calendar, etc.

It can be noted that five main dimensions were taken into account

• voice
• messaging system
• conference
• video
• mobility

© TechTarget

Another possible definition is the unification of synchronous and asynchronous communication.

It can be seen that unified communication and collaborative work platforms may have common characteristics. Indeed, an electronic document management (EDM) platform, or a corporate social network (CSN), may include, for instance, chat functionalities.

Similarly, unified communications can be found in call centre technologies, through the automatic sending of messages via SMS or e-mail, or interactive voice servers.

The advantages of unified communication

The advantages of unified communication are numerous and include the following

• adopting a single software to manage internal communication,
• gaining productivity by saving time in meetings, travelling and searching for documents,
• promoting mobile working, teleworking and exchanges for multi-site companies,
• improve the dissemination and sharing of information and employee experiences within the company,
• eliminate the need for telephone equipment,
• reduce the costs of telephony (consumption) and collaborative solutions,
• easily follow or retrieve conversations,
• be able to use any type of terminal (smartphone, tablet, computer),
• attract and retain talent,
• improve comfort at work,
• communicate with customers and external service providers,
• facilitate the adoption of the platform by employees and managers (intuitive use).

The application areas of unified communication

Although already experiencing considerable growth, Unified Communication is seen as a rapidly developing technology in the coming years. The sectors pushing in this direction are different but we can see that the two most important are IT & Telecom and Finance.

©Digitalic

Looking specifically at the Italian market, we have data from Digital4 that indicates

• more than 90% of meetings are still in the form of physical meetings
• more than 90% of companies use email to exchange documents

In short, there is work to be done but also a lot of room for improvement. One hope is that the increase in smartworking will be a spur to the use of these new communication channels.

Unified Communication Cloud Solutions

Here, the focus will be on software adapted to SMEs, as they are able to understand their needs in terms of interconnection, agility and responsiveness, the main challenges of unified communication.

A Unified Communication platform can be installed in-house or accessed in the cloud via a web browser, so-called UCaaS solutions: Unified Communications as a Service .

So that you have all the information before making a choice, we present the SaaS market leaders and alternative platforms that are worth discovering.

Our database includes many other communication and collaboration software with cross functionalities, please feel free to browse it.

Our selection of software

Slack

Slack's primary vocation is to eliminate the use of e-mail and to share different means of communication on a single platform for real-time exchanges.

It is primarily a chat software for sharing documents, with conversations organised in discussion strings (or threads). It integrates and synchronises with Twitter, Google Drive, Dropbox, Asana, GitHub, Zendesk, Mailchimp, Trello, Skype, Facebook, etc.

eXo Platform

eXo Platform is an all-in-one platform that centralises communications and facilitates engagement and communication between your employees. It offers extremely comprehensive functionalities ranging from document management to the Corporate Social Network.

To use the platform, simply connect to a web browser facilitating smart-work and mobile use.

Ringcentral Engage Digital

Ringcentral Engage Digital, is a perfect software solution for medium and large-sized companies. It is a platform that is able to aggregate different means of communication (chat, email, social...) thus playing a major role in customer support. It is therefore mainly aimed at professionals in the telecom or call centre environment.

This solution is available in the cloud and is already known and appreciated in 65 countries.

See all software Unified Communications

Fluidity, efficiency, speed

As you have seen, unified communication is broad and can include all kinds of services that primarily facilitate internal communication.

As your company grows, it will need more advanced collaborative solutions, e.g. integrating your CRM platforms, social networks or more advanced document management.
For small and medium-sized companies, unified communication is initially a real asset to continue to develop in a coherent way and in a spirit of teamwork.