In the world today human interactions are ever-changing and complicated. Teams in the workplace are malleable and dynamic, and so, therefore, it is routine to work with colleagues in different locations.

Enterprises have a responsibility to support their employees, and the astute organization will invest in communications solutions that are truly collaborative, and those which unite telephony, video messaging, and mobile – and indeed, any emerging communication channel.

As businesses grow organically, their communications systems tend to form piecemeal, according to needs that have arisen at particular important junctures. Working with a particular client, for instance, might suggest that a particular messaging platform would drive efficiencies; further down the line, a different solution might be leveraged. As this process continues, the enterprise finds itself with a variety of communication software & hardware methods, and despite the existence of some level of open standards, the different solutions rarely work together seamlessly.

With a truly unified communications solution, systems integrate in real-time: voice, video, data. And, in an ideal world, they come together in a single user interface.

People work smarter when communications capabilities are embedded into their everyday work patterns, so finding the unified interface for an application that truly improves productivity will lead to a solution people happily use every day.

The old adage of computing is that no one ever uses a solution in order to make somebody else’s life easier! The take-home from this is that simple access, an approachable graphical user interface, and overall ease of use leads to the highest adoption levels. And the better the adoption rates, the better and faster the decision-making processes, the lower the travel costs, telephony costs, and associated expenses.

It was only a few decades ago when face-to-face meetings, sometimes after significant travel, or telephone calls, were how collaboration was achieved. However, interactions with customers, colleagues, and partners are by necessity much more fluid than ever before. Competitive pressures also mean that interactions need to be quicker, but also be capable of reaching out globally.

When email first arrived in the workplace, the playing of email tag was understandable; in fact, in some ways, it was the “modern” version of telephone message tag! But losing time while a team organizes its communication means lost sales, decisions based on incomplete or misleading information, unhappy customers and disgruntled staff.

Any business owner or entrepreneur will know that hiring the right people is the best way to achieve a distinct advantage. But the question remains, how to use the best people from around the world, but still respond as effectively as if everyone were sitting it in the same building? How is a corporate culture built with offices on multiple continents, and with employees spread between partners facilities, customer sites, and branch offices?

All organizations are under pressure to reduce expenses. At the top of the list of avoidable costs are travel and telephony. Unified communications mean that organizations can face down the following common challenges:

-keep kilometers traveled down to an absolute minimum for internal and external meetings

-prevent high mobile phone costs while roaming and reduce inflated hotel access charges

-reduce overall costs of telephony, hardware, and software

-obviate the need for expensive PBX upgrades

-stop, or at least reduce, the charges associated with hosted web conferencing systems

-cut back on real estate costs and reduce associated maintenance by enabling personnel to work from home or remotely.

To surmount these challenges and more, enterprises are seeking a fully unified communications solution. Here at Tech wire Asia, we consider Avaya to be worth your attention. Avaya’s range of solutions enables enterprises of all sizes to achieve their goals, be that a more efficient collaborative system, better communications or an increased efficiency in the integration of communication platform and workforce desktops.

In today’s mobile business environment, mobile messaging is as important as was the telephone alone in decades past. Avaya’s resilient yet cost-effective mobile solutions can either be built on its own technology or they will integrate seamlessly with third-party applications which might be already embedded in the enterprise, such as Microsoft Exchanges Message Store.

The emphasis with the California-based company is on achieving maximum efficiency either with new systems or with existing communications systems, whether those are in the cloud or on their clients’ premises.

End users ease of use is continued in management and administration facilities, which lower infrastructure costs and allow rapid deployment across the enterprise. The ease of installation and the power of Avaya’s system means that from day one, organizations can begin to innovate, perform and reliably communicate across all channels.

Once inside the Avaya environment, existing channels can be optimised or new ones added, according to business requirements, rather than the technology dictating which methods of communication are used internally or in customer-facing roles. In this way, Avaya allows business to dictate to IT, not the other way round.

To read more about Avaya’s solutions, click here.

*Some of the companies featured on this article are commercial partners of Tech Wire Asia