How many communications devices do you have? A smartphone? Laptop? Tablet? Now imagine those multiplied across all the employees in your company. It’s a mind-boggling number. Especially when you think of all the vital messages and other communication passing between all these individual devices every single day. And what happens if one person’s device is lost or stolen? Does all the information it contains go with it? Not if you’re using a unified message platform (UMP).
A unified message platform brings all your important communications together in one place. Emails, voicemail, instant messages, faxes and more are safely and conveniently stored, ready for you to access – quickly and easily – whenever necessary. You can even integrate your calendars and video conferencing for a one-pot solution that’s hard to beat.
You can also customise it to suit your personal requirements. You can allow voicemail users to forward their messages to another inbox, for example. Or use the “do not disturb” features to temporarily pause alerts. You can also create individual, personalised greetings for specific callers. If you’re one of those people always rushing from one meeting to the next, this kind of convenience and adaptability is invaluable.
And convenience really is at the heart of a unified messaging platform. Today’s multitude of communication methods may make life easier, but it still gets super-complicated when your working life is spread out over several devices. Continually shuffling between multiple platforms quickly erodes productivity. You end up spending time with the colleague who wasn’t able to make the meeting, catching him up on what was said. Or forwarding the key condensed points from a long email string to another department.
Of course, not only does this impact everyone’s productivity, it also gives you a lower ROI on your communications infrastructure purchases.
Benefits Of A Unified Messaging Platform
Over and above the undeniable convenience of Unified Messaging Platforms, there are plenty of other great advantages too:
Efficiency And Ease Of Use
Most UMPs don’t introduce new functionality into your existing processes. They simply combine standalone services and applications into one system. This means your staff can effortlessly switch between voicemail, instant messages and emails without needing to open multiple apps.
Budget Friendly
A unified messaging platform drastically reduces your company’s communication costs. It unifies your communications around a single platform, instead of using a multitude of tools. In addition, there’s not nearly as much hardware to install and maintain, and fewer software licensing and support fees to pay. Because any software upgrades are managed from the cloud, costs are reduced even further.
When you combine your communication services, you need less physical space on your servers to store messages. That means a reduction in hardware costs. It also means fewer maintenance and support-related expenses. This alone could translate into significant savings every year. Support contracts on older systems can cost companies millions. It’s easy to think it’s cheaper to adopt the old “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mindset. But the on-costs associated with maintaining and repairing legacy equipment mount up very quickly.
Boosts Productivity
If you don’t have to waste valuable work time learning to use tools, searching for information and logging in to multiple apps, you have more time to spend actually doing what your company pays you to do.
Supports Bring-Your-Own-Device
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is already immensely popular in the States and Europe, and it’s starting to gain in popularity here too. While this is a great cost-saving for companies, it does mean they lose control over which brand of device employees use, or which operating system they prefer. This is another area in which a unified messaging platform comes into its own, always integrating seamlessly with a combination of devices.
This is also advantageous when employees work on different devices in different locations. A UMP means someone could join a video conference on his cellphone while waiting for a flight, another from their laptop on the office VoIP, and a third from a tablet on their home WiFi.
Cellfind is a leading mobile technology solutions company offering a complete range of high-volume, multi-channel messaging solutions. Our secure, reliable offerings mean you can interact with your customers, employees and other people important to your business in a cost-efficient, secure and timely manner. Chat to us today about integrating a unified messaging platform into your business.
