Maximising Business Productivity with Unified Communications

In today’s business environment, the use of unified communications (UC) is helping enterprises streamline their communications and improve productivity. In this blog, Vivek Kar, Global Product Management Head for Collaboration and Voice Solutions, Tata Communications discusses the various benefits offered by unified communications for business success.

Over a decade ago, a McKinsey report showed that the productivity of a team increases by 20-25% through improved communication and collaboration. In a more recent study published in early 2023, leaders reported increased productivity (72%), increased customer satisfaction (63%), and increased employee confidence (60%) as the top benefits of effective business communication – a multi-fold increase over ten years!

Yet, the lack of good business communication and collaboration tools continues to pose a problem for businesses, more so due to the hybrid nature of work that is here to stay. This is where a comprehensive collaboration platform can make all the difference.

Today, the use of unified communications (UC), which is essentially the integration of all business communications channels into one platform or solution, is helping organisations streamline all their communications, whether internal or external. In addition to being cost effective and facilitating better collaboration across the hybrid workforce, this can help companies achieve increased employee and business productivity.

Enhanced Collaboration and Team Productivity

Let’s start with employees. With most companies having adopted a hybrid working model, unless employees have the ability to communicate and collaborate efficiently, their productivity – and by extension, that of the business – will suffer.

Working collaboratively on documents and projects, holding brainstorming sessions, hosting and attending virtual meetings from anywhere and using a variety of devices, are all benefits that they get from a good UC solution. In addition, the flexibility, productivity and responsiveness they gain due to the ability to stay connected on the go are invaluable.

In a recent survey conducted by Microsoft, 85% of employees surveyed named business collaboration tools as one of the most essential parts of their company’s digital transformation efforts, with 86% saying that a single, centralised platform or application where teams can collaborate in multiple ways would be ideal.

Benefits to the Organisation

From the organisation’s viewpoint, team productivity and engagement improves as employees are empowered with easy access to the tools they need to perform well at their work. Streamlined communication across integrated systems and features of a good UC solution such as project management, task assignment, and tracking and analytical functionalities further improve business efficiency.

Cost savings are achieved in multiple ways: business continuity is ensured, efficient collaboration methods reduce the need for business travel, and the UC solution also removes the need for multiple communications tools and their associated costs. Real-time data sharing enables quick decision-making and responsiveness to market changes and client needs.

“UC tools can scale as the company grows, adapting to changing business needs and accommodating a larger workforce or an expanding customer base.”

They optimally integrate with emerging technologies, ensuring the company stays up-to-date with the latest advancements and trends in communication and collaboration.

Essential requirements for optimal collaboration

The collaboration needs of companies are both numerous and complex, often entailing working across multiple geographies which can bring in compliance and regulatory issues to handle; a hybrid model of work that involves diverse locations and devices; interoperability between multiple vendors, systems and technologies which ensures consistent user experiences; management of multiple access numbers and complex bandwidth provisioning and so on. Ensuring security across all of these is an added issue.

A superior unified collaboration solution like Tata Communications GlobalRapide can handle all of these requirements, acting as a single, end-to-end go-to partner for companies that need to ensure zero-risk cloud UC/collaboration, network, voice, migration and managed services and tools at a global scale.

Business Communication through Tata Communications JAMVEE

Effective business communication should involve all employees in an organisation – including the frontline and field force.

“Traditional full-suite collaboration suites, allowing offnet calling capability, may be too expensive to be rolled out to all employees, and that is when a business phone application is highly relevant.”

If employees are provided an app that allows them to keep their personal and business profiles separate, and contact co-workers through on-net or off-net dialling, or through a closed user group (CUG) call, the organisation can ensure that they have the required business control while providing optimal employee experience.

Tata Communications JAMVEE is a cloud-based business phone application that can be deployed easily on iOS, Android, Desktop and WebRTC. It provides lower total cost of ownership when compared to its full-suite counterparts, and can be used even by organisations who are slowly moving to the cloud.

By adding JAMVEE to its portfolio, Tata Communications addresses the pressing market need for unified communications across different types of organisations and employee types.

Business productivity comprises the efficient use of resources and optimal output through effective processes, technology, and workforce management, which maximises profits and helps achieve organisational goals. Unified Collaboration tools fundamentally transform how businesses operate, promoting efficient communication, fostering collaboration, and ultimately driving increased productivity and success in today’s competitive business landscape.

To learn more about how Tata Communications GlobalRapide can improve business productivity for your organisation, click here.