The Only Guide to Unified Messaging You’ll Ever Need

Communication may be the single most crucial aspect of any business. Having the right technology to ensure it’s accessible, easy, and reliable matters tremendously. With the shift to hybrid work, companies are learning that unified messaging is the most ideal, as it integrates all channels.

If your organization wants to reset its communication platform, you’ll want to read this post to find out everything about unified messaging.

What Is Unified Messaging?

Unified messaging integrates different communication formats, including email, SMS, chat, phone, and video, into one system. It includes a single interface, providing a better user experience.

In the past, all these channels sat in silos. Your employees would have to go back and forth between applications, whether in the office or remote. Unified messaging simplifies your technology stack, reduces costs, and provides a better user experience.

Why Should Your Business Adopt Unified Messaging?

The advantages are clear, as noted above. Consolidation of systems inherently leads to greater savings, efficiency, productivity, and accessibility. Here’s how unified messaging delivers benefits with its robust features.

Reduce Your Communications Budget

If you move from many providers to one, you can guarantee savings with the switch. If it’s your first venture into cloud-based systems, you’ll continue to lower your costs by eliminating on-premises hardware and equipment. You’ll receive one monthly bill that doesn’t fluctuate based on call volume.

Boost Productivity of Workers Wherever

If your staff has all communication tools available in one interface, they’ll save minutes a day on these activities. That adds up to hours a week and days a month.

Additionally, having easy access to a chat feature can also improve productivity. If an employee needs clarification or more information, they can reach out this way and know if the other person or people are available with the presence indicator. They’ll get the answer they need quickly and be able to keep working.

With this example, you can see how being well-connected to colleagues supports productivity. A recent survey found that 71 percent of employees said this connection made them feel more productive.

Improve Collaboration Through Connection

No matter where employees are, they need a seamless way to collaborate. Unified messaging provides this setting. There’s still disconnection in the workplace on communication that needs unifying. When people have easy tools at their disposal to interact in many ways, collaboration happens more organically. It also occurs more in real time. Workers can still respond to chats or texts while running errands or taking the train into the office.

Connection is critical for internal relationships and trust-building. From that comes stronger collaboration and the ability to work through challenges. All this is possible when you empower people with great unified messaging technology.

Work Smarter with Easy Technology

With unified messaging, you simplify your tech stack in a single interface, either through a desktop or mobile app. With everything centralized, your staff will appreciate this improved user experience.

It also makes things easier for your administrator. They aren’t working with multiple systems, just one. They also don’t have to worry about updates, upgrades, or infrastructure. Your provider takes care of those things. However, you don’t have to contact your vendor when adding users or changing settings. You have control of that with an easy setup that takes minutes.

Enhance Security and Reliability

Security of your communication channels is imperative for any business, no matter the size or industry. Protecting data is something every company wants to do, and unified messaging can fortify this. By working with a provider with layers of security protocols and redundancy, your communications infrastructure is more secure.

With greater security comes better-built systems that are also more reliable. You’ll experience little to no downtime. You can feel assured that communications won’t falter with unified messaging.

Now that you know what you can gain, what should you prioritize when looking for a system?

Features Your Unified Messaging System Should Include

Ready to find the ideal platform? Pay attention to these features.

• Single interface for all features and is intuitive and easy to understand
• Administrator tools that allow for changes and reconfiguring
• Reliable and high-quality phone system usable on any internet-connected device as well as desk phones
• Desktop and mobile apps
• Video conferencing requiring only seconds to start with HD video, screen sharing, and screen annotation
• Team chat with direct message, channels, and presence indicator
• Virtual voicemail, featuring transcribed messages via email and in the app
• Integrations with other platforms that support communication, including Office 365, CRM (customer relationship management) platforms, help desk software, and more

In addition to these core features, unified messaging systems often include file sharing and storage. Employees can work on documents simultaneously in real time. They all stay in the same secure location.

Unified messaging may also offer call analytics, which provides reports on usage and performance. This can be useful information to assess those with customer-facing roles like sales and support. You can extend these capabilities further with call center features, which can complement and work in tangent with unified messaging.

Unified Messaging: Great for Your Employees and Your Budget

Unified messaging delivers so many benefits and features. You’ll be providing your staff with technology that actually makes their workday easier. For this reason and the savings, you have reasons to consider the move.

You can learn more about unified messaging systems by taking a product tour of Intermedia Unite.