WorkastUnifying Your Business Communications: A Step-By-Step Approach
BySarah Harris
on May 03#business-tipsSarah Harris
Sarah Harris takes care of the customer support requests at Workast. She is also an avid writer.
Effective communication and collaboration are essential to success in today's fast-paced business environment, especially as remote work becomes more prevalent. Unified communications (UC) offers a comprehensive solution that streamlines communication channels, regardless of location, by consolidating various communication tools and platforms into a cohesive system, including voice and video communication, messaging, collaboration tools, softphone, dynamic and persistent chat channels, rich team member profiles, and document management. By providing a single application accessible across different devices, a UC system offers an Omni channel experience that meets the needs of modern users and helps businesses stay competitive.
To unify your business's communications, you need a systematic approach tailored to your unique needs and requirements. This comprehensive guide provides a step-by-step process to help you develop a plan that streamlines your communication tools and platforms, allowing for seamless collaboration and improved business outcomes.
1. Evaluate Your UC Needs
When evaluating your organization's communication needs before implementing a UC solution, it's important to consider factors such as the communication channels and tools your employees currently use, as well as those they need to perform their roles effectively. It can be helpful to seek the assistance of managed IT services in Chicago or one in your location to guide you through this process and ensure you identify the best UC solution for your organization. Here are some tips to help you evaluate your UC needs:
Conduct A Communication Audit: Review your current communication channels, such as email, instant messaging, video conferencing, and telephony, to identify the ones essential for your organization. Consider the usage patterns and volume of each communication channel and their effectiveness in achieving business goals.
Identify Key Users: Identify the key users of your communication channels and their specific roles in the organization. This will help you understand their communication needs and which UC tools and features are necessary to optimize their workflows.
Analyze Workflows: Analyze your company's workflows and identify the communication bottlenecks and pain points. This could include issues like long email chains, missed calls, or delayed responses.
Identify Pain Points: Talk to your employees and identify the communication pain points that hinder productivity and collaboration. This could include issues like dropped calls, slow network speeds, or difficulty accessing information.
Determine Key Features: Consider the key features that your organization needs in a UC solution. For example, video conferencing and screen sharing may be critical if remote work is prevalent. Security and encryption may be essential if your organization deals with sensitive data.
Assess Infrastructure: Evaluate your current communication infrastructure to determine if it can support a UC solution. This includes assessing your network bandwidth, hardware, and software. If your infrastructure is outdated, you may need to upgrade it before implementing a UC solution.
Set Goals: Define your UC goals and how they align with your business objectives. This could include improving collaboration, increasing productivity, or reducing communication silos.
By taking the steps above when evaluating your UC needs and picking the right solution for your organization, you can maximize the benefits of a unified communication system.
2. Ensure a Robust Foundation
Ensuring a robust foundation is a critical step in creating a successful UC implementation. It involves ensuring that your communication software and hardware support a high-capacity system, which is necessary for optimizing your communication channels and improving performance.
One best practice for ensuring a robust foundation is network segmentation. Dividing your network into smaller segments reduces congestion risks and improves performance. It also enhances security by isolating sensitive data and systems. Network segmentation enables you to prioritize critical communication channels, such as voice and video conferencing, and allocate the necessary bandwidth to ensure they function optimally.
Another best practice for ensuring a robust foundation is Quality of Service (QoS) policies. Prioritizing critical communication channels ensures that they receive the necessary bandwidth to function optimally. This is especially important for real-time applications like voice and video conferencing. QoS policies enable you to prioritize traffic flows based on their importance, ensuring a seamless communication experience for your employees.
Network monitoring is also critical for ensuring a robust foundation. Monitoring your network provides real-time feedback, allowing you to identify and address issues promptly. It also helps you track usage patterns and identify areas for improvement. Network monitoring enables you to proactively identify and address performance issues, reducing downtime and improving the overall performance of your UC solution.
A firm foundation minimizes downtime and network congestion risks, improves performance, and ensures scalability, adaptability, and flexibility to changing business needs. By investing in it, you can ensure that your UC solution will meet your organization's needs and provide a seamless communication experience for your employees. A robust foundation is a critical component of a successful UC implementation, and it enables your organization to maximize the benefits of unified communications.
3. Implement a Change Management Plan
Implementing a UC solution requires significant changes in how employees communicate and collaborate. A change management plan helps manage this transition effectively. It involves defining the change's scope, communicating what will change, providing training and support, identifying potential resistance, and establishing a mitigation plan.
The change management plan should also include a timeline for implementation, including milestones, responsibilities, and communication plans. Clear communication about the changes and their benefits will help employees understand the need for the change and motivate them to adopt the new system.
By implementing a change management plan, businesses can ensure a smoother transition to the UC solution and minimize resistance, leading to faster adoption and better outcomes.
4. Test Your Communications
Testing your communication channels is a critical step in ensuring that your UC strategy is effective. It enables you to identify any issues or areas for improvement and refine your UC strategy to optimize communication channels for maximum efficiency and productivity.
To test your communication channels, observe at least two departments for 1-2 weeks and gather feedback from employees. It's essential to ensure that employees use all communication methods in your UC strategy during testing to identify any issues or areas for improvement. Observing a representative sample provides valuable insights into how your UC strategy is being used and how it can be improved.
According to the IT consulting experts from Steadynetworks and other IT companies, it's also important to ensure a long enough testing period for a comprehensive view of communication channel performance. A longer testing period allows you to evaluate usage patterns and identify areas for improvement that may not be immediately evident.
Once you've gathered feedback and observed communication channel performance, use the information to refine your UC strategy and make adjustments. This may involve adding or removing communication tools or adjusting communication policies to better align with your business goals.
Regular testing and evaluation of your communication channels is critical to optimizing your UC strategy for maximum efficiency and productivity. By continually monitoring and refining your UC strategy, you can ensure that communication channels are being used effectively and efficiently to achieve your business goals. Once you're satisfied with communication channel performance, present the final UC strategy to your organization for implementation.
Conclusion
Optimizing communication channels for maximum efficiency and productivity requires careful evaluation and consideration of current channels, infrastructure, UC solution selection, proper training and adoption, and regular reviews and assessments for ongoing success. With a comprehensive plan, businesses can enhance their collaboration and productivity, ensuring they stay competitive in a rapidly evolving marketplace.