Businesses often unlock productivity gains by spending money on new tools and technologies. Unified Communications tools are one investment that boosts productivity while reducing your costs.
How Team Collaboration Drives Results
With the right collaboration tools, your business can realize the benefits of increased productivity from a Unified Communications and Collaboration Platform.
Benefits include: 
My introduction to the world of telecommunications was barely over twenty years ago when the Internet was just getting going and nobody had a handheld device. Everyone had a phone on their desk back then. The underlying technology appeared magical, but the industry was ready to explode into what has now become Unified Communications.
The Time's They Are A Changin'
Everyone is tethered to their office network to some degree via smartphones, tablets, home-office teleworking, and traditional desktops and laptops. These are all brought together by leveraging the Internet and cloud-based applications, Unified Communications software, and the integration of inter-operability standards between disparate systems.
How it works - a day in the life
As an example of what it means to leverage UC tools, I only need to describe a typical day at my desk. It starts with checking my email, which is hosted by MS Office 365, and setting up my weekly appointments in Outlook. This is directly connected to my Mitel Unified Communicator Collaboration software, and to our Connectwise CRM system.
I then work in HubSpot, which is a hosted serviced that allows me to define and manage all my tasks for the day and week ahead. Whether it’s a phone call, email, meeting, or reminder. It is also a very powerful prospecting tool. I’m able to rapidly gain specific information about a particular company or prospect. It is all directly connected to my Office 365 account, allowing me to provide inputs to the CRM system.
All transactions are tracked via the contact and company record so I can always see the historical stream of communication with any client. Any other colleague that is working with me as a team member or needs access to the record can see the same information via this application. When I need to do research, it provides direct links to every company’s webpage and my contacts Linkedin accounts.
.png?width=300&name=Untitled%20design%20(1).png)
When I need to reach out to a colleague, I use the Mitel Unified Communicator. This is a desktop app with telephony tools that show a complete directory and present status of every user in the company. These end users may be anywhere in the world and connected to any type of device. The system allows them to change their status dynamically so that any phone call will ring at their device, wherever they may be.
If they’re in a meeting or on the phone, I can send them a secure chat to correspond with me. This chat can include documents and web links and is tracked and recorded for all historical transactions. It is also encrypted and secured from start to finish.
I can quickly turn this chat into a video conference with the touch of a button and standard PC web cameras. If I need to host a conference, provide a presentation, or review documents I can utilize the audio/web/video collaboration tools that are included with the core software. All of these are tied together with a single user interface under the Mitel MiCollab application available on any industry standard server.
These systems work in unison so I’m able to efficiently manage a multitude of projects and opportunities.
When considering the goals of optimal time management and maximizing relationships with customer and prospects, these tools have proved to be very beneficial.
With technology today, ‘better, faster, cheaper’ is the reality. Being able to utilize and leverage available resources is essential to attaining goals and achieving superior customer satisfaction.
Originally published on 07/05/2018
