Unified Communications (UC) is the integrated communication services (that may or may not be a single product or service) used by an organization to optimize its business processes. These integrated communication services may include live chat, voice call, voice mail, video chat, video conferencing, SMS, fax, and email.

Unified communication is not restricted to sending (or receiving) a message using different communications mediums. It can also allow an individual to send a message using one communication medium and receive using (the same or) another communication medium. For example, one can send a fax through a fax machine while the receiver may be using an online fax server and email to fax solution such as ICTFAX. In this case, the receiver may choose to view a received document through an online web interface or configure incoming faxes as an email.

How it will add value to your business?

Unified communications solutions optimize business processes and decision-making by connecting to clients, prospects, their data, and applications anywhere and anytime. For example, It is possible to send mass messages using either text or voice mail to all your clients informing them of a special discount on products. You can simply thank your loyal customers for their patronage of the company. Unified communications is always an efficient way to inform people about an emergency like a weather-related closing or natural disaster.

This will allow to seamlessly integrate a full range of communication services such as SMS, voice, fax, email, video, phone survey, and video conferencing into your existing IT infrastructure. It will also enhance collaborative capabilities among different departments of your organization because clients and their data are available to all the employees.

What options you have?

Bringing Unified Communications to your business requires carefully examine and choose the suitable option according to your requirement.

The first step will obviously be to choose the company that provides unified communications services and products (e.g. ICTBroadcast is a unified communication autodialer software). This decision is largely based on what communication services are needed for your business and what is the cost involved in buying these communication services.

Next, you have to decide whether you want a unified communication platform at your own premise or want a hosted solution. Your service provider will either install a unified communications platform at your own premise or provide all hardware and software as part of the hosted service.

Unified Communications platform may have the following (but not limited to) features to support your business:
Voice Broadcasting
Fax Blasting
SMS Messaging
Video Broadcasting
Email Marketing
Voice Survey and Polls
Inbound Campaign
Call Center
Interactive Voice Broadcasting
Multi-tenant and Muti-campaign
Answering machine detection
DNC and Opt-Out for compliance
Custom Caller ID
Scalability and Load Balancing
IVR Designer