Industry news

Major business praises unified communication systems

Businesses have been urged to adopt unified communication systems, as they can increase productivity, reduce costs and speed up customer service.

At the recent VoiceCon Orlando 2008 conference, Dennis Schmidt, senior vice president for network services at Bank of America, explained how a unified communication system had improved operations at the firm.

According to computerworld.com, Mr Schmidt said that the system had cut the cost of supplying phone service to employees by 15 per cent on average.

He added that unified communications systems also made it easier to expand into new buildings as there was no need to install voice-only networks.

Finally, Mr Schmidt explained that the unified communications system allowed workers who move from building to building to log into an IP phone and have their calls routed to the phone and get their voice mail.

However, Mr Schmidt urged other firms to carefully plan the roll out of their unified communication systems for them to be successful.

He told the site: "Network transformation is less about technology and more intensely about the people, process and organisational transformation."

In particular, he suggested firms establish monthly targets for how many VoIP phones will be deployed.