Shifting the Communications Culture

Unified communications is full of promise. However, without a shift in the underlying culture of communications and how communications integrate with and enhance business processes, unified communications is little more than bells and whistles on a marketing brochure.

Organizations need to do their due diligence and select a unified communications platform with the services and functionality they need. They need to consider how it will leverage or integrate with the existing infrastructure. They need to implement it properly. They need to ensure that the unified communications deployment is secure.

Does that cover everything? Let me think…..OH! They also need to actually train the people who are supposed to use and benefit from the unified communications. This is arguably the most important piece. If the end users are not aware of what unified communications can do for them, and if they are not trained to properly use the functions and tools in unified communications, then the investment in unified communications is more or less a waste of money.

A recent article in eWeek, How to Help Users Connect with Unified Communications, addresses this issue as well. Make sure that users are given the tools to make the most of unified communications, and the training to understand how to use it effectively.