Communication and collaboration within an organisation, and externally to stakeholders and customers, is fundamental to business success. It always has been, but now in this connected age the necessity for best practice communication and collaboration has become more vital than ever.
 

This is evidenced by market growth reports, which suggest that the unified communications industry is likely to surpass $167 billion by 2025. 
 

Streamlining real-time communication solutions like voice, video and data into one manageable solution will enable quick and efficient comms, ultimately improving business productivity, profit  and customer retention, among other things.
 

Devising an effective communication and collaboration roadmap is key to ensuring continued viability in an ever-changing space. As technology continues to evolve and break new ground, so too must a business, and their agility and willingness to adopt these new technologies and solutions could enable businesses to unlock new potential.
 

Business growth 
 

The scalability and agility of unified communications solutions lends itself to business growth. As start-ups become scale-ups, and scale-ups become enterprises, businesses with a smart roadmap and an effective plan in place will easily adapt to evolving challenges, easily overcoming problems as they arise.  
 

Many solutions can be fine-tuned, and they are flexible enough to support businesses with teams of two or two hundred. Putting mobility front and centre will complement a business as it moves through the perpetually evolving business landscape. Not thinking about the future and looking at quick fixes with minimal foresight will do an organisation a disservice, possibly draining time and money.
 

Improve productivity
 

Improving productivity can appear to be an insurmountable challenge for many businesses, but unified communications has proven time and again that it can address this challenge in numerous ways.
 

From 52% uplift in workplace productivity to an average profit increase of 25%, studies have found that businesses adopting unified communications solutions have much to gain. It sounds promising, so the next step is to identify the solution best for your organisation’s current operations, all with one eye on the future.
 

Effective collaboration
 

Adopting an effective and lasting comms strategy can have a huge upshot to collaboration within an organisation. When knowing that team members are on-hand throughout the working day, when and where they might be, leads to many practicalities. Tasks can be turned round quicker, and collaborating across teams, departments and even continents become a breeze. Similarly, looking externally, if a colleague needs to close, convert or rescue a sale, or provide information to a customer quickly, then collaboration is key, and it can only be achieved with effective comms.
 

Speed equals satisfaction 
 

We know what it feels like as consumers, to be on the receiving end of slow, inaccurate service, passed from pillar to post with no resolution in sight. As a business, ensuring your customers don’t face this seemingly never-ending trail of calls, emails and dead-ends can be essential to improving retention. Businesses lose tens of billions of dollars every year because of bad or drawn-out customer service, and three quarters of people are likely to switch if they find purchasing or service processes to be lacking. Businesses can solve this through communication and collaboration. 
 

Considering all of these points, the ability of unified communications to power-up marketing, processes and services results in a win-win for businesses. With the boost in productivity and collaboration thrown in, a well executed, scalable and mobile unified communications solution could lead to growth in all areas, resulting in happier, more productive employees and a satisfied, loyal customer base.  
 

To learn more about how you and your business can benefit from unified communications, then look no further than the Call & Contact Centre Expo 2020, Europe’s leading call & contact centre event.
 

By Matthew Hughes | Editor in Chief of Top Business Tech, https://tbtech.co/