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How to Streamline Your Business Communications

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StrategyDriven Business Communications Article |Business Communications|How to Streamline Your Business CommunicationsCommunication is one of the key tenets of any business. Without clear communication, things just don’t get done, and start to fall apart. Whether your business’s communication is good or bad though, there’s always room to streamline, and doing so can have huge benefits for your company.

There are many ways you can look to improve your communication, both internally and externally, and find the systems that are going to allow your business to offer a better service.

Here, we take a look at five ways in which you can streamline your business communications.

Clearly Define Roles

When you’re working on an important project, it’s important that everyone clearly understands their roles. If everyone’s roles aren’t clear, that’s when communication can break down, as nobody knows who they need to communicate with.

You may think you have defined someone’s role within the project, but it really needs to be made sure that they understand exactly what that role is and what they’re responsible for.

Have a Point Person

You need to have a person at the top who is in charge of the project. Otherwise, different pieces of information can get passed around certain pockets of the project without ever making it to the person who’s actually in charge.

Communication needs to flow through the point person, who decides what to do with the information and how to proceed. Otherwise, people begin to communicate as individuals rather than as a team.

Bring Your Communication Together in One Place

We have so many different ways of communicating these days, which in many ways is great, but it also brings its own problems. Every minute someone spends trying to remember if they received that important piece of information through email or an instant messenger is time wasted, and this time can really add up.

Bringing your different communication channels together through unified communications (UC) with a company like Code Software can help streamline your team’s communication, making it more efficient and effective.

Make Use of the Data

When you use a UC system, you have access to so much data that allows people to learn about the way they communicate and improve their performance.

When it comes to communication with the customer, there are so many variables that happen in every call, so it can be difficult to judge how you’re performing. It’s only when you have access to all the data that you can see which areas you can improve on.

Make Rules for Different Communication Channels

Another way to overcome the problem of having too many communication channels is by having different rules for each communication channel. For example, if you’re seeking someone’s opinion, it can be quite tricky to do it through written word because it’s hard to understand tone in writing.

So, you can make the rule that if you’re seeking an opinion it has to be through a voice call rather than instant message. There are many different rules you can put in place to suit your business needs and further improve upon communication.

The Top 4 Benefits of Introducing Unified Communications into Your Business

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Unified communications sounds like another corporate buzzword, the sort of thing that a bouncy, over-eager sales rep would try and sell to you with vague promises of efficiency and taking your business to the next level. Regardless, there are a number of perfectly valid reasons that introducing a unified communications system into your business is a smart move and one that virtually any business can benefit from.

Really small businesses, where you and your coworkers are few enough and close enough that you can simply speak to each other, won’t benefit from unified communications. However, any business that consists of multiple departments and requires that employees are able to efficiently and easy communicate with one another will benefit from unifying their systems.

Easier to Manage

Having a single, unified system is much easier to maintain and to manage than having a number of different, disparate systems. All of your unified communications go through a single server and can be managed through a single interface. You don’t need to have any hardware on-site, instead everything is hosted in the cloud. Should there be any hardware issues, then backups can take over, meaning that for your business there is little to no interruption in service.

Reduced Costs

Instead of paying for a number of different products, each of which have to be individually managed, a unified communications system is largely cloud-based and the only cost to your business is a subscription fee. For that fee you will be covered in the event of any issues at no extra charge. If yours is a business that needs to make phone calls to other branches or locations, then making these calls using a VoIP (Voice over IP) protocol, such as SIP Trunking as offered by Masergy, is cheaper and more reliable.

Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

Consumers are more vigilant than ever when it comes to demanding that the companies they do business with minimize their carbon footprints. Even if customers are not actively selecting businesses because of their green credentials, being able to tell them that your company takes environmentalism seriously makes it much easier to market your products and services. Switching to a unified communications system is a simple yet very effective means of reducing your carbon footprint and boosting your business’s green credentials.

Improve Productivity

By unifying all of your communications systems you will make it much easier for your workers to get to grips with the most effective ways of communicating with one another. Even if every member of your team has to learn how to use the new system, once they have done so, you will notice some major productivity gains, gains which would be hard to obtain any other way.

A unified communications system offers numerous advantages to any business. The benefits that they bring more than justify the financial cost, as well as the time that you will need to invest in training your team in using the new system.