Universal comms a vital next step

"Customers can [now] connect with each other very quickly and easily, and they expect to be able to connect with your business very quickly and easily," says David Prosser, MD of ComUnity.

---

Universal communications is a vital - yet often difficult to navigate - new priority for businesses, agreed experts at a discussion about universal communications hosted by Microsoft in Johannesburg yesterday.

It is important for employees to have flexible business communication solutions enabling them to communicate both internally and externally from any device, anywhere, and at any time, panellists agreed.

While historically, "communication" when applied to business referred to optimising internal correspondence, customers are putting increasing demand on businesses to be available to external communication, said Uriel Rootshtain, Office division lead at Microsoft SA.

"Customers can [now] connect with each other very quickly and easily, and they expect to be able to connect with your business very quickly and easily," echoed David Prosser, MD of ComUnity.

What facilitates this change is the merging of "digital work" with "digital life", said Rootshtain, through technologies such as smartphones which allow personal and professional use simultaneously.

Yet despite the increasing importance of universal communications systems, many businesses remain more focused on protecting existing assets than engaging in the risk-laden process of crafting new ones, said Prosser.

Additionally, many businesses will adopt a solution for the sake of staying on top of a trend, without fully considering the specific functionality the solution needs to meet their unique needs, he continued.

Input from customers is absolutely critical in developing universal communications that will appeal to their needs, said Stelios Vakis, head of business IT enablement at Nedbank.

Implementing universal communications involves not only engineering new technological solutions, but tackling cultural setbacks, said Kate Skinstad, senior manager at Ernst & Young.

Within the business, universal communications demands the synergy of business imperatives - which do not necessarily understand the practicalities of IT - and IT departments, which are not traditionally customer-focused, Skinstad elaborated.

Employees also tend to be resistant to the idea of universal communications, said Rootshtain, because often the idea of being able to work from anywhere at anytime gives the impression employees will be expected to be available at all times, under any circumstances.

Tackling this misconception involves setting new cultural norms surrounding when and under what circumstances one is expected to be available, and how to police one's personal boundaries, he concluded.