Communications & Collaboration

With the increased drive to reduce costs and increase efficiency, many organizations are reassessing their current working practices. The consolidation of resources, rationalization of estates, reducing unnecessary costs and optimizing assets are all common trends. The traditional methods of communicating and collaborating need to change to support new ways of working and a growing number of organizations are embracing new strategies such as flexible working.

The increasing consumerization of technology is supporting such strategies, ensuring the process of communicating and collaborating is efficient and effective regardless of time, location or what device is being used.

Productivity and efficiency can be transformed by the adoption of tools that enable effective collaboration, from the provision of a unified message box that acts as a repository for voice, video and email messages, to the use of virtual meeting spaces for project teams enabling real-time collaboration on documents, designs and ideas. Using presence ensures team members know who is available at any time, focusing queries towards the right individuals and avoiding disruption or delay. For example, hospital consultants using touch screen tablets, combining colleague presence with patient information, will enable rapid co-ordination of multi-specialist resources, improving the timeliness and quality of patient care.

Organizations must also consider the wider implications of adopting new working practices such as the security, accessibility and availability of information, as well as the provisioning and decommissioning user access to corporate resources.

It is the effective integration of these services in a way that supports strong business processes that will underpin a successful transition to a more collaborative and productive operation.