INTRODUCTION

For today's employees, managing various types of communications has become something of a challenge. Telephone calls, voice messages, email messages, faxes, messages from the customer relationship management (CRM) system, messages arriving by post and the use of instant messaging can find employees spending far too much of their day processing and managing their communications with their customers and coworkers. Most people deal with more than two hundred messages during a single business day. To help manage their communications, many technology companies are developing tools and solutions that focus on simplifying the communications process. This set of applications is generally called Unified Communications and includes integrating the communications process with other enterprise applications (unified messaging, integrated document management, integrated CRM, etc.), new tools and protocols for extending the range of communications (mobile wireless, WI-FI, IP Telephony, etc.) and building special devices to enable access to communications from a wider range of devices (mobile wireless devices, tablet PC, smart phones with PDA capabilities, etc.).

This paper will focus on the messaging challenges companies face today, with some discussion of other communications solutions.

TRADITIONAL MESSAGING PROBLEMS AND COSTS

Most existing messaging systems were implemented over time by different companies and supplied and maintained by different vendors. Because different departments were responsible for their implementation, little concern was given to integration of functionality or intelligent managing of resources. As a result, most businesses find themselves facing a similar set of problems when it comes to dealing with their messaging systems.

TOO MANY MESSAGES AND MESSAGE TYPES

In a typical business, employees find themselves dealing with three basic message types: email, voice and fax messages. As each of these technologies has evolved, it has become easier to send messages to a business contact. This has added to the number of messages an average person receives and sends during the day. A few years ago, a user might have received ten or so messages a day — a few voice messages, faxes and several email messages — today it's not at all unusual for a business person to receive more than 200 messages or more in a single day. Unfortunately, as the number of messages received increases, the expectation of a prompt reply from the sender does not decrease. This leads to spending more time processing and managing messages and less time performing more critical business functions.

MULTIPLE DEVICES REQUIRED TO ACCESS AND PROCESS DIFFERENT MESSAGE TYPES

As the various types of messaging originally evolved, each required the user to handle the message using a different format or device. Faxes were available only as hard copy at the fax machine and voice messages were stored on a separate voice mail system and could only be accessed from a telephone. Further, users had multiple voice mailboxes for their business, mobile phone and home phone. Email messages were only available from the desktop computer. Not only were all message types accessed using different methods, there was also no way to store the various messages in a single location based on subject, projects or priority.

POOR MESSAGE NOTIFICATION

In order to respond to messages in a timely manner, the recipient has to first know the message has arrived. Originally, voice mail systems would light the message-waiting indicator on the user's telephone at their desk and later added the ability to call the user at a single telephone number or pager for notification. Email systems could show a new message icon or perhaps sound a beep at a user's computer to indicate the arrival of a new message, but lacked any means of notifying a user that was away from their desk. Faxes generally sat at the fax machine until someone noticed them, or were, at best, distributed once a day. Without effective message notification, it was almost impossible to be responsive to business needs.

EMPLOYEES ARE INCREASINGLY MORE MOBILE

In today's business environment, people are more mobile than ever. Being mobile may be as simple as being down the hall in a conference room or could involve traveling around the world. In many businesses, it has become financially beneficial for businesses to allow a certain portion of their employees to work from home on an occasional or regular basis. With the traditional messaging systems, there is no effective way to be notified of new messages.

COST OF MULTIPLE MESSAGING SYSTEMS

As businesses implemented additional messaging systems, the costs to deploy and maintain these systems grew out of proportion to their value. Companies ended up with additional expenses including telephone line resources (lines for fax machines, voice mail, lines for notification callouts, for dial-up to the network to access email, etc.). Since each system was separate and distinct, administering the systems was time consuming and involved training the administrators and users on multiple systems.

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