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Who needs Unified Communications?
Information technology has revolutionised the way businesses share information and ideas. The challenge lies in staying productive when you’re bombarded with e-mails, messages, voice mails and phone calls.
Staff spend most of the day answering non-urgent e-mails and playing phone tag - still missing those important calls that improve your bottom-line.
Customer Satisfaction suffers when key staff are un-contactable or tied up with a multitude of messaging that is not integrated.
It’s ironic that communications that were designed to enable your staff to enjoy more freedom and mobility can also cause your business to grind to a halt.
But now there’s a way to combine all the vital communications that drive your business forward and ensure its future success.
Unified Communication via software such as Siemens HiPath OpenScape Office joins everything together, creating a seamless communications system with applications your staff use every day. It lets you combine your phone calls, voicemail boxes, conferencing, fax, and messaging into a single, unified solution.
With OpenScape Office, you can restore order to all these messages forms and accelerate your business to take advantage of new communications.
Here are just some of the advantages you’ll enjoy with HiPath OpenOffice:
Reach team mates or employees - first time, every time
Share information seamlessly from any location. Eliminate guessing games and wasted energy
Integrate communications with business processes. See dramatic improvements in workflow.
Reduce operational costs. Increase productivity and profitability
Reduce organisational frustration and stress
Are we really wasting that much time?
The average small to medium-sized enterprise (SME) uses 6.4 types of communication device and 4.8 communications applications such as email, mobile phones, desktop phones and PDA’s*. Juggling them is almost impossible, especially when your people could be anywhere within your building, on the road, or overseas.
The end result is inefficient communications with unpredictable costs that can get out of control:
<52% of employees use multiple methods to contact someone on a daily basis
<36% of the time they fail to get connected
22% of deadlines are missed as well as valuable revenue opportunities
So if you can overcome inefficient communications, you will have a distinct competitive advantage, at the same time as addressing all those bigger business issues.
* Unified Communications Application: Uses and Benefits, January 2006, Sage Research
Why invest in HiPath OpenOffice?
HiPath OpenOffice is a unified communications solution that incorporates the latest in internet voice technology. It’s designed and priced specifically for small and medium enterprises and because it uses genuine open standards, it integrates seamlessly into your existing IT environment. There’s no need to ‘rip and replace’. HiPath OpenOffice is easy to install, use, administer and maintain. What’s more, it can be scaled smoothly from 20 up to 150 users. So it can also accommodate growth as a result of your increased productivity and profitability. The result is:
More efficient, happier, and productive staff
A more mobile, more agile, more responsive workforce
Improved workflow so revenue opportunities are seized/br>
Improved customer service and response times
Reduced backlogs and bottlenecks
Reduced missed calls and missed faxes, less phone tag and guessing games.
How Unified Communications works
Here’s a timeline showing how HiPath OpenOffice works for you on a typical working day:
9.00am: You need to speak with a colleague immediately but they’re on the phone. With HiPath OpenOffice you can check their presence status and send them an Instant Message.
10.30am: An offsite meeting went over time and you’ll be late getting back to the office. Update your presence status from your mobile phone instead of relying on a colleague to send a message. Your voicemail greeting will change dynamically to match your presence status, based on simple rules you can set yourself.
12.20pm: An important customer is on the phone and wants a conference call NOW. With HiPath OpenOffice you can see who’s available instantly. Drag-and-drop available team members into your application to call them at once. If someone is already on another call, send an Instant Message and ask them to join in ASAP.
1.30pm: You’re reviewing a document on your laptop and need to call a contact number listed in the file. HiPath OpenOffice lets you click and dial to call them directly from the document app on your laptop.
3pm: You’re on a critical call and have to divide your attention between listening, speaking and furiously writing notes, HiPath OpenOffice lets you record the conversation for a detailed meeting report or to review later.
5.40pm: You’ve been in meetings all day, returning and answering phone calls in between, but you can’t remember who you’ve called back and who’s called you. HiPath OpenOffice gives you a smart and simple call journal to prioritise and view messages without having to listen to each one.
6.15pm: You switch between email, voicemail systems and the fax machine - all integrated seamlessly into one application with a Microsoft OutlookTM plug-in.
Key features and benefits for SMEs
HiPath OpenOffice has been specifically designed to meet the needs of small and medium enterprises with features that make managing diverse communications simple and cost effective.
Presence
Lets everyone set their availability so you’ll know if someone is in a meeting, on a phone call, when they’ll become available and the best way to contact them. If you’re out of the office you can even update your availability via your phone.
Conference Management
HiPath OpenOffice makes it easy to set up conference calls using the ‘Conference Management’ feature. Schedule conference calls, create a dial-in or ad-hoc call on the fly by simply dragging and dropping participants from your directory. Remember, there are no conference call charges. It’s all handled through HiPath OpenOffice, so costs are reduced and productivity is improved because everyone can get together to make the decisions required to move forward.
Microsoft OutlookTM Plug-in
HiPath OpenOffice integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Outlook, so everyone can access all their communications via a single screen. Email, voicemail, fax and instant messages can be viewed, managed and answered from the Outlook screen they use every day. Their presence status and voicemail greetings change automatically based on events in the Outlook™ calendar, so callers always get the latest status on staff availability. There’s no need to switch between screens, so your teams enjoy increased productivity.
A feature-rich system that makes working a pleasure
HiPath OpenOffice is a total solution. Evotec can help you make it work specifically for your business, to match your culture and strategic priorities. Think how convenient this could be for your business:
Have all your contacts in just ONE directory so you don’t have to search for numbers in multiple places
Access, change, and manage your key contacts with handy favourites lists
Route all mobile and desk phone messages to ONE voice message box
Receive and respond to faxes as easily as an email with a fax message box
Know who you’ve called and who has called you with your personal call journal
Forward all your calls to ONE number with intelligent call management
Get immediate notifications when you are away from your desk and a key message or fax arrives
Give your callers options to reach you or someone else with personal autoattendant
Connect callers to available staff the first time and see the presence status of everyone in your organisation with Attendant Console
Dial a number from any desktop application to contact someone immediately
Never misunderstand a customer instruction or action item again with live call recording
Take advantage of your negotiated call rates and call packages with different mobility capabilities.
For more information, or to arrange an obligation-free demonstration on how Siemens HiPath OpenOffice can benefit your business, call Evotec on 1300 133 996.
For a YouTube demonstration of OpenOffice at work, click here