Uncle Ben once told Spiderman, “with great power comes great responsibility.” As your business grows, there’s a greater requirement for collaboration among different teams and efficient interactions on various levels. Therefore, enterprise communications are extremely important for business success.
Now when we discuss business communication, people often imagine external conversations—with customers, clients or partners. However, what slips their mind is the importance of connectivity within the organisation. The year 2020 has left us re-examining the latter as we all adjust to a remote working model.
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Let’s first address the elephant in the room:
Enterprise Communication
Every email, fax, text, call, or video chat within employees of an organisation falls under the umbrella of enterprise communications. Employees are able to collaborate, brainstorm, report, inform and update progress this way.
Hence, a fault in the system can lead to problems in projects and overall efficiency. Especially in unexpected crises situations like the ongoing pandemic, it’s important to discuss the communication model for business continuity in remote times.
As technology has progressed through the years, we’re presented with a multitude of options for transmission media. More options often mean more confusion.
The current work environment is increasingly diverse, and thus, people are comfortable with different types of media and platforms. As an organisation, it is important to identify the varied needs of your employees and provide them with a digestible solution.
How can you do that? Five words: Artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud services.
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According to Trade Press Services, 74% of employees in 2018 admitted to feeling left out when it came to company news and information. This fosters employee disengagement and eventually affects their performance. By investing in enterprise communication, you are also motivating your workers.
How are AI and Cloud-based services improving enterprise communication?
Companies tend to keep their focus on public relations and consumer experience. However, this can often lead to neglect of in-house communications. If the true intent of a message is not properly conveyed, it can lead to inaccurate actions, a slack in productivity and overall, utter inefficiency. Hence, a simple solution to this problem is a unified form of communication.
With cloud services, you can make use of UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service). This concept, along with AI, provides you with several features that can be used for improving collaboration within the business:
Video Conferencing
Meetings can be held across the world with the help of video conferencing facilities. Even if you’re miles apart, you can log in or join a virtual meeting externally. Moreover, technology is no longer limited to the visual presence of employees. Thanks to AI, video calls are more advanced than ever, allowing the participants to carry out various tasks simultaneously for seamless interactions.
When on a call with several participants, machine learning can identify and tag each individual’s name to their screen. This makes it easy to identify a particular member from a sea of people. Furthermore, you can also control permissions to the meeting, keeping it as secure or open as you wish. In fact, you’re notified even if a participant has been dormant for too long, thereby allowing realistic monitoring.
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With the help of screen and file sharing, study material can be tracked by every member with ease, without conducting independent searches every time. This not only saves time and effort but also lends the process more competency. Automatic call recordings and transcripts can be used later as reference material by the students.
Instant Messaging
Gone are the days of sending out physical letters and ardently waiting for replies. Too slow, too tedious, too inefficient. Instant messaging (IM) has changed the language of the world. Why wait for days when words can be exchanged within seconds?
Instant messaging can inform employees of any updates in schedules or projects immediately. AI enhances the experience further by allowing speech-to-text conversions. You need not spend time typing each word when technology can put your words into writing.
IM also ensures that no important notice is lost in the mail trail by sending the message to individual devices. Uniformity in the transmission is a must to avoid any miscommunications and resulting disputes.
Call Transfers and Voicemails
Picture this: You receive a rather important call on your work telephone right as you’re about to leave the office. Do you wait there until the end of the conversation? Not anymore. Simply transfer your call to your preferred device. Quickly switch to your mobile phone and talk on the go.
If you do not have time to attend to a call, cloud technology can divert it to a voicemail facility. You can tap into the unattended calls in your free time. In fact, you can automate the system to forward voicemails to your inbox along with a transcript, so you always stay notified.
Detecting presence and Monitoring
Another feature of the cloud and AI is to detect the online presence of an employee. You can keep a track of the working hours of the staff and maintain a healthy personal-professional timeline. Monitor employee tasks efficiently, and be informed of their availability status at all times.
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Common Storage
In a traditional office setup, documents are often saved on several devices or data silos that can be accessed only with specific infrastructure. This limits access to the data and increases time and effort for those who wish to find it. An appealing feature of the cloud is that it provides a common storage space for all the data—which can be tapped by any personnel, using their own access.
You don’t need to spend on bulky infrastructure as everything is stored virtually. This also makes it easy to scale without worrying about hardware. Of course, while handling sensitive data on the Internet, security is a major concern. You can manage the permissions for each item and limit access to confidential projects. High levels of firewalls and encryptions are in place to ensure the safety of the system. Additionally, by syncing multiple devices, you can integrate multiple contacts under one umbrella.
Virtual Assistant
Siri and Alexa have become staple names in every household. They ease routine tasks by acting as virtual assistants. However, this feature is not limited to the domestic setup; it has way more potential in an office space.
Using AI, you can unlock a virtual assistant in the office that will allow you to automate mundane tasks like scheduling meetings, setting alarms, dialling numbers, taking notes, etc. Your agents can instead focus on tasks that require their careful attention.
Now that we have gone through the features of what the cloud and artificial intelligence has to offer, let’s recap some benefits:
- The technology is easily accessible and encourages remote working
- Its features can be scaled up or down according to the needs of the organisation
- It allows for real-time feedback and conversation
- It encourages collaboration between employees and departments
- By eliminating the need for infrastructure, it is cost-effective for businesses of any size
Conclusion:
Communication is elementary to achieving a common goal. Interacting effectively within an organisation can help employees collaborate with one other and also keep themselves informed on any important updates.
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Hence, it is necessary to find a means of information transmission that is appealing to everyone. Cloud solutions and artificial intelligence are revolutionising enterprise communications by unifying the means of interaction. Various features and benefits can then be unlocked by using these technologies, a move many firms have already made.
Author Bio:
Vanita Arora is a marketing enthusiast. She is currently working with Servetel – a leading cloud telephony provider that specializes in providing IVR Services. Reading novels, traveling, researching new online marketing trends are some of her interest areas that keep her rejuvenated.
