Enterprise Communications Featured Article

It appears that market growth of unified communications technologies will continue to expand until at least 2018. Businesses are banking on UC addressing all their enterprise communication needs in consolidated, easy-to-use solutions that will make video, voice, text, and other methods of interaction simple and possible from any desktop or mobile device.

As a recent blog post from Tadiran (News - Alert) Telecom points out, several markets are becoming interested in new communications technologies, and they are driving growth that analysts expect will more than double the value of the UC market in the next four years. Tadiran points to research that shows the market doubling from $26 billion to $61.9 billion, and TMC (News - Alert) has recently written about the Infonetics research that suggests that the industry will see a compound annual growth rate of 7 percent.

Aside from these numbers being arguably impressive to laymen and businessmen alike, the fact is that enterprise employees will eventually have to use the new technologies when they come to pass. They may see changes within their computers and personal mobile phones. They may use new desk phones, applications, and conferencing materials that they have never seen before. Although UC providers want to make their products as simple to use as possible, everything comes with a certain learning curve, and this will be no different.

Therefore, like Tadiran suggests, business officials must provide training for their employees when the new tech arrives. Officials can lighten the pain of transition by letting them know, early on, that things will look and feel different in the months or weeks ahead. Allowing them time to settle in will reduce the shock of change.

Still, even with a lot of preparation time, managers and trainers will need to be patient because the learning curve for the new materials could be higher than expected. And once employees get into the groove of using new software and hardware time and time again, they will become adept at the new facilities, and operations will begin to run smoothly.

Managers, as well, should work with their UC providers to make sure training happens initially and support is ongoing. Although experts can make sure employees have a good handle on new devices and programs, continued support through providers makes sense when managers have issues they run into through the lifecycle of their utilities, and team leaders within offices who work among their peers can become contact points for any day-to-day problems employees may encounter.