In today's rapidly evolving digital world, unified communications can help any business to connect better employees, customers and suppliers from virtually anywhere to achieve an unending success together.

Unified communications is a term used to describe any form of call and multimedia or cross-media message management functions controlled by one user for social or business purposes – often intertwining the two.

Encompassing several models and communication systems – such as collaboration, unified messaging and transactional applications – it has been around for several years, steadily evolving.

Communication in the 21st century

Voices are but one piece in the communication puzzle. Whether dealing with a business associate or a client, excellent communication is an essential element to running a business.

Advances in communications such as video conferencing and wireless technology are rapidly making businesses more virtual, meaning that employees, as well as a business itself, are no longer confined to one physical location. Today, a lot of businesses run with many decentralised elements, most of which exist only online.

In November of 2014, Microsoft announced that the next version of Lync will be branded Skype for Business. This was an unexpected move to many but, in hindsight, aligning these two powerful entities isn't all that shocking – especially with the wildly impressive statistics that Skype boasts.

Currently, Skype has a whopping 300+ million active and connected users per month. Over 140 million of those active users are on Android or IOS. Skype calls currently account for nearly 40% of the global international calling minutes in addition to having more than 300 billion minutes of video every year.

These extraordinary statistics offer extensive communication possibilities for businesses that depend on unified communications to build their brand to its highest possible potential.

Is your business unified communications-ready?

There is nothing more important for a businesses continued growth and success than the ability to efficiently collaborate and communicate. Ignoring or refusing to join the ever-changing innovations to both communication and social interaction can have a grossly negative impact on the viability of a business.

In the short time since its wide implementation into business practises, unified communications has helped organisation boost productivity.

You may think that because you are regularly emailing, messaging or conferencing co-workers, business contacts and customers, your business is already using unified communications to its full extent. But the chances are you are using an inferior one-size-fits-all approach that isn't necessarily meeting your specific needs.

Updating a business's use of unified communications doesn't have to be a time-consuming or costly headache – it more than likely already has the majority of tools needed to get the ball rolling.

Any business not entirely confident in whether its use of unified communications is up to date may want to get in touch with an independent conferencing services provider.