Innovation & Business Communications Tools

I think that most people will probably realise that communication plays a huge role in the global economy, and the world of business. The reasons for this are primarily information exchange and relationship building. Essentially, it is a lot easier to exchange useful information with a business partner or prospect and build relationships between them – therefore communication plays a huge role in facilitating business and driving the world economy.

But what are the sorts of communications tools a modern business will use for this? The following is a rundown of the most popular, and useful, communications tools businesses use (or perhaps should use) to spur innovation and connectivity in their day-to-day activities.

It’s no secret that there have been a wide range of advances in business communications practices in recent years due to the massive rise of the internet and enhanced information technologies. The most significant of these, and possibly the most iconic of these – is email.

Email really did revolutionise the business world. All of a sudden, people could send very extensive and detailed information all the way across the world at the touch of a button. This really changed everything, literally everything. And the hallmark of a truly revolutionary technology is examining whether or not it is still around – and email is as strong as ever.

Sending documents to clients or even dealing with sales can be accomplished over email. It’s become a lot easier to send very large pieces of data too – and also very securely. In addition to this, the proliferation of Wi-Fi internet access has increased the reach of email access, as well as web connectivity itself.

Well, phones might actually seem a little bit low-tech and not truly an important tool in the modern business world. But the technologies of phones, although they might seem old and antiquated, have also developed and updated along with their super high-tech equivalents.

For example, there are such things nowadays called VoIP phones. VoIP means (Voice Over IP), and it is essentially an internet phone. This means that voice data is pushed over a network, you might not see the immediate benefits of this – but the fact is that VoIP phones have revolutionised business telephone systems. The kind of designs that are available to businesses vary widely, but many corporate environments use more established technologies including Avaya and Cisco – but there are many, often cheaper, alternatives for smaller businesses as discussed by Garrett Smith at VOIPSupply.com.

Using this model, you can actually integrate phones into your communications technology. This creates a very resilient and adaptable stream of data, in terms of voice. By interpreting phones traffic as data, you can push them through to software programs that allow you to interact with this data more easily – something unachievable on traditional phone devices. So, included in this data might be customer details, service requirements or the nature of their inquiry that is read by a software application and presented to the phone operator – so this means that whoever is handling the calls is better placed to deal with them.

Intranets are an amazing development, although they are much lesser known than the internet itself. Intranets, for those who don’t know, are basically internal internets – in other words they can only be accessed by those who are authorised by the network administrator.

The benefits of an intranet are many. Communication is important in a business setting internally, for example there may be a need for chat functionality and intranets. In addition to this, collaborative tools such as document sharing are available. This is excellent for efficiency. You can make a big impact on efficiency by introducing document sharing as you can have a single collaborative document for, as an example, a company policy that is viewable by all employees and updatable by relevant managers. This means that there is a single document that is always the most up to date version and does not require distribution as it is permanently located in a centralised location.

There are also social aspects to intranets; in larger companies this can be particularly important. For example, forums and communities can be developed and function as a kind of internal social network.

Cloud computing is still very much in its infancy, but it is still a very interesting technology. With cloud computing data, applications and even computing power can be shared. This is excellent for companies whose staff requires access to powerful computing systems such as those in digital media and design industries where large computer processing power is necessary.

This can save money for companies. For example, with a centralised server computing power can be pushed to other client devices such as laptops, desktops, tablets and smartphones. This can save significant money and time when it comes to maintenance and upgrades. By pushing a virtual desktop to a client machine, which will be very basic in comparison to the server in terms of hardware, you only have to maintain the server itself – with the client machines being very much more reliable and stable due to their simplicity.

There are also significant upgrades required from time to time, and the cost of upgrading a centralised server is much less than upgrading multiple individual computers.

Technology is bringing us closer together. But a lot of people find emails, chat services or intranet forums somewhat impersonal. Well, with the advancement of internet speed videoconferencing can now take place over networks.

This is excellent for accessibility, as well as convenience when someone is needed in a meeting but is in a different location, but the main benefit is a personal touch.

By seeing people on a conference, much like you might when sitting across from them in the boardroom; you are able to interact more easily. You can’t shake hands, but you can see people’s reactions and interact on a more human level. Videoconferencing is a big deal, although it currently is only used for the most important meetings and not for every small detail.

So there you have a rundown of some of the most important pieces of business communications equipment. Making an impact currently are email and intranets, although cloud computing is catching up quite rapidly – and there is significant advancement in videoconferencing.

In any case, there are many significant communications technologies which businesses and the world economy increasingly rely on. What did you think?  I’d love to know what you think. Please feel free to leave a comment and share your thoughts below.