A Personal Unified Communications platform with Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies can strengthen the abilities of your workforce, empowering them to become mobile with the same features they would use on their desktop at the office. This will improve productivity, collaboration, and customer satisfaction. A BYOD policy can also help prevent disruptions caused by adverse weather, office emergencies or renovations, and other events that may cause communication failures.

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The research firm ZK Research defines Personal UC as, “the ability to deliver a consistent set of UC services to any user, on any device, in any work location.”

Organizations that take advantage of Personal UC capabilities such as BYOD are set up to gain a valuable competitive advantage.

 

Personal UC Characteristics

The ideal Personal UC platform possesses the following characteristics:

  • Feature parity: Personal UC aims to provide mobile workers with the same UC features as office workers – that means all of the same features, capabilities, and customer experiences across multiple devices.

 

  • Collaboration: Personal UC prioritizes the ease of video conferencing and other collaboration features. This priority reflects the growing prominence of video conferencing in the modern workplace.

 

The ZK Research 2014 Unified Communications Survey found that video meetings end 73% faster than other meeting types. ZK Research also found that mobile devices are the most common platform for video conferencing.

 

The New BYOD: Bring Your Own Experience (BYOE)

Personal UC solutions transform all endpoints that have been allowed by BYOD policies into powerful tools for collaboration. Feature parity and mobile-centric development turn Bring Your Own Device into something more like Bring Your Own Experience (BYOE).

This new mobile experience provides simplified collaboration, improved business intelligence, application integration, and faster access to information.

BYOE provides powerful enhancements:

  • All endpoints provide a consistent experience, regardless of network and operating system
  • Contact information from all business directories is integrated between devices
  • A flawless hand-off is created between mobile devices and fixed lines, without losing work progress or connectivity
  • Ad hoc conferences can be started with only a few clicks, sidestepping plugins and downloads

 

The success of BYOD

The benefits are clear: using BYOD or BYOE solutions improves collaboration and reduces time to information. Not to mention your employees will have all the same access to all the same information regardless of their location.

Tech Target Unified Communications surveyed 348 IT-focused enterprises about various aspects of their current UC programs. When asked about the benefits of their UC strategy, 57.5% cited improved collaboration, while improved time to information was cited by 56%.

Organizations of all sizes that are looking for the next competitive advantage will benefit from pursuing a Personal UC solution that utilizes BYOD and BYOE collaboration tools. Work absences decrease, missed calls and messages decrease, meeting attendance increases … BYOD is a win-win solution for any size business looking for a competitive edge.