Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc. Telecommunication Systems Division

What does “unified communications” mean to your business? To most, it means creating a more effective business by integrating business applications with people communications. It sounds great in theory, but it’s only meaningful if it provides tangible benefits. Things like improving employee productivity and streamlining business processes that enable you to make better decisions, provide better service to customers, generate more sales, reduce costs, and improve profits.

How can unified communications help do that? Most businesses already have several ways to communicate with their customers, suppliers, and each other. They use office telephones, cell phones, voice mail, email, video conferencing, instant messaging, and more. In a non-unified approach, these various forms of communication work independently of each other, sometimes causing you to try multiple methods before reaching someone. Unified communications includes the structure and intelligence to enable these various forms of communication to work together, so information reaches recipients quicker and through the most appropriate medium.

Want a couple of real life examples? How about one number access, in which your customer dials your number, it either rings your desk telephone and mobile/cell phone simultaneously, or it tries your desk telephone, then your cell phone, etc. until it finds you wherever you are. Or a presence viewer that enables you to see the status of other users, with the ability to click on the name to either call or instant message with them. Or, how about off-premise call forwarding that not only enables your incoming calls to reach you when you’re out of the office, but enables you to change your forwarding destination from any remote location. After all, what good is forwarding your calls off-premise if you can’t tell the system where you are when you change locations?

Toshiba provides a comprehensive unified communications solution that includes PBX voice features, voice messaging (auto attendant, speech recognition, voice mail, IVR, message notification), unified messaging (email, voice messages and fax), voice conferencing, desktop collaboration and video conferencing, contact center applications, mobility applications, presence, instant messaging, and business process integration. These capabilities work together within the same system to form one comprehensive, integrated communication solution.

And of course, flexibility is a key factor. That’s why the Toshiba solution lets you pick and choose the mix of modular capabilities that meet the specific needs of your business. Toshiba makes these unified communication solutions available today, and continually works on additional capabilities that will continue to enhance Toshiba’s unified communications offering in the future.