Unified Communications

Recent research has shown that a lot of companies are going about Unified Communications (UC) in the wrong way. When you take into account the condition of the economy, it’s easy to see why businesses are approaching UC in a piecemeal way and bolting on bit after bit, but this is not the way to unify your communications.

The trick is in the name – Unified. Using a fragmented system of communication makes things harder and not easier. The benefit of UC lies in the efficiency of having all your communication systems as one making it cheaper and easier to manage. So if you’re considering UC, make sure you do it right!

Find out more about unified communications and how it can streamline and make your business more effiecnt and get in touch with Elite Telecom, your leading UK telecoms provider.

As your business expands, so do your avenues of contact.  Although it is often said that increased distance is to blame for the breakdown in communication, the secret is a unified comms system. By bringing everyone together through a unified communications (UC) platform, you’re literally taking out the middle man, and integrating your various communicative services into one single interface.  Pulling together a host of different communication modes including video conferencing, mobile communication, email, voicemail, instant messaging and VoIP, means that you only have to answer to one solution – unified communications.

With more and more businesses interacting on a global scale, it’s common for people to be working from home or utilising satellite offices as a means of staying in touch, regardless of physical location.  Connecting your team onto one platform ensures better team collaboration – allowing online meetings to be scheduled more easily or for spur-of-the-moment reviews to take place.

Quite simply, unified communications can do wonders for your business, including:

• Telephony.  Connecting various phone devices means you can call your co-worker by name, and not by extension;


• Presence.  By identifying a person’s availability, it will be easier for people to know when you’re in or out of the office, without wasting time running around trying to locate you.


• Instant messaging.  Talking as a pair or in groups wherever you are means less restrictions, as well as making file sharing simpler.

A recent study has stressed the need for up-to-date knowledge of IT skills in order to manage data more efficiently.

The National Audit Office found that the IT skills of at least 40 per cent of civil servants employed at the Department for Work and Pensions, Education, Farming and Rural Affairs and the Treasury fared as “fairly or very significant”.

Spending per employee in the furthering of IT skills came to £547, with little evidence to confirm whether or not the training made an impact to the productivity of workers.

At least £275 million was spent by the government on training during the 2009/10 tax year, with contributions towards the salaries of both departmental learning and development staff – however, only 48 per cent of those polled noted minor improvements in carrying out their work duties.

“IT is seen as a non-essential cost so traditionally it is an area the government doesn’t invest a lot in.  But the pay-off of increasing spend on training would be greater efficiency savings,” said Sid Barnes, executive at employment agency Computer People.

Manage your data more effectively by keeping up-to-date with the latest phone systems and unified communications as well as advancing technology trends – by keeping up with the UK’s leading telecommunications provider, Elite Telecom.

At least 49 per cent of businesses plan to increase spending on unified communications rather than IT over the next year, according to a recent study.  But many IT services featured in the findings have reported that there are still several organisations who do not have a clear concept of UC.

Collated by IT company CompTIA, their report of “Unified Communications and Collaboration Market Trends” assessed firms with a range of workforces, and found that UC technology will be more likely to be implemented in businesses of 500 or more employees.

Larger companies will be more inclined to grow in terms of UC services (around 64 per cent of participants) in comparison to their IT solutions, with smaller firms (consisting of 50 employees or less) less likely to invest in unified communications (35 per cent of those interviewed).

“This is an area that we’ve seen as growing for a while now and we really wanted to get some data behind it and start including some of our members who are active in this space, because we see it as an emerging market.  I think the data confirmed that it’s an emerging market,” stated CompTIA director of technology analysis, Seth Robinson.

However, there are still some obstacles to overcome before unified communications can be truly understood as well as appreciated by many end-users.  But the concept of joining different tools of communication together is one of great appeal to many businesses, so it is predicted that it won’t be long until organisations take to this methodology.

“Right now there’s more adoption in enterprises, and I think that makes sense because of the large nature of that, the obvious desire to tie together branches and headquarters, and maybe they’ve got more mobile workers, but the small and medium business, there’s an opportunity there because tying all these things together can really bring some efficiencies, which is really what a small/medium business is after,” said Robinson.

Whatever your small/medium/large business is after, Elite Telecom are sure to have it.  Call us for details on our extensive range of telecommunications solutions today.

For a long time, unified communications dominated the IT stage - but it has since been pushed out of the limelight by a newer piece of technology; video conferencing. The “prognosis for its use in healthcare appears to hold promise,” reported one expert, with virtual meetings providing several benefits especially for use especially in the medicine sector.

Thanks to advancing trends in technology, media can be implemented far more effectively – with sound and video coming together to deliver time and cost effective communications solutions.

President and CEO of BurstPoint Networks, Tom Racca, explained the advantages behind uniting staff and customers instantly on a global platform: “Healthcare has always been a progressive field and those involved – from researchers to physicians to IT leaders – are driven to find better, more efficient methods,” he says.

Racca has come up with 4 important factors imperative to healthcare providers when employing videoconferencing:

Care of patients – Patients can now conduct medical appointments from the comfort of their own home;

Compliance and training – Live stream training allows videos to be accessed whenever and wherever;

Collaboration – Meetings can now be held with other healthcare professionals, allowing ideas to be exchanged over a virtual forum;

Communications command and control – The provision of videoconferencing allows for the distribution of messages to be passed quicker, unifying several departments within a medical authority.

Whilst many healthcare organisations are slowly discovering the advantages behind videoconferencing, Racca believes the technology will improve and increase quality in years to come.

See if virtual meetings are a part of your company’s future, with our exclusive videoconferencing technology available at Elite Telecom.

The latest report released by the Megabuyte Forum reported positive results with telecoms resellers last month, with huge growth in relation to share price performances as well as mergers and acquisitions valuations.

Businesses with notable increases include:

-          Telecom Plus (+29%)

-          Kcom (+24%)

-          Daisy (+18%)

-          Alternative Networks (+17%)

-          Talk Talk (+16%)

This proved quite an achievement in spite of the particularly weak markets – especially in the case of the FTSE (down 2.8%).

All the companies apart from Daisy confirmed evident changes, with Telecoms Plus and Alternative Networks displaying substantial organic profits and revenue growth; followed by Talk Talk and Kcom producing significant achievements despite revenue demands.

Spirits in the communications sector were high thanks to Vitruvian’s £100m acquisition of Unicom, approximated at 6-7x EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortisation) – clearly showing growing popularity within the private equity field.

As the UK’s leading business telecommunications services provider, we really know what we’re talking about.  From business mobiles to unified communications, we have the solution for you.  Call Elite Telecom today to see how our range of services can benefit your business, and let’s get connected.

No we are not recreating the lyrics from a Destiny’s Child song, per-lease. We are of course, referring to the amount of unwanted paper shoved through our letter boxes at the end of every month – don’t they know we are in the midst of a global warming-environmental-climate change-Osama Bin Laden Probably Caused It Anyway- Crisis?

You get bills for your phone lines, for your broadband, for your extra neat, cool call add-ons, you trawl the web looking for engineers when something breaks, or for new products when, to be honest, you should have just got a better deal in the first place.

By trusting a reputable reseller like Elitetele.com to source your business telecoms solution, you actually put yourself at more of an advantage than trying to source all of the cheapest deals yourselves.

What can Elitetele.com do for my business?

As Bob Dylan once wrote, the times – they are a-changin’ – and over 40 years later the times are a-changin’ even faster.

But what good is your office telecoms solution, if in 12 months there’s a fair chance it will be outdated and over-used? (Much like Bob’s key phrase, as used and abused above) – are we supposed to simply hang our phone systems out to dry and invest in sparkly new ones? We’re still in a recession here.

As mind-boggling technology continues to grow and expand at rapid speed, the telecoms industry is actually enjoying a much-needed boom. But what exactly is happening to our offices, you ask? And will we still need our business phone systems in 12 months’ time?

There are two major shifts going on in telco land at present, allow us to elaborate.

The Universal Standards Movement

The Unified Communications Revolution