Unified communication solutions have gained favour in the business technology marketplace because they deliver clear benefits to the organisations that use them. The benefits of unified communication solutions are many and varied but can be grouped into three main categories:

• Personal productivity. By seamlessly integrating all communication devices and media types into a common platform with a common interface, unified communications enable on the go personnel to work more efficiently and effectively. No more time wasted trying to manually manage and integrate disparate communication streams; instead, unified communication solutions manage this task by, for example, providing each user an integrated mailbox that aggregates messages of all types (email, voicemail, fax), and enabling users at any time to indicate where they are and by what means they prefer to be contacted.
• Business intelligence. Unified communication systems enhance situational awareness and agility by, for instance, enabling businesses to always know the best and fastest way to reach personnel at any given time. Unified communication solutions also drive business intelligence by integrating with information-rich resources such as CRM systems, so that an incoming call from a customer automatically brings up relevant data on that customer.
• Ease of service management. The best unified communication solutions greatly simplify an organisation's management of its communication services, enabling the organisation to work with just one provider, to have just one account and invoice, and implement just one training programme.