Non-unified comms 'cost millions'

Businesses could be needlessly missing out on millions of pounds by not upgrading their systems to take advantage of unified communications, it has been suggested.

According to a survey for Siemens conducted by Insignia Research, the average company in North America or Europe with 1,000 staff members can lose nearly £6.3 million a year purely because they cannot communicate in real time with others.

The study claimed that the lost earnings are caused by disruptions to workflow, frustration and additional cost incurred by not making use of unified communications, which include VoIP services and IP PBX systems.

Some 94 per cent of respondents said they were held up from completing tasks by an average 5.3 hours a week while they waited for information from someone else.

That amounted to a loss in productivity equivalent to more than £4.3 million a year in wages paying employees to wait for information, the report suggested.

"We've all become accustomed to working this way," said Grace Tiscareno-Sato, senior global unified communications marketing manager at Siemens.

However, she suggested that firms need to break out of a "sense of complacency" and investigate switching to unified communications because the business costs and employee frustrations "are real".