Do You Communicate Effectively?

By Ken Buck on Mon, 02/02/09 - 2:00pm.

How often do you take a moment to stop and ask yourself this question? How often do you poll your organization for 360 degree feedback on this question? Do you and the personnel within your organization communicate the same way that you did at this time last year? Do your clients respond to you the same way that they did a year ago, or have they shifted the way they WANT to respond to you? Either they will force the issue and you will either get on board with them, or, typically, they will stop responding and you will probably miss new business opportunities. Not something any of us can take lightly in this economy. These may seem like trivial questions, but they lead to much deeper questions about how you manage internal and external relationships and streamline communications for your users. Have you taken a harder look at Unified Communications lately? Is your CRM system stagnant and limiting? Have you looked at new communications interfaces? Do they effectively link information and users across your infrastructure?

In light of some of these questions, Microsoft is launching Office Communications Server 2007 R2 during a worldwide online event on Feb. 3, 2009. Here is a link http://www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver/en/us/default.aspxi to the event that I am sure will captivate and intrigue you this week! Microsoft is leading the charge to help you communication enable your business processes, increase workflow management, and embed communications capabilities into your existing business application environments. For those smaller IT shops that are in transformation, or, the infancy of linking business processes to workflow to the way that they communicate with clients and fulfill the OSB process, Microsoft is making it easier to integrate OCS 2007 with their existing suite applications which may have been deployed as stand-alone systems. Today, it’s even more critical for SMBs to manage compliance requirements and focus on issues such as cost control, security, and system integration across their infrastructure if they want to remain competitive.

I challenge you to take a harder look at how you communicate in 2009 and how Unified Communications may help you resolve some of your business problems. Stay tuned to my blog and look for more of the goods on OCS 2007 R2 in the coming weeks!