Is your business leveraging its chat assets?
Instant Messaging or Unified Messaging (IM) has always been thought of as something that is generational and linked to “digital natives”. Increasingly in a more collaborative society, people are using messaging applications to connect informally with friends and colleagues with great benefits.
WhatsApp now has over 1 billion subscribers and even the PM Malcolm Turnbull is a user. If you look beyond WhatsApp you have other messaging applications and the tried and true SMS. The question for most businesses should be, how secure are these applications for business, and how effective are they as standalone applications?
In recent research from Access4 (Access UC Appreciation Index 2016), 59% of senior decision makers said that they did not use instant messaging in their organisation. Given the widespread nature of Instant Messaging, it would be fair to challenge this statistic. Should the statistic state that 59% of senior decision makers are unaware of messaging being used in their business and therefore do not have a strategy as to how they support integrated messaging as part of their communications plan.
Instant Messaging needs to be a business application that is integrated into your communications platform, is device independent and not linked to other personal devices. iMessage can be a security issue when used for business as it appears on all other registered devices under that user, whether they are used for business or not.
In a world which is ever more connected using Instant Messaging becomes an enabler of open, quick and efficient communications. The questions to answer when implementing a unified messaging strategy are:
- Is this a strategic and sanctioned application?
- Do we have the right security measures in place?
- Can access be managed centrally by the organisation?
- Is this integrated into our Unified Communications plan or it is just something someone downloaded?
- Can you track and store the messages if the worst was to happen?
Instant messaging becomes a huge asset to a business when part of an overarching unified communications plan, not something a small group of users downloaded onto their mobiles.
