Presence, at the base, is the ability to determine the availability of an individual no matter your location or theirs, no matter the device each of you happens to be on and at its most grand design, regardless of if you work for different organizations or are using different applications. Chances are that you have had a "Presence" client and you didn't even realize it both at home and at work. Do you use AOL Instant Messenger? Or Microsoft Live Messenger? Or Yahoo! Messenger? Technically you have a "Presence" client right there. At a glance I can see if someone is available, busy or away. It's rudimentary in nature but you get the idea. You've had Presence but just didn't call it that!

Take this concept and expand it out a bit. You have enterprise class instant communication tools such as IBM SameTime or Microsoft Office Communicator which can not only tell you if someone is available or busy, it can give you detailed information such as why they are busy. By scrolling over their name you see their contact information, their current schedule and when they will be free. It is extremely powerful information and allows you to immediately make the decision to go to someone else for the information you needed in some cases.

Expand this concept out a bit further with me. With fully integrated Unified Communications solutions, now I can simply click on a person's name and can call their office or cellular numbers, can send them an email or even a SMS message. All of the sudden the communication challenges that I talked about a few weeks ago become fewer and farther between. Take it a step further and with a few clicks I can have a two or three person "chat" session to work on a business challenge with a great chance of successfully solving it in a shorter period of time.

The challenge of course is to understand just how much a unified Presence client can save your organization and employees both in time and money. Studies from Gartner and Forester indicate that as much as 1.5 hours per week per employee can be saved with a Presence client. That is a lot of money for the organization but it's also a lot of frustration saving for the employees as they are able to solve business challenges faster (which in turn saves the company money). 

How much an enterprise wide Presence solution can save your organization will vary but it is clear that both time and money can be saved and higher employee and customer satisfaction can be achieved with it.

First, it simplifies the management of your infrastructure. With a unified communications solution, regardless of the vendor you go with on it, your organizations needs for a "telephony" staff and a "network" staff should go away. Unifying allows your organization to merge these too groups, providing more flexibility for scheduling and staffing. This also allows for your organization to simplify its training needs. No longer do you have to send (and spend) on both telephony and network training. It's effectively all-in-one by most vendors now.

Second, it breaks down communications barriers. The average SMB worker spends 3.3 hours a week working through communications barriers according to a recent report from Siemens. It is one of several things that hinders productivity, customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction but is one that is addressable by UC solutions. A communication barrier, according to this report, was anything that was caused by inaccessibility or lack of full collaboration with fellow employees.

Let's do some simple math around this number shall we? Let's say you have 150 workers with an average salary of $60,000 per year. That salary breaks down to $1200 per week on a 50 week work year (everyone needs a vacation!). If you break this down further, that means that each employee costs $30 per hour to the organization based on a 40 hour work week. Multiply 30 by 3.3 and you end up with a cost of $99 per week per employee trying to fight through communication barriers. Extrapolate this out further: Let's say you have 100 employees out of your 150 who are struggling through these communication barriers. That means you organization is losing $9,900 per week in lost productivity. Over a year that adds up to a whopping $495,000 (50 week work year). Of course there are variances that your particular organization would have to take into consideration when you start determining just how much communication barriers are costing your company. The point of this exercise is to point out the obvious: it adds up very quickly! Let's say you go all out and buy a $150,000 UC solution. Using this simple math you would see your ROI in 15 weeks.

These are just two of a variety of reasons why your organization should consider unifying its communication platforms. Ultimately it will save your organization money, increase employee productivity and satisfaction as well as customer satisfaction.