One of the more important benefits of unified messaging - the integration of e-mail, voice and fax communications in a single mailbox - is the time savings that it affords users. Here's a stab at quantifying just the voicemail-related benefits of unified messaging:

• Assume that the typical user receives five voicemails per day. During a 250-day work year, the typical user would receive 1,250 voicemails.
• Further assume that a single voicemail accessed by telephone takes an average of 30 seconds to process, while one in a unified mailbox takes only 10 seconds. In the latter case, there are visual cues (e.g., the identity of the number that called you) that speeds the processing time per message.

Using these assumptions, a user would spend 10 hours 25 minutes per year processing voicemails via telephone, or 3 hours 28 minutes per year processing them in a unified messaging system. At a fully burdened annual salary of $80,000 for that user, the savings of nearly seven hours per year translates to a savings of $267 per user per year. In an organization of 2,500 users, that translates to productivity savings of nearly $670,000 annually.

Unified communications represents the goal of many workplace decision makers - the integration of e-mail, telephony, presence, fax, mobile communications, collaboration tools, audio conferencing, Web conferencing and videoconferencing into a coordinated and centrally managed communications system, all of which will be accessible via a single address. I believe that's where most workplace communications is ultimately headed, with the ultimate goal being truly intelligent communications. The only real question is how do you get there? There are three basic paths you can follow:

1. Start with unified messaging – the integration of e-mail, voicemail and fax into a single mailbox. This is a “light” form of unified communications and offers users the advantage of receiving their most important communications in a single place, making it easier for users, particularly mobile users, because they have only one location to check for these different communication modes.

A consensus on the definition for "unified communications" may be harder to establish than you might think. For example, here are some possible definitions:

     - A unified communications system routes voicemail sent to one or more telephone numbers and faxes to one or more fax numbers into an e-mail inbox where they can be heard and viewed in a manner similar to e-mail.
     - A unified communications system routes conventional voicemail, conventional faxes, SMS messages, instant messages, e-mail, VoIP traffic and other content to an e-mail inbox where this content can be viewed using a single interface.