Why we talk about contact

You may have noticed that Enreach increasingly uses the term ‘contact’, rather than talking about unified communications (UC) or UCaaS. There is a good reason for this shift in our focus: we believe ‘contact’ more accurately describes how people communicate, collaborate and work these days. Plus, it fits in with our vision to enable more meaningful human connections, whether ad-hoc or planned, without digital or physical barriers.

‘Communication’ is an exchange or information (verbal or non verbal), while ‘collaboration’ is about working together, and ‘productivity’ is how people work. What ‘contact’ does is embrace all three of those, and also reflects just how many forms of contact most of have these days, across voice and data, for instance chat, mobile phones, email and more.

We also like ‘contact’ because it fits into a more modern view of the digital workplace. To us, talking about UC and UCaaS is still valid, but they are starting to feel old-fashioned and out of step, not just with our vision but these terms are not representative of how everyone shares and receives contact in multiple ways. Also, UC and UCaaS describe the ‘how’ not the ‘why’, technology abbreviations that work for the industry but not for people in general.

We also see contact converging, bringing those technology islands together, so that people can have more natural and focused conversations (whether via
voice, video or data), without all those technologies getting in the way. We will be sharing our vision for converged contact shortly. In the meantime, why not have a think about all your own forms of contact — incoming and outgoing — and what, in an ideal world, could be improved.