Industry news

ASE adopts unified communications

The Association for Science Education (ASE) will be rolling out unified communications technology in order to reduce its overheads.

Hatfield University based, the organisation is a professional group representing science teachers and also publishes a number of journals on the field.

Deputy chief executive John Lawrence says the ASE's telephony operations are central to all its activities, as it has traditionally been the key way of contacting its members.

Highlighting the older systems high usage and maintenance costs, he also identifies problems presented by its detachment from the rest of the group's processes.

"[What unified communications] delivers is a cost-effective, converged telephony platform that will significantly improve the accessibility of our organisation to both our staff and our members," he states.

Among the benefits the ASA highlights are an increase in the efficiency of the processes, reducing the time necessary to perform certain key tasks, higher levels of integration and being able to accurately record call details automatically.

Contributing editor at TMCnet.com Anshu Shrivastava claims thorough planning is a necessary requirement when it comes to the roll out of unified communication systems.