Integrated Communications – What is it and Why Should I Care?

Integrated communications is, on a very simple level, little more than making sure you can communicate well throughout your organization and to your customers.  It’s an important concept to understand because it can often lower your fixed costs and improve your ability to serve your customers. In essence, the simplest definition may be “the ability for businesses to communicate quickly and effectively internally and to customers.” Integrated Communications can include both hardware and software technology such as phone systems, e-mail systems, messaging software, mobile phones, remote access technologies, Internet service, websites, social media, and more.  Deployed well, the advantages of Integrated Communications can be very powerful.  Here are a few common advantages:

• Creates a platform for developing new processes and efficiencies that drive competitive advantage
• Allows businesses to do business anytime, anywhere
• Enhances collaboration activities and improve organizational productivity
• Creates an environment with multiple communication redundancies
• Enables new service delivery methods by integrating voice, video and data communications
• Enhances mobile workforce communication
• Optimizes your communications and networking environments for cost-effective performance.

For example, at ITP we provide many different ways for our customers to contact us including phone, e-mail, and web access methods.  We manage all our client’s issues through a ticketing system that streamlines internal communication between engineers, operations, and our back-office support staff.  Doing so has increased our customer’s service experience enormously by allowing them to access ITP’s staff and services in the way that works best for them AND it has ensured our internal communications are efficient and seamless.

A few other examples of where these advantages could be realized would be:

1. Deployment of a SharePoint server to allow secure document access and collaboration across multiple sites or between a geographically distant workforce
2. Deployment of a VOIP phone system like a Shoretel phone system to save telecommunication costs between sites
3. Deployment of MPLS Internet access to deliver secure communications between office locations and reduce hardware expenses.
4. Implementation of a social media strategy

Ultimately, any technology initiative should be driven by business need or strategy.  However, with the response times customers have come to expect from all businesses today, along with the need for businesses to communicate quickly and efficiently to satisfy those expectations, deploying an integrated communications strategy is almost certainly a quality investment.

Info-Pro / Omniform Filler “out of memory” error

Just wanted to share a quick fix for an “out of memory” error a client was receiving when attempting to open older Info-Pro forms (these are the older style executable files that use Omniform filler).  The client recently upgraded all but one system to Windows 7 (an older system remained XP).  In addition we installed a new SBS 2008 server.  All workstations are 32-bit Windows.

Certain older forms would open, others would not.  However, one workstation was able to open any form – and surprisingly it wasn’t the old XP system.  That system failed with the same memory error.

After some trial and error it turned out that some of the forms would generate the “out of memory” error message when certain printers were set to the Windows default.  After setting the default printer on any system to match the one that the “working” Windows 7 system was using, that system functioned properly.  The only other default print driver that could be used was Adobe PDF (the Adobe writer driver).  All other printers set to default would throw the memory error.

So a workaround is to simply change the default printer before opening the specific forms that cause issues.

Info-Pro has since moved to Adobe fillable PDF but many law firms still retain their older Info-Pro Omniform forms that have been completed for clients.  Until the old forms are completely phased out this is a pretty quick and easy workaround.