What is Presence?

Presence is one of the most critical business applications in the work place today. Presence grants users the ability to view (in real-time) who is or is not currently available within the company. A user’s status updates depending on whether they are on an internal call, external call, in Do Not Disturb, or simply online/offline. Users also possess the ability to manually update their statuses for when they are out to lunch, in a meeting, or other impromptu appointments, such as taking part in a customer demo. Applications such as Presence and Chat enable users to quickly and efficiently get real-time responses to their inquiries, increasing business productivity and promoting communication throughout the organization.

What is still missing from Presence?

Presence is critical to offering accurate information on who is available within the company at any given time. However, the presence applications today require a level of human interaction to log into the network or set their presence options manually. How often do we forget to change our voice mail greeting after returning from (or going on) vacation? Do we always update our email notifications as soon as we’re back in the office and working? As easy as updating those should be, without an application that handles both automatic and custom updates, we are in danger of providing inaccurate information and frustrating those trying to contact us when they don’t get a timely response as expected.

What could make Presence even more useful and valuable? What if your Presence application automatically pulled the location information about where a user checks in (i.e. at the corporate office, at a local branch, at home, or on their mobile device)? The purpose of Presence is to provide your work availability wherever a user may be, so making detailed status updates automatic rather than manual would remove many of the “I forgot to” scenarios that we experience all too often. Let’s take it a step farther by having the Presence application automatically route the call based on the user’s availability, location and device; meaning that critical business calls never have to land in a user’s voice mailbox again. It’s easy to see why a Presence application can truly make work mobility an any time, any place reality.

ESI has been in the Presence Management business for more than 20 years and understands the true value of location and availability. Time is money, and critical business questions require quick answers. ESI knows the best way to deliver an advanced presence experience and we can’t wait to let you try it out!