The use of IP telephony within business has the potential to improve small and medium-sized enterprise organisational effectiveness and performance, it has been claimed.

Maren Bennette, leader of the Communications Management Association's (CMA) Unified Communications Forum, says that the implementation of 'unified communications' applications, such as unified messaging, video and audio conferencing and the merging of fixed and mobile communications, can bring considerable benefits to businesses.

"It has the potential to improve organisational effectiveness and thus improve business or organisational performance. This would be achieved not by the use of IP telephony in place of traditional TDM telephony," she commented.

She added that VoIP had less potential in terms of lowering SME costs.

"If by VoIP one is meaning the use of IP to carry communications traffic over the Internet (i.e. Skype) then there is less impact to organisational effectiveness," she commented.

"But there is a potential impact on business performance, in as much as VoIP services will save money," she added.

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