What have you found the number one benefit of UC to be?

This is almost re-stating the definition of UC, but untethering your workers to do their job wherever they choose is the #1 benefit. Think about it; With a traditional phone system, your people can only communicate from their desk, which is literally tied to a box sitting somewhere in a closet. With UC, your people can work from their desk, from home, from their laptop in a coffee shop...or pretty much anywhere they can get cell service or a network connection.

The downside for workers is that the expectation just shifted from answering the phone and making calls only when at their desk to always being on call, but they can still make the personal decision as to whether they want to use the tools provided.

Basically, more work-time is created, and workers can choose to take advantage of it or not. You'll be amazed at who is willing to take calls during their commute or other downtime to stay productive.

Hands down the benefit that I see is the ability to link together presence information with the communication space. By far the largest benefit is the ability to stop the lost efficiencies of wanting to respond to an email or a voice mail or an IM and not knowing which mode of communication may be the best option. I think once companies put this in place ans start to understand the benefits of knowing if a person tat sent an email, but really deserves an personal phone call reply, especially in the federated provider/customer areas, can show some real personal benefit when it comes to efficient use of time and client/customer interaction. Knowing availability is key in efficient communications today and being able to look at single area and understand possible 'best ,odes' of communication (IE: IM, Phone, Mobile, or email) is always going to increase efficiency.

Add to that the end users ability to redirect call flows to their preferred device as their location and mobility needs change is going to be key going forward.

I agree that mobility and presence are the two biggest that I see right now. Adding some video to a call if nice. Screen POPs have been around for a long time and help a lot with inbound phone calls. Other that those it would be processes that integrate communication into business process - like project management, groups, document sharing. If your company has a workflow that it is electronic the attaching and refernecing of communication in that process is also helpful.

Benefit - simplifed access to all of your messages. Rather than checking voicemail, and then email all day long, your voicemails are deposited into your email so you are now looking in one location. Most of my customers, once they have this feature, they rarely go into their voicemail again.

Benefit - Access to contacts for dialing, without having to manually dial all their numbers. Using click to dial, a couple buttons and you are dialing your client, without mis-dialing.

Benefit - Get calls anywhere. With find-me follow-me features, it is easier to be reached as your desk telephone is set up with time-of-day forwarding, as well as forwarding on no answer to cell phone, alternative office, home, etc.

Unified - where you want it unified, and how you want it unified - that is a huge benefit as your day changes, as your needs change, as your requirements change.

The number one benefit to UC is the increase productivity and efficiency in an organization. Now, this might be somewhat of a "soft" statement however once implemented and metrics such as customer responsiveness, project deadlines and customer retention are measured and tracked, the increase in productivity easily becomes tangible and quantifiable.

To Raymond Caasick's point above, the details he presented are what attributes to the increase in productivity. The ability to Instant Message someone regarding a proposal, escalating that to a voice/video call and then sharing the proposal and working on it together and then saving the revision, no matter where they are. You can even pull in other users to collaborate.

The current industry statistic is 30 minutes per day per employee is saved by utilizing Unified Communications in an organization.

Now end users might think that they are now always accessible however Communications Behavior is changed with Unfed Communications and the end-user is control of how they wish to interact with real-time communications - their language, their availability, with whatever they have in front of them.