Running an enterprise is no walk in the park. It could get overwhelming with more workforce, resources, and bigger goals. Streamlining communication and ensuring transparency can help smoothen enterprise businesses' workflow. This is where your choice of enterprise communication tools comes in.
Ensuring smooth dialogue in an enterprise might seem like a mammoth task, but it isn’t impossible. The best enterprises turn to certain business communication tools compatible with their size and complexity.
What elevates a business communication tool to enterprise-grade? How difficult is it to choose the most appropriate one for your enterprise in a market flooded with options?
This article will answer all your questions!
What makes an enterprise communication tool?
With so many team communication tools on the market, how do you pick the right one?
Before deciding, you need to know a few basic features that make a good communication tool. These include:
- Interoperability between chat and video
- The ability to send rich media and large files
- 1-on-1, group, and project-oriented communication (channels)
- advanced notifications setting
- mobile and desktop versions.
Additionally, you should be extra conscious of the attributes that make it suitable for large enterprising firms, as this could call for a different set of features.
Here are a few factors you must consider while choosing chat and video tools for your enterprise:
- Scalability: a reliable enterprise communication tool would be easy to scale. That is, it can efficiently accommodate a large number of users globally. A scalable communication tool will ‘grow’ with your business by adding more members as it expands, supporting seamless organizational communication.
- Integrations: enterprise communication tools would be easy to integrate with many software and tools, including Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools like Salesforce, or project management tools like Asana. Likewise, it needs to sync with other communication platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams.
- Security: security is of utmost importance regardless of the scale of your business. The enterprise communication tool you choose should ensure data and operations security. It is a game-changer in establishing credibility and trust with your clients. Ensure that your communication tool abides by the latest ISO standards. Likewise, in-meeting controls and admin privileges are important factors for a communication tool.
- Internal and external communication: You shall not have to install separate software to work remotely with your colleagues, partners, and customers. In addition to integrations and scalability, ensure that the app you choose for your organization promises both internal and external communication so you can centralize all your communications, even with partners and vendors.
10 best communication tools for enterprise organizations
While creating this list, we thought about communication apps that can support large numbers of concurrent users, have advanced security capabilities, and would fit in a tech stack of an enterprise business.
Here are our recommendations for the best enterprise communication tools.
1. Rocket.Chat
Rocket.Chat offers numerous features ideal for enterprises of all sizes. It is an open source tool, which isn't a classic choice for enterprises: but there are numerous advantages of open source for enterprise businesses like flexibility, scalability, and more.
Furthermore, Rocket.Chat has specialized in secure communication and collaboration. Organizations in highly regulated industries use it to deploy this enterprise communication tool on-premise and control all the exchanged data.
Of course, Rocket.Chat is ISO 27001 certified and provides end-to-end encryption to all conversations.
Rocket.Chat is also easily scalable. You can either choose microservices or deploy multiple instances of Rocket.Chat. It also supports Webhooks, which helps it to integrate with other tools and services, creating a seamless workflow for your teams. You may integrate your existing accounts in Slack, Zoom, Salesforce, Dropbox, Google Drive, and more.
Since it operates on Matrix protocol, Rocket.Chat is highly interoperable, allowing you to communicate with external partners (and customers) that use other communication apps on their end. Perfect for streamlining all work communication in a single inbox, knowing that all security measures are applied!
2. MS Teams
Microsoft Teams is a conversation-centered collaboration platform ideal for enterprises that use Microsoft Office. You can do everything from online meetings to sharing large files. With MS Teams, you can manage and track calendar invites, making online meetings easier, and even use translation while sharing files, while instant messaging remains a central function of the tool.
Some of the newest features of MS Teams include the Together Mode, where you can assign seats to people, Live Translated Captions (Premium feature), detailed call history, and more. The newest updates make this a well-rounded app for all internal business communication.
With reliable security and scalability options, MS Teams has become an industry favorite among enterprise communication tools.
3. Pexip
Pexip is one of the most secure video conferencing tools on the market.
It provides extra security in confidential meetings, personalized banking, and even hands-free work. Pexip’s meeting rooms help you connect with different teams without friction. You have complete control and privilege over your data and meeting info, especially suitable for privacy-oriented enterprises.
Pexip’s Enterprise offers more flexible video conferencing options. You can connect with clients and team members globally. Secure Spaces by Pexip is a video solution used even by legal firms that handle sensitive data.
This tool is easily scalable and ensures 100% security. One of Pexip’s most significant promises includes more effective HR productivity with seamless interview scheduling and customizable screens. Unlike many other video collaboration applications, Pexip facilitates full-HD, high-resolution video and audio in live meetings.
4. Zoom
Remote meetings are made easy by Zoom. It is one of the most-used enterprise communication tools. Zoom’s scalability makes it a convenient option for small and large businesses.
You can record your meetings with Zoom and revisit them as you please. You can even break out into separate chat rooms after assigning different tasks to teams. This is great for team building and social bonding. You can opt for different backgrounds, live chat options, and reactions using Zoom.
The premium version of Zoom has a whiteboard feature that works wonders during brainstorming sessions. This make it a well-rounded app for improving team communication in the workplace.
5. Happeo
This social intranet platform is custom-made for enterprises that use Google Workspace. It is a one-stop hub for your company’s information and processes. It cuts down on resorting to multiple tools for various requirements. It keeps everyone on the same page with prompt posts and announcement facilities.
Most importantly, Happeo allows users or team members to take breaks for casual conversations and social bonding when work gets too overwhelming.
Happeo has many widgets and integrations that could elevate your business communication model. You can integrate this tool with Google Drive, Calendars, and more, or customize widgets. Happeo also offers multilingual support with a provision to create a homepage unique to your enterprise.
Happeo offers analytics, including engagement, search, and influencer. Its universal search option can save precious time.
6. Asana
Asana is a project management tool with expanded features that makes company-wide alignment easy.
Its interface helps optimize team collaboration and task assignment. Its timeline feature can track progress and schedule projects. Additionally, Asana allows multiple integration options with third-party apps.
What makes it a great enterprise communication tool? Besides enterprise-grade security, Asana is easily scalable and fits into a classic enterprise-level tech stack. More importantly, it helps everybody in the organization have a clear overview of company-wide projects and goals.
7. Confluence
Atlassian’s Confluence is another enterprise communication tool that connects teams. The company wiki permits live editing for real-time updates. In line comments and mentions are other features that set Confluence apart. You can integrate JIRA and Hipchat with Confluence for better collaboration.
➡️Find out what other collaboration tools are favored by software development teams.
8. Krisp
As the name suggests, Krisp facilitates high-quality video conferencing by canceling echoes, background noise, and other sounds from the meeting. The speaker’s voice stands out clearly. This tool is beneficial if you need to conduct meetings in noisy areas.
Using Krisp, you can even run a meeting during your commute. Even though it's not central to communication, it makes remote work much easier for people that have a lot of meetings and can't afford a quiet environment. And we all know that enterprises rely on hybrid work models more and more!
9. Guru
Guru helps companies host knowledge bases and online document storage. It facilitates easy knowledge sharing and seamless information transfer. Known also as Get Guru, this software is extremely helpful for effective document and know-how management. It offers third-party integrations and has a Chrome extension for easy access.
10. RingCentral
RingCentral offers solutions for businesses of all sizes, including enterprise. With this software, you can meet with clients one-on-one and have teams distributed worldwide without affecting your productivity. RingCentral is a well-known unified communications software, so if your business needs phone, video, and messaging in one, you should consider RingCentral.
Choose the best communication tool for your organization
When choosing a reliable communication tool for your enterprise, we recommend that you look into your organization's needs. Take time to compare features and prices before deciding. Most importantly, pick communication tools that your employees will love to use. User-friendliness is unavoidably important as it ensures that team members will not use other communication means inappropriate for enterprise businesses, like WhatsApp.
Another aspect of enterprise-grade communication software to be extra mindful of is security. Here at Rocket.Chat, we've built team collaboration tools for organizations that need an extra layer of security - protecting their business-critical data as well as customer data.
Get in touch with our team to learn how we can help your business stay secure and compliant while communication is optimized.
Frequently asked questions about <anything>
enterprise communication tools
What is an enterprise communication tool?
What types of apps are there for internal business communication?
What criteria should an enterprise communication tool fulfill?
How to choose the best communication software for your organization?
- Digital sovereignty
- Federation capabilities
- Scalable and white-labeled
- Highly scalable and secure
- Full patient conversation history
- HIPAA-ready
- Secure data governance and digital sovereignty
- Trusted by State, Local, and Federal agencies across the world
- Matrix federation capabilities for cross-agency communication
- Open source code
- Highly secure and scalable
- Unmatched flexibility
- End-to-end encryption
- Cloud or on-prem deployment
- Supports compliance with HIPAA, GDPR, FINRA, and more
- Supports compliance with HIPAA, GDPR, FINRA, and more
- Highly secure and flexible
- On-prem or cloud deployment