Unified Communications: Is it Right for Your Business?


Unified Communications: The Dial Tone of the 21st Century

January/February 2008  Print

Many businesses have started to review their needs for Unified Communications (UC). However, much confusion still exists in the business community on whether this technology will actually deliver business benefits.

UC enables easier collaboration and communication in the workplace.

The concept that underlies UC is presence. Presence combines elements of IM, voice and audio conferencing, Web conferencing and video conferencing into common solutions like email, calendaring and contacts. The user sees an intuitive interface that enables them to contact their colleague or client through their preferred method of communication for any given time.

With UC, users can see whether a contact is in their car, in a meeting or at their desk, from a user perspective the communication technologies are also interlinked so that if for instance you pick up the phone, one’s status is automatically set to ‘busy’ . It allows instant collaboration based on location; this always-on availability has the potential to dramatically improve employee performance and in turn, job satisfaction.

 

Establishing the Business Case for UC

UC aims to minimise human delays, provide faster service delivery to customers and deliver cost savings to the business. Its use can potentially also result in reductions in business travel and therefore reductions in greenhouse gases. Sounds like the ideal solution, right?

Like any emerging technology, there is a temptation to deploy for deployment’s sake. For example, when Facebook burst onto the Australian scene 18 months ago, it became the one stop shop for online social interaction. Now however, we are seeing the first signs that its growth is slowing with at least one recent report illustrating Facebook’s first fall in user numbers in January this year.

Similarly, businesses need to prepare for UC by first identifying how it will work for their business. For example, it is pointless to include a Web conferencing component in a businesses’ UC strategy if users only ever engage in face to face meetings.

 

The Three Steps Towards UC Enlightenment

For IT managers contemplating UC as a strategy to improve efficiency within their business, there are three important elements to first consider:

1. Education:Every new IT project needs to begin with an adequate level of understanding in order to set objectives and monitor management’s expectations.

 

2. Usage rates: User adoption is perhaps the largest barrier to the success of a project such as a UC implementation. Ensure staff’s needs are identified and met with the new solution in order to keep new technologies relevant.

 

3. Training: Businesses will see improvements in both end user adoption rates and IT administration if they incorporate a UC-ready training plan into their 2008 priorities.

Currently, two of the most significant vendors in the UC space are Microsoft and Cisco. The challenge for organisations will be to have staff skilled across both vendors’ technologies.

As a starting point, businesses need to ensure their staff have training across Cisco Call Manager, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Office Communications Server. This training will form the basis of your businesses’ UC strategy.

More information on DDLS’ additional UC training courses will be available in the coming months.