To fully exploit the power of unified communications it is important to view UC not as a single project, but as a journey that requires careful business and technology planning. UC provides an opportunity to introduce productivity benefits, to transform business processes, and even create new and innovative ways of engaging the external marketplace. There are four main steps that comprise the UC journey: individual productivity, workgroup productivity, communications enabled business processes and enterprise transformation.
This process starts with a strong understanding of the end goal, and involves a significant amount of planning and testing. When correctly implemented, this journey can deliver huge payoffs. And, now is the time for your organization to start setting the itinerary so your trip can begin.
What is Driving UC Adoption?
Companies that are implementing or thinking about implementing UC are at the forefront of a communications revolution. Just as the telephone and, more recently email, transformed the way people exchange information, UC promises to dramatically alter the way people connect to each other.
Though adoption is still in its early stages, there are several factors that are driving companies to begin to implement UC today. Firstly, there are significant cost savings available from even basic communications and collaboration capabilities and the reduction of total cost of ownership by eliminating the need to invest in and manage separate systems for email, instant messaging, voicemail and conferencing. It enables companies to better support a virtual workforce, allowing them to save money on physical office space.
Organizations are also adopting UC so they can start improving intra-enterprise and company-customer communications. This helps them have more productive employees and more satisfied and loyal customers, which in turn translates into top and bottom line improvements. Knowing where you want to end up on the journey is the best way to determine exactly how you’re going to get there.
Embarking on the Journey
Individual productivity is the first destination on the UC journey. It increases productivity by enabling employees to save time in everyday activities through capabilities such as “click to call” and unified messaging.
The next step is workgroup productivity, which extends productivity improvements to workgroups through collaboration and conferencing tools, like SharePoint, and generates significant cost savings through system consolidation, reducing external communications costs, travel and even real estate.
The third stopover on the journey is communications enabled business process (CEBP) improvements which create greater efficiency and effectiveness by directly embedding UC capabilities into business processes that extend across multiple functions of the enterprise.
Enterprise information is the fourth and final stop on the UC journey. It accelerates the identification of new products, services and channels by using UC and collaboration to engage an external ecosystem of customers and partners.
An Opportunity at Stake
Throughout this journey, organizations have an opportunity to increase productivity, shorten sales cycles, reduce communications costs, lower training and meeting expenses, and even gain greater insight into customers’ needs and interests. There is clearly a competitive advantage at stake and the time to start looking at UC and embarking on this journey is now.
Because each of the destinations is associated with its own set of benefits and specific ROI, there’s clear value in going through each individual phase of the process. Since it takes time to get the plan and infrastructure in place, it is important to prepare for the different destinations, invest in the right software and services, and get ahead of the business demand for UC solutions. This ultimately means a competitive advantage for the successful early adopter.
To make sure there aren’t any bumps along the way, determine your goals and evaluate your current infrastructure and technologies. Identify what you’ll need for your UC rollout and upgrade your current infrastructure to accommodate. Educate your employees so they are able to use the new technology and are prepared for the business process and cultural changes that accompany UC. Measure your results so that you can refine your strategy as you go. Starting today will ensure that you have the foundation in place to rapidly introduce employee productivity and business process improvements as opportunities arise.
For more information, please download the white paper on the upper right hand corner of the page.