Pave your Way to Unified Communications

Manu Priyam

What should be the strategy  if you want to migrate to unified communications. For this, we interacted with key CIOs and IT decision makers across the country. Interestingly, while about half of them didn't have any plans to deploy unified communications, the remaining were at various stages of deployment. Some were awaiting management approval, others had convinced the management and were about to start the roll out, and there were a few who had just finished deploying the same. The ones who had no plans to deploy had several reasons for not doing so. Predominantly, either they didn't feel the need to migrate just yet, or they found it difficult to justify the cost. A few also felt that the technology was still too new and another set of respondents were waiting for others to deploy and test the waters first. Even if you're from the second lot of people who don't plan to deploy unified communications, you'll find this story useful as we've tried to answer most of the apprehensions you have about migrating to the technology.

Where to start?

Our survey indicated that currently, convincing the management to move to unified communication is a herculean task. 93% of them said that the job was difficult. The primary reason for this revolved around justifying the cost and ROI as well as explaining the business benefits. For instance, one key aspect of Unified Communications is move from TDM based voice communication to VoIP. Convincing the management to move to VoIP is still not a very easy job. In fact, one of our respondents said that as the existing cost of communication in the country is not very high, so moving to VoIP doesn't really offer as high a benefit as what it might offer in other countries. Possibly this is just a mindset problem, where we want to use old things till they work, as pointed out by one of our respondents. But then, if the management still feels that way, then it must be convinced. Another point that you may need to convince the management about are the legal implications. VoIP still has some legal hurdles in the country, so you would need to find the right answers to overcome them for your organization.

There are several things you can do to make it easier to convince the management. First is to get your own views about unified communications clear. Understand what it really is and what it means to you. Unified Communications, as the name suggests, is about integrating multiple communications channels in your organization, so that it becomes easier for people to communicate with each other. So first you need to identify the channels you already have in place and the challenges you're facing with them. According to a majority of our respondents, the very existence of multiple communications channels was hampering productivity of their employees. All problems stemmed from this one problem. Due to this, it was becoming difficult to reach the right people at the right time. Moreover, managing so many communications channels was itself becoming quite a task, and not to mention the cost of owning so many channels. So start by identifying the key issue you're facing with your communications channels and what would it take to integrate them. This would help you figure out the approximate cost and effort that would be required for the migration. Incidentally, more than 50% of the respondents to our survey already had audio/video conferencing and instant messaging in place. Slightly more than 40% of the respondents were already using calendar sharing, while another 39% had already shifted to IP telephony. Another 31% were already using online Web conferencing facilities. If you already have these setup in your organization, then the move to unified communications would be easier.

Define the benefits very clearly

Define the benefits very clearly

Next, identify the key benefits you're likely to derive from this integration. There were quite a few benefits that were told to us by the respondents through our survey. Cost saving whether it's through reducing rentals, cutting down travelling costs, or through reduced call rates, was one strong reason for moving to UC. Whatever the case may be, UC must deliver a good ROI in the long run. Ease of communication and managing multiple communications channels was another reason. Some had linked it directly to business and said that their objective for migrating was to increase the revenue and expand the market. Some strongly felt that the key factors that will make organizations more competitive in the future are reach and speed of service, and only unified communications will offer such facility. There were also some benefits that were not directly linked to business. Synergy across functions for instance is a key benefit of unified communications. What if you need to interact with people in your organization from multiple departments across multiple locations, and by using multiple communications channels? Unified communications would definitely come in useful there. Availability of people for communication will become much higher, thereby improving the overall productivity of employees. We even received responses that went as far as to integrate unified communications with back office applications, systems, and business processes. It's important that you define the business benefits you're likely to gain by migrating to UC. Also do keep in mind that this would be a long term investment, and therefore returns from the same would not be immediate.

Define metrics for success

Once you've deployed unified communications, how would you rate its success? Please be very clear on this because this is the main reason for doing the migration. According to our survey, higher customer satisfaction was the key reason for moving to unified communication. More than 35% of our respondents stated this as their reason. Other things like lower communication costs, higher productivity per employee, reduced number of internal voice mail messages, and even improved revenue came after this one reason. Of course, this might be different in your case. Possibly, you're looking at it more from improving employee productivity than anything else, or possibly you have it directly linked to the revenue. Whatever the case may be, you need to clearly define the metrics that you would be using for measuring the success of your deployment.

 What's your UC wishlist?

r UC wishlist?Once you're ready to migrate, you need to define which elements would form a part of your unified communications system. What all do you plan to deploy? IP Telephony topped the charts in our survey, followed by video conferencing. Another 60% of the respondents wanted to add Instant Messaging to it and another 60% (there were overlaps in choices) also wanted to bring smartphones and PDAs into the picture. Interestingly, very few really opted for building presence capabilities into the system.

 This is surprising since the true value of a unified communications system would be felt if you really know where the person you're trying to reach is located and how best to contact him or her. Possibly this is because building 'presence' capabilities is also the most difficult and time consuming task as it would come in only after all the pieces of a unified communications solution have been integrated. Speaking of time, do keep ample time to do a complete roll out of your unified communications strategy. More than 40% of our respondents said that they will take up to a year and half to do the complete roll out. There were another 30% who said they would be able to do it in a year's time frame. So depending upon what all you plan to deploy, keep a time frame of 1 to 1.5 years handy for this.

"The two things we meticulously took care of were: bandwidth utilization and security. Basically the bandwidth utilization for critical operations should not hamper with the day to day operations. Security is also one of the major factors which was important for the process."

Manikkam VS, Head - Information Technology, Henkel CAC

Key factors to consider

Defining the key factors to consider when migrating to unified communications should also be a part of your strategy. One is user acceptability. Before anything, you must ensure that you get a buy-in from your users. The only way that this will happen is to convince them of the technology and its benefits. Further, the only way to do that is to first understand the key challenges that they're facing with the organization's communications infrastructure. To take a quick example, how difficult is it in your organization to catch somebody from the marketing team? They're the ones who travel the most and would therefore be the most difficult to catch. Likewise, what's the success rate of voice mail facilities given at each employee's extension? Do employees ever call back people who've left a message in their voice mail? Do they even bother to ever check their voice mail messages? Once you know of the problems faced by your employees, you'd be in a better position to give them the solution. Moreover, when you are giving them the solution, don't thrust it on them as one of our respondents put it. Instead of doing that, create an appetite amongst the employees for the requirement/need of unified communications.

 Cost is of course anyways a factor to consider, and we've already pointed it out. But as one of the respondents to our survey has put it, that the technology for unified communications is available. You just need to justify the cost and see the value for money. Also remember that the initial costs of deployment can be quite high, as stated by one of the respondents in our survey. So, do a thorough cost benefit analysis before proceeding. Security is another key factor to consider when migrating to unified communication. As you would now have all your communications channels integrated, it becomes even more important to secure them. Monitoring the utilization of your system is another key factor to consider. One key success factor for unified communication is employee training. You must ensure that all your employees are fully aware of the system and how to use it. Otherwise, it might end up becoming a dead investment. Your staff must know how to use your unified communications facilities. What measures will you have in place to ensure good quality of service for your unified communications setup? It's very critical that you define this.

Choosing a vendor/partner

So how do you decide whom to partner with for deploying your unified communications? As this is still a new area, one thing you need to check is whether the vendor has done any previous deployments in India. If so, then how long did it take, what features were incorporated, and at what cost. Expertise in technology, or rather skill of integrating multiple communications channels is a must. The vendor must have experience in working with multiple communications channels and should be able to integrate them together. The geographical spread of the vendor was another key point that came up from our survey. Is the vendor present across all locations as your own setup? Or at least has other partners available for the job? What kind of after sales support will the vendor provide is another key point to consider. Speaking of integration, one must consider the legal issues and implications in the process, if any. For instance, what would the interconnect charges be like if you're connecting multiple communications channels such as voice with video or data. According to some of our respondents, even some of the MTNL and BSNL authorities are not clear about the policies for interconnect charges. The legalities of using VoIP must be taken into account in any case.