Unified Communications (UC) is increasingly viewed as a valuable platform that can offer numerous benefits across the entire enterprise. The value of UC is magnified when an organisation has employees who spend the majority of their time working off site in different locations – the notorious ‘Road Warriors’. The concept of UC is one of simplification, with the goal being to maximise communication by making it easier for users to manage voice, video and data-based services. This, combined with presence (the platform’s awareness of where group members are and what communication tools they have access to, and the ability to change which channel is being used during the session), is designed to save time, resources and improve employee productivity. The result for the end user is a far more organised and directed way of communicating with colleagues, partners and customers. Today, many businesses have key employees who do not spend their time working at a fixed desk in the company office, and these employees need to be reachable—sometimes at a moment’s notice.UC gives Road Warriors access to a full range of real-time communication tools. By delivering voice and data services over a wireless LAN, to PDAs and dedicated IP phones, UC keeps these employees continuously available. Road Warriors can reply to email with their voice, turn an IM into a conference call, or even answer their desk phone from the airport. No matter how, where, or when they communicate, they have seamless access to the same familiar interfaces and corporate resources that they would receive if they were physically in the office. In addition, the use of presence allows targeted, instead of blasted, communications which reduces costs and risk and makes doing business easier. Providing employees with the ability to work from anywhere is key to future business success. Whether responding to requirements from Road Warriors, employees requiring a work from home option, or the need to engage in an urgent request from a customer’s site, which requires full access to the corporate network, UC applications put the right tools in the hands of an empowered workforce.The use of UC is particularly valuable to organisations with information workers on the road. The Yankee Group estimates that integrating different work and communication modes can improve information worker productivity by 15-20%. Providing UC solutions to Road Warriors also aids productivity for other office workers. Making smart business decisions quickly can be difficult, particularly if knowledge workers are operating off-site. UC connects the right people to solve issues in real-time in a simple and cost effective manner. Office workers can use presence to ascertain availability and find the best method of communication with Road Warriors, saving time and resources. An example of this is skills based routing in a call centre. Calls can be escalated from a call centre agent taking the call directly to an available expert, regardless of where the knowledge worker is geographically. It can even be transferred directly to a mobile phone. UC can improve customer satisfaction through worker availability and responsiveness. By providing one number access to employees, regardless of device or location, customers can easily and quickly get in touch with the right contact within an organisation. UC eliminates the need for the customer to leave messages and wait for a call back, accelerating workflow. Return on investment on UC deployments can be found in Internet Protocol (IP) transport savings, reduced mobile phone charges, increased employee productivity and cost savings inherent in a modern communications platform. Some metrics are more difficult to measure than others, so organisations need to find those that make the most sense for their business. An Avaya UC customer recently reported that it was able to increase first call resolution of customer problems from 7% to 72%, compared to the prior year. Another business used Avaya UC solutions to integrate multiple customer service platforms to drive a 12% reduction in costs in its first year of implementation. Key technologies in a typical UC solution include Internet Protocol (IP)-PBX, voice over IP (VoIP), presence, e-mail, audio conferencing and web conferencing, video conferencing, voicemail, unified messaging (UM), instant messaging (IM), and various forms of mobility. Another key capability of UC is that it can be integrated into business applications through Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). The broad use of SIP is helping greatly in easing access to the platforms needed for UC to deliver real benefits. SIP is an open protocol and open platforms lower the risk of adoption and increase the value of a technology. This means that a company’s existing business systems – often consisting of multiple inhouse development sources, off-the-shelf solutions and bespoke vendor offerings – can be aggregated and supported simply and effectively. By leveraging the capabilities of SIP a company can safeguard legacy investments while becoming more agile, efficient and customer-centric with a UC deployment. Open, SIP based communications ensure employees are able to flexibly connect to other users, applications and systems across the enterprise. This makes it possible to simultaneously accelerate decision-making and achieve meaningful financial impact, while moving enterprises towards a more people-centric approach to collaboration. Businesses should look to create a peoplecentric approach enabling employees to easily collaborate where, when and how they need, with the right tools and information at their fingertips. An example of this is a sales Account Manager. The Account manager is able to connect to the corporate network through his PDA off site, to view the team’s current sales opportunity pipeline. As the pipeline is communications enabled, he can immediately click to call his customer from the pipeline and arrange a meeting. He then accesses the customer relationship management (CRM) system to review past interactions with the client and updates the records to show the new meeting appointment date. As his company has presence, his boss sees the Account Manager is available for 10 minutes before his next meeting and instant messages him asking about the projected sales for his new client. The Account Manager then escalates the instant message to a phone call and forwards him the CRM update on the details of his planned customer meeting. He does all this from the comfort of his car before he goes into a customer presentation.Putting the Road Warrior in control of how they receive their communication and at the centre of the UC interaction is essential in the move towards a truly collaborative workforce. Avaya’s “people centric collaboration” approach is built on the premise that technology should support seamless, context-enabled interactions that enhance communications – delivering customer service gains, productivity improvements, and easier access to information any time, anywhere, anyhow. People need to be at the centre of these interactions with the technology serving their needs, not vice versa. Typically, employee collaboration is dependant on technology silos based on the network, application or devices they are using, and/or the location they happen to be in. This severely inhibits the ability of workers to collaborate efficiently and effectively, which in turn inhibits business agility and customer service. New and enhanced product innovations and services redefine the economics and effectiveness of real-time, multi-media enterprise business communications and collaboration. Businesses need to move towards rich, contextual collaboration applications that improve the end-user experience and drive faster decision making for both the line of business and end users. When considering UC solutions, IT Managers should look to new features such as increased security, scalability and flexibility, expanding virtualisation across the entire platform. The benefits of UC are becoming clear to businesses. With the advent of next generation platforms, running open, session-based communications, employees are able to flexibly connect to other users, applications and systems across the enterprise. These new tools and services make it possible to simultaneously accelerate decision-making and achieve meaningful financial impact, while moving enterprises towards a more people-centric approach to collaboration.
