A unified solution for communications

By Mathias Peña Grez, Senior Editor

We sit down with a panel of experts to gauge their views on the power of unified communications (UC) in the 21st century business environment.

“For those that have built an understanding and a vision of how UC can benefit the business, the real issue is that many of the components are already in place but just don't talk to each other”
-Richard Pinnington

BM. In these tough economic conditions how can UC achieve business goals and slash costs?
Martin Saunders. UC can provide a business with a competitive advantage by allowing customers and business partners to easily identify and communicate with the right people within an organisation. New customers can be won by making the business easy and quick to work with - thus shortening the sales cycle. Customer retention can be improved by with the increased customer satisfaction that goes hand-in-hand with better communication. UC can help businesses make their workforces more productive by reducing the need to travel, directly saving time and transport costs. UC enables remote meetings without a substantial loss in the quality of contact between meeting participants by providing high quality voice and video and by allowing presentations to be shared.

Cathy Ham. UC can help people get their work done without the need to travel so much. Travel costs for face-to-face meetings are a major avoidable cost, but only if the alternatives to doing business are economically viable, user-friendly and business quality. Audio, web and video conferencing offer such solutions and increasing numbers of organisations, in all areas of business and public service, are discovering the business benefits they can help deliver. These conferencing solutions are often the means by which most people experience effective, unified and real-time collaboration for the first time - UC in action. As an example of the cost benefits that can be achieved, our experience with customers shows that for an organisation of 10,000 people, the typical travel cost for a face-to-face meeting is in the order of €121. Conferencing typically replaces 52 percent of face-to-face meetings, yielding a €1.3 million P&L saving. Adding in the savings in unproductive time (salary cost) while travelling can extend the overall P&L saving to €2 million.

Philippe Babin. Companies looking to justify an investment in UC during an economic downturn may be initially wary of the perceived financial challenges in implementing a UC solution. However, an effective UC strategy enables an organisation to offset any financial challenges by creating a more productive work environment. The capability to streamline communications by bringing all of your communications tools - phone, instant messaging, email, conferencing, and data - together so that employees can in real time communicate and collaborate regardless of their location as well as within the applications they already know, use and trust.

Organisations can also potentially see dramatic returns from reduced overhead costs. Many multi-location businesses report monthly savings of up to 50 percent and more after implementing an effective UC strategy. UC enables companies to set up their remote workers anywhere - on the road or in their homes - reducing the cost of physical office locations, travel, training, and equipment.

Richard Pinnington. Firstly, UC means different things to different people. Many businesses recognise some of the technology that forms the basis of UC but not all understand how they can best apply it. To narrow it down, the core topics are:

• Convergence of voice and data networks.
• Convergence of business phone systems and mobile phones.
• Unified messaging - email, voicemail, IM and even fax in a single message inbox.
• Audio, video and web conferencing.
• Presence - a way of notifying other people of your availability and preferred method of contact.

Implementing any of these initiatives, or creating the ultimate UC environment where a business has unified all aspects of communications listed above and integrated them with business applications such as Microsoft Office, Lotus Sametime or SAP, can have dramatic effects on productivity, business processes, customer service and consequently business performance and cost.

Ravi Pather. UC, simply put, means a range of communications applications running over an IP network that are typically integrated into a set of business processes. Real-time applications such as voice, video conferencing and fixed mobile convergence are typically the first to be deployed followed by some levels of integration providing enhanced productivity via integrated telephony, presence, conferencing and so on. Many Enterprises currently regard VoiP and video conferencing as their primary UC investments using the hard cost savings that can be realised.

Integrating these applications provides users with increased efficiencies and productivity, however they are realised only when the user experience from using these applications is positive. Experience shows that poor reliability or call quality, significantly impacts the service and user confidence with a consequential reduction in productivity. If these efficiency and productivity gains are to be realised immediately then the IT operations (whether in-house or outsourced) must be focussed on service levels, usability and the user experience. This means making an appropriate investment in tools, not making the mistake of assuming that appropriate tools come as part of the UC solution. The established network or VoiP tool vendors are typically focused on managing equipment, configuration, availability and network performance rather than focussing on the users call experience, and the associated diagnostics behind this.

BM. What other benefits does UC offer organisations?
Ravi Pather. UC as an extension to pure VoiP or video conferencing offers increased opportunities for cost savings through increased convergence at both the network and infrastructure levels, increased automation of business and communications processes, and most importantly the flexibility to remain in contact using multiple forms of communications.

However, these additional benefits can only be realised if a positive user experience can be maintained. Operations cannot wait for users to report problems; they need to provide a real-time view of the service experience and meaningful diagnostics to identify any root cause. 

Richard Pinnington. As you consider the aspects below, think of the processes or job functions within your business that might benefit from being 'communications enabled':

• Maximising personal productivity - imagine working on a spreadsheet and clicking on an equation to see if its creator was available for an explanation, maybe via an IM or a video chat.

• Deploying the right resources - this aspect is of considerable interest to the fire service, for example, and can have a significant cost, time and environmental impact by reducing unnecessary travel.

• Collaborating more effectively - for a contact centre or customer helpdesk, you'd be able to identify experts anywhere in the business and bring them into a discussion to ensure first call resolution.

• Streamlining the supply chain - such as triggering alerts to inventory shortages; or sending a text message when a delivery driver is within range of a customers house

Philippe Babin. It is not acceptable especially in these economic times to always be unavailable or slow to respond to your messages; a prompt reply is expected almost immediately by customers, clients, partners and other employees. Not responding quickly can result in potentially missing an important business opportunity. One of the greatest tangible benefits behind UC is the ability of an organisation to give its employees real time secure voice and data communications that enable them to make better and more informed decisions that can ultimately impact an organisation's overall competitiveness and efficiency.

Martin Saunders. By reducing the need to travel, using UC can help a business achieve its green goals. Employee satisfaction can be increased by enabling working from home. By providing presence and using instant messaging, team working can be enhanced over traditional voice and email communication methods by providing an unobtrusive means of identifying the availability of co-workers and the best means to make contact with them.

Cathy Ham. UC also allows people to work just as effectively away from the traditional office as they would in it. Now people across multiple time zones can work together on global projects without the need to leave their desks, or in many cases their homes. Such business agility and flexibility drives innovation, customer service and cost efficient business operations. For the individual, work/life balance is easier to actually achieve, people are happier in their working lives which leads to better employee retention rates, less natural wastage and a more motivated workforce, more in touch with overall business objectives and strategy.

BM. Mobility is of utmost importance for businesses, with staff travelling all over the world and needing to stay in contact with colleagues and clients. How is UC playing its part in mobile working?
Richard Pinnington. Today for many organisations, the cost of mobile-related communications is the largest element of their ICT spend. The mobile phone operator determines the services available and the mobile network is separate from your business communications network. Employees need two phone numbers, mail boxes and double the administrative support. Missing calls or wasting time collecting multiple messages is commonplace. While employees on the business network can see the availability of their colleagues through 'presence', they can't see the status of off site colleagues.

Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) allows you to change all this. Firstly, you can publish one number for each employee. The mobile phone and the desk phone would ring until one was answered. There would be one message system, with voicemails placed in your email inbox for easy retrieval, or read to you if you're travelling. If you were on a conference call in the office and wanted to head home, you could seamlessly transfer the call to your mobile. You can reduce mobile phone costs by running the mobile call over your wireless network, then dynamically pass the call to the mobile operator when you move out of range of your network. Our habit of using the mobile phone while in the office needn't cost you money anymore. And on international calls, you can avoid the costly roaming charges by routing mobile calls via local private networks. Essentially, the mobile phone becomes an extension off the business phone system (PBX), so that it has the same features as a desk phone, and the same 'presence' capabilities.

Philippe Babin. UC is not only about voice and data communications; it is also about how that same mobile device is able to achieve the notion of 'presence'. UC allows enterprises to maximise the connectivity of their workforce with their customers and other employees. It offers them the ability to reach directly any given individual, regardless of where they are located in the world, enabling insight and collaboration of the employee base to help improve work processes as well as to help meet overall customer commitments.

Cathy Ham. When people do need to travel, UC needs to help them stay in touch easily and effectively. With audio conferencing for example, anyone can join an audio conference call from virtually anywhere in the world for the cost of a local phone call, or even freephone using a fixed phone or their mobile. With an internet connection they can talk and share documents or slides in the same way they would gathered around a table, projecting slides from a PC. Using UC in this way allows people to use their time to best effect, to suit the circumstances at the time. So, when working on the move is a necessity, it needn't be a pain.

Martin Saunders. The challenge of global working is one of communication. Traditional 'mobility' technology has brought email and telephony communication to more people in more places but these communication methods often lack the richness required in sensitive group situations, such as board meetings, sales engagements and project meetings.

UC can add this richness by providing simultaneous voice and video communications in a virtual meeting room format where presentations can be made and items of businesses effectively discussed between many people. When operating in different time zones, UC solutions can provide real-time information about the availability of people indicating whether it is appropriate to attempt to contact them or not. Where it is inappropriate to contact someone who might be asleep or otherwise engaged, UC can expose the alternative means of 'offline' communications available -- including traditional methods such as email and voicemail.

Ravi Pather. UC plays an essential role in mobile working as it enables communications across multiple media types, using multiple devices that better suit the environmental context. Again to ensure this works effectively the users experience needs to be monitored. Psytechnics plays an important role in ensuring the users' experiences are maintained and that their associated IT operations and support teams have the visibility and tools to ensure that service levels are maintained and services are usable from the users' perspective. You cannot put your users on hold whilst operations investigates the quality issues or performs trial and error tests. You must have real-time service performance monitoring with meaningful diagnostics to identify the root cause. Too many times we see IT operations blissfully unaware that users suffer poor call quality, and that these problems remain invisible, even when reported by users, operations then having to resort to essentially guesswork to troubleshoot.

BM. What are the main stumbling blocks to widespread UC adoption and how can these obstacles be overcome?
Philippe Babin. The main stumbling block to the widespread adoption of UC is the lack of knowledge that organisations face in understanding the full benefits that UC can bring as well as the technologies involved in implementing the ideal UC solution. It's important for organisations to understand that there isn't one magic solution to implement for a UC strategy. For UC more than most other emerging technologies, a 'one-size-fits-all' approach will not work, so in order to increase the adoption of UC amongst the masses, it involves a portfolio of solutions approach that can be customised specifically to meet a company's needs for mobility, collaboration and technologies.

Ravi Pather. Managing a positive user experience, and UC operating costs.

Users remain sceptical about the benefits of UC as early or existing projects have typically had mixed results. Many of the negative issues associated with these projects are call quality related. The equipment can be operating correctly, the network performing with sufficient bandwidth and quality of service, yet there can still be issues. User complaints involve echo, distortion, noise and volume for voice, and picture blocking, loss of sync and distortion for video. These issues are generally not detected by traditional tools and can only be resolved quickly and reliably using a tool that understands them from the users' perspective - relating user complaints to actual network or application anomalies.

Experience shows there is little focus and emphasis on operations costs when considering new UC applications. A mistaken belief being UC as just another network application can use existing network performance tools. The reality is somewhat different, the ongoing operational overhead for these real-time UC based applications (primarily voice and video) is higher and more complex than expected. The initial capital expenditure of UC itself remains the focus for the business case, with operations and support generally being considered as an afterthought, sometimes years into the projects rollout.

Cathy Ham The financial and environmental benefits to organisations from increasing use of UC can be quantified. However, it is easy to overlook the human factor issues that need to be addressed when trying to change the meetings culture of an organisation. The key to managing resistance to change is to offer meeting alternatives that are easy to use, cost effective and extremely reliable. To get widespread UC adoption, you have to get people using the technology and seeing and believing for themselves how good it can be. We know from our own experience in providing conferencing solutions to many of the world's largest organisations how much effort and ongoing user support is required to maximise the use of straightforward audio conferencing. Such experience in driving and setting up adoption programmes, training, helpdesks and proactive service monitoring can make the difference between success and failure for widespread UC adoption.

Martin Saunders. Some technical challenges still surround the integration of legacy systems into a UC environment although the continued development of gateway technology and natural replacement of older systems means that this is becoming less of an issue for most businesses.

Security is a primary concern for many organisations where confidentiality is a paramount concern - such as in government and healthcare:

• The communication between users of a UC solution must be assured.
• Securing assets belonging to different organisations and individuals presents a challenge.
• It may not be apparent that a recording of a conversation or virtual meeting is being made - and if it is, where it is being stored and how it is being secured.

For UC solutions to be truly effective, they must work for all potential users of it - both inside and outside of an organisation. If a UC solution does not function for users outside of an organisation then experience shows that users within an organisation will become frustrated with it and it will eventually be abandoned. The challenge of providing access to an organisation's UC to, potentially, anyone is not without difficulty - linking up different UC platforms between organisations can be taxing and very few UC platforms provide a means for an external user to participate without the installation of client software.

Richard Pinnington. A lack of understanding of what UC is, and what it can do for a business is often cited as the core stumbling block. For those that have built an understanding and a vision of how UC can benefit the business, the real issue is that many of the components are already in place but just don't talk to each other. So how much of the investment can be retained and leveraged, what needs to be added, and which vendors or systems integrators can do the work? What existing supplier contracts would be impacted?

UC remains a relatively new yet rapidly evolving market. You should look for suppliers that are recognised leaders in the UC space with relationships with application vendors such as Microsoft, IBM and SAP, and the necessary integration skills. Vendors, such as Nortel, will work with you to explore how UC can be implemented within your company for maximum business benefit and then help you with a roadmap that leverages what you already have to allow you to realise those benefits.

The panel:
Martin Saunders, Senior Technical Consultant for Amicus ITS
Cathy Ham, General Manager of Global Portfolio and Marketing at BT Conferencing
Philippe Babin, General Manager Media5 Corporation
Richard Pinnington, UK Marketing Manager for Enterprise Solutions for Nortel
Ravi Pather, VP of Sales for Europe at Psytechnics