Uncomplicating Unified Communications for SMBs. July 2012

Transcription

1 Uncomplicating Unified Communications for SMBs July 2012 Ziff Davis Research All Rights Reserved 2012

2 Table of Contents Summary.... p. 03 Demystifying Unified Communications... p. 03 Unified Communications: The Business Case.... p. 04 UC Levels the Playing Field.... p. 05 Coming to Terms with UC.... p. 05 UC Pre-Purchase Checklist.... p. 08 Conclusion.... p. 10 Uncomplicating Unified Communications for SMBs Ziff Davis Research All Rights Reserved

3 Summary Unified Communications (UC) has been making its way into the enterprise for a number of years, but uptake has been markedly slower in the small-to-midsize business (SMB) space. Many SMBs are concerned that UC is too expensive, too difficult to set up and maintain, overhyped or, worse, they are simply baffled by UC and its benefits. If you re not completely clear about what Unified Communications encompasses, you aren t alone, and it s not your fault. UC will continue to be misunderstood, in that the range of definitions is broad and inconsistent, says Jon Arnold, principal at J Arnold & Associates, a VoIP and IP communications consultancy. UC is one of those things that you recognize when you see it, although you may not have the right words to describe it. Demystifying Unified Communications A clearer picture of what UC is and isn t begins to emerge when one understands that, unlike most other technologies, UC is not a specific solution per se, but a strategy enabled by various products that helps organizations to collaborate and communicate more effectively and efficiently. By embracing technologies such as voice over IP (VoIP), voice mail, mobility, conferencing, telepresence, , unified messaging (UM), and instant messaging (IM), this nascent technology can boost employee interchange and help optimize business processes. Blair Pleasant, co-founder of UCStrategies.com, explains is succinctly: UC integrates real-time and non-real-time communications with business processes and requirements based on presence capabilities, presenting a consistent unified user interface and user experience across multiple devices and media types. UC enables people to connect, communicate and collaborate seamlessly to improve business agility and results. To illustrate her point, she offers this example: A typical UC session might start with an instant message between two parties that escalates to a phone call or Web conference through a click of a button on the PC screen. That click connects the parties via audio, and another turns the call into video, if desired. If other people need to be added to the conversation, a look at the presence status of people on your buddy list lets you simply click-to-conference to bring them into the call. Uncomplicating Unified Communications for SMBs Ziff Davis Research All Rights Reserved

4 Unified Communications: The Business Case Imagine arriving at the office each morning and taking care of all of your s, voic s, and other communications in a fraction of the time you spend responding and reaching out now. Picture yourself connecting with colleagues, customers, and partners when and how it s most convenient for you. Imagine how much of your workday you could salvage from the many interruptions that stanch your productivity, so you could spend the bulk of your time in the office getting actual work done. Now picture a strategy that not only helps you achieve all this, but also enables you to collaborate faster, more effectively, and more efficiently with your staff and customers. These are the potential benefits of UC. As Technet s Microsoft Small Business blog explains, UC adoption allows you to stop being interrupted and instantly bag some increased productivity. Being in control of your communications enables you to handle all your communications all at once, at a time that suits you. This is beneficial in two ways: Firstly, you can bundle up all those calls, s and texts and deal with them in one go, which is handy, according to the blog. But, more importantly, UC uses the concept of presence. If you ve ever used Instant Messenger or Facebook Chat, you ve already used presence. With one or more customizable presence options ( online, do not disturb, be right back, etc.), you can inform contacts of your availability before they phone or write. Although it sounds somewhat counterintuitive, presence allows clients, staff, and partners to feel more connected to you, even when you are displaying your virtual do not disturb sign. When others gain insight to your availability, they can reach out knowing when you are receptive, instead of calling you blindly and hoping to get through. Secondly, the blog continues, UC allows you to be available on your own terms: With UC, you can choose which channels to keep open, and which to ignore. For example, you can push calls to voic while remaining available via , and letting those who wish to contact you know your preferred contact method of the moment. Using a technique called cascade (also known as trickledown ), UC allows people to get in touch in the most appropriate way for your needs without driving them to frustration and finally giving up. Seamlessly to the caller, UC can try your office phone, home phone and then mobile, the blog explains. Then it can take a voic message, Uncomplicating Unified Communications for SMBs Ziff Davis Research All Rights Reserved

5 leave it on your mobile, and also the audio to your work address. The UC system will funnel communications to you in the order you choose, across any communications medium. You can set up the UC system to send messages to the most convenient places for you to pick up at your convenience. UC Levels the Playing Field Beyond sheer technical capabilities, UC can help SMBs to gain competitive advantage and to differentiate themselves in a marketplace that, in the past, has been likely dominated by large enterprises due to their size and sheer muscle. Non-regulated businesses, for example, can leverage UC as an effective compliance repository. Gaining access to records of contact in date order, regardless of communication mode, affords SMBs with a simplified first step to dealing with compliance or legal challenges. SMBs with employees who work from home can appear as authoritative as larger businesses, while affording teleworkers anonymity. On the occasions when you take calls at home, you might prefer customers not to have your home phone number. By giving out only your presence details (i.e. a name) or a mobile which cascades down to a home phone number, there s no need to give out home/personal details at all, Technet s blog explains. UC further levels the playing field by extending presence capabilities to roles. Because UC doesn t differentiate a worker s name ( Joe, for example) from his or her role (say, support ) an SMB can appear to be a larger outfit than it really is, no matter how many people on staff wear multiple hats. You can look like a 20-person company, even though there are only four of you, Technet s blog explains. In doing so, you will almost certainly improve your workflow, productivity, and gain transparency into the efficiency of your operations. Coming to Terms with UC As with any technology, learning the related UC jargon will move you along the learning curve and give you a better understanding of how elements of UC fit together. The following list, while not exhaustive, will give insight into some basic terminology associated with Unified Communications: Uncomplicating Unified Communications for SMBs Ziff Davis Research All Rights Reserved

6 Internet Protocol Private Branch exchange (IP PBX): Some vendors classify the IP PBX (or switch ) as the essential enabler of UC systems; others consider UC to be simply an extension of Internet telephony. In lay terms, IP PBX provides the plumbing required for a UC solution. Currently, the IP PBX market is in a state of flux, with vendors moving toward software solutions and away from hardware-centric products. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web services are playing an important role in UC solutions, and most switch vendors have announced plans to provide call control capabilities via software rather than hardware, says UCStrategies.com s Pleasant. Presence: Presence (also known as telepresence) is the backbone of UC solutions. As UC s primary enabler, presence will be the dial tone of the future, Pleasant says. As previously discussed, presence provides real-time notification of users current availability and ability to communicate. Pleasant explains the mechanics of presence: Servers gather presence information from various sources and provide unified presence information to end-users or applications. In a UC world, when we discuss presence, we are going beyond simple instant message presence (i.e., knowing if a buddy is online and available for an instant messaging session) to presence enabling all communications, including telephony. Understanding the importance of presence provides insight into one of sticking points of UC: lack of federation among vendors. Most switch vendors today either offer their own presence server and capabilities or integrate with presence capabilities from IBM and/or Microsoft, Pleasant explains. The biggest challenge today is the lack of federation, or the ability of these presence systems to work together to allow users on one presence system to see the presence status of a partner or customer on another system. Instant messaging: Business-grade instant messaging (IM) is another major component of a UC solution. In business environments, IM generally requires an enterprise-grade IM system, rather than a public IM service such as AOL or Yahoo, Pleasant says. Enterprise IM systems offer security and privacy that public IM services cannot. As with presence servers, however, most enterprise IM systems do not interoperate with others. Unified messaging: Unified messaging (UM) integrates voice, fax, and messages with message notification. UM provides users with access to their messages, anywhere, anytime, from any device. With UM s store-and-forward capabilities, most UM products add a variety of advanced call and message Uncomplicating Unified Communications for SMBs Ziff Davis Research All Rights Reserved

7 management functions, including desktop call screening of inbound calls, find me/ follow me, live reply or call return, and cross-media messaging. New presence capabilities mean that the need for UM systems to act as answering machines is being reduced, and the value of UM is moving toward enhanced, real-time connectivity with individuals, Pleasant says. Speech access and personal assistant: Personal assistants (or virtual assistants) allow users, via speech commands, to access their inbox, calendar, directory and so on, Pleasant explains. Personal assistants provide intelligent screening and filtering of messages and let users navigate their schedule, calendar, contacts, outbound dialing and so on, in addition to their UM system. Mobility: In an ever more mobile world, voice and video communications will increasingly be launched from and connected to mobile wireless devices. By integrating voice and real-time communications services with core enterprise communications, mobility allows end-users to do their jobs regardless of location. Enabling UC features like click-to-conference and IM for mobile users allows them to participate in conferences and access some of the same capabilities they can access in the office, improving their productivity when mobile, Pleasant says. Business Process Integration (BPI): By integrating with business processes and workflow applications, UC reduces the human latency that stalls business processes in need of human input or communication. In many business processes today, Pleasant explains, work comes to a standstill until someone can provide information needed to proceed to the next step. UC can reduce this delay by contacting the next person in a sequence of steps, or by initiating an ad hoc meeting or conference call to settle an issue. By communication- or voice-enabling business processes and applications, communications can be initiated within the application, making it easier to notify and interact with others to resolve a problem. Back-office applications such as customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), sales force automation (SFA), and supply chain management (SCM) are some of the applications that can be UC-enabled. For example, businesses can replicate CRM by using the number from an incoming customer call to identify the caller and then look up the customer s history. Thus, an agent can answer a call with all needed customer information on his or her screen. BPI can also, for example, enable someone reviewing a document or spreadsheet to Uncomplicating Unified Communications for SMBs Ziff Davis Research All Rights Reserved

8 contact the document s author when additional information is needed. By mousing over the author s name, the reviewer can check the author s presence status, then initiate a click-to-call conversation. A manufacturing exception system, for example, can detect an issue, escalate the situation as needed, then notify the appropriate contacts via any communication mode. Responsible parties can be brought into a conference call to resolve the issue immediately. Conferencing and collaboration: UC enables conferencing and collaboration, which includes audio-, video- and Web conferencing, as well as capabilities such as shared workspaces, whiteboarding, file-sharing, and document-sharing. Among the technologies in the collaborative portfolio, Pleasant sees Web conferencing as the fastest-growing in popularity. Web conferencing brings collaboration to the desktop via a Web browser and an Internet connection, allowing participants to view presentations and other documents while participating in a real-time conference. Voice communications can take place over the Internet or through a separate audio conferencing bridge. Another collaboration component is shared workspaces, which enable participants to view, share, edit and save documents and files. UC Pre-Purchase Checklist Before embarking on your UC initiative, do your homework. The following checklist will get you off to a good start. Investigate the areas of your business that UC can improve. Get input from employees and customers to help you define goals for the UC deployment. Find out which methods of communication your customers prefer, and get their input about which areas of your company s communications need improvement. When you define the goals for your UC initiative, make them as specific as possible. Ben Stiegler, CEO of UC provider SynerTel, suggests: Define goals for the UC deployment and what you want to get out of it. The more specific, the better: frequent video conferences with remotely-located CEO; record all interactions with our customer service team; mobile workforce needs one-number accessibility; reduce operating costs by $xx,xxx annually. Understand what hardware and software you already have. Inventorying your current solutions sounds like obvious, eat-your-vegetables advice, but Uncomplicating Unified Communications for SMBs Ziff Davis Research All Rights Reserved

9 so many do not know what type and what version of PBX, contact center, system, CRM system and so forth that they currently have, cautions Richard Piatkowski, account executive at customer contact provider Aspect. This information is paramount for any partner to be able to understand you technically and shows that you are serious. Get buy-in from the people who control the money. Without having someone to sign the checks, your UC initiative will come to a halt before you can start. Get top executives on board, and be sure at least one of them holds the purse strings. Get approval to investigate ideas and options, Piatkowski suggests. Be able to explain conceptually what UC is and what it might be able to do for the business. Research vendors and prepare your short-list. Stiegler recommends that you interview three to five experienced UC providers to see if they are on your wavelength. Key points of assessment: Do they speak business, or techno-geek? Do they understand your business? Have they successfully served others in your industry? Are they manufacturer-certified on the system they plan to offer you? For how long? How many certified salespeople? Engineers? On the specific platform? Are they asking you questions that you hadn t thought to ask yourself? Piatkowski recommends that you ask colleagues, ask business associates, ask a partner company, ask a trusted supplier: Do you do UC? Are you planning to? Can you recommend a partner to speak with? Arrange demos for interested parties and stakeholders. Gain hands-on experience with the proposed system by taking it for a test-drive. Experience the proposed system, says Stiegler. Check usability, response-time to clicks, audio and video quality. Piatkowski explains this is a time for everyone to understand what might be on offer, how it works, what it will do for you, how it delivers against your and your customer s issues. Let people question the partner as to their recommendation on have to haves, need to haves, nice to haves. This then lets the partner pull together intelligent pricing offers, based on real conversations. Uncomplicating Unified Communications for SMBs Ziff Davis Research All Rights Reserved

10 Conclusion Is your SMB ready for Unified Communications? Of course, only you can be the judge of that. But understanding a few key takeaways should make things clearer: UC is not a specific solution, but a strategy enabled by various products that helps organizations to collaborate and communicate more effectively and efficiently. UC can level the field, helping SMBs to gain competitive advantage and to differentiate themselves in a marketplace once dominated by large enterprises. Learning the related UC jargon will move you along the learning curve and give you a better understanding of how elements of UC fit together. Before embarking on your UC initiative, do your homework. Now, you should not only be able to recognize UC when you see it, but also have the right words to describe it. About Ziff Davis Ziff Davis, Inc. is a leading digital media company specializing in the technology market, reaching over 40 million highly engaged in-market buyers and influencers every month. Ziff Davis sites, which feature trusted and comprehensive evaluations of the newest, hottest products, and the most advanced ad targeting platform. Ziff Davis B2B is a leading provider of online research to enterprise buyers and high-quality leads to IT vendors. More information on Ziff Davis can be found at ziffdavis.com. Uncomplicating Unified Communications for SMBs Ziff Davis Research All Rights Reserved