VoiceCon Unified Communications eWeekly Issue 126| September 2, 2009
A Cooperative Project of VoiceCon and UC Strategies
==============================================================

This issue of UC Weekly is sponsored by VoiceCon San Francisco
 
Register now and save up to $900 off the regular price for VoiceCon San Francisco to be held November 2-5, at the Moscone North Convention Center.  For more information visit [...]

You may be asking yourself, what is a “solutions integrator?” We created that term to describe companies that sell and integrate UC solutions – including VARs, interconnects, telecom dealers and system integrators. From the vendor perspective, this group is called “the channel” or “channel partners,” but from the end user or enterprise perspective, these are the people who not only sell them the voice and data products needed for a UC solution, but also help put the solutions together, tying them together with the organizations’ existing systems (telephony, data), desktops, devices (wireless, wireline), and perhaps most importantly, applications.

In the past, the job of resellers, VARs, interconnects and telecom dealers was essentially to sell products or “boxes” (PBXs, phones, voice mail systems, etc.), and in some cases they would also provide some related software applications.

The situation today is much different, with the focus on applications first, requiring an understanding of the customers’ business, business processes, workflows, etc. As you’ve heard countless times by now, Unified Communications is: Communications integrated to optimize business processes. It’s the job of the solutions integrators to do this integration, and this is a different type of activity than simply selling boxes.

Today’s solutions integrators must understand various work modes in the context of the business processes that are being performed, e.g. is the work primarily customer-facing field work (sales, service), or on-site process-centered mobile work (health care, retail, manufacturing, distribution), or on-site or virtual office desk-based work (financial services, enterprise support departments), or flexible location information or knowledge work (development, marketing, consulting, management)? The solutions integrator must then be able to convert that information about the processes and the roles within those processes into designs that specify the best communications modes and applications and support those choices with the best UC software, hardware, devices and procedures.

Next, it’s important to get buy-in from the top – if C-level and other executives use the UC capabilities, others in the organization are more likely to as well. These executives can set an example and drive adoption for the rest of the organization.

Get people excited about UC, and Dimension Data provides a great example. The company initiated a fun, online animated campaign aimed at getting its employees curious and excited about their internal UC deployment. The animation included hints about the upcoming UC rollout, such as “Looking for a convenient place to strategize with your coworkers, look no further than UC,” concluding with “Look for more information next week when the journey continues…”

At last week’s VoiceCon Orlando, we didn’t hear any dueling definitions about what Unified Communications is or how it should be defined, as in previous years. Instead, we heard discussions about the hard dollar savings companies are experiencing from their UC implementations, and how UC is being used to transform their businesses and improve their business processes. This demonstrates how far we’ve come and the maturing of the UC industry. Here are a few of the many examples that were discussed at VoiceCon.

When asked to identify their strengths during Marty Parker’s tutorial session, “Comparing UC Options and Vendors –Who’s Offering What?,” most of the vendor panelists didn’t talk about technology, but instead mentioned their ability to provide a solid ROI and TCO, as well as their ability to integrate and optimize business processes.

Several enterprise customers noted that their companies have eliminated all unnecessary travel, but because they have been able to meet with customers, co-workers and partners via videoconferencing, they have been able to maintain the relationships and get their jobs done without having to get into a train, plane or automobile. In addition, videoconferencing helps make meetings more effective than audio-only conferences, because you can see what the other person/people are doing; in short, video helps to ensure that participants pay attention to what’s being presented and discussed, instead of checking their Blackberries or doing other unrelated activities.

Channel training and incentives for UC: The channel is the key to selling UC, and they need to be incentivized to go beyond selling switches to selling UC solutions, especially solutions that integrate with business processes and applications. Most VARs and system integrators (SIs) are still leading with IP Telephony or Unified Messaging rather than UC, and are especially falling behind in terms of selling UC integrated with business processes, which requires additional business analysis skills that most VARs and SIs lack.

In these challenging economic times, many of us are wondering whether enterprises will continue to invest in UC technologies and solutions. The answer is, it depends.
 
As my colleagues Marty Parker and Don Van Doren noted during sessions at VoiceCon San Francisco, during these difficult periods, companies’ investment patterns tend to fall into one of the [...]

In the UC world, your goals may be to enhance workgroup productivity, improve customer service or shorten development cycles. Vote for your politician or UC provider based on who will help you best reach your goals now and in the future.

We’re at the beginning stages of social networking in the enterprise–there will be many ways in which to UC-enable these applications and services, making them exponentially more useful for individuals and organizations. And hopefully without the details of your dinner or kid’s soccer game.

Although the Unified Communications market is still relatively new, the future looks bright, as the market is expected to grow at an annual rate of 65% from 2007 to 2012. This growth rate is typical of a new, but broad-based market segment. But while growth appears likely, the market is so new that it’s difficult to predict exactly when enterprises will move from a “wait-and-see” attitude to more aggressive deployment.