Our vision is that Unified Communications will deliver a new level of efficiency, productivity and effectiveness for communications in business and government enterprises.  We have seen such breakthroughs before in many ways, such as Direct Digit Dialing, voice mail, e-mail, IVR self-service, call/contact centers, and web services.  Each of these allowed major reductions in the cost of business transactions while also enabling better, more responsive customer service.  The results were revenue and profit growth for the business enterprises that used the new tools most effectively as well as cost/benefit improvements when used in public sector enterprises.

 

We see two broad classes of UC deployment for realization of this vision: 

Personal productivity concentrates on UC functionality that makes communications easier for the individual user -- seamless integration of a variety of communications modalities, coupled with presence functionality to identify the best way to communicate with an individual.  Depending on the particular user's requirements, this could encompass a number of different communications capabilities.  The typical benefit statement for this type of UC focuses on ease-of-use, and how it enhances the ability of an individual to communicate easily and quickly with others – in other words, personal productivity. 

 

Integration of communications into business processes takes a different approach and analyzes the business processes to find the communication “hot spots” that are delaying transaction completion, causing customers to enter a voice mail or email queue, or limiting a process to the availability of a single person, when others could serve a customer, answer a question, or make a decision.  Today, many processes have steps in which a "communications bottleneck" can develop -- information is needed from someone who is not available, for example.  These delays can often significantly affect the overall time requirements to complete a process or workstep.  The impact of appropriately designed UC functionality is to streamline the workflows in order to speed cycle times, eliminate steps, and reduce staffing requirements.  In some of our assignments, we have seen end-to-end time reductions of 30% or more.  These reductions can speed revenues, reduce carrying costs, make staff available for additional activities, and improve customer satisfaction with the company's responsiveness.  Beyond just harnessing the personal productivity tools, we see applications software automatically invoking UC capabilities to enable processes to move more quickly.  When an expert is needed to review a pending document, the system automatically finds one with appropriate credentials to speed the processing.  And, in many cases, the need for a communication event, such message follow-up calls, can be eliminated entirely, since the messages are avoided in the first place. 

 

We see these both of these two different concepts how UC can be deployed.  While each can bring benefits, some of our ROI studies suggest that the benefits of business process improvement through UC can be ten times greater for than for personal productivity tools alone. 

 

But, there is a challenge.  Personal productivity is readily understandable.  People "get it" quickly once they experience it.  The "integration of communications into business processes" is a much vaguer concept.  The concepts and techniques of embedding UC capabilities into business processes are less readily understood than the concepts of personal productivity. 

 

Therefore, many companies find it more effective to begin a move to UC by introducing these tools as personal productivity enhancers.  We think that's fine, because it builds understanding among employees of the power of these new tools, and gets them engaged in the process.  However, it's critical not to stop there.  Rather, enterprises need to go to the next step.  Evaluate processes and identify the "hotspots" where UC can bring real benefit.  Then implement the functionality needed in those key processes to achieve significant benefits.  This approach builds a base of acceptance within the company, as well as gathering paybacks to fund further rollouts. 

 

We envision the potential of UC to transform how business is accomplished, by making communications a seamless part of many business processes.  Just like the computer revolution decades ago and the explosion of Internet enabled functionality more recently, merging communications into processes through UC will have a similar effect. 

 

UniComm’s role in this vision is to help your enterprise create a strategy for moving forward, to provide you with a process to efficiently and effectively identify the most appropriate applications, and to support successful implementation of an action plan of how best to get there.  See more under our Services.