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Understanding user needs and aligning ICT strategy to business strategy facilitates in establishing Unified Communications
 Predictions abound, technical solutions exist and everybody keeps trying to find the silver bullet that will tip the Unified Communications (UC) market. Does such a thing exist?
Forrester’s recent analysis ‘Sizing the Unified Communications (UC) Market’ identifies UC potential within enterprises of $14.5bn by 2015 across North America, Europe and Asia. The confidence stool is then kicked out from under this attractive number by the statement: “While all firms are demanding measurable business benefits to support UC business cases and deployment plans, the voyage to UC will be unique at each firm.”
It’s all too bespoke and scenario-specific to identify any generic business benefits or give good odds on the market potential being reached. In the meantime, Microsoft, IBM Cisco, Avaya and others continue to invest in further UC developments and promotion on the basis of what could seem to be a hope and a prayer. Google have released Wave, a UC platform for consumers. Its appeal is based on the core UC principle of communication and collaboration. Publish your trip of a lifetime diary and photos and invite friends to add their own experiences, maybe from the same holiday. They in turn can add other contacts to the collaborative effort and maybe extend this to other related topics.
Communicating from the Middle East
Microsoft’s Communicator is a business-focused UC application that combines e-mail, IM and voice with presence and buddy lists. Having used the tools myself extensively in the Middle East and Africa, there were few surprises about the core needs they satisfied. In an e-mail culture, the trigger for the tools to be used would often be a high-priority message or request. Finding people for more information or to take the next steps became easier as their presence and availability could be seen (or found after looking them up in the organisation directory). Response times can be better gauged as a result of knowing when contact can be made. Ping an IM across, ask if someone can take a call, put on the headset and click to dial. Conference calls could be easily set up by selecting a name, dragging and dropping it into the dialogue box. Surprisingly, making and maintaining a VoIP call from Cairo to Johannesburg, among others, mostly worked with reasonable voice quality.
Hands-on experience of several manufacturers’ UC products shows that they do work as a business enabler within the organisation boundaries. The majority of UC tools provide the same core service set as Microsoft and offer the potential for improved productivity and cost reduction. These are, however, very broad areas for investigation and business case ROI, and therefore subject to many different variables both during assessment and in implementation. Tangible measures of success are hard to tie down and will be open to interpretation while in service.
So, is there a different approach to UC that takes some or all of the vagaries out of specifying an implementation need and creating a business case?
Recognising business needs
Starting with an obvious statement, UC does seem to be a very good example of a solution looking for a problem. And it is presented in this way by some of the technology manufacturers to market. Shifting focus to the needs of the business user (public and private sector) and aligning the ICT strategy to the business strategy provide the right framework to start establishing the requirements and sizeable opportunity for UC. Mckinseys’ third annual Business Technology Survey1 reports the following as the top business issues:
- Improving the efficiency of business processes
- Improving the effectiveness of business processes
- Reducing IT costs
- Providing managers with information to support planning and decision making
- Ensuring compliance with regulations
- Creating new products and services
- Entering new markets
Working with Microsoft’s Communicator in the manner described earlier could be seen as the application being used as an accelerating factor in an escalation process. If this is accepted then, like any process, it can be captured and it can be replicated. It can also be measured by cost, time and efficiency amongst other factors and it can have targets attached. Framing the escalation process as a series of transactions allows the required communications functions to be identified and associated with each activity. The triggers needed to move through the process from start to finish can also be driven by the most appropriate communications method. In this format, the requirement and opportunity for UC matches the top two organisation needs and starts to become more measurable.
Analysing processes
A great example of overcoming the challenge of framing UC requirements at the business opportunity level came up at a recent public sector UC event in London. John O’Neill of Lancashire County Council presented the details of the council’s investment in customer service centres. Challenged by the need to unify 550 existing services and provide consistently higher levels of customer satisfaction and interaction, John refused to look at the technology first. Instead, an analysis of the process that excellent service operators used to resolve enquiries and issues was undertaken. This resulted in a step-by-step communications and transactions template against which each of the existing services was reviewed. Identifying close similarities in the requirements for providing a successful customer experience drove unification and set the requirements for the provision of the remaining core services. Technologies that would deliver each part of the conversation to the right place at the right time could then be specified, designed and implemented.
Starting from a clearly defined process made it possible to apply the communications template to a large number of services. It also allowed the underlying technologies to be specified for the overall process first and then tailored where needed to meet any bespoke requirements.
Driving a business case ROI is obviously going to be helped by having a clear way of stepping from business opportunity, through the specification of communications requirements as a process, to a UC implementation. Making the wider case for UC as a whole is also helped by this approach. There are many generic processes that can benefit from UC being embedded into them.
The final question to answer is whether there will be a growing requirement and opportunity for a communications and process approach to fuel the take off for UC?
The rise of the online economy, worth £163bn in 2007 and growing 30 per cent year on year according to the ONS is already providing the opportunity. Processes are being described by independent software vendors that demand communications across a variety of devices. Some of these help with distribution processes, some with sales processes and others with customer services. There are varying degrees of complexity but all of them can be put into a standard framework and all of them can then be assessed for the potential business impact they will make.
Unified Communications is already here and is making an increasingly powerful impact through business process specification. Decisions about the technologies can be made once the rigour of understanding the communications process has been completed and the opportunity impact assessed.
Reference:
1. McKinsey third annual Business Technology Survey 2009, which was carried out in September 2008 and published in December 2008. |
