philipsamse: Moving Telephony From The Desktop Removes Communication ...

Moving Telephony From The Desktop Removes Communication Barriers And Increases ROI

Your workforce is mobile. Your clients are global. And good communications ? around the clock and around the world ? are essential to your company?s success.

To make the most of the opportunities presented by the global economy, enterprises need a comprehensive, streamlined communications infrastructure. This is one that integrates all of their communications devices and software. Enter Unified Communications (UC).

In the UC environment, all your communication tools ? from voice, data, video conferencing and instant messaging through e-mail and text messaging ? are fully integrated in real time.

The results include: voice calls to desk phones to be automatically routed to a cell phone when required. E-mail intended for a desktop mailbox can be sent to the user?s Portable Digital Assistant (PDA). And text messages can be converted into speech for a phone message.

These applications provide employees with increased mobility and the ability to work from anywhere. They also improve and measure customer support and service, present a professional image to customers, manage communications more efficiently and connect all sites or branches ? giving everyone the same sophisticated communications capabilities.

Real-time Communications
UC deployments are becoming more popular in the enterprise space. In fact, a recent survey of U.S. business people, conducted by Market Tools for Siemens Enterprise Communications, found that more than half of companies are actively installing UC applications to increase productivity and business responsiveness.

Nemertes Research?s recent ?Unified Communications and Collaboration Research Benchmark,? study found that more than 47 percent of IT executives are deploying or planning to deploy UC. This represents an increase of 17 percent from 2007.

The study also finds that nearly 90 percent of enterprises identified their organizations as ?virtual.? The firm defines this as where some employees work remotely from their supervisors and workgroups.

According to the Nemertes study, ?The rise of the virtual workforce requires that organizations provide their employees with tools to collaborate and communicate regardless of location, via a variety of means including text, audio and video.?

UC solutions reduce communication problems, improve business processes and enable a truly mobile workforce, says Irwin Lazar, principal research analyst and program director for Unified Communications and Collaboration at Nemertes.

?In a non-UC environment, all communication services, like cell phones, instant messaging and video conferencing are deployed piecemeal,? Lazar says. ?Those applications require a different learning curve and, in many cases, offer very little opportunity to communicate between applications.?

In a true UC environment, all voice, data and video, along with e-mail, instant messaging and calendaring applications, are fully integrated with desktop and mobile devices. So instead of sending out e-mail, leaving voicemail messages and trying to track down the right person, UC enables staffers to find the right contact straight away.

?Now you can use something like a single buddy list to track whether or not somebody is on the phone or online and initiate a voice call, web conference or video conference,? Lazar adds. ?UC improves any business process that relies on human interaction.?

Customer Service
UC leads to tangible benefits regarding improved customer service. For example, if a customer dials in, that person receives an automated message detailing where the sales rep can be located (if you want to provide that information), and whether the call can be taken. If it can, the call is routed to a cell phone or other specified number.

UC also offers better throughput through contact centers along with better opportunities to close sales. ?We see the use of UC as a business process improvement tool as really being the key driver,? Lazar says.

He cites the example of one ?national organization? that saw a 5-to-10 percent increase in sales thanks to UC. ?Their account managers were more easily able to find subject matter experts and pull them into customer calls, versus taking messages and calling people back,? he adds.
Another organization found anywhere from 15-to-20 percent improvements in contact-center throughput.

?We?ve also seen companies demonstrate reduced phone bills as a result of using instant messaging,? he says. ?So when you drill down into the specific components, you see additional business cases.?

UC can also reduce travel costs. For example the Nemertes report finds that growth in the adoption of desktop, room-based and telepresence video conferencing is allowing global companies to eliminate 2 percent to 5 percent of international executive travel.

The Nemertes study also found that 65 percent of executives are deploying or evaluating telepresence video-conferencing systems and 51 percent deploying desktop video.

?Today, one out of every two dollars spent on enterprise communications is spent on UC solutions,? says Chris Thompson, senior director of solutions marketing for Cisco Unified Communications.
?Companies have quickly moved away from the ?standardized? world of the 1990s and more toward a world where people use different tools to work,? Thompson says. ?This has been accelerated by the new workforce, which is naturally collaborative and used to being continuously connected.?

Blurring Communication Lines
In many companies, the efficiency of unified communications is quickly making e-mail unviable as a reliable communication tool.

?Smartphones are also blurring the lines between e-mail, short message service and instant messaging ? all are typically now used to send short text communications,? Thompson says.

The growing popularity of UC solutions is being further accelerated as more companies embrace video conferencing and Web 2.0 applications. ?As people accelerate the shift away from traditional communications towards UC, they gain immediate ROI as well as the opportunity to extend new applications into the workspace,? he adds.

At the heart of the growth are video-conferencing applications. They add more context to communications and Web 2.0 applications embedded in business processes, Thompson explains. ?Businesses are rushing to embrace unified communications as a foundation for collaboration to accelerate decisions, gain productivity and strengthen competitive advantage.?

Strong ROI
Unified communication can lead to reduced travel costs and real estate costs. This happens because of flexible workspaces along with the popularity of teleworking where staff works from the road or from home.

UC also reduces employee acquisition and retention costs by enabling people to bring the tools they prefer to work, yet enabling a seamless collaborative experience. By bringing customers closer and improving a company?s customer response times, unified communications reduces customer acquisition, service and retention times.

A UC solution will also reduce cabling and facilities-management costs. This is done by leveraging the common IP network for all voice and data traffic, thereby reducing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) in the process.

ShoreTel has created a TCO tool to help businesses evaluate the financial aspects of unified communications. The tool focuses on capturing data on the costs of deploying and managing a UC solution and also the cost savings that businesses can enjoy.

The productivity benefits of UC for businesses are ?clear and compelling,? says Kevin Gavin, vice president of marketing at ShoreTel. This includes more effective and timely collaboration among employees, greater responsiveness to customers and significantly reduced time wasted on telephone tag. ?We have found that for many firms the ROI is less than six months,? Gavin adAnd for some firms, it could be instant when monthly operating cost savings are greater than lease payments.

UC Network Infrastructure
Enterprise customers considering a UC solution should begin by looking for the business benefits. Then they need to make sure their vendor is deeply involved in the process, Nemertes Research?s Lazar says.

?Start by documenting the business value that you can derive from UC,? Lazar says. Then talk to the vendors.
?We see UC implementation challenges vary greatly depending on the current installed environment?, he adds. ?So, sit down with your vendors to understand their products, their roadmaps and the level of integration they support.?

The Layered Look
Most medium-to-large enterprises will use one of several different strategies to deploy unified communications, says Cisco?s Thompson.

?There is no real standard laundry list of components,? he says. ?The equipment required is largely dependent on the types of workspaces that exist within the business and the needs of the users. However there are some common components.?

These include a router for Internet access, a switched IP network, Wi-Fi for mobility and finally, any application-specific services like video and conferencing servers.

In reality, your company can find itself at any of three different stages when it comes to a UC deployment ? with each level offering more features and capabilities.

1. Converged Networks: The first stage involves creating a converged network. That means integrating your telephone system and your IP-based data networks into one single network.

To do this, you?ll need Quality of Service (QoS) switches and routers along with voice- and datacapable hardware. Applying QoS to both your routers and switches becomes more important as more and more traffic flows through the network.

QoS switches prioritize traffic on the network so that more important traffic can pass first, resulting in significant performance improvements. Make sure to choose a QoS switch that can handle the amount of traffic you expect to run across the network.

Next, choose a router that enables a converged network. You?ll need one that will be able to support the more demanding requirements of a fully developed UC solution.

For example, Cisco?s 2800 Series routers will support your converged networks. And they can also deliver the power needed to add business applications like video conferencing without requiring an equipment upgrade.

2. Telephony and VoIP: The second stage involves implementing a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solution on your converged network. Here, you select the IP phone hardware and software that will run on your converged network infrastructure.

You?ll also need to incorporate an Internet Protocol Private Branch Exchange (IP-PBX) It?s a business telephone system designed to switch calls between VoIP users on local lines and switch calls between VoIP users and traditional telephone users.

IP-PBX switches enable Internet access, VoIP communications and traditional telephone communications to run on a single line to each user. This provides incremental flexibility as the enterprise grows and reduces long-term operation and maintenance costs.

For example, D-Link?s SIP IP-PBX switch can support up to 25 users. Incoming calls are directed by the integrated auto-attendant to assist callers to their destinations. One unit can support up to 25 extensions.

The extension can be located anywhere with Internet access. And multiple units can be used to increase the number of extensions or unite a company that has many locations under a single PBX system.

This is also a good time to consider Power over Ethernet (PoE) technology. It allows you to power office devices like VoIP phones and wireless access points, using your Ethernet cable without any interruption to the data traffic traveling along the same copper wires.

3. Unified Communications: Here you can bring your UC solution to life by integrating converged network and VoIP solutions with instant messaging software, video conferencing software and other mobility tools, such as cell phones, PDAs, e-mail, presence and more.

Depending on the size of your rollout, you may require dedicated UC servers to support your UC strategy. Cisco?s UC solutions, for example, support IP telephony, unified client software, presence, instant messaging for business, unified messaging, rich-media conferencing, mobility solutions and application development.

That integration is enabled and managed by Cisco?s RSVP Agent. The software allows Cisco routers to intelligently exchange information with Cisco?s UC Manager software, to improve quality of service and increase network flexibility.

Future Trends
Important UC trends to look for include increased integration of UC solutions with other business applications, more powerful and intuitive call routing, and screening tools so that people get the calls that they want and avoid call interruptions for non-critical calls, ShoreTel?s Gavin says.

The need for more effective communication tools away from the office, along with increased use of video conferencing, is also driving the increasing popularity of UC solutions.

?The impact of these trends is that the ability to deliver these leading features and capabilities is increasingly a requirement for businesses selecting an enterprise communications solution,? Gavin explains.
?With the emergence of mobility and the global economy, we now see a requirement to take the collaborative experience that happens on premises, behind the firewall, beyond the firewall,? Cisco?s Thompson says.

Whether to home, hotel room, customer site, or to facilitation between supplier and customer, people increasingly expect a superior communication experience. And they expect this irrespective of the workspace components on either side of the communication.

Building a UC Business Case
Today, business executives understand that Internet Protocol-based (IP-based) solutions, operating over a converged voice-and-data network, are the best choice to replace aging telephone systems.

Because the expense for fully implementing Voice over IP (VoIP) and unified communications also impacts the data network, you want your investment to deliver a rapid and adequate return, with both strategic and financial value.

Cost savings are an important part of the decision. But any communications business case should also consider the broad range of resulting financial and strategic improvements, including: