Werewolves and UC

Rumour has it that only a silver bullet will kill a werewolf.

Presence status = busy (fighting mythical beasts)

Many people I talk to speak of trying to find the unified communications (UC) "silver bullet". Interestingly, and in a reverse thinking sort of way, they are looking for a silver UC bullet not to kill UC but rather to make their UC business case.

The trouble is, I do not believe there is a single silver bullet when it comes to making a business case for UC.

In order for unified communications to help an organization, first and foremost, an understanding of the key communication requirements and current communication challenges needs to be documented.

And let me try to be clear here. Documenting requirements, does not mean a few smart people in the organization hold all the ideas in their heads ready to spew them forth on demand. Documenting means talking to various groups in an organization and then writing down their requirements and validating what you have written with them.

I refer to the process of documenting communication requirements and then evaluating the pros and cons of various solution options to select the best match as creating a "UC Roadmap". And for further clarity, this is a customer-specific roadmap. If there was one roadmap, if all roads really did lead to Rome, then I could simply post the UC roadmap and be done with it.

Unfortunately, the real world is not that simple, and outside of assessing and writing down the specific needs of a particular organization, I have not been able to find a magical approach to understanding the most appropriate UC solution.

That's not to say, UC vendors don't push a "one size fits all" approach. I would too if I wanted to peddle a particular solution. As a vendor, there would is no point in defining actual requirements if the process leads a prospective customer to become a customer with another vendor.

And so, we are left with a boring, simple and yet effective process. Create a customer-specific UC Roadmap:

1. Survey and interview different types of users.
2. Write down their communication needs and current communication challenges.
3. Validate what you wrote down with the people you talked to.
4. Evaluate the pros and cons of the various solution options. (This assumes you actually have experience with the various options!)
5. Choose a solution (or hybrid solution) that best addresses challenges and matches the documented requirements
6. Based on the selected solution, build a value model that compares costs to potential benefits.

And while there may be no single silver bullet, I believe there are a few key areas we should focus on while looking for a solution.

Firstly, I would recommend looking into areas of "cost avoidance":

• Is there an opportunity to save on travel costs by using video conferencing or other remote collaboration tools?
• Is there an opportunity to save on real-estate costs by allowing remote (home workers) to access voice, conferencing and other tools from a home office and remain productive?
• Is there an opportunity to reduce audio conferencing costs by using some of the newer on-premise audio conferencing options?
• Is there an opportunity to save money on the purchase of IP sets by using softphones for certain users?
• Is there an opportunity to use existing licenses to provide functionality without purchasing additional licenses (more and more vendors are bundling extra capabilities with bases feature sets)

Depending on specific circumstances, any one of these areas could save enough money in a short period of time (typically less than 12 months) to justify an investment in UC.

Of course, there is also opportunity to look for UC to drive revenue.

However, while there is no doubt that UC can make people more effective, whether a reduction in "human latency" translates to the bottom line depends. Much like driving a 450 HP sports car, it certainly goes like stink but whether you get to work more quickly depends entirely upon traffic.

And of course UC can also improve customer service. The commonly cited example is to use presence to quickly find an expert to answer a customer question. While I like this example at an emotional level, the actual reality of implementing this solution in the real world often takes more work than expected. And further, a business model based on improved customer service will need to show clearly how happier customers translate into increased revenue.

So, in the end while many look for a silver bullet, I myself remain more concerned about vampires, those that suck the life out of UC through ridiculous claims, and as such I continue to wear my garlic necklace and to share stories based in reality.

Presence status = available (but smelling slightly of garlic)