Employing collaboration tools, as the first step toward wholly unified communications, delivers productivity gains, lowers an organisation’s carbon footprint and can be achieved without a large upfront capital investment. Co-sponsored feature: AT&T
In the not too distant past, successful participation in international business endeavours required extensive - and often frenzied – preparation for multi-purpose business trips to visit a slew of customers and suppliers. Although travel still requires the careful choreography of immunisations, ground transportation, interpreters, customs, lodging and numerous flight legs, much of the aggravation is diminished by online systems that respond accurately and instantaneously to requests. And fewer - or even no - trips are needed due to the increasing application of unified communications or UCsolutions.
With the advent of UC, membership in the global digital economy is no longer limited to those with a passport and a frequent flyer number. Today, it’s easy to forego business travel and schedule instantaneous, secure and reliable collaboration sessions – even face-to-face - regardless of a colleague’s longitude and latitude. As organisations weather the current economic climate, usage of collaboration tools is on the increase. The productivity, quality and cost efficiency benefits they offer play neatly into the requirements of businesses which are under immense pressure to cut costs and streamline operations. Additional benefits include a reduced carbon footprint and flexible access options from office, home or remote work locations. UC solutions enable businesses to realize operational efficiencies and significant savings on travel costs while still having a profitable exchange. Gone is the proverbial telephone tag associated with logistics planning. New and affordable UC tools enable businesses of every size to collaborate productively – even from halfway around the world.
Click to connect
Unified Communications can be viewed as a method of clicking to connect via a combination of emerging and traditional collaboration tools - such as conferencing, voice, e-mail and messaging - with fixed or wireless voice. As more organisations clearly recognise the benefits that can be accrued, a greater number of users are enjoying the efficiencies gained from the integration of desktop and infrastructure-based communication tools. However, the challenging global economy is a double-edged sword. On one side, it’s requirement that an organisation streamline processes lends itself to greater uptake and deployment of collaboration tools but, on the other side, it creates a climate of caution in which any spending must be carefully justified.
As a consequence, analyst firm Frost & Sullivan has reported that only 20% of global companies with revenues in excess of $100 million are what it calls decisive adopters when it comes to unified communications. Decisive adopters have a strategy in place, understand that investment in key technologies is critical and plan not to simply survive these difficult times but to come through them stronger.
The analysts report that, while most organisations are familiar with tried and tested communications products and services such as VoIP, audio conferencing and instant messaging, the concept of unified communications is only recognised as such by 31% of CEOs surveyed. That may appear to suggest that only a small portion of major companies are embracing the technology but those that have are increasing their commitment to it. Frost & Sullivan reports that 51% of CEOs whose organisations have already invested in some kind of UC intend to increase their usage and that 26% of companies surveyed increased their UC spending during the last year.
In addition, the high awareness among CEOs of the majority of collaboration tools encompassed by unified communications means that practically all global companies have at least some form of UC tools in operation. Although these companies are already reaping the benefits afforded by employing discrete applications, Frost & Sullivan points out that those who have integrated individual tools into a unified communications solution are enjoying maximised benefits and consequently increasing their spending on and usage of UC. The attraction of unified communications is obvious but it appears that organisations need to increase user penetration to a critical level within their business for the concept to take off and the benefits to be realised.
Sustainable productivity gains
Deployment of unified communications is a long-term, strategic programme promising sustainable productivity gains. Without a UC adoption plan, people are simply expected to work harder, faster and longer to increase productivity. Even during an economic downturn, where fear of job cuts may make employees more amenable to working longer hours, this is unsustainable. UC enables existing tasks to be performed in less time and eliminates some tasks completely freeing up employee time that would otherwise be wasted in travelling to unnecessary meetings, endlessly exchanging emails that achieve little, trading voicemails with colleagues and managing superfluous logistics such as making room reservations, printing handouts, providing directions and ordering refreshments. UC solutions prevent errors from creeping in to the system and remove barriers that slow down information flows and decision making. By condensing business process timelines and improving the transmission of accurate, timely information, risks are mitigated, thereby accelerating decision making.
In addition to productivity gains, another benefit that unified communications can offer is cost savings, with the most obvious expense reduction being less frequent travel. It’s easy to identify where the savings originate, for example, avoiding the purchase of airline tickets, taxis, meals and hotel rooms. Further savings can be realized by curtailing the administrative costs of booking travel and processing subsequent expense claims. Less clear, but equally valid, are the precious minutes and hours no longer wasted in the taxi, the airport check-in, security lines or in flight, most of which were spent without generating a single cent of value for an organisation.
In this scenario, many would argue that unified communications is not required to replace travel since a single collaboration tool, such as an ordinary conference call, could achieve the same goals. That is partially true. But unified communications, for example combining audio with a web session, opens up further opportunities for cost savings and efficiency gains. And delivering UC within a shared workspace takes away the issue of project management because the files are centralised and can be worked on collaboratively rather than clumsily sending files around by email and having each person create new versions, which must then be centrally collated.
Evolving to unified communications provides an opportunity to gain additional cost and organisational efficiencies such as common applications, calendars and file stores. Companies that have not adopted unified communications typically have a piecemeal approach to applying communications tools. For example, audio conferencing may be provided to different departments from different sources driving up unit cost and risking the use of premium or out-of-town dial-in numbers by providers lacking a broad pool of dial-in choices. Here, a potential area of cost savings is to save money simply by utilising VoIP integration with a company’s IP-PBX, which minimises the dial-in cost. Overall, organisations are likely to benefit from negotiating a comprehensive deal with a single communications provider that can deliver a variety of UC tools - including audio, web, video and security - on a global basis.
Although de-emphasised in challenging economic times, organisations remain focused on running green and unified communications can provide the means to cut an organisation’s carbon footprint. Reducing long haul travel has obvious advantages in this respect as does eliminating unnecessary local trips that, added together, could potentially have an even more profound effect on the environment. Frost & Sullivan estimates that 70% of an average company’s meetings are routine-based working meetings between colleagues who already know each other – in other words, candidates for UC versus face-to-face interaction.
UC with collaboration tools
In support of the move to UC, AT&T provides a comprehensive suite of collaboration tools for the global service provider marketplace. Among this portfolio is the AT&T Telepresence Solution or ATS. This inter-company telepresence solution combines the strengths of AT&T's global networking capabilities with Cisco TelePresence technology to deliver a unique, fully-managed, scalable, highly secure and reliable environment end-to-end. The company also provides the AT&T Business Exchange, a unique bridging capability that allows customers to meet with employees, suppliers and strategic allies while retaining a high level of security on their VPN network. The exchange is a meet-me business-to-business global connectivity video collaboration feature that allows multiple companies in different locations to connect to one another.
AT&T Connect is an integrated platform that transforms audio, web and video conferencing into a single, company-wide collaboration solution. It provides the tools for visual presentations, remote collaboration and voice conferencing that enable customers to meet and collaborate with anyone in the world. Cost-saving capabilities such as sharing presentations and applications and conducting interactive white board sessions help team members become more productive, reduce expenses and increase efficiencies. AT&T Connect integrates with the leading UC desktop clients and help strengthen the foundation for UC strategies – for AT&T and for its customers.
Both AT&T Connect and AT&T Telepresence Solution make external collaboration processes nearly as economical and convenient as internal processes. AT&T is rapidly expanding the global availability of its offers by continually adding endpoints to its services infrastructure. In addition, the UC consulting practice of AT&T offers expertise in developing a long-term UC strategy that takes into account the rapid changes anticipated in technology and vendor offers. UC solutions can involve significant complexity, particularly in multi-vendor solutions. The most successful UC deployments are tightly aligned with and best support the requirements of the business.
In these tough times, devising a solution that reduces costs and increase productivity is a business imperative. To achieve such benefits, organisations would be wise to incorporate a unified communications blueprint into their business plans. As a managed service, unified communications is not a frightening investment proposition. Customers can avoid upfront capital costs and protect themselves from technology obsolescence. Those factors, along with environmental and productivity benefits, are just the tonic for beleaguered CEOs’ ears in this economic climate. GTB