venerdì 8 maggio 2009

ROI benchmarks

When I discuss this issue with my clients I need to do a quick check shopping list to see what their organisation looks like, here are some of the key check list items:

Are the a single site organisation, multisite or multi-national, scaling up Unified Communications provides a a more and more compelling case based on the geographic reach of the organisation.

Some clients with a single site ask me "But how can I benefit from Unified Communications as we are all here, the answer is Presence . Unless the client lives in a Trappist Monastry or is the lone sentry in a Bunker (actually even this guy needs UC) UC is going to work for you." my reply is something like this, "thinking of your staff do some of them have a need to travel for business, if on a night over do they stop in a hotel/airport with internet access? Would you like to share your Presence with your clients or your suppliers?" because with Presence you can decide when to call, when to IM and when to not disturb your co workers.

If you use Microsoft OCS Communicator or similar try something for a day or an afternoon, turn Microsoft Office Communicator off, you will be in a worse condition that a Smoker who's stopped or an addict to various substances, by the time you can't being isolated anymore.

So in summary presence allows us to decide how or when to get in touch with our co-workers and save money in wasted searching.

Conferencing is another key aspect, many larger organisations use video and audio conferencing extensively, I always ask my clients how they manage this, many use outsourced conferencing service providers, I ask if they could tell me about the costs. with Unified Communications solutions costs can nearly always be slashed. Furthermore if it's necessary to arrange an Ad-Hoc conference, Presence info and IM allow the ability to get a workgroup together and improve the response speed of the organisation to respond to business opportunities or deal with customer issues.

Secondly but also very important is the Persistent group chat facility PGC, many of my clients are familar with MSN or IM but when I explain how groups can be formed work together on an opportunity or problem they are impressed when they get the idea. An example when we using OCS in Qatar in the Middle East, we had technicians in our offices in Hong Kong working with the Systems Integrator in Doha Qatar working with our support team in New Jersey to resolve a problem with Cisco Call Manager 4.0, Microsoft OCS a Voice Gateway from Quintum and and Ericsson MD110. We resolved the inter operation problem within the first hours US Eastern Standard Time, with PGC our Hong Kong engineers were able to work with the colleagues in New Jersey and our site team in Qatar was completely supported.

These are just a few of the advantages of Unified Communications correctly deployed, But correctly explained and most importantly correctly deployed! users will become as addicted to UC as business users did to the photo copier machine in the 1980's. Those who are old enough will remember the photocopier salesmans pitch " I'll leave this machine with you for 2 weeks on loan and come back after 2 weeks to take it back" We know what happened then and with Voice Pilots and Lighthouses, Cisco and Microsoft are reinventing that wheel again, it's err... addictive.

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