Unified Communications Assessment: Are You in Need of a UC Solution?

Review the unified communications question set below and answer them objectively based on your company's current infrastructure and business processes.

Because the purpose of integrating a unified communications solution isn't to "keep up with Jones's."

It's because you've identified a genuine business need, whether it be to communicate more effectively with your customers, streamline the flow of information from remote offices, or create a new operational advantage against your, shall we say, less modernized competitors.

After all, deploying a professional-grade business communications system that incorporates a holistic unified communications strategy can be disruptive (as many major change events are), so you need to make sure you've started such a project for the right reasons!

1. PBX Phone System Analysis

- As your business continues to grow, do you find yourself saying things like "I wish our phone system did this" or "Why doesn't our PBX do the types of things that our vendor's can?" more and more?

A unified phone system with converged voice and data features can make remote offices feel closer to home and make it easier to reach internal employees and external customers on-the-fly in real time.

Remote, Field, and Mobile Employees

- Does your company have a team or teams of employees located remotely, in branch offices, or who are out in the field on a regular basis who each use disparate cell carriers and wireless Internet providers who would benefit from a streamlined method of accessing network resources at HQ to more easily communicate with office staff and customers?

Fixed mobile convergence (FMC) is a burgeoning topic of unified communications that allows employees to utilized unified telecommunications and data networking resources regardless of where they may be.

Remote Collaboration

- Are you or fellow employees regularly forced to participate in conference calls involving others in remote locations? Does it seem like these conference calls are often less effective than they need to be because a) some people don't show up, b) others arrive late, c) others have to drop off due to other obligations, and/or d) some are on cell phones with bad reception ruining the call for others?

Unified web, phone, and videoconferencing solutions enable more convenient call scheduling, real time online collaboration, and efficient conference call management.

Reaching Customers and Decision Makers

- Does it often seem that decisions take days or weeks longer than they need to as a result of decision makers being difficult to reach or slow to respond?

"Human latency" is the term used to define the waiting period in between receiving and responding to messages, whether email, voicemail, chat, etc. Forrester Consulting found 63 percent of organizations surveyed in 2006 experienced unnecessarily prolonged decision making processes.

CRM Integration

- Does your company currently use a CRM/SFA/ERP system that aggregates your company's important data and information resources, such as customer contact info, account and order history, delivery status, A/R and A/P, into an easily accessible, well secured, centralized location?

In the past, the costs associated with connecting and integrating disparate data systems and databases, which often involves customized development work, was only available to large enterprises. But, due to open source solutions and an increase in innovation many of those previous cost barriers have been removed.

- How would you rate the security and privacy policies of your current CRM database system, including protection from internal hacking and theft?

Strong security and privacy policies can be used as added selling points to your customers, and allows you to receive recognition from regulatory and best practices agencies.

Cost Reduction and Management

Communications Services

- Does your internal staff, vendors, contractors, and suppliers use separate service providers for wireless Internet access, web and video conferencing, intra-office phone calls, voicemail, mobile email, faxing, and call forwarding?

Multiple service contracts minimizes negotiating power, creates accounting and billing inefficiencies, and increases costs.

MACDs (Moves, Adds, Changes, Deletions)

- Does your organization frequently move employees from one desk to another, change office locations, have high employee churn rates, or work with temporary contractors?

Unlike in years past, when an appointment with an outside "phone guy" had to be scheduled to come into the office to make system administration changes, a holistic business communications system allows for quick and easy changes to employees' administrative and communications resources without disrupting work flow.

Interoffice Calling

- Does your organization have many different branch offices located in different parts of the city, state, or country that require regular back-and-forth calling?

An IP-based business communications system allows for a single voice and data IP network to be built between all office locations, significantly reducing local and long distance toll charges between offices.

Mobile Workers and Telecommuters

- Does your organization have a team of employees who frequently travel between branch offices and customer locations and need to stay in regular contact with fellow employees, vendors, and/or customers?

Often times companies who transition to an IP-based business communications platform that incorporates the full suite of unified communications features see drastic reductions in monthly operating costs, ranging from thousands to the tens of thousands of dollars (but, of course, if your company only spends $500 per month on such expenses, then there's not much room for improvement to begin with!)

Conferencing

- Does your organization spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to use outside third party services, like ConferenceCalling.com, to host web, phone, and video conferences?

Many IP PBX phone systems that offer unified communications functionality also include embedded conferencing features, thus drastically reducing monthly conferencing expenses.

Operational Efficiency

Industry

- Every industry carries unique work activities and business processes specific to its operational requirements, and within those esoteric processes specific to that industry lies the opportunity to streamline, maximize productivity, and optimize value. Can you think which ones particular to your organization and industry have room for improvement? Examples include:

- regulatory compliance- investor relations- order processing- inventory management- transaction management (frequency and size)- shipping and receiving- customer service and technical support

Mobile Workers and Telecommuters

- Are employees in your organization finding it difficult to keep up with and manage a large number of different communications mediums, including cell phones, office phones, email, chat, voicemail, and others?

Sage Research conducted a survey in 2006 and found unified messaging (ex. voicemail-to-email) can save some workers up to 55 minutes per day.

Business Processes and Day-to-Day Operations

- Does your company's management have an accurate understanding of how staff feel about, utilize, and react to the various communications infrastructure in which they have invested and implemented?

Taking inventory on which communications methods and tools are most utilized and which ones have gone all but abandoned allows management to realign spending and invest in the infrastructure resources that carry the most employee value.