Unified Communications: cultural evolution is as vital as technology change

Businesses are attracted by the idea of cutting costs and making life simpler – and Unified Communications (UC) can help them do both.

But buying into the technology alone often doesn’t provide them with the complete solution they think it will.

The problem seems to lie with one missing essential: the need for ‘cultural evolution’. With expert help from their suppliers, companies might weave their email, text, voicemail and mobile systems into one and add in smart new strands such as video conferencing and ‘presence’ information. However, if they haven’t thought first about getting involvement and buy-in from their employees and they try and impose that new fabric straight onto current work styles and processes right across the business, UC probably can’t fit and perform at its best.*

This means that Communications Providers will have a vital dual role to play as market interest in UC starts to grow. Phase 1 will be helping businesses to understand that before making any choices they need to know how their people work, communicate and collaborate now, the best practices they like using and how they’re structured and managed, both geographically and hierarchically. Only then can they appreciate where and how different UC tools could be effectively mapped onto that picture. Tailoring and delivering the right technical solutions – and the sizeable cost and productivity advantages of UC – then become a highly effective Phase 2.

Paradoxically for a concept with ‘Unified’ in its name, companies also don’t have to converge all their comms in one go – or indeed introduce new UC tools universally to everyone in their organisation. A stepping stone approach can be feasible. For a business with multiple office locations that’s keen to cut call costs, the starting point could be IP telephony. While one with a large field-force might want to begin with a ‘follow me anywhere’ system that automatically diverts calls from fixed line numbers to mobiles so that they reach individuals wherever they happen to be working.

* Source: “Unified Comms: what it needs to succeed”: www.silicon.com, 17 November 2009

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