Unifying Communications Across the Organization

By Courtney Macavinta

For most enterprises, employee collaboration and rapid response to clients and customers are mission-critical. In the past, this meant trying to answer or return emails and phone calls in a timely fashion or scheduling numerous face-to-face meetings. With the emergence of unified communications (UC), however, organizations -- especially those with a distributed workforce -- can enable their teams to connect more immediately and efficiently by using the communication tool that makes the most sense.

Essentially, UC aims to foster the convergence of communication "touch points." UC platforms can link video, data and voice communications tools (such as phones, PDAs, mobile devices or computer desktops) to create a single point of contact. With UC in place, a person's "presence" can be detected across a company's entire communication platform.

For example, if an employee is only available on an instant messaging (IM) system, her colleagues can detect that and send an IM instead of trying to call her. In addition, UC allows real-time communication across multiple platforms. So if two co-workers have been sending long emails back and forth, they can use a UC software dashboard on their desktop to easily take the conversation to IM or video chat over their organization's UC platform. Other collaboration tools that UC platforms offer include the following: application sharing, calendar sharing, white-boarding, Web conferencing, and integration with a company's customer relationship management system.

"UC is definitely one of those buzz words today, and it refers to having access to all of your forms of real-time communication, and all of your streams of content, managed over the same interface," says Jon Arnold, an independent telecommunications analyst and principal of J Arnold & Associates.

The overall goal of UC is to improve an employee's ability to interact in real-time or enable clients or partners to reach a company using one point of contact.

"UC is about a lot more than employee productivity -- it helps business move more quickly and solve problems faster," says Forrester Research Vice President Elizabeth Herrell, who's written several reports on UC. "I know businesses that are in a competitive situation that have to respond more quickly and if they'd take a close look at the lost time due to communication [inefficiencies], they'd be shocked at how much time is wasted."

For CIOs exploring the best way to approach UC for their organization, experts offer the following advice:

• Explore vendor landscape  As UC is still developing, CIOs should investigate the current offerings from UC vendors and the costs associated with upgrading. "Different vendors are taking different approaches," Arnold says. "You have to seriously look at UC as a strategic investment. It's much more than upgrading your phone system."
• Look at the relationships UC vendors have with voice communication companies That's a recommendation from Herrell's February report, Unified Communications Merges With IP Telephony In 2007. She says not all vendors can cost-effectively support UC applications if an established partnership is not in place. She also advises CIOs to get a clear picture of what the vendor currently offers versus product features that are still under development. "A lot of vendors have not fully deployed all the applications," Herrell says. "CIOs need to look at the vendors' full road map to know what they're doing. Find out where they really are with integration and support."
• Decide which teams need UC   Not everyone within an organization will benefit from UC. Herrell says it's important for CIOs to work with other business division leaders to identify which employees actually need real-time access to each other or to customers. "Determine if there are quantifiable areas that could benefit most -- find any pockets where this could fit their needs," she says.
• Expand an existing platform  Ideally, UC shouldn't require an enterprise to "rip and replace" its current communications system. Instead, vendors should help a CIO lay out the best plan for unification. "It's about leveraging your current system -- it's building on what you have," Herrell says.

Perhaps most importantly, CIOs should approach UC by evaluating how it relates to their organization's overall business strategy and required return on investment. "That is the power of unified communications," says Arnold. "It's an investment in becoming more competitive."

Courtney Macavinta is a Silicon Valley-based business and technology writer. Her articles have appeared in CNET News, Business 2.0, the Inc Web site, Red Herring, Wired News and The Washington Post. She is also managing  editor of the online program The Online Family Web site.