Who Doesn't Need UC?
Tom Nolle's post below brings up a statistic that'd be helpful for us to keep in mind as we look at Unified Communications, and it was echoed by a comment by one of our presenters in yesterday's VoiceCon webinar. Knowledge workers, according to Doug Michaelides of Mitel, make up only 20% of the U.S. workforce.
Tom Nolle cites a pretty similar number in his post:
How many workers today are impacted by “collaboration” based on PCs? Here are some numbers from my research. Only one in three workers has any IT component to their job whatsoever. How many workers today are impacted by “mobility”? Only 15% are mobile. You can understand how a senior executive at an average large company might be having a problem making the connections between either of these “technology benefits” and massive, widespread, productivity benefits.
Does this mean there's no possible justification for Unified Communications? No, just that we need to avoid getting tunnel vision about UC. Within the world of communications and information technology, UC is the major trend, but, especially in a slowing economy, enterprises are going to weigh all their technology investments within a context that's much broader than IT.
Indeed, Gartner is recommending that you beat the rush and start cutting budgets now. Finding targets of opportunity for increasing investment in UC will be getting more challenging, not less. On the other hand, if the optimistic talk about speeding business processes via UC can be validated, you might have a good bang-for-your-buck story to tell.
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