Unified Communications is a core element necessary for businesses to quickly adapt to the ever-changing marketplace. For enterprise technologists, it requires a new approach to the architecture.
Executive Summary
Speed and flexibility are two of the greatest business differentiators in the global economy as products and services become commoditized. Enterprises must continually look for ways to lower costs, improve products and services, and deliver rapidly. Unified Communications is a core element necessary for businesses to quickly adapt to the ever-changing marketplace.
Unified Communications (UC) is defined as the integration of people, processes, information, and technology that enhances how people interact to exchange information and work together towards a common goal. A Unified Communications strategy is not just about adding high-definition video conferencing, supporting WebEx on an iPhone, or any other specific technology. A UC strategy embeds communication technology into every business process, coordinating the right people, and adding the appropriate contextual information to the communication.
Implementing UC is challenging due to its vast scope that covers many organizational silos, both within IT and across multiple business groups. Due to the inter-divisional nature of UC, quantifying the value, funding, implementation, and support must be done at the enterprise level. To ensure the successful implementation of UC, enterprises should create a communications architecture group, adopt SIP as a core standard, and start with point solutions that align with the long term UC vision.
Complete automation within an enterprise is possible--if nothing ever changes. However, since in the real world changes occur every second of the day, people must be involved. Communication and collaboration are required in order for people to effectively and efficiently work together. Unified Communications takes this one step further and integrates human communication with enterprise IT systems, resulting in improved business productivity, increased sales, and swift resolution of crises.
Position Statement
The Value of Unified Communications
Enterprises need to improve their Unified Communications capability in order to quickly adapt to the ever-changing global business environment. Enterprises that master Unified Communications will:
* Grow top line revenue by adapting to customer requirements
* Lower bottom line costs by improving productivity
* React quickly to opportunities and situations and resolve them in real-time.
The more things change, the greater the value of communication. In an ideal business setting, everything would be automated and nothing would change. But the reality of a global economy is that change occurs at a record pace, and businesses that do not keep up become causalities. Customer requirements and expectations, technology, supply chain, and political uprisings are examples of real-time changes that directly impact how a business operates and potentially succeeds.
Most businesses have ERP, CRM, SCM, and other enterprise IT systems that run the business. These systems all talk to each other using a message bus. There are also communication systems like telephony, email, chat, and conferencing used for people to communicate with each other. However, there is very little integration between the enterprise and communication systems. Unified Communication integrates people and systems.
Examples of Unified Communication opportunities within a business:
* Faster Sales Cycles: Customers increasingly ask for customized solutions that can be delivered quickly, at a competitive price. A customized solution is not part of a standard offering, so experts from engineering and manufacturing must collaborate to deliver the solution, and management must approve, to ensure that the transaction is in the best interest of the enterprise.
* Improved Customer Service: Using a company's website as the foundation for customer service. If this does not work, offering click-to-connect (call/chat/conference) to address unique and/or complex questions that cannot be handled by web self-service. The ability to free up the right resources in real-time to address service questions is critical to successful customer service.
* Real-Time Product Feedback Tracking social websites for information regarding a company and their products, and then gathering shared attributes: what people like and dislike, wish lists for improvements, etc.
* Better Crisis Management: Time is money, particularly when a crisis occurs. Whether it's a disrupted supply chain, halted plant production, or a critical IT system failure, the faster the appropriate people and information merge, the speedier the resolution.
Defining Unified Communications
To reiterate, Unified Communications is defined as the integration of people, processes, information, and technology that enhances how people interact to exchange information, and their ability to work together towards a common goal. A UC strategy is not just adding another technology. A UC strategy embeds communication technology into every business process, coordinating the right people and adding the appropriate contextual information, as illustrated in Figure 1 below.
As shown in Figure 1, the four primary components of communication are:
* People: Entities that are involved in the communication
* Process: Following a business methodology towards an end result
* Information: Who, what, when, where, and why data that adds context to the communication
* Technology: How communication takes place--phone, web, email, video, chat, letter
Overcoming the Challenges of Implementing Unified Communications
Implementing Unified Communications is a challenge because of its large scope, which includes:
* Multiple IT technical groups--Network, Telephony, Messaging, Web
* Multiple IT application groups--ERP, SCM, CRM, HR, Corp
* Multiple business areas--Marketing, Sales, R&D, Manufacturing, Service, Accounting
Along with a very broad enterprise scope, there is no "out of the box" Unified Communications solution that enterprises can purchase. In fact, industry standard SIP--for integrating all communication channels and information--is just now coming of age. To implement Unified Communications successfully, enterprises should:
1. Create a Communications Architecture discipline
IT should create a Communications Architecture discipline that integrates all communication for a consistent, relevant, efficient, and effective communication experience. Unified Communications is not a technology, but a solution that integrates human interaction with enterprise IT systems. Figure 2 shows how Communication Architecture fits into standard IT architecture framework.
Network architecture focuses on moving data/information/content from one point to other point(s) in a reliable, secure, and cost-effective manner. Telephony architecture focuses on one modality of communication--voice. Application architecture focuses on processing information. In today's IT architecture frameworks, there is no standard for communications architecture. Communications architecture focuses on improving the speed, efficiency, and effectiveness of communication. It takes the who, what, when, where, and why of communication and translates it into the how. The how is what categorizes it as a communications service.
2. Adopt SIP as a standard for inter-connecting all systems involved in communication
SIP should be adopted as the enterprise standard that integrates all communication channels with communication, collaboration, and information. As communications including voice and video become another application that runs on an enterprise's shared IT infrastructure, it is important to understand the role of the session layer and how it "glues" the multi-channel communications to communication and collaboration services. SIP replaces proprietary CTI technology that has been used in the past. Communications vendors such as Avaya, Cisco, and Genesys have written specific CTI interfaces to applications such as Siebel and SAP. Figure 3 illustrates a Unified Communications framework based on SIP.
3. Start small with point solutions and move towards a complete enterprise solution
Unified Communications projects should be done on a case-by-case basis towards an overall long-term strategy. Contact Centers, distributed work teams with large deliverables, and business processes that need to be expedited offer the best short-term opportunities for Unified Communications. Because UC is a combination of technology, information, process, and people, it may need multiple pilots prior to wide scale deployment. Enterprises that only deploy new UC technology such as presence, video conferencing, or click-to-call will not see the full potential of UC. Just like ERP, SCM, or CRM projects, UC has a large scope, and enterprises need to consolidate towards one system over time. Enterprises that have successfully completed large ERP, SCM, and CRM projects will find that UC is the next big opportunity to improve productivity and market share.
Conclusion
While there are challenges to implementing Unified Communications, the long-term benefits far outweigh the start-up costs and effort. Enterprises that master this emerging level of communication will benefit in top line revenue growth, lower operating costs, and they will be better equipped to react quickly to opportunities and situations that arise in a face-paced global economy.
Definitions:
Communication: The interaction of people and/or systems to exchange information.
Collaboration: People working together towards a shared goal over a period of time.
CRM: Customer Relationship Management--An enterprise system that manages all interactions with clients and sales prospects. It organizes, automates, and synchronizes business processes such as marketing, sales, billing, customer service, and technical support.
ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning--An enterprise system used to manage internal and external resources including tangible assets, financial resources, materials, and human resources. It is a software architecture whose purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the organization and manage the connections to outside stakeholders.
SCM: Supply Chain Management--An enterprise system that manages the network of interconnected businesses involved in the ultimate provision of product and service packages required by end customers. SCM spans all movement and storage of raw materials, work-in-process inventory, and finished goods from point of origin to point of consumption.
SIP: Session Initiation Protocol is a signaling protocol, widely used for controlling multimedia communication sessions such as voice and video calls over Internet Protocol (IP) and including information regarding the communication.
Unified Communications An enterprise system that manages the interaction of people, processes, information, and technology that enhances communication and collaboration.
Further Information:
"Unified Business Communication Framework," November 16, 2009. http://nojitter.com/blog/archives/2009/11/unified_busines.html
"Defining Communication Architecture Within IT Architecture," Feb 16, 2009. http://nojitter.com/blog/archives/2009/02/defining_commun.html
"Voice As An Application," March 15, 2010. http://nojitter.com/blog/archives/2010/03/voice_as_an_app.html
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Sorell Slaymaker is VP-IT Communications Architecture for Unified IT Systems, and is a No Jitter blogger.
