I'm finally getting around to digesting the banquet of content that was our Virtual VoiceCon event from last week. One thing that struck me was some data that Brent Kelly presented in his keynote, about the processes by which enterprises are evaluating and implementing UC technologies.This is a pretty eye-opening slide:
What this is saying is that, at least among the Wainhouse survey base, many enterprises are piloting and picking vendors before (or maybe instead of) doing needs assessments, ROI analysis, strategy development and even RFP issuance.
The news isn't entirely bad: Needs assessments and strategies are in process at enough enterprises to push the total positive responses for these two activities over 50%.
Where you see a real lack of interest is in determining ROI and issuing RFPs, things that 15% and 16%, respectively, say they have no interest in. This roughly corresponds to the percent that say they have selected vendors, minus the percent that say they have done RFPs/ROIs. In other words, take the number of people who have made a vendor decision, subtract the number that apparently based that decision on an RFP, and you get the number that seem to be choosing without benefit of an RFP.
When Brent has written and spoken about UC decision-making in the past, he's characterized the process in many enterprises as "ready-fire-aim." Here are the elements he says a decision-making process should have:
* Requirements Management * Configuration Management * Measurement and Analysis * Process and Product Quality Assurance * Project Monitoring and Control * Project Planning * Supplier Agreement Management
It looks like there's a not-insignificant cohort of the enterprise user base that's skipping much of this process.
