Two advantages of the Unified Communication Platform

Speaking of the Unified Communication Platform, the first advantage is low cost. Imagine that the company doesn't want to use low prices to achieve high-end informatization work? Therefore, the Unified Communication Platform also has a sound development momentum. In addition, video conferencing is also very attractive for many enterprises that have expanded overseas or are far away from each other.

Global Crossing, which is engaged in IP network construction, uses a video conferencing system to hold high-level Global conferences. Brinks Hofer, a legal company, uses VoIP phones as the entry point for implementing the Unified Communication Platform UC, insurance company Celina Insurance integrates instant messaging to provide an automatic telephone system for agents. Coke Aquaculture, who raises salmon and COD, uses IP phones to publish real-time weather forecasts to fishery managers ......
For them, the same is the cost savings brought about by UC, and the difference is the deployment strategy of UC based on the trend.

If you visit the regional headquarters of Global Crossing in Rochester city, New York, you will find that it is not a guard, but a computer terminal. It prompts you to enter the name of the person you want to visit, and the system will open a video window on the person's computer to tell him that someone is looking for him. At the same time, he also receives an instant message or an audio connection. He can type or speak to agree or reject the visitor. If you are allowed, the system will take a photo of you and print a temporary pass to let you into the building.

Saving money is the first step

With the popularization of IP telephone VoIP and instant messaging IM, the concept of Unified Communication Platform is gradually deepened. Many users are deeply applying unified communication, adding communication content to the routine business activities, and some applications developed by others, send relevant data directly to the UC software on the phone or PC.

"Many companies are saying that Unified Communication saves costs ." Mike Fuqua, head of Global Crossing, senior vice president of Global information systems, said: "In fact, there are not many companies I have seen that can actually put Unified Communication into practice ."

The system of Global Crossing may not be a real unified communication platform, but it is indeed a brave action, especially in the current poor economic situation, who will be so stubborn to practice UC?
Many companies focus on UC only when they realize that they are using a dedicated group switch PBX Based on circuit switching. Because maintenance and daily operation require a lot of manpower and material resources.

Gurdeep Singh Pall, vice president of Microsoft Management UC product line, said: "Our major customers of the Office Communications Server product do not care about improvements in productivity and integration, it does not care about the new features added to the newly released OCS 2007 R2. They just said, 'The audio conferencing system needs to be changed '. This is true for many customers ."

Currently, companies often use both traditional PBX systems and unified communication platforms. Singh Pall believes this is because a small part of UC functions are not available, but the use of unified communication platforms is a general trend.

"This is just like people are still putting some applications on the mainframe for one reason or another. But over time, these programs will be isolated ." He explained.

Forrester analyst Henry Dewing predicts that in a few years, the Unified Communication Platform will become an essential element in the daily business activities of enterprises, enterprises will use high-speed wireless networks, standardized videos, location-based services, and other technologies to deploy UC. But now, 57% of companies have not yet completed the trial of UC, and 86% believe that they will achieve good results in the use of UC, but the current concerns cannot be ignored: 55% of companies are still wondering what role UC will play.

The Whirlpool example shows that the value of UC varies greatly from person to person. The company is preparing to build a system, one of which is that if the production line lacks a specific performance test, the system will automatically notify the relevant quality administrator, the notification method must include all valid contact methods. However, after the company changed its CIO, the project was abandoned halfway, even though the Avaya IP phone number introduced in the project remained. It is difficult to integrate the Unified Communication Platform into the company's core strategy.

This may also be a good thing, because people will focus on the functions that are truly practical or can effectively help business operation. In this way, UC must prove its basic value: saving costs.

Global Crossing saves costs by using the UC service. For example, the company's chief operating officer holds a global meeting once a week, and about 16 participants are holding meetings through the OCS Video Conferencing System. Can the deployment and Application of UC save the company about 1 per week? Listen 60 thousand ~ 2? The cost is USD 50 thousand, 30% of which comes from the use of IP phone calls between the Office and the customer, and 40% of the travel expenses incurred by the chief operating officer during the meeting.

Improve Customer Service

Global Crossing also hopes that employees can respond to customer problems more quickly to improve customer satisfaction. To this end, the Fuqua team began to observe how employees used communication tools when receiving customer problems, and recorded and analyzed some data, such as the time and location of the problem response, call duration.

Fuqua eventually found that the cost of Global Crossing in terms of customer service issues is much higher than the reward. There are too many collaborative technologies in the company, such as audio conferences, online conferences, video conferences, and telephones. However, in the process of serving customers, there is no unified communication platform like Microsoft OCS to integrate them together.

The trouble is not just about cost. Because these tools do not have common IP features, employees often do not know the best way to find their colleagues when encountering problems, or even who they should find, this makes the efficiency of customer service personnel and handling personnel very low.

Nick Lippis, a consulting consultant, believes that a company is best suited to introducing UC when making large-scale process improvements, because they will have a large budget, "you can add some UC software, it brings more value than existing infrastructure."

Fuqua believes that UC is worth investing, and it is necessary to integrate it into the business applications that people use every day. For Global Crossing, these programs include Microsoft Outlook and an application that tracks order workflows. Now, when an employee logs on to the Order Workflow System, the name of the person who can answer the corresponding question is displayed in each step, and an icon is displayed to indicate whether the employee can directly talk to the person. This relies heavily on the integration of internal systems. Fuqua believes that the time for Global Crossing to handle problems, such as errors occurred when modifying the network design specification, is reduced by 15% ~ 25%.
In the middle of the year, Global Crossing will allow customers to participate in a survey to see which employees are most satisfied with the problem solving process. By using OCS, they have established a system that allows customers to log in and view the contact information of the Customer Service personnel. They can also learn about the processes that the customer service personnel are currently handling and listen to their opinions.

Global Crossing is still testing M-Bots mobile robots ). When engineers or sales personnel need to know some data information, such as the recent sales situation or the handling status of a faulty ticket, they can use Office Communicator Mobile on their smart phones, learn about the data by talking to a robot. Fuqua suggests that mobile UC applications should be as simple as possible, because mobile devices tend to have low power and computing power.