Session Code #438
Building an Effective UC
Strategy
Joe Seghatoleslami, Mike Taylor
Strategic Products & Services
#CONVERGE2014
Learning Objectives
• Discuss current UC best practices, the need for
Line of Business buy-in, and the building
blocks of an effective UC infrastructure.
• Enable users to develop an effective UC
strategy that will ensure ongoing success.
WHAT IS UNIFIED
COMMUNICATIONS?
What is UC&C?
“Communications
integrated to optimize
business processes”
–Marty Parker, UC Strategies
UC Applications
Audio and Web
Conferencing
Mobility
Online
Collaboration
IP Telephony
&
Presence
Chat / Instant
Messaging
Video
Conferencing
• Integration of disparate,
potentially multi-vendor,
communications media
–
–
–
–
–
IM and Presence
Voice
Video
Document sharing
Conferencing – audio, video, web
• The goal: drive productivity and
business agility
Unified
Messaging
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What’s the Point?
The virtual workforce requires the right
tools:
– CTrip: 9% productivity increase; happier,
healthier agents
– Aetna: $78M in real estate savings
– Cisco: $195M/year in productivity increases
(1993)
Sources:
“Does Working from Home Work?”. Bloom et al. Stanford University.
“In telecommuting debate, Aetna sticks by big at-home workforce”. Reuters.
“Location, Location, Location”. New York Times.
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What’s the Point?
De-risk yourself from your younger
workforce:
– Used to modern consumer tools
– Don’t be a time portal
– Be in control of:
• Bandwidth
• Security*
• Compliance
* http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/think-your-skype-messages-get-end-to-end-encryption-think-again/
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THE PROBLEM WITH UC
The Problem with UC
Risks and
Challenges
• Adoption: Just because you build
it … they may not come
• Too many technologies
• IT requires a major cultural
change as traditional silos must
be merged
Pan Am
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What if I own “UC”?
Major communications vendors have all switched to a
three-tier licensing structure to sell their UC stack.
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What if I own “UC”?
• Remember the goal: drive productivity and
business agility
– Without a business case, “what if?” is really “so
what?”
– If it does not drive efficiencies or reduce risk in
your business, it is a poor investment no matter
what the cost.
• Investments should be prioritized based on
business value.
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The Problem with UC
• First, you must define it within the context of your business.
– Business requirements
• How will this initiative actually improve results/performance?
– User requirements
• Workflows and inefficiencies
– Technical requirements
• Security
• Network
• Compliance
• Have you mapped your definition to specific goals?
• Have you defined and analyzed existing gaps?
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HOW TO DEVELOP A UC STRATEGY
How to Develop a Strategy
Align with business goals and end user requirements
1.
2.
Identify stakeholders, business processes and user needs for UC
Define UC within the context of your business.
‒
‒
3.
4.
5.
6.
Assess your current environment
Design a “clean sheet” reference architecture which meets your core
business and end user needs.
Perform a gap analysis between your current and target state
Define the projects required to fill in the gaps and prioritize based on
value
‒
‒
7.
Specific business goals
Functional requirements
Remember there is value to risk mitigation in addition to reducing costs or
increasing productivity.
Define detailed training and rollout plans.
Implement, analyze, optimize.
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Identify Stakeholders
• UC will embed communications into work flows and should
change the way people do business
– Solicit input up-front to increase support and user adoption when
deployed
• Stakeholder Groups:
–
–
–
–
Line of Business
IT - Network
IT - Applications
IT - Security
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Is This Your Organization?
Leadership
IT
Network
Telecom
Aligned Incentives Build Bridges
LOB
LOB
IT
IT
Security
Applications
Marketing
Customer
Experience
User Groups
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LOB
Product
Management
Identify User Needs
Think like a user.
Group
Collaborate With
How
Need
Executives
Board Members
Email, Video
Way for outside users to
join video session
Sales
Customers
Voice, Mobile phones,
Email
Ability to spontaneously
share desktop to conduct
presentations or resolve a
billing issues
Design
Internal and Suppliers
IM, Email
Ability to review SOWs and
Price Quotes
Legal
Customers
Email
Share documents to speed
up redline process
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Taking Use Cases to the Next Level
• Use cases should be able to be tied back to specific
goals.
– Improve productivity:
• Add IM/P and escalation
• Click-to-dial from CRM
• Provide advanced mobile services
– Decrease time-to-market:
• Video collaboration for product engineering
• Document collaboration for sales
– Improve communication with suppliers:
• Federate IM/P
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Assess Current Infrastructure
• Understand corporate policies
–
–
–
–
Compliance: PCI/HIPAA/etc.
Archiving, eDiscovery
Data security
BYOD
Speed the process and increase
the chance of success by finding a
Partner with experience in Voice,
Video and Collaboration
Applications.
• Assess infrastructure readiness
(short term, mid term, long term)
–
–
–
–
–
Applications
Network: LAN/WAN/Wi-Fi
Network access control
Mobile Device Management (MDM)
Edge support VPN/Edge servers/SBC
• Identify gaps and remediation plan
– Document visually and in writing—read from the same page.
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Go Beyond Technical Diagrams
Instant
Messaging
Audio
Conferencing
Cisco
WebEx
Video
Email
Polycom
Microsoft
Exchange
2010
Microsoft
Lync 2013
AT&T
Microsoft
Lync 2013
Unified
Messaging
Avaya
Aura
Messaging
+ Mutare
Microsoft
Exchange
2010
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Voice
Avaya
Aura 6.3
Cisco UCM
Gap Analysis Should Drive Projects
Gap
Technical Recommendation
Business Benefit
Priority
Budget
1
2014
No current method for
Deploy Acano for peer-to-peer
Maximize investment in current
desktop and room-based
and virtual meeting room
communications; better productivity;
video users to communicate
scenarios
less user complaints/tickets
No IM solution for mobile
devices/users
Deploy Lync 2013 Mobile client
to corporate provided iOS and
Android devices
Increased connectedness and
collaboration for mobile employees
2
2014
Investment overlaps for
audio conferencing
Consolidate on to a single
hosted audio conferencing
provider
Decrease spend; provide common set
of tools
3
2015
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Implement, Analyze, Optimize
• Training and proper
communication are crucial at
this phase
• Measure or fail
• Create a positive feedback loop
between users, LOBs, and IT to
drive optimization
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On-Going Support
• Ongoing support should always be considered when
building a UC Strategy
– It is important to have support agreements and SLAs in
place prior to roll out regardless if the support is internal or
external
– Lengthy outages and poor user support will kill adoption
faster than anything else and will take considerable time to
recover from
• Some things to considered:
– Hard costs of manufacturer maintenance
– Cost for MACs
– Cost to service a support ticket vs. volume of tickets.
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CONCLUSION
Conclusion
• Proper planning ensures success
• Having an outside partner can speed up the
deployment and reduce risk
• Include users up-front so your solution meets their
needs to ensure adoption
• Do an honest assessment of your current
infrastructure
• Have User Adoption and Ongoing Support plans in
place prior to going live
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QUESTIONS?
Thank You for Attending
Please remember to complete your
evaluation of this session in the
CONVERGE2014 mobile app.
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