Putting Unified Communications to Work for You

While the term “Unified Communications” is now being used by many CIOs, they often lack real understanding of the many ways it can help their businesses and the key requirements they should look for in a Unified Communications solution. There are enormous pressures on businesses today to reduce costs, deliver higher levels of service and be environmentally responsible. Unified Communications can be the answer to these issues. But first, CIOs need to evaluate and understand how Unified Communications can help achieve their goals. Then, they can determine the right solution for their business.

“Unified Communications solutions aim to break down the obstacles and complexity to communication in the enterprise, while optimizing the performance of communications-sensitive business processes.”

Eliminating Fragmented Communications Drives ROI

Despite the advances in communications technology – or ironically, possibly because of these advances – business users are clearly experiencing a frustrating, complex and fragmented communications environment. While the variety of devices and media give flexibility and choice, they also add to communication latency, friction and overload.

The ability to ‘connect’ in real-time suffers, duplicate and redundant communication attempts proliferate, and key business processes that rely on communications are slowed down (or even stopped altogether) because of fragmented communications. Delays, lack of closure on questions or processes, or duplicate communication attempts all add up to a potentially frustrating and unproductive business environment.

But how does it impact business?

A study done by Insignia Research of Toronto, Canada set out to measure the nature and impact of communication friction, latency and overload – based on the real-world experiences of those who know best – end-user employees in the organization.

The survey identified the following issues:

• The most common and costly pain point (experienced by 94% of participants) was found to be the latency resulting from “waiting for information” from colleagues who were not available when needed. The average length of this delay, which is directly attributable to the use of disjointed systems, is 5.3 hours per week, resulting in an average annual cost of over $9000 per user. Considering the majority of survey respondents are in customer-facing roles, this 5.3 hour delay per week (per person) in any business process is indeed troubling.

• Those who regularly travel for business estimated spending eleven days in the past year on unnecessary or avoidable business travel. This means an annual waste of at least $3400 per person on unnecessary business travel. This happens when frequent collaboration with existing communications systems is not effective, forcing managers to synchronize teams through expensive face-to-face meetings requiring travel.

• A majority of respondents reported spending at least 10% of their time working from remote locations, but they also reported reduced productivity by an average of 7.8 hours a month because they lack the communications tools off-site that they have available in their main office. This productivity reduction exists because it is harder for off-site workers’ colleagues and customers to contact and collaborate with them unless office-based tools are available on any device, anywhere.

• 75% incurred incremental communication costs on up to 4 business trips within the previous six months, with an average expense of $186 per trip and an average annual cost of $1488 per business traveler. These are additional communications expenses on top of typical travel expenses.

The study estimated the full financial impacts of doing nothing about a fragmented communications system by calculating how much lost productivity costs a company and what avoidable expenses are incurred as a result of poor communications. The following chart identifies these costs for varying sized enterprises.

Clearly, there is a large opportunity for improvement and streamlining, which in turn will have a positive financial outcome. The current communications status quo must be addressed, for companies that want to stay competitive and productive, and want to eliminate redundancies, speed business and improve their expenses and bottom line.

The answer, in large part, is Unified Communications. Unified Communications solutions aim to break down the obstacles and complexity to communication in the enterprise, while optimizing the performance of communications-sensitive business processes.

Unified Communications enables enterprises to automate communications as part of business processes in order to make decision-making faster and more effective. In a typical business workflow process, each time human intervention and decisions are required, the process slows or stops if the appropriate person can not be reached (because they are on vacation, working remotely, in business meetings, etc.) This can add minutes, hours or days to the process and have a detrimental impact on the company’s bottom line and customer satisfaction. Using Unified Communications, these workflows can be automated to use rules-based routing to reach out to the appropriate person on their desired device, or get forwarded to their designated alternate, so that decisions can be made more quickly and the workflow kept on track.

Another study by an independent research organization examined the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of a number of different communications solutions, including traditional PBX, IP PBX, Managed IP PBX, and Siemens HiPath 8000 (now known as the OpenScape Voice Application). The scenario was a Global 1000 enterprise with 25,000 total users spread across a large headquarters and 195 small to mid-sized branch offices. The applications included contact centers, messaging and conferencing.

The study found that an IP PBX was the most expensive solution, while the OpenScape Voice Application offered the least expensive TCO over 5 years. Siemens designed the OpenScape Voice Application with TCO in mind, with features and functionality to improve operational efficiency, reduce costs and eliminate unnecessary business expenses. By consolidating nodes and servers, network and operational costs are reduced, including headcount and space requirements. It also has a modular architecture that allows IP, TDM and analog networks to co-exist, protecting legacy investments while introducing IP benefits to the enterprise. Lastly, the OpenScape Voice Application can operate as a truly centralized, single node solution, and depending on the number of users, it can be one server or multiple server configuration, which provides nearly unlimited scalability from up to 2,000 users for a single server to over 100,000 users.

Implementing a Unified Communications solution can add great value to any organization by reducing inefficiencies, frustration and incremental expenses. When professionals can reach colleagues when they need them, and are able to use the right media and access the right device, they can collaborate from wherever they happen to be working, and today’s delays to the execution of business processes begin to disappear.

Unified Communications Supports Green Efforts

As CIOs consider the economic impact of productivity and ownership costs, they must also look at how the extra effort by employees and workflow delays are an ecological problem. People work longer hours, but not more productively. This extra work also consumes resources - energy to power the office infrastructure and lighting, not to mention the unnecessary burden placed on IT systems. CIOs should also understand how Unified Communications can aid their efforts to be more environmentally conscious.

In traditional TDM technology, all the intelligence resided primarily in phone systems comprised of proprietary hardware and discrete components. It provided most of the computing power and consumed the lion’s share of energy. Phone systems also required convection cooling, which has a very big appetite for power. The total electrical connected load of phone systems with 1,000 extensions ranged up to 5.4 kilowatts, and their cooling systems consumed at least as much power. Additionally, for networked phone systems, there is the overall system’s power consumption to consider. Classic phone systems were distributed so that every company site had its own phone system.

Software-based VoIP solutions, such as Siemens OpenScape Voice Application, that run centrally on standard servers in the IT data center can help significantly reduce power consumption. Standard servers are preferable to proprietary hardware for big systems because they are more energy efficient. Far fewer computers are needed for communications system centralized in a data center, which also reduces overall current consumption. Just two servers in the computer center are all it takes to provide phone services to as many as 100,000 subscribers.

IP systems spanning many sites can decrease overall power consumption by up to 38%, depending on the customer’s configuration. What is more, sophisticated systems such as this may be installed, operated, and maintained remotely. There is no need for service engineers to travel to the different locations, which also cuts back on CO2 emissions. In other words, a centralized communications system residing at the data center reduces energy consumption directly as well as indirectly.

Communication has always connected people and spared them unnecessary trips, and e-mail, telephones, and video conferences carry on the tradition. Technologies such as HD video and telepresence eliminate the need for travel. Connected by multimedia-enabled internets, employees at different sites can get together in virtual meetings. Modern video conference capabilities allow them to see and hear each other, and work on documents and presentations in a joint effort as if they were all in the same room. This renders many business trips superfluous. And with the video application using the same directory as voice and all other media, the complexity of the video call of the past is replaced with the ease of a click-to-dial video conference, from the boardroom to the desktop.

Modern telecommunication solutions have also made the home office increasingly viable and reduced the need of long commutes every day. With innovative teleworking tools that leverage SIP networks, companies can commit fewer resources to on-site working places and still be very effective. And with smart desk-sharing schemes, enterprises with a sales focus can operate with up to 70% fewer workstations. With less office equipment to buy and less office space to lease, maintain, heat, and air-condition, companies save on capital expenditures and energy costs.

Unified communications solutions not only help enterprises reduce costs, they also spare the environment. Reducing CO2 emissions and using electrical energy wisely protects the environment – and pays dividends for enterprises. The direct costs of communications systems and end devices’ power consumption have an impact on the company’s bottom line, and so do the indirect but very real benefits of green enterprise telecommunication. Modern unified communication solutions converge the different communication media and means within enterprises, boosting the productivity of the workforce and the entire company. More efficient enterprises use energy more efficiently.

Open Communications is the Answer

So, now that the CIO has decided that Unified Communications is the way to go, what kind of solution is best? That’s where Open Communications comes in. Open Communications allows you to unify your communications in a single solution that drives your business forward – and it’s open to integrate with your current environment and meet future requirements.

Siemens believes that an open, software-based approach is key because it allows customers to evaluate, design, integrate and support multi-device, multi-media and multi-network solutions easily and effectively, as opposed to bolt-on proprietary approaches. Our solutions accelerate your processes through better collaboration and enable you to cut costs by enabling teams to work in new ways. Finally, you can manage the change at a pace that optimizes your return on investment. It is not a ‘rip and replace’ approach, but an evolutionary approach that enables you to optimize, enhance or transform your communication environment.

Because Siemens solutions such as OpenScape Voice Application and OpenScape UC Application use open interfaces and are designed using standards-based technologies, they can converge seamlessly with a customer’s existing infrastructure to make the most of their legacy investments. Our solutions can be embedded so deeply that they intuitively feel like part of the original IT infrastructure and/or part of the business applications your employees use every day. This provides the freedom to evolve a communications environment, easily and cost-effectively, to meet current and future needs. Siemens has already revolutionized the way that many leading organizations manage their communications, increasing efficiency, generating profit and maximizing their return on investment.

For example, Siemens has worked with a number of other business software vendors to integrate with the OpenScape UC Application. By seamlessly embedding real-time presence information into commonly used business applications, enterprises of all kinds can accelerate decision-making, reduce process latency and improve collaboration. Siemens has integrated with Lotus Sametime to streamline communications while facilitating click to dial, click to conference, and presence in a horizontal application to enhance collaboration and productivity.

The following image demonstrates OpenScape UC Application integrated with Siebel, which can help streamline communication and decision processes for pharmaceutical trials.

OpenScape UC Application integrated with Salesforce.com, as in the following image, is being used by a customer in the mortgage industry to streamline time-sensitive transactions.

Siemens’ strategic concept for Open Communications is a human-centric and business-oriented approach of unifying different modes of communications based on products and services built on a foundation of open standards. It binds the voice, IT, and mobile domains together to accelerate the decision process by facilitating global conferencing and collaboration among individuals.

Today’s businesses are rapidly changing and adapting in order to maximize productivity at the lowest costs. Unified Communications and Siemens can help today’s CIOs achieve a more streamlined, efficient communications infrastructure that results in a more productive and effective workforce and better customer satisfaction and bottom line.