Presence, smresence, what’s the big deal with Presence? Presence is all about connections. If you were to ask a user what presence is, you would probably get a lot of different answers: Presence is telling whether someone is available, online in the case of IM, or in a meeting until 3PM in the case of Microsoft Outlook, etc. Presence equals efficiency, especially for an end user. Contact Centers are the ultimate proving ground for a company’s ROI.

Presence allows anyone not just Contact Centers the ability to pull in enterprise resources to resolve any issue immediately. Efficiency increases when a company can eliminate phone tag, by letting users know, through device presence, if someone is on the phone or available to accept a phone call. Imagine the possibilities if you could integrate all forms of presence (IM, device presence and email) and federation. End users desperately need this type of UC interoperability.

Earlier this year Blair Pleasant wondered about the future of UC without federation. While Federation might be number one on many people’s list; I think she needed to include the importance of presence. Blair wishes for federation, but right now Presence makes my life more efficient because I am not playing phone tag, and I do not foresee the big 3 playing nice in the sand box so federation is way down on my list. Nothing ruins my day more than having left a voice mail at the beginning of the day and by the EOB I haven’t heard from my contact, only to hear that they have been in a meeting in my own building all day. Presence can make my day, by telling me through MS Outlook, that my contact has a lunch break at 1:00, so I will walk on over to the meeting and catch him in the hallway. A much more efficient use of my time than waiting on a return call from a voice mail message I left at the beginning of the day.

I would consider Presence Integration to be more important than Federation when it comes to UC interoperability between multi vendor platforms like Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007, such as letting an end user know when the contact in your IM client is “in a call”. While many would scoff at that possibility, I call that the “Ultimate Presence Experience”, eliminating phone tag, ensuring reach-ability, eliminating email latency, and eliminating the frustration of how can I connect with someone now. I continue to lead the charge for efficiency through presence, and what better way for all of us to keep our New Year’s Resolution than with UC Interoperability and Integrated Presence!!

Tags: UC Information, Unified Communications Information by Mark Littlefield
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Yes, you’re eyes are still working!  It’s true.  The unrelenting push by Microsoft to make a product that delivers some version of enterprise telephony has broken into the Gartner MQ for that exclusive club, Corporate Telephony, that was published only last Friday, August 8. 

Now, most of you know that Microsoft had already propelled itself to the Leaders quadrant in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications 2007, but this is PBX and IP-PBX territory. 

What’s the catch?  Well, Microsoft is in the lower right quadrant — the Visionaries quadrant.  That’s the place for companies with completeness of vision, and Microsoft is rated far to the top (the right on the x-axis) on that scale, but still with work to do on “ability to excute”. 

While some may say this is bad for Microsoft, since they will look weak in the telephony group, it seems to me that this is ideal for them!  It says that Gartner sees Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 as addressing the future directions of Corporate Telephony, but isn’t ready to do it all.  That’s great.  I’ve argued before that Microsoft does not want to win as a leader in the PBX market, they want to win as a leader in the “communications” market, where their software can make major improvements in business operations, not just simply replace a phone. 

Gartner suggests that Microsoft OCS is on target for those who want to “look beyond enterprise telephony to different ways of working, especially for nomadic and knowledge workers.”  I agree entirely.  In fact, you read it here first, on UCStrategies.com.  We called this out from the beginning, advising readers, clients, and our workshop and VoiceCon attendees to look for breakthrough improvements for the specific users in specific business processes.  This is why we have always said that UC is, “Communications integrated to optimize business processes.”  Just look at the 200 Microsoft case studies for OCS 2007 – some are just simple travel avoidance or international toll cost savings, but many really are new ways to communicate and are real business optimizations. 

We’ll bring you more news on this as it unfolds, both here and at NoJitter.com.  If you want to know about Unified Communications, and if you want to know how UC will intersect Corporate Telephony, this is the place to be! 

Please do add a comment below, so we get a lively dialog on this momentous event.

Tags: UC Information, Unified Communications Information by Marty Parker
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He’s singing my song! The “Holy UC, Batman..” article by my colleague Jay Brandstadter certainly struck a chord with me. For years, I have avoided falling into the jargon pit that both the voice and data industries seem to love so much; and there is good reason for this avoidance. When I work with resellers, whether VARs or telecom dealers, one of my goals is to help them understand the importance of consultative selling rather than product selling. To me this means approaching any sale from the perspective of the customer’s needs rather than from technology and products. So I try to speak the language of business… not technical jargon (of course, this encourages some in our industry to assume that I don’t understand the technology - too bad for them).

But to my point… it seems to me that the unified communications industry is so busy trying to define UC according to what a product or group of products can DO, that they’re missing a very important issue. THEY’RE CONFUSING CUSTOMERS! And when customers are confused, they don’t buy! Why not define UC according to what it means to a business - how it can improve business overall? It’s similar to defining a car as a vehicle with 2 or 4doors, 4 wheels, an engine, etc. So what? From a customer perspective, a car is a means of getting them from here to there quickly, safely and comfortably. THAT’s why they buy a car.

If I’m a customer, I don’t care if “UC” is about presence or mobility, or even integrating business processes with my communications system. I’m going to buy a solution (whether it is “real” UC or not) solely because it is going to make my business more profitable by reducing costs, making my employees more productive and/or improving customer service.

If UC is to grow as an industry, customers must buy solutions that we know are made up of products and software that we manufacture or develop…. and today’s customers are smarter than ever. Steve Burgess, a very savvy integrator and CEO of Guidant Partners, firmly says that the customer doesn’t care HOW it works, they just care that it DOES work - and that it makes a positive difference in their business. So I’m going to be so bold as to offer another definition for “UC”…. Unified communications brings together and utilizes communication tools and information tools to make workers more productive from wherever they are, provide management with the information and means to make better and faster decisions, provide better customer service and improved customer experiences, and overall help a company be more profitable. How are we going to do this? The person who signs the check to buy doesn’t really care how!!!!!!! Only the vendors who provide the products and the distribution channels who sell and install those products care “how”.

Let’s stop talking to ourselves and begin talking to the customer - please!

Tags: UC Information, Unified Communications Information by Pam Avila
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Marty, let me add further to your “modest proposal”.  My suggestion is that Gores and SEN strive to become the systems integrator of choice for integrating voice communications into business processes. 

As we look at the developing unified communications market, we see strong parallels to the way contact centers developed.  Companies are willing to spend thousands of dollars per agent seat gathering and integrating applications, communications, customer data, and knowledge systems into processes to solve a specific business problem - handling incoming customer contacts efficiently and effectively. 

Unified Communications holds a similar promise for many places in the enterprise - linking people, processes, and technology in a way that solves a specific business problem.  Our consulting work, and numerous published case studies point to the fact that applying UC to business processes is the road to the best ROI opportunities.   But achieving these results sometimes requires integrating voice communications into business applications.  And that’s a lot of potential revenue for innovative services companies.

Who better to tackle the subtle challenges of voice communications than a multi-billion dollar company with deep roots in the voice business.  Moreover, Siemens has, with their OpenScape UC Server, gained experience understanding other systems with which it will integrate. 

There are several paths.  Siemens could “go it alone” and choose one of several models such as Genesys Labs, IBM Global Services, DiData, Accenture, or others.  Or, they could work closely with their VAR network to develop an ecosystem of integrators. 

So, Gores and SEN, go beyond the traditional voice communications business.  Integration services is where it’s at in the unfolding unified communications marketplace! 

Tags: UC Information by Don Van Doren
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Our UCStrategies.com team has been discussing the acquisition of Siemens Enterprise Networks (SEN) into a joint venture with The Gores Group, who also owns Enterasys and SER.

As we pondered the situation, it became clear that this is an ideal time for some dramatic action.  SEN has arguably the best software stack for UC solutions in the entire industry in their OpenScape Communications Suite.  (Yes, we mean just the OpenScape Suite, not all the updated telephony-centric products such as the HiPath 8000, et al.).  

Our modest proposal is that the new SEN look past the traditional converged voice and PBX market, in which they are in a money-losing fourth place position (this according to their own slides from yesterday’s announcement) and look instead to the future via Unified Communications. 

What if they told all of their installed base customers that the new SEN is different?  The new SEN will not declare end-of-support on all that good Siemens technology that still works.  Instead, the new SEN recommends that the customers don’t waste their time replacing PBXs with IP PBXs and buying new phones, but rather spend their time and money installing OpenScape, connected to any PBX they own (old or new, of any brand).  Since OpenScape provides the complete set of communications tools that integrate seamlessly with both Microsoft and IBM (SEN has alliances for this with both companies) and with the enterprise back-office or hosted solutions (think SAP, Salesforce.com and more), SEN has the best chance of any company to come out as the market leader in Unified Communications. 

Hmmm. So the choice is to continue to sell PBXs, where SEN lost 602 million Euros on revenues of 3,200 million Euros in FY2007 and try to hold on to fourth place with declining market share, or to use this opportunity to truncate the loses in PBX selling (but continue the more profitable servicing business) and shoot for the leadership position in UC.  Losses/share laggard or smaller but profitable leader?  Oh, yeah, let’s be the leader! 

So, there’s our modest proposal.  What do you think?  Please post away on our blog here.

Tags: UC Information, Unified Communications Information by Marty Parker
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The recent UC Summit that was organized by UC Strategies was highlighted by defining productivity benefits at two different levels. One was for the individual end user who gained personal time-savings and convenience from UC technologies (UC-U), the other was the performance efficiency of a business process in terms of both quality and speed of process completion (UC-B). Some of this was described in the eBook, Unified Communication Cutting Through the Hype, that I and my UC Strategies colleagues published earlier this year.

While both perspectives are valid and important, there is a gap between the two. Because most business processes involve more than one person, it becomes critical to business process performance that all the individuals who are involved in the process (work flow) do so as efficiently as possible. That means that they must be able to communicate as quickly and flexibly as possible, either as as contact initiators or contact recipients/respondents, so that there is no unnecessary delay in the process as a whole. If a key decision maker or action taker should be delayed in communicating, the whole process will consequently suffer a delay. So the impact of personal productivity (UC-U) can also impact (UC-B).

I recognized this years ago when first looking at the need for UC. I suggested that UC-B performance must take into account the performance of individual users who can cause such delays to the performance of the “group” as a whole, especially in time-critical situations. Having alternative resources to fill the human availability gap is a typical business strategy that has long been used in call centers, for example, to handle real-time phone calls. However, whenever there is a requirement for specific individual, then such an individual has to maximize their communication accessibility through UC flexibility for the benefit of the group and the business process.

“Group productivity” or “UC-G” can be described as the flexible accessibility to receive and respond to timely information and people contacts as quickly as possible. UC capabilities, coupled with mobile accessibility, will maximize UC-G for the user as well as the business process. For this reason, it will be important to identify specific users who are key to a high priority business process and insure that they are fully equipped to exploit the benefits of UC technologies. So, for example, doctors and nurses who must be notified that a patient is in a life-threatening state, cannot afford to be without mobile devices that allow them to be accessed by people and information wherever they are. Business situations have similar kinds of demands when there deadlines or costly problem situations that need to be fixed as quickly as possible to minimize losses.

UC flexibility has to extend beyond the business premises and include people outside the organization who are involved or affected by the situation. This means that premise-based UC alone will not be adequate when customers and business partners need to be involved in a time-sensitive business process. UC-G will therefore have to involve capabilities like “federated presence” in order to deal with such outside contacts as effectively as possible. Similarly, metrics to track communication efficiency with people inside or outside the organization will be useful in identifying UC needs that the organization doesn’t have direct control over, but which will still impact the organization’s business process performance.

What do you think? We welcome your comments.

Tags: UC Information by Art Rosenberg
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The number of disabled veterans in the U.S. has increased 25 percent over the last seven years. Today there are 2.9 million disabled veterans in the U.S. including over 181,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who are receiving disability as of May 2008. A January 2007 report from the Small Business Administration entitled “Self-Employment in the Veteran and Service-Disabled Veteran Population” revealed that during the years 1988 - 2005, 64 percent of service-disabled veterans were unemployed. 32 percent of disabled veterans were employed by an organization of some sort while four percent were self-employed.

As soldiers continue to return from Iraq with devastating injuries that probably would have killed them in previous wars, they will hopefully be rehabilitated and begin seeking gainful employment. What better place for these veterans to find work than as home-based contact center agents?

Veterans2Work (V2W) is a relatively new organization that seeks to find opportunities for disabled people, and particularly disabled veterans, as home-based workers. Run by contact center industry and Vietnam veteran John Reynolds, V2W is a joint venture with the already-established CORA, which stands for Creating Opportunities by Recognizing Abilities. CORA is a certified training facility that trains, equips and qualifies disabled people for work. CORA can also function as an outsourced facility with disabled workers remaining with CORA but contracting for work with another organization - the classic contact center outsourcing arrangement.

CORA can also train and mentor workers to become direct hires of other companies through a set training period that demonstrates their abilities, typically 90 days, before the disabled worker becomes an employee of the hiring company. V2W’s job is to make sure the business community at large knows about the availability of this workforce.

Although the contact center industry as a whole has not fully embraced the notion of the home-based agent or employee, it’s time to get over the misconception that home-based workers are not as productive or reliable as office-based workers. Internet Protocol (IP) and unified communications (UC) offer any employee or contractor a means to stay in touch with the office regardless of his or her location. A home-based contact center agent can have virtually identical communications capabilities as an office-based colleague with UC solutions such as presence ensuring that qualified support is never more than a mouse click away for any agent.

V2W also offers American business what I consider to be an additional benefit in that it provides many industries, including the customer service industry, an alternative to sending jobs offshore in order to lower labor costs. With the substantial state and federal tax benefits that come with the hiring of disabled veterans and other workers, or through contracting with organizations such as CORA for outsourced services, there is now a viable financial alternative to sending contact center agent jobs to offshore locations.

As a veteran of the armed forces myself I believe it is vitally important that we take care of our own. Corporate America, and in particular the contact center industry, owes it to itself and to those who have served to consider what V2W might be able to do to help American business, and to help those who have suffered disabilities in service to their country. For more information on V2W visit www.veterans2work.com or call John Reynolds at 415-925-1515.

Tags: UC Information by Paul Stockford
4 Comments »

Aspect Software recently commissioned a study to look at opportunities to improve customer service through unified communications (UC). Aspect retained Leo J. Shapiro and Associates LLC of Chicago to conduct the survey of 50 contact center supervisors and 50 contact center agents at the end of 2007. The findings of the study clearly identify customer service stumbling blocks that could be overcome by the deployment of UC in the contact center.

The Aspect study found that, according to the supervisors and agents interviewed, 10.3 percent of all telephone inquiries handled on a daily basis required assistance from knowledge workers outside of the contact center. When these calls requiring outside help occur, the study reports that one of two things generally happen:

• Contact center personnel place the customer on hold while they seek the expertise required, then relay that information to the customer secondhand; or
• Contact center personnel attempt to resolve the customer issue to the point that outside expertise is needed, and then the customer call is transferred to the knowledge worker for resolution.

I submit that a third scenario is also possible - that the customer service rep takes the information from the customer and promises a call-back once the answer can be gleaned from the appropriate resources. In any case, these scenarios negatively impact two important contact center performance metrics; average call handle time, also known as average handle time (AHT), and first call resolution (FCR). An increase in AHT or a decrease in FCR can both be detrimental to the operational performance and customer service levels of the typical customer care center.

The Aspect-sponsored Shapiro study found that the average call was increased by approximately 2.5 minutes each time a knowledge worker outside the contact center was required to in order to resolve a customer inquiry. Although the study didn’t pinpoint how much of that 2.5 minutes was spent searching for the knowledge worker and how much was spent on the phone with the customer, we can reasonably assume that a good percentage of that time, perhaps as high as half of that time, was spent searching for and connecting to the knowledge worker outside of the contact center.

If that one-to-1.5 minutes spent searching for a resource could be reduced or eliminated through the use of such UC-enabled solutions as Presence, the cost savings and increased productivity could be significant. Think of the number of calls your own call center handles each day and what might be saved by shaving a minute or more off of ten percent of those calls. Although this is conjecture, it still serves to illustrate a point: UC in the contact center comes with a built-in return on investment (ROI) that is not only demonstrable; it is enough to make even the most hard-hearted CFO take notice.

Full details of the Aspect Software survey are available at www.aspect.com.

Tags: UC Information by Paul Stockford
4 Comments »

I love Vienna – the architecture, the pastries, the wine, the history, the cafes, and did I mention the pastries? What a beautiful place to visit and hear from Siemens Enterprise Communications execs about their progress to date, future plans, and more. While it was sometimes hard to pay attention to the presenters since it meant taking my eyes off of the frescos on the ceiling of the 16th century palais where the conference was held, I managed to gather a few tidbits.

As you have probably read by now, Siemens Enterprise Communications did not announce which company will most likely merge with or acquire them, and all they will say is they are “In advanced stages of talks with potential partners” and are in discussion with a private equity partner and a competitor. That’s disappointing to me since I’d like to see them get acquired by a synergistic partner such as Oracle, SAP, or another business process or application provider (you know, UC is “communications integrated to optimize business processes.”) But they didn’t ask for my opinion.
The theme of the conference, as to be expected, was openness and the move to software-based solutions. Siemens OpenScape products are open, software-based solutions focusing on open standards that can integrate to existing IT landscapes. For example, the OpenScape UC Server is described as a single comprehensive software suite based on SOA. The software can run on all infrastructures, and not just with Siemens’ products. OpenScape UC Server has been deployed on Avaya, Nortel, Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, and NEC switches, works with any IT or telephony infrastructure, whether IP or TDM, and works on any client, while providing the basis for several UC applications.

Thomas Zimmermann, COO, and Gerhard Otterbach, CMO, discussed how the OpenScape UC Suite is “the world’s first truly integrated unified communications solution based on open standards.” The software foundation, OpenScape UC Server, provides SIP Session Control, Aggregated Presence, Administration and Licensing, Availability Management, QoS Management, and compliance and governance. On top of this software foundation are the OpenScape Applications based on OpenSOA, including: OpenScape Voice, OpenScape Mobility, OpenScape Video, OpenScape Messaging, OpenScape UC Application, and OpenScape Contact Center. The layer on top, OpenScape Integration Services, include Security, CEBP Microsoft Ecosystem, CEBP Vertical Industry, CEBP IBM Ecosystem, and CEBP Other Line of Business Applications.
Continuing the discussion about the transition to a software and services business, Zimmermann and Otterbach mentioned that the company is growing several innovation areas, including OpenScape UC Suite, HiPath OpenOffice, OpenScale Managed and system integration services. I agree with the company that it’s important for them to speed up this transition to a software and services business, and was glad to hear several speakers state that they have a clear roadmap on how to accelerate, which will include enhancing systems integration and other areas within the company. What I believe is the most important but also most challenging step is to transform skills to UC software and services, which includes training and certification programs for Siemens and its channel partners, and the need to recruit experts.

For system integration and professional services, Siemens Enterprise Communications provides OpenScale Service to design, implement and support open, multi-vendor UC solutions. The Openscale integration services include CEBP for the Microsoft ecosystem, IBM, other line of business applications, and vertical industry applications. OpenScale is a global services offering that works with competitors’ environments, not just Siemens’. This is key as Siemens Enterprise Communications transitions to a software and services business – most enterprises are multi-vendor.

Siemens Enterprise Communications is also developing broader market coverage and lower sales cost, with a focus on having a direct presence in all of its regions, while developing indirect channels and alliances, and growing in emerging countries. For example, in 2006, indirect revenues for OpenScape Voice Licenses accounted for 35% of the revenues, and today accounts for 53% of revenue.

While doing all of this, Siemens will continue to focus on its core business, divest non-core assets and businesses, partner with SMB channels, and focus R&D on UC innovations.

For several years I’ve been saying that Siemens Enterprise Communications has been a thought leader in terms of unified communications, and everything I heard throughout the two days of the conference reinforces this belief. Siemens was first to market with a product to support Microsoft LCS, and spent a great deal of time and energy evangelizing about UC, what it means, and what it does (remember when many people didn’t know what “presence” referred to – Siemens had to explain it over and over to help people understand the value of UC). Siemens Enterprise Communications is not sitting back and waiting for UC to happen, but is being an active player in moving the industry forward. The company’s move toward software and services is exactly what the company needs to be doing. Hopefully whoever acquires or invests in the company will allow it to continue moving forward and innovating.

Tags: UC Information by Blair Pleasant
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In the June 19, 2008 VoiceCon UC eWeekly (a weekly newsletter jointly sponsored by VoiceCon and UCStrategies.com), Fred Knight asked the question, “Where’s the Beef?”

At first, I thought that Fred was losing faith on the directions for UC. But after reading his newsletter a couple of times, I decided Fred was basically raising a challenge, one of his most important roles across both the entire communications industry, especially as Co-Chair of VoiceCon. Fred had seen a very skeptical article in NetworkWorld, entitled, “Enterprises baffled by Unified Communications, survey finds.”

Fred’s challenge is to “prove” that Unified Communications is real, is understood by the customers, and has real value. So, I took his challenge and did my homework on the NetworkWorld article. My conclusion is that Forrester Research is off-target on this one - either they asked confusing questions in their survey or they tried to make UC-related conclusions from a survey that was really a “general purpopse survey on networking plans,” rather than on UC specifically.

But the homework of studying the NetworkWorld article did prove that UC is alive and well. The article links to an excellent definition of UC and to a survey based on that definition, in 800 telecom managers were very clear on the benefits of and reasons for UC. It also shows that audio and web conferencing (i.e. collaboratively sharing and discussing information) is the leading UC application at over 40% adoption, somewhat ahead of video conferencing and well ahead of IP PBX.

Anyway, I found plenty of beef, even to the extent that UC applications seem to be pulling VoIP rather than the other way around. If you’d like to read more, take a look a the entire post on NoJitter.com.

So, thanks, Fred, for the challenge. Improves all of our games, and the UCStrategies.com team likes to win!

Tags: UC Information, Unified Communications Information by Marty Parker
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