Copyright © 2009 Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide
September 14, 2009
“Customer UC” –
Voice Assistance Is Only A Part of The “Contextual Contact Center”
Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View
As I mentioned in my last article, new unified communications technologies (UC) have started to impact customer contact operations to the point that the traditional “call center” now has to be called a customer “contact “center. In addition, the holy grail of call center performance efficiency, “First Call Resolution” (FCR), must now be called “First Contact Resolution.”
From a business results perspective, UC ROI performance must include metrics like customer satisfaction (soft) and revenue generation (hard), not just cost savings and Total Cost of Ownership (hard). Customer contact activities are therefore increasingly being evaluated as key to overall UC implementation planning.
I have labeled such customer-facing UC communication activities as “Customer UC.” This is where the flexibility of UC technologies are applied to traditional customer contacts (inbound and outbound), “Customer UC” must support users both inside and outside of the organization who are not necessarily at a desktop, on premise, or using the same communication technologies, but are involved directly or indirectly with “customers.” These kinds of challenges were discussed by a panel of innovative contact center technology developers on the subject of ”UC and the Contact Center” at TMC’s Internet Telephony conference in L.A. at the beginning of this month (9/1-3).
The Disruptive Impact of UC and Mobility On Traditional Telephone Call Centers
The traditional call center is no longer really a physically located “center,” but has to be “virtual” in terms of where the technology is located and where the “agents” and “experts” are located. (Call center “customers” have always been “virtual!”) Nor is the next generation “contextual contact center” dedicated to handling just conversational voice calls or automated, self-service applications, based on legacy telephones and Interactive Voice Response technologies.
Because of the exploding consumer shift to personalized, multi-modal, mobile “smart-phones,” coupled with evolving SIP networking infrastructure that can support all forms of person-to-person, person-to-process, and process-to-person interactions, organizations of all sizes will need the power of UC to support the dynamic demands of their users and customers. “Customer UC” must be endpoint device and location independent to provide faster, more efficient access to both information and people to end users involved in their business activities, whether they are internal staff “agents,” and “experts” or external customers and business partners.
What’s Happening With “Customer UC” Today?
Feedback from the contact center market today confirms some of the points made above. In various panel discussions at the IT Expo show, the following interesting observations were noted:
- Business organizations are buying more “UC technology” for contact center applications, although not actually using the technology yet. Desktop video (for conferencing) is in second place as a UC application purchases. This indicates the direction and priorities that UC implementation planning is taking.
- Biggest UC implementation mistakes that enterprise IT staffs seem to be making are:
Making a vendor selection first
No preparations, doing requirements “homework”
Trying to implement UC like existing communications (e.g., treating Microsoft OCS like Exchange)
- The cost of planning for UC is about the same for a large and a smaller business organization, while the cost of implementation will obviously be higher for the larger group. Any size organization will have the similar customer care problems and therefore “Customer UC” will pay off for them all.
- “Hosted” and “cloud computing” solutions are increasingly attractive to any size organization, as IP telephony and wireless mobility become software rather than hardware based.
- UC operational needs are based on individual job responsibilities (“roles”). For the SMB organization, the needs analysis and requirements effort can typically be 50% of the total UC implementation cost. For the large organization, UC implementation can be phased in by individual groups, application by application.
However, the SMB market doesn’t have big legacy technology investments to protect nor IT staffs to train and manage, will “low-hanging fruit” for service providers.
- “Communication Enabled Business Processing” (CEBP) is a big target for UC integration with business applications and mobile customer contact exploitation, but is still evolving. It needs standards for open interoperability to make its role in the “Contextual Contact Center” really take off.
- New IP telephony technology can’t be sold separately without UC integration considerations, making UC marketing a partnering team effort. UC also can’t be sold just on a telephony cost savings basis to IT management alone, thus requiring business management and business process analyses first.
My Panel’s First Two Question
My panelists were representatives from contact center technology developers Altitude Software, CosmoCom, and Fonality,
1. What Are The Key Drivers For UC In The Contact Center Market?
- Increase flexibility for customer access to mobile and remote personnel who are best qualified and “available” to satisfy specific customer needs
- Increase flexibility of choice for mobile and desktop customers to get information and contextual access to live assistance in real-time (“click-to-call/chat”) or via timely messaging
- Improve operational business process performance by increasing use of self-service applications (online, voice, mobile, proactive services), which minimize both labor needs and human delays.
- Increase customer satisfaction and retention through improved customer experiences, which helps generate revenues and profits. This includes proactive “notifications” to mobile users about time-sensitive, requested information.
- Increase business application flexibility by shifting to communications-enabled software, rather than hardware, that can be customized for any-size business and for individual end users.
- Reduce operational costs and TCO by centralizing and virtualizing operational management and technology support for competitive business operational needs
Note: Although there are UC benefits for everyone involved in customer interactions, there will be different organizational and business priorities for each of the above considerations that must be analyzed and evaluated prior to planning UC implementations.
2.What traditional call center processes will be probably be changed first by UC? Which won’t?
Will:
- Importance of contact handling time vs. effectiveness of modality of contact vs. increasing shift to self-service and pro-active notifications.
- Consolidating “Agent” desktops to facilitate multi-modal customer interactions for various business applications
- Supporting new multi-modal communication needs for remote, online “agents” and “experts”
- Supporting mobile and online multi-modal customers
- Customizing “unified desktops” to make both “agent’ and “expert” interactions more efficient across different business application processes
- Developing new metrics and reports to track all new forms of customer contacts and interactions
Won’t
- Consolidated reporting of all customer interaction metrics from both the customer perspective and live assistance support involved will be evolving after all specific Customer UC capabilities have been successfully tested and implemented
- Automated proactive notifications by business applications will also come later as more customers become mobile and more practical experience is gained with new mobile devices and specific types of applications. At that point, individual applications will have to be integrated to enable “CEBP” functionality and operational management
- Agent empowerment to dynamically switch interaction modalities, e.g., text messaging, voice calls, online collaboration, video conferencing, etc.
- Changing “First Call resolution” to “First Contact Resolution” in terms of responding to a mobile caller by acknowledging the call notification but deferring it in various ways from an immediate real-time voice response
- Won’t change management responsibilities for line of business and customer contact activities.
Comments to other UC-Contact Center issues will be posted later.
What Do You Think?
You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Start UC Planning With " Business Performance ROI" (BPR)
Copyright (C) Unified-View, All Rights Reserved.
ãCopyright 2009, The Unified-View – All rights reserved worldwide
August 26, 2009
UC “Performance ROI” – Find The ”Why” and “Who” First!
Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View
A recent article on NetworkWorld complains that “ROI doesn’t always pan out with unified communications” because it is hard to calculate the cost savings of UC. The article also quotes a Forrester survey of IT managers where about half say they don’t see the business value to deploy UC this year. One IT manager, who actually implemented UC applications in his organization, still complained that it is difficult to quantify the cost-saving value of the “UC stuff.”
Cost Savings – “Is That All There Is?”
In these hectic economic times, the challenge for cost savings has heightened for IT management and CFOs, but there are other business performance objectives as well, i.e., generate revenues faster, minimize losses that can result from missed deadlines or slow responses to emergencies.
A new white paper sponsored by Avaya, a leading provider of traditional telephony technology, reflects an increasing shift of enterprise UC marketing focus from traditional IT management’s concern with infrastructure technology support and cost reductions. The new starting point for UC planning begins with two areas of operational business productivity that IT doesn’t have direct responsibility for:
1. Business process performance and it’s dependencies on flexible contact with people
2. Individual end user task performance and work environment dependencies upon flexible communications accessibility and responsiveness
Both of these UC productivity metrics, labeled by my colleagues at www.UCStrategies.com, as UC-Business Process (UC-B) and UC-User Productivity (UC-U), are key to determining the priorities and choice of UC implementation needs, before IT can jump in with cost saving considerations. To maximize UC-B results, UC-U capabilities must be included.
The inherent variability between different business processes and individual end user job responsibilities means that there can’t be “one UC size fits all.” This variance will especially increase as traditional “person-to-person” voice conversational activities shift from fixed desktops to mobile devices, real-time text messaging, and “process-to-person” notifications and proactive application contacts.
Avaya’s White Paper on The UC “Secret Ingredient”
By contrast to the technology market’s traditional approach to “ROI,” the white paper sponsored by Avaya targets the business management audience, not just IT. Avaya, a dominant telephone system hardware company that has already moved into IP Telephony software, is apparently moving further up the food chain to aggressively compete with third-party consultancies to provide the necessary operational analysis for all elements of UC (not just telephony). This reflects both the complexities of multi-modal UC and implementation alternatives, as well as the current lack of in-house enterprise expertise that is contributing to the delay in enterprise UC adoption described in the Forrester market study.
The “Secret Ingredient” for maximizing UC business value described in the white paper relies on exploiting “professional services” to first determine the value priorities for the “why”” and the “who” of business operational changes that UC applications will enable. Such consulting services are needed to help objectively identify and analyze high-value communication problems or “hot spots” in current business operations that UC solutions can minimize or eliminate.
“Hot Spot” is simply another label for significant “human latency” in a business process caused by communication delays that can impact process performance and results, e.g., missed deadlines, increased overhead, loss of a customer, loss of life, etc. It applies to any important delay or inefficiency that stems from involving communication with people, either as “contact initiators” or as “contact recipients/respondents.” It also means that it includes time-sensitive contacts that are initiated by an automated business process application (“process-to-person” message notifications), not just “person-to-person” contacts.
Most significantly, however, the Avaya white paper acknowledges the increasing importance of all real-time and near-real-time contacts, not just voice conversations, as essential to mobile accessibility and business process performance efficiency and effectiveness.
Nothing Really New!
Of course, Avaya’s new positioning is nothing really new. My colleagues and I at UC Strategies and UniComm Consulting, have long advocated the view that unified communications is not just about moving TDM telephony to IP Telephony and VoIP for cost-savings, nor even to mobile phones for greater voice accessibility. More fundamentally, UC involves the flexible and effective use of all forms of communication with people - anywhere, anyway, any time.
The challenge for bringing UC efficiencies for people into high-value business processes lies in two areas of communication contact:
1. Accessibility
2. Availability
While mobile communications and flexible choice of medium will increase an end user’s ability to initiate a business contact, initiation “accessibility,” it will not necessarily increase a contact recipient’s “availability” or change in business process priorities. For this reason, the traditional telephony notion of immediate, interruptive real-time contacts has to be updated to allow for near-real-time options and more practical “as soon as possible” (ASAP) real-time connections
What Do You Think?
You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360.
ãCopyright 2009, The Unified-View – All rights reserved worldwide
August 26, 2009
UC “Performance ROI” – Find The ”Why” and “Who” First!
Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View
A recent article on NetworkWorld complains that “ROI doesn’t always pan out with unified communications” because it is hard to calculate the cost savings of UC. The article also quotes a Forrester survey of IT managers where about half say they don’t see the business value to deploy UC this year. One IT manager, who actually implemented UC applications in his organization, still complained that it is difficult to quantify the cost-saving value of the “UC stuff.”
Cost Savings – “Is That All There Is?”
In these hectic economic times, the challenge for cost savings has heightened for IT management and CFOs, but there are other business performance objectives as well, i.e., generate revenues faster, minimize losses that can result from missed deadlines or slow responses to emergencies.
A new white paper sponsored by Avaya, a leading provider of traditional telephony technology, reflects an increasing shift of enterprise UC marketing focus from traditional IT management’s concern with infrastructure technology support and cost reductions. The new starting point for UC planning begins with two areas of operational business productivity that IT doesn’t have direct responsibility for:
1. Business process performance and it’s dependencies on flexible contact with people
2. Individual end user task performance and work environment dependencies upon flexible communications accessibility and responsiveness
Both of these UC productivity metrics, labeled by my colleagues at www.UCStrategies.com, as UC-Business Process (UC-B) and UC-User Productivity (UC-U), are key to determining the priorities and choice of UC implementation needs, before IT can jump in with cost saving considerations. To maximize UC-B results, UC-U capabilities must be included.
The inherent variability between different business processes and individual end user job responsibilities means that there can’t be “one UC size fits all.” This variance will especially increase as traditional “person-to-person” voice conversational activities shift from fixed desktops to mobile devices, real-time text messaging, and “process-to-person” notifications and proactive application contacts.
Avaya’s White Paper on The UC “Secret Ingredient”
By contrast to the technology market’s traditional approach to “ROI,” the white paper sponsored by Avaya targets the business management audience, not just IT. Avaya, a dominant telephone system hardware company that has already moved into IP Telephony software, is apparently moving further up the food chain to aggressively compete with third-party consultancies to provide the necessary operational analysis for all elements of UC (not just telephony). This reflects both the complexities of multi-modal UC and implementation alternatives, as well as the current lack of in-house enterprise expertise that is contributing to the delay in enterprise UC adoption described in the Forrester market study.
The “Secret Ingredient” for maximizing UC business value described in the white paper relies on exploiting “professional services” to first determine the value priorities for the “why”” and the “who” of business operational changes that UC applications will enable. Such consulting services are needed to help objectively identify and analyze high-value communication problems or “hot spots” in current business operations that UC solutions can minimize or eliminate.
“Hot Spot” is simply another label for significant “human latency” in a business process caused by communication delays that can impact process performance and results, e.g., missed deadlines, increased overhead, loss of a customer, loss of life, etc. It applies to any important delay or inefficiency that stems from involving communication with people, either as “contact initiators” or as “contact recipients/respondents.” It also means that it includes time-sensitive contacts that are initiated by an automated business process application (“process-to-person” message notifications), not just “person-to-person” contacts.
Most significantly, however, the Avaya white paper acknowledges the increasing importance of all real-time and near-real-time contacts, not just voice conversations, as essential to mobile accessibility and business process performance efficiency and effectiveness.
Nothing Really New!
Of course, Avaya’s new positioning is nothing really new. My colleagues and I at UC Strategies and UniComm Consulting, have long advocated the view that unified communications is not just about moving TDM telephony to IP Telephony and VoIP for cost-savings, nor even to mobile phones for greater voice accessibility. More fundamentally, UC involves the flexible and effective use of all forms of communication with people - anywhere, anyway, any time.
The challenge for bringing UC efficiencies for people into high-value business processes lies in two areas of communication contact:
1. Accessibility
2. Availability
While mobile communications and flexible choice of medium will increase an end user’s ability to initiate a business contact, initiation “accessibility,” it will not necessarily increase a contact recipient’s “availability” or change in business process priorities. For this reason, the traditional telephony notion of immediate, interruptive real-time contacts has to be updated to allow for near-real-time options and more practical “as soon as possible” (ASAP) real-time connections
What Do You Think?
You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Bringing UC To The Contact Center
Copyright (C) Unified-View, All Rights Reserved.
August 18, 2009
Hard Questions For “Customer UC” Panel Discussion
Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View
As UC technology slowly but surely pervades the legacy domains of TDM telephony, the most important targets, from a business operational standpoint, are any enterprise communication contacts that are customer facing. That would include dedicated call center “agents, as well as subject-matter “experts,” decision-makers, and mobile “action-takers (field support).”
(See UC Forum on contact center “Experts”) http://www.ucstrategies.com/forum.aspx?id=4543&g=topics&f=14916
The resulting UC “ROI” is not just from cost-reductions because of more efficient IP infrastructures, or even greater internal staff productivity, but because it can speed up revenue generation or prevent business losses through more responsive and efficient business processes, increase customer satisfaction and retention, and enable better productivity for any end users involved in a business process that requires timely contact with people.
While the role of UC technologies in contact centers is still evolving, it is very obvious that UC flexibility is not going to be restricted to internal enterprise staff, nor just to traditional call center “agents.” Customers and external business partners, along with internal business “experts,” will be affected. Accordingly, there are many kinds of changes that will take place in enterprise communications that will involve UC applications and customer-related activities, which I have labeled as “Customer UC.”
UC Questions For Enterprise Contact Centers
I will be moderating a leadoff panel discussion at the upcoming Internet Telephony Conference in L.A., September 1, 2009, on ”UC and the Contact Center.”
(See Session information at::)
http://www.tmcnet.com/voip/conference/west-2009/attendees/w09-conferences.aspx?t=cc#cc-01
Here are some of the basic “Customer UC” issues that will be addressed:
1. Who should be in charge of Customer UC migration planning? What are the different responsibility roles for IT, Operations, LOB management?
2. What traditional call center processes, including IVR self-service applications, will be changed first by UC? Which won’t?
3. What are key considerations for presence in a Customer UC environment?
4. How will UC benefit contact center “agents” differently than “experts?”
5. How will customer-facing business process applications be affected by UC and “CEBP?”
6. How should new Customer UC capabilities be “trialed” and implemented?
7. What will desktop requirements be for dealing directly with mobile, ”multimodal” customers?
8. What Customer UC features and functions benefits are most important directly to customers? How will they be measured?
Please feel free to send me suggestions for other questions that are bothering you about how UC will change customer interactions within an enterprise. I will be publishing the results of this panel discussion, including audience comments, in a future column.
What Do You Think?
You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360.
August 18, 2009
Hard Questions For “Customer UC” Panel Discussion
Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View
As UC technology slowly but surely pervades the legacy domains of TDM telephony, the most important targets, from a business operational standpoint, are any enterprise communication contacts that are customer facing. That would include dedicated call center “agents, as well as subject-matter “experts,” decision-makers, and mobile “action-takers (field support).”
(See UC Forum on contact center “Experts”) http://www.ucstrategies.com/forum.aspx?id=4543&g=topics&f=14916
The resulting UC “ROI” is not just from cost-reductions because of more efficient IP infrastructures, or even greater internal staff productivity, but because it can speed up revenue generation or prevent business losses through more responsive and efficient business processes, increase customer satisfaction and retention, and enable better productivity for any end users involved in a business process that requires timely contact with people.
While the role of UC technologies in contact centers is still evolving, it is very obvious that UC flexibility is not going to be restricted to internal enterprise staff, nor just to traditional call center “agents.” Customers and external business partners, along with internal business “experts,” will be affected. Accordingly, there are many kinds of changes that will take place in enterprise communications that will involve UC applications and customer-related activities, which I have labeled as “Customer UC.”
UC Questions For Enterprise Contact Centers
I will be moderating a leadoff panel discussion at the upcoming Internet Telephony Conference in L.A., September 1, 2009, on ”UC and the Contact Center.”
(See Session information at::)
http://www.tmcnet.com/voip/conference/west-2009/attendees/w09-conferences.aspx?t=cc#cc-01
Here are some of the basic “Customer UC” issues that will be addressed:
1. Who should be in charge of Customer UC migration planning? What are the different responsibility roles for IT, Operations, LOB management?
2. What traditional call center processes, including IVR self-service applications, will be changed first by UC? Which won’t?
3. What are key considerations for presence in a Customer UC environment?
4. How will UC benefit contact center “agents” differently than “experts?”
5. How will customer-facing business process applications be affected by UC and “CEBP?”
6. How should new Customer UC capabilities be “trialed” and implemented?
7. What will desktop requirements be for dealing directly with mobile, ”multimodal” customers?
8. What Customer UC features and functions benefits are most important directly to customers? How will they be measured?
Please feel free to send me suggestions for other questions that are bothering you about how UC will change customer interactions within an enterprise. I will be publishing the results of this panel discussion, including audience comments, in a future column.
What Do You Think?
You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Panel Discusses The P-PBX in Enterprise UC Implementations
Copyright (C) Unified-View, All Rights Reserved.
Listen to this expert panel that I participated in discuss what is really happening on the enterprise UC implementation front. Points discussed include;
- Implications of Avaya-Nortel acquisition
- Innovative UC communications for business process improvement vs. simple cost reductions
- Role of hosted services vs. premise-based technologies
- Impact of mobile communications on tradtional desktop telephony
Listen now by going to:
http://ucstrategies.com/industry-buzz/uc-experts-disucss-what-is-the-need-for-ip-pbx-in-uc.aspx?gnid=14580
Feel free to comment afterwards on the UC Strategies web site or get back to me at:
artr@ix.netcom.com
Art Rosenberg
The Unified-View
Listen to this expert panel that I participated in discuss what is really happening on the enterprise UC implementation front. Points discussed include;
- Implications of Avaya-Nortel acquisition
- Innovative UC communications for business process improvement vs. simple cost reductions
- Role of hosted services vs. premise-based technologies
- Impact of mobile communications on tradtional desktop telephony
Listen now by going to:
http://ucstrategies.com/industry-buzz/uc-experts-disucss-what-is-the-need-for-ip-pbx-in-uc.aspx?gnid=14580
Feel free to comment afterwards on the UC Strategies web site or get back to me at:
artr@ix.netcom.com
Art Rosenberg
The Unified-View
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Copyright (C) Unified-View, All Rights Reserved.
July 22, 2009
Smart-phones Have Roadblocks for Mobile UC
Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View
A very perceptive article by a Mercury News columnist, Chris O’Brien, puts the spotlight on obstacles to Mobile UC growth that currently exist because of the wireless carrier control over the smart-phone market. Because the flexibility of UC solutions usually provides greater enterprise value for the more dynamic needs of mobile end users than for desktop users, the future growth of UC adoption will be slowed by some of these considerations.
In addition, the many mobile business process applications that can now be exploited through smart-phone (or netbook) “App Store” venues, will be affected by how the carriers will work cooperatively with enterprise-based mobile services for both their business users and consumer customers.
The battle is only beginning but this article cuts to the chase of some of the problems that are in the way of universal adoption of UC. In particular, it raises questions about enterprise support for individual end user UC needs that are discussed in one of the UC Strategies.com forums. (Go to www.ucstrategies.com)
What Do You Think?
You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360.
July 22, 2009
Smart-phones Have Roadblocks for Mobile UC
Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View
A very perceptive article by a Mercury News columnist, Chris O’Brien, puts the spotlight on obstacles to Mobile UC growth that currently exist because of the wireless carrier control over the smart-phone market. Because the flexibility of UC solutions usually provides greater enterprise value for the more dynamic needs of mobile end users than for desktop users, the future growth of UC adoption will be slowed by some of these considerations.
In addition, the many mobile business process applications that can now be exploited through smart-phone (or netbook) “App Store” venues, will be affected by how the carriers will work cooperatively with enterprise-based mobile services for both their business users and consumer customers.
The battle is only beginning but this article cuts to the chase of some of the problems that are in the way of universal adoption of UC. In particular, it raises questions about enterprise support for individual end user UC needs that are discussed in one of the UC Strategies.com forums. (Go to www.ucstrategies.com)
What Do You Think?
You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Where Mobile UC Will Really Pay Off In The Enterprise
Copyright (C) Unified-View, All Rights Reserved.
June 29, 2009
Big Mobile UC Payoffs Coming From Outside The Enterprise
Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View
Anything you read these days about business communications tries to align the technologies within the framework of “unified communications” (UC). What that really means is questionable.
UC is quickly becoming the battleground for all forms of business activities, not only from a technology perspective, but also for the primary constituencies in an enterprise organization. As new UC technologies continue to evolve and converge, legacy communications and new integrations with business process applications are challenging enterprise management to change the way end users do business. This will not only affect people within their own organizations, but key processes that involve their business partners and, most importantly, their customers who generate revenue.
Drilling Down To Enterprise UC Requirements
There are three main constituencies within any enterprise organization that need to significantly benefit from implementing UC technologies and services in order to gain their interest and support: They are:
1. Business and operational management – To generate revenue, minimize risks and losses through strategic and tactical business policies, processes, and procedures
2. Internal end users – To perform their different job responsibilities in business processes easily, efficiently and effectively
3. Technology management – To provide flexible, reliable, and secure business process technology tools, network service infrastructure, and support services to for points 1.and 2. (above) at minimal cost.
All three constituencies will be affected, directly or indirectly, by the migration to mobile, multi-modal UC, especially as it affects communication contacts with different types of people involved in high-value, time-sensitive business processes. These can be characterized as:
· Person-to-person contextual contacts (voice calls, multi-modal messaging)
· Person-to process on-demand access to information, automated transactions, and live assistance
· Process-to-person personalized contacts, especially real-time notifications and interactions
· Increasing personalized contact accessibility for all of the above through mobile devices and services
While Business Management will help identify operational work flow problems, requirements, and priorities for UC needs in enterprise business processes, and IT management will establish UC technology implementation plans, integrations, support, administration management and budgets, the third constituency, the end users, are really the most complex and critical elements to satisfy. Not only do enterprise end users have different job responsibilities and contact relationships, but they also have varying work environment needs for both desktop and mobile business contacts. Finally, what happens with the end users will typically affect the performance of most business processes.
More UC Payoffs – Partners, Customers, Inbound vs. Outbound Mobile Self-services
To complicate matters further, enterprise UC must realistically accommodate efficient business contacts outside of the organization as part of high-value business processes, i.e., business partners and customers. UC facilities must therefore be provided not only to support flexible communication contacts (e.g., federated presence) directly between people wherever they may be located, but also directly between people and automated business process applications, regardless of user endpoint device type and modality of interaction. Only then can business process performance be maximized and “human (contact) latency” be minimized across any group of involved end users.
There has always been a big revenue “pony” under customer contact communications, and traditional call center technology has always taken the lead in supporting both live and automated inbound call-handling activities for customer care applications. However, the real-time demands of voice telephony, coupled with the legacy Telephone User Interface (TUI), left much to be desired in terms of the user experience and efficiency of complex self-service applications.
Although on-line interactive application usage on the Web has now far surpassed traditional Interactive Voice Response (IVR) self-services, the two are starting to converge both at the PC desktop and with mobile communication devices. The screen interface provides greater flexibility for complex input and output of information, which the limitations of legacy IVR applications could not even begin to deal with and thus always required immediate access to highly trained live assistance.
Automated outbound contact applications were also hampered by the limitations of telephony-based voice contacts in successfully making person-to-person contacts with a particular individual. Now, with the rapid consumer adoption of personalized, mobile, “smart-phones,” all that is changing, for both business and personal service applications. Proactive Communications Enabled Business Processes (CEBP), coupled with flexible mobile contact accessibility, is now positioned to bring the power of a variety of automated application services plus access to live assistance, when necessary, to individual end users, wherever, whenever needed.
Given these convergence changes, the enterprise market needs better UC-based products and services to replace legacy telephony technologies. For example, it will be inefficient for outbound application notifications to function simply as “Proactive IVR,” since outbound contacts from a business process application will have to capitalize on personalized, mobile “smart-phone” accessibility through mobile UC, not traditional, location-based phone call attempts that rely on the limitations of voice-only interactions.
Instead, consider starting with immediate delivery of a mobile notification message of any kind from a business application service to an end user, followed by the user’s option to access a multimodal portal that offers the recipient choices of automated self-service interaction (voice or online input/output), along with live assistance access options (chat, voice, video). This approach was demonstrated several years ago by Intervoice, since acquired by Convergys. However, the real payoff can now be finally realized from the proliferation of proactive application contacts that will result from the explosion of “smart-phone” usage and “App Store” mobile applications.
What Do You Think?
You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360.
June 29, 2009
Big Mobile UC Payoffs Coming From Outside The Enterprise
Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View
Anything you read these days about business communications tries to align the technologies within the framework of “unified communications” (UC). What that really means is questionable.
UC is quickly becoming the battleground for all forms of business activities, not only from a technology perspective, but also for the primary constituencies in an enterprise organization. As new UC technologies continue to evolve and converge, legacy communications and new integrations with business process applications are challenging enterprise management to change the way end users do business. This will not only affect people within their own organizations, but key processes that involve their business partners and, most importantly, their customers who generate revenue.
Drilling Down To Enterprise UC Requirements
There are three main constituencies within any enterprise organization that need to significantly benefit from implementing UC technologies and services in order to gain their interest and support: They are:
1. Business and operational management – To generate revenue, minimize risks and losses through strategic and tactical business policies, processes, and procedures
2. Internal end users – To perform their different job responsibilities in business processes easily, efficiently and effectively
3. Technology management – To provide flexible, reliable, and secure business process technology tools, network service infrastructure, and support services to for points 1.and 2. (above) at minimal cost.
All three constituencies will be affected, directly or indirectly, by the migration to mobile, multi-modal UC, especially as it affects communication contacts with different types of people involved in high-value, time-sensitive business processes. These can be characterized as:
· Person-to-person contextual contacts (voice calls, multi-modal messaging)
· Person-to process on-demand access to information, automated transactions, and live assistance
· Process-to-person personalized contacts, especially real-time notifications and interactions
· Increasing personalized contact accessibility for all of the above through mobile devices and services
While Business Management will help identify operational work flow problems, requirements, and priorities for UC needs in enterprise business processes, and IT management will establish UC technology implementation plans, integrations, support, administration management and budgets, the third constituency, the end users, are really the most complex and critical elements to satisfy. Not only do enterprise end users have different job responsibilities and contact relationships, but they also have varying work environment needs for both desktop and mobile business contacts. Finally, what happens with the end users will typically affect the performance of most business processes.
More UC Payoffs – Partners, Customers, Inbound vs. Outbound Mobile Self-services
To complicate matters further, enterprise UC must realistically accommodate efficient business contacts outside of the organization as part of high-value business processes, i.e., business partners and customers. UC facilities must therefore be provided not only to support flexible communication contacts (e.g., federated presence) directly between people wherever they may be located, but also directly between people and automated business process applications, regardless of user endpoint device type and modality of interaction. Only then can business process performance be maximized and “human (contact) latency” be minimized across any group of involved end users.
There has always been a big revenue “pony” under customer contact communications, and traditional call center technology has always taken the lead in supporting both live and automated inbound call-handling activities for customer care applications. However, the real-time demands of voice telephony, coupled with the legacy Telephone User Interface (TUI), left much to be desired in terms of the user experience and efficiency of complex self-service applications.
Although on-line interactive application usage on the Web has now far surpassed traditional Interactive Voice Response (IVR) self-services, the two are starting to converge both at the PC desktop and with mobile communication devices. The screen interface provides greater flexibility for complex input and output of information, which the limitations of legacy IVR applications could not even begin to deal with and thus always required immediate access to highly trained live assistance.
Automated outbound contact applications were also hampered by the limitations of telephony-based voice contacts in successfully making person-to-person contacts with a particular individual. Now, with the rapid consumer adoption of personalized, mobile, “smart-phones,” all that is changing, for both business and personal service applications. Proactive Communications Enabled Business Processes (CEBP), coupled with flexible mobile contact accessibility, is now positioned to bring the power of a variety of automated application services plus access to live assistance, when necessary, to individual end users, wherever, whenever needed.
Given these convergence changes, the enterprise market needs better UC-based products and services to replace legacy telephony technologies. For example, it will be inefficient for outbound application notifications to function simply as “Proactive IVR,” since outbound contacts from a business process application will have to capitalize on personalized, mobile “smart-phone” accessibility through mobile UC, not traditional, location-based phone call attempts that rely on the limitations of voice-only interactions.
Instead, consider starting with immediate delivery of a mobile notification message of any kind from a business application service to an end user, followed by the user’s option to access a multimodal portal that offers the recipient choices of automated self-service interaction (voice or online input/output), along with live assistance access options (chat, voice, video). This approach was demonstrated several years ago by Intervoice, since acquired by Convergys. However, the real payoff can now be finally realized from the proliferation of proactive application contacts that will result from the explosion of “smart-phone” usage and “App Store” mobile applications.
What Do You Think?
You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Sprint Network Services For Enterprise UC
Copyright © 2009 Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide
May 12, 2009
Sprint Network Services Put “Meat on The Bones” Of Enterprise UC
Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View
By now, most of the enterprise market understands what UC technology is basically all about (“Why of UC”) – i.e., enabling individual end users to flexibly communicate easily and cost efficiently anywhere and anyhow to do their jobs faster and better. Not only will end users be more productive, but business operations also become more cost efficient and effective. Because UC involves a significant change in handling phone calls within the context of increased mobility, messaging, and online information access, the biggest challenge to enterprise organizations is how to move forward with their migration to UC.
Sprint Nextel’s announcement this week offers a practical shortcut to business organizations to selectively bridge the gap between existing enterprise communications and the missing elements required for UC. Using their “Now Network” facilities, Sprint has teamed with strategic partners to offer new network services for mobile device support, multi-modal IP networking services (wired, wireless), integration with IP Telephony, Unified Messaging, Instant Messaging and presence management.
Connecting Enterprise Applications, Desktops, and Mobile Users
With the increased growth of wireless communications and multimodal “smart-phones,” business process operations can now support any form of contact that an individual end user requires. Not only does this apply to people within an organization, but also to any external business contacts they deal with (business partners, customers) whose communication facilities are outside the control of the enterprise.
While UC flexibility is useful at the desktop, it’s greatest value is when it is combined with the power of mobile accessibility. That is also when users really need the flexibility of choice in communicating with eyes-free, hands free speech, silent screen interactions and text messages, or video interactions. Without the combination of mobile access and choice of communication modality, operational time delays of “human contact latency” can seriously impact high-value business processes and cause missed or delayed revenues, serious financial loss, and even loss of human life.
Such concerns are no longer just about traditional person-to-person contacts. As business processes become more automated and monitor operational workflows, they too need to proactively and selectively notify responsible people of any situations that require awareness, decision-making, or action taking by people. Those people, in turn, therefore need to be as communication-accessible as possible in order to be responsive to such operational situations, especially if they are time critical. That’s where mobility and UC services are needed most.
Mix and Match - Sprint “Now Network” Services Will Connect People, Networks, And Enterprise UC Applications
In Monday’s announcement, Sprint revealed the integration of it’s comprehensive 3G and 4G, SIP-enabled, wired and wireless “Now Network” facilities with UC technologies provided by industry leaders Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco for enterprise-based Instant Messaging, Email, and IP Telephony. Their new service can help close the gap and speed up the migration from legacy PSTN TDM voice applications to IP-based, interoperable UC applications. In addition, Sprint’s UC solution can also open new avenues for enterprise business applications to access and interact with different types of end users, but still be efficiently managed and controlled by individual enterprise operations.
Sprint emphasized its use of SIP trunking over an MPLS network for its IP Telephony (VoIP) service offerings and interoperability with the PSTN network, as well as with enterprise IP Telephony networks. In addition, Sprint will initially provide Mobile Integration to support their subscribers’ Sprint CDMA phones in a Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) business environment. As the smart-phone market continues to explode, we would expect the service to become more open and device independent, as well as support “dual persona” mobile devices. That is where the UC action will really explode for all kinds of communication services and where we expect all network operators to follow Sprint’s lead to compete for mobile subscribers and enterprise applications access.
What Do You Think?
You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Siemens Gets Ready For UC Enterprise Battles
Copyright (C) Unified-View, All Rights Reserved.
April 27, 2009
Siemens Sales Strategies For The New UC Markets
By Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View
Siemens Enterprise Communications Group (SEN Group) new executive team discussed how they are addressing the changing needs of the global UC market that will absorb traditional premise-based telephony. As already reflected by competitive announcements from other leading UC technology providers, such as Avaya’s Aura, the Siemens announcement highlighted the need to support existing telephony investments while offering new “open,” IP-based application software for UC.
Key changes in marketing strategies mentioned by CEO James O’Neill and President of Sales Mark Vayda included the following:
Siemens is aggressively reorganizing its sales and marketing organization with new incentives and new staff to support the shift to software, services, and partnering strategies that UC implementations will require. Both O’Neill and Vayda lay claim to their successful experience in the software and services business with Oracle Corporation.
The challenge of migrating from legacy telephony to UC, IP Telephony, and mobile technologies will be the same for the entire industry, The question is how quickly will the technology and service providers get their acts together and offer flexible and future-proof solutions to meet many different customer needs.
What Do You Think?
Contact me at artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360
April 27, 2009
Siemens Sales Strategies For The New UC Markets
By Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View
Siemens Enterprise Communications Group (SEN Group) new executive team discussed how they are addressing the changing needs of the global UC market that will absorb traditional premise-based telephony. As already reflected by competitive announcements from other leading UC technology providers, such as Avaya’s Aura, the Siemens announcement highlighted the need to support existing telephony investments while offering new “open,” IP-based application software for UC.
Key changes in marketing strategies mentioned by CEO James O’Neill and President of Sales Mark Vayda included the following:
- Global approach to sales and marketing
- Exploit “Cloud Computing” – Hosted/Managed services
- Software based, real-time telephony applications expertise
- Targeting key vertical markets such as Government, Health care, Education, Utilities, in major geographical area
- Shift of emphasis to channel-based sales, coupled with strategic direct sales activities
- Channels to include System Integrators, Carriers, VARs, Service Providers, etc.
- Device independence for end users (wired, wireless)
Siemens is aggressively reorganizing its sales and marketing organization with new incentives and new staff to support the shift to software, services, and partnering strategies that UC implementations will require. Both O’Neill and Vayda lay claim to their successful experience in the software and services business with Oracle Corporation.
The challenge of migrating from legacy telephony to UC, IP Telephony, and mobile technologies will be the same for the entire industry, The question is how quickly will the technology and service providers get their acts together and offer flexible and future-proof solutions to meet many different customer needs.
What Do You Think?
Contact me at artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360
Sunday, April 05, 2009
UC And The Future of Desktop Telephony
Copyright © 2009 Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide
April 5, 2009
The Real Message From VoiceCon – How To Prepare For Enterprise Desktop Telephony “End-of-Life”
Unfortunately, a fractured foot kept me from attending the Spring VoiceCon show as planned, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t see and hear the important messages that were delivered there. Needless to say, from a “vision” perspective, those messages are no real surprise any more. What we are finally seeing are practical products and services that will help enterprise IT to start selectively planning and delivering IP Telephony and UC applications, based upon real demand from both individual end users and specific, high-value business processes.
There is no question about where new telephony technology (IP Telephony) is going, from both a business and consumer (customer) user perspective. It will become an integrated UC application to make voice contact with people more flexible and efficient, “anywhere, any time, any way.” UC, in turn, will be integrated with all aspects of information access and information exchange, often referred to as “collaboration.” While direct access to information has become increasingly easy with web search facilities and portals, making real-time contact with people still remains a challenge that UC and presence management technology is helping to simplify.
To attain such objectives:
·IP telephony functions will be software-driven and personalized
·IP telephony usage will be location, device and network independent
·UC device (smartphone, softphone) interfaces will exploit screen, keyboard, and speech interfaces instead of the legacy Touch-Tone keypad. This will enable person-to-person communications to be device-independent, multi-modal, cross-media, and trans-modal (switching between real-time contacts and messaging)
·UC will facilitate both person-to-person and process (application)-to-person contact initiation, thus making business processes more proactive (via CEBP integrations), flexible, and efficient for real-time operational performance management
The real challenge to enterprise IT management or third-party support services is how they should be migrating from current legacy telephony technology to the new and more complex UC-IP Telephony world of the future.
The “End of Life” Strategy of UC Implementation Planning
Unfortunately, every level of telephony communication technology will be affected by the convergence and integration requirements of UC. This means that changing legacy architectures, products, and old telecom perspectives will be necessary to deal with all the changes that will be evolving, even if the new technology were free! So the main message today from vendors attacking the upcoming UC market is to start the migration selectively with existing applications that can be updated with minimal disruption and costs. In addition, they will all offer expertise and consulting services to help inexperienced IT organizations plan and cost justify practical implementations.
With today’s economy forcing everyone to control technology spending as much as possible, the potential of lower costs and increased people/process productivity may not be enough to justify customer UC movement. This is particularly true when there is not enough “demand” from Line of Business management or individual end users of the technology who just may not be aware of the benefits they will gain from UC (UC-B, UC-U).
However, what is starting to force the issue of moving forward with UC, is the growing need to replace existing “end-of-life” enterprise technologies that are not only getting more expensive to maintain, but cannot be simply replaced with old technology. Needless to say, everything that is old and TDM telephony based, falls into this category, including desktop telephones, PBXs, TDM trunking, key systems, voice mail systems, call center systems, etc.
Growing use of personalized, mobile phones for increased accessibility is adding another driver for the need for UC flexibility. Throw in the fact that mobile and desktop smartphones, as well as PC-based softphones, can minimize the need to buy traditional and limited desktop phones, and you have a new ballgame for UC implementation planning. What is also complicating matters for enterprise IP Telephony planning perhaps even more, is the fact that IP-based, hosted/ managed services offer new implementation alternatives as opposed to traditional premise-based ownership.
Bottom Line For Enterprise IT In UC Planning
They can’t really do it by themselves! They will need to find the new requirements for UC applications and the business priorities for those requirements, before they can even start looking at the new UC products and services that are being announced daily.
What will also make it hard for the move to IP telephony and UC is that UC is not just about voice telephony, and the “elephants in the room” already are text messaging technologies (email, IM, SMS) and the myriad of online business process applications that are ready to exploit CEPB (communications enabled business process) capabilities to initiate automated notifications or contextual person-to-person telephone contacts. The aggressive presence of Microsoft and IBM at VoiceCon underscored their interest in enterprise UC/IP Telephony migrations.
So, it is interesting to see the kind of long-overdue architectural changes that leading telephony providers like Avaya are making to migrate their customers to IP Telephony in the UC marketplace. Open, real-time communication application software, rather than just desktop hardware, along with integrations with business process applications is obviously the new focus of their UC game. But it’s also obvious that they can’t just sell telephone systems separately anymore, so look for more teamwork between the operating systems providers, the desktop application providers, and the communication providers.
Which vendor will lead the UC migration? Who knows!
What Do You Think?
You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or .
April 5, 2009
The Real Message From VoiceCon – How To Prepare For Enterprise Desktop Telephony “End-of-Life”
Unfortunately, a fractured foot kept me from attending the Spring VoiceCon show as planned, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t see and hear the important messages that were delivered there. Needless to say, from a “vision” perspective, those messages are no real surprise any more. What we are finally seeing are practical products and services that will help enterprise IT to start selectively planning and delivering IP Telephony and UC applications, based upon real demand from both individual end users and specific, high-value business processes.
There is no question about where new telephony technology (IP Telephony) is going, from both a business and consumer (customer) user perspective. It will become an integrated UC application to make voice contact with people more flexible and efficient, “anywhere, any time, any way.” UC, in turn, will be integrated with all aspects of information access and information exchange, often referred to as “collaboration.” While direct access to information has become increasingly easy with web search facilities and portals, making real-time contact with people still remains a challenge that UC and presence management technology is helping to simplify.
To attain such objectives:
·IP telephony functions will be software-driven and personalized
·IP telephony usage will be location, device and network independent
·UC device (smartphone, softphone) interfaces will exploit screen, keyboard, and speech interfaces instead of the legacy Touch-Tone keypad. This will enable person-to-person communications to be device-independent, multi-modal, cross-media, and trans-modal (switching between real-time contacts and messaging)
·UC will facilitate both person-to-person and process (application)-to-person contact initiation, thus making business processes more proactive (via CEBP integrations), flexible, and efficient for real-time operational performance management
The real challenge to enterprise IT management or third-party support services is how they should be migrating from current legacy telephony technology to the new and more complex UC-IP Telephony world of the future.
The “End of Life” Strategy of UC Implementation Planning
Unfortunately, every level of telephony communication technology will be affected by the convergence and integration requirements of UC. This means that changing legacy architectures, products, and old telecom perspectives will be necessary to deal with all the changes that will be evolving, even if the new technology were free! So the main message today from vendors attacking the upcoming UC market is to start the migration selectively with existing applications that can be updated with minimal disruption and costs. In addition, they will all offer expertise and consulting services to help inexperienced IT organizations plan and cost justify practical implementations.
With today’s economy forcing everyone to control technology spending as much as possible, the potential of lower costs and increased people/process productivity may not be enough to justify customer UC movement. This is particularly true when there is not enough “demand” from Line of Business management or individual end users of the technology who just may not be aware of the benefits they will gain from UC (UC-B, UC-U).
However, what is starting to force the issue of moving forward with UC, is the growing need to replace existing “end-of-life” enterprise technologies that are not only getting more expensive to maintain, but cannot be simply replaced with old technology. Needless to say, everything that is old and TDM telephony based, falls into this category, including desktop telephones, PBXs, TDM trunking, key systems, voice mail systems, call center systems, etc.
Growing use of personalized, mobile phones for increased accessibility is adding another driver for the need for UC flexibility. Throw in the fact that mobile and desktop smartphones, as well as PC-based softphones, can minimize the need to buy traditional and limited desktop phones, and you have a new ballgame for UC implementation planning. What is also complicating matters for enterprise IP Telephony planning perhaps even more, is the fact that IP-based, hosted/ managed services offer new implementation alternatives as opposed to traditional premise-based ownership.
Bottom Line For Enterprise IT In UC Planning
They can’t really do it by themselves! They will need to find the new requirements for UC applications and the business priorities for those requirements, before they can even start looking at the new UC products and services that are being announced daily.
What will also make it hard for the move to IP telephony and UC is that UC is not just about voice telephony, and the “elephants in the room” already are text messaging technologies (email, IM, SMS) and the myriad of online business process applications that are ready to exploit CEPB (communications enabled business process) capabilities to initiate automated notifications or contextual person-to-person telephone contacts. The aggressive presence of Microsoft and IBM at VoiceCon underscored their interest in enterprise UC/IP Telephony migrations.
So, it is interesting to see the kind of long-overdue architectural changes that leading telephony providers like Avaya are making to migrate their customers to IP Telephony in the UC marketplace. Open, real-time communication application software, rather than just desktop hardware, along with integrations with business process applications is obviously the new focus of their UC game. But it’s also obvious that they can’t just sell telephone systems separately anymore, so look for more teamwork between the operating systems providers, the desktop application providers, and the communication providers.
Which vendor will lead the UC migration? Who knows!
What Do You Think?
You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or .
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Drilling Down On UC Productivity
Copyright © 2009 Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide
March 24, 2009
UC Productivity , People "Accessibility”, and the Death of “Dumb” Touch-Tone Telephones
The basic objective of business communications is to improve accessibility to both people and information. The Internet and the World Wide Web has already made tremendous inroads in providing “virtualized” search and access to information, so the remaining challenge is to maximize similar ease of access to people. That is the fundamental objective of unified communications (UC), whether it is “person-to-person” or (automated) “process-to-person.” Conversational voice telephony is not going to disappear from the UC picture, in fact it may increase significantly because it may become easier. However, how people will be initiating and responding to phone contacts will certainly be changing.
The birth pains of UC, however, are deeply entwined with the migration of legacy, voice-centric TDM telephony to converged IP-based telephony and the media flexibility of multi-modal “smart-phones.” Disruptive changes have started taking place at all layers of business communication technology and usage, ranging from wired and wireless network infrastructures to “cloud-based” communication applications to new forms of end point communication devices. As UC-based services extend more flexible communications access beyond the boundaries of location, organization, networks, and devices, they have started to threaten the legacy telephony technologies of both enterprise organizations and service providers.
Communication “Availability” vs. “Accessibility”
While presence-based “availability” has been a differentiating factor in supporting the productivity benefits of UC for “person-to-person” contacts, it should not be confused with contact “accessibility.” Being “accessible” doesn’t necessarily mean being “available” for a voice conversation, but the reverse is also true - being “available” doesn’t necessarily mean being “accessible.”
To have a real-time interaction with a person, it will be necessary for that person to be both “available” and “accessible.” On the other hand, it will be sufficient to be just “accessible” to communicate via all forms of messaging. As messaging activity increasingly dominates business and social contact activities, the need to maximize individual user “accessibility” via more flexible endpoint devices will become universal.
Maximizing People “Accessibility” With Mobile, Multi-modal Devices
What triggered this article is the acknowledgement in the industry press that personalized, multi-modal mobility and “smart phones” will take over business communications the same way it is taking over the consumer market. What that means is that the business telephone, as we have long known it, is going to change dramatically into a flexible, multimodal, computerized device that can accommodate more than voice conversations. Not only will such devices allow efficient visual access to information from web-based portals, but they will also allow telephony functions to integrate “contextually” and seamlessly with all forms of screen-based text messaging and business applications.
It is therefore necessary for enterprise organizations to “cut to the chase” and start planning and prioritizing how their existing telephony technologies must slowly change to maximize the operational business benefits of UC and how such changes will include prioritizing the different UC needs of individual “end users.” The flexibility of mobile or desktop “smart-phones” coupled with UC, can maximize individual end user accessibility and productivity, as well as associated business process performance. Depending upon the contact needs of specific end users, however, the UC ROI “bottom line” will be heavily dependent upon the replacement of “dumb,” voice-only telephones as a primary communication device wherever they are used!
The confusion for IT management that has long surrounded the definition of “unified communications” because of the convergence of its different technology components is now also hitting the definition of mobile “smart phones” (Read Matt Hamblen's post at: http://www.infoworld.com/news/feeds/09/03/16/Cell-phone--smartphone----whats-the-difference.html?source=gs)
See also what is now being labeled as “media phones” for the wired desktop. The software elements of “smart-phones” are like PCs and laptops, ranging from mobile operating systems to software clients to a variety of business and consumer applications that must support different user interface options and device form factors. All of this makes the choice of devices more personalized and complex, rather than a “one-size fits all” that an enterprise could supply in the past to employees.
What Does That Mean To Enterprise IT?
While individual end users and their job responsibilities will determine what endpoint devices they will carry with them for all their person-to-person communication needs, there will still be other enterprise responsibilities that IT will have to fulfill. These will include the need to cost-effectively support all business communication activities, including business “process-to-person” contacts and information access.
For openers, all forms of communications will generate traffic that needs to be supported by adequate broadband network capacity, both wired and wireless. Because of mobile access and contacts with customers or business partners, such connections will extend beyond the domain of enterprise controlled private networks. On the other hand, automated business process application contacts with end users will require appropriate information access security and integrations between communication applications, better known as Communications Enabled Business Processes (CEBP).
Given the dynamic flexibility of UC-based contacts, usage traffic will vary dynamically from the siloed email and telephone traffic of the past. This will make projections of UC traffic and private network needs difficult to specify in advance, but is especially important for estimating cost savings that can be derived from usage-based hosted UC services.
When it comes to supplying mobile endpoint communication devices, the enterprise will need to shift to supplying business client software, not hardware, for devices that will accommodate both personal/consumer needs and secure business process applications. The term “Dual Persona” has been used to describe this capability for a single device to manage all forms of contact (incoming and outgoing) for a single individual user. This should help support the challenge of “multitasking” between applications, between people relationships, and between job and personal responsibilities.
“Smart-phone” Flexibility and End User Productivity – UC-U = UC-I + UC-R
When it comes to measuring the “soft” user productivity ROI of UC, which looks at individual end user time saved because of ease and speed of communicating, the term “UC-U” has been created. This is differentiated from the business process ROI of “UC-B,” which looks at the total performance of a business process task in terms of elapsed time and quality, and is dependent to some extent on UC-U benefits that can be very dependent upon endpoint device UC flexibility that mobile and desktop “smart-phones” can provide.
But we really must look at UC-U from the two user roles in communications, the “initiator” and the “recipient/respondent” roles. Each role has its functional needs that must be supported by flexible application, network, and device capabilities to achieve end-to-end efficiency and effectiveness. So, when evaluating all the pieces in a UC solution or service, the productivity benefit for contact initiation (UC-I) should be evaluated separately from contact reception/response (UC-R). While most people will need both kinds of capabilities at different times, there will always be business processes where the value of one will be more important than the other. More significantly, it will be necessary to monitor communication activities to insure that end users exploit each type of capability properly to maximize both UC-U and UC-B.
What Do You Think?
You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360.
March 24, 2009
UC Productivity , People "Accessibility”, and the Death of “Dumb” Touch-Tone Telephones
The basic objective of business communications is to improve accessibility to both people and information. The Internet and the World Wide Web has already made tremendous inroads in providing “virtualized” search and access to information, so the remaining challenge is to maximize similar ease of access to people. That is the fundamental objective of unified communications (UC), whether it is “person-to-person” or (automated) “process-to-person.” Conversational voice telephony is not going to disappear from the UC picture, in fact it may increase significantly because it may become easier. However, how people will be initiating and responding to phone contacts will certainly be changing.
The birth pains of UC, however, are deeply entwined with the migration of legacy, voice-centric TDM telephony to converged IP-based telephony and the media flexibility of multi-modal “smart-phones.” Disruptive changes have started taking place at all layers of business communication technology and usage, ranging from wired and wireless network infrastructures to “cloud-based” communication applications to new forms of end point communication devices. As UC-based services extend more flexible communications access beyond the boundaries of location, organization, networks, and devices, they have started to threaten the legacy telephony technologies of both enterprise organizations and service providers.
Communication “Availability” vs. “Accessibility”
While presence-based “availability” has been a differentiating factor in supporting the productivity benefits of UC for “person-to-person” contacts, it should not be confused with contact “accessibility.” Being “accessible” doesn’t necessarily mean being “available” for a voice conversation, but the reverse is also true - being “available” doesn’t necessarily mean being “accessible.”
To have a real-time interaction with a person, it will be necessary for that person to be both “available” and “accessible.” On the other hand, it will be sufficient to be just “accessible” to communicate via all forms of messaging. As messaging activity increasingly dominates business and social contact activities, the need to maximize individual user “accessibility” via more flexible endpoint devices will become universal.
Maximizing People “Accessibility” With Mobile, Multi-modal Devices
What triggered this article is the acknowledgement in the industry press that personalized, multi-modal mobility and “smart phones” will take over business communications the same way it is taking over the consumer market. What that means is that the business telephone, as we have long known it, is going to change dramatically into a flexible, multimodal, computerized device that can accommodate more than voice conversations. Not only will such devices allow efficient visual access to information from web-based portals, but they will also allow telephony functions to integrate “contextually” and seamlessly with all forms of screen-based text messaging and business applications.
It is therefore necessary for enterprise organizations to “cut to the chase” and start planning and prioritizing how their existing telephony technologies must slowly change to maximize the operational business benefits of UC and how such changes will include prioritizing the different UC needs of individual “end users.” The flexibility of mobile or desktop “smart-phones” coupled with UC, can maximize individual end user accessibility and productivity, as well as associated business process performance. Depending upon the contact needs of specific end users, however, the UC ROI “bottom line” will be heavily dependent upon the replacement of “dumb,” voice-only telephones as a primary communication device wherever they are used!
The confusion for IT management that has long surrounded the definition of “unified communications” because of the convergence of its different technology components is now also hitting the definition of mobile “smart phones” (Read Matt Hamblen's post at: http://www.infoworld.com/news/feeds/09/03/16/Cell-phone--smartphone----whats-the-difference.html?source=gs)
See also what is now being labeled as “media phones” for the wired desktop. The software elements of “smart-phones” are like PCs and laptops, ranging from mobile operating systems to software clients to a variety of business and consumer applications that must support different user interface options and device form factors. All of this makes the choice of devices more personalized and complex, rather than a “one-size fits all” that an enterprise could supply in the past to employees.
What Does That Mean To Enterprise IT?
While individual end users and their job responsibilities will determine what endpoint devices they will carry with them for all their person-to-person communication needs, there will still be other enterprise responsibilities that IT will have to fulfill. These will include the need to cost-effectively support all business communication activities, including business “process-to-person” contacts and information access.
For openers, all forms of communications will generate traffic that needs to be supported by adequate broadband network capacity, both wired and wireless. Because of mobile access and contacts with customers or business partners, such connections will extend beyond the domain of enterprise controlled private networks. On the other hand, automated business process application contacts with end users will require appropriate information access security and integrations between communication applications, better known as Communications Enabled Business Processes (CEBP).
Given the dynamic flexibility of UC-based contacts, usage traffic will vary dynamically from the siloed email and telephone traffic of the past. This will make projections of UC traffic and private network needs difficult to specify in advance, but is especially important for estimating cost savings that can be derived from usage-based hosted UC services.
When it comes to supplying mobile endpoint communication devices, the enterprise will need to shift to supplying business client software, not hardware, for devices that will accommodate both personal/consumer needs and secure business process applications. The term “Dual Persona” has been used to describe this capability for a single device to manage all forms of contact (incoming and outgoing) for a single individual user. This should help support the challenge of “multitasking” between applications, between people relationships, and between job and personal responsibilities.
“Smart-phone” Flexibility and End User Productivity – UC-U = UC-I + UC-R
When it comes to measuring the “soft” user productivity ROI of UC, which looks at individual end user time saved because of ease and speed of communicating, the term “UC-U” has been created. This is differentiated from the business process ROI of “UC-B,” which looks at the total performance of a business process task in terms of elapsed time and quality, and is dependent to some extent on UC-U benefits that can be very dependent upon endpoint device UC flexibility that mobile and desktop “smart-phones” can provide.
But we really must look at UC-U from the two user roles in communications, the “initiator” and the “recipient/respondent” roles. Each role has its functional needs that must be supported by flexible application, network, and device capabilities to achieve end-to-end efficiency and effectiveness. So, when evaluating all the pieces in a UC solution or service, the productivity benefit for contact initiation (UC-I) should be evaluated separately from contact reception/response (UC-R). While most people will need both kinds of capabilities at different times, there will always be business processes where the value of one will be more important than the other. More significantly, it will be necessary to monitor communication activities to insure that end users exploit each type of capability properly to maximize both UC-U and UC-B.
What Do You Think?
You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360.
Monday, March 02, 2009
End User Demand for Business UC? – It’s the Same for Any Size Business
Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View
As I have frequently pointed out, UC is really all about making timely and flexible contact with people, who are not always accessible or “available” in real time. Business contacts may be both traditional “person-to-person” contacts, as well as “process-to-person” contacts, where automated business application services proactively “notify” (deliver messages) to individual end users/subscribers about something that is important and time-sensitive specifically for them.
In either case, however, the ability of a recipient to be contacted more quickly because of mobile accessibility and/or a flexible choice of communication modalities, makes UC technology useful for both contact initiators and recipients, as well as for the performance of business processes that depend on people to take timely actions.
Up till now, there has been a primary focus by enterprise technology providers on UC infrastructure as a means of reducing support costs, TCO, etc., which is of particular interest to IT management, but not to individual end users or even to business management (LOB) in any size enterprise. While budgets and lower costs are important for management and implementation planning, they are not the real strategic objective for business operations. As I have often questioned, “If you got UC technology for free, what would you do with it?”
UC Surveys Starting To Look At Individual End User Needs
In the past year, there has been a realization that individual business users are really key beneficiaries of UC capabilities, but their communication needs and benefits are not identical. And it is not just about voice communications, either! That means UC implementation planning must be geared selectively to high-value needs of end users (“UC-U”), that, in turn, will also pay off most to the business ROI (“UC-B”). What should be recognized here is that if individual end user needs are not taken care of first, the business processes that depend on those users will suffer, because UC capabilities will not be adopted and exploited effectively.
From that perspective of end user needs as either a contact initiator or contact recipient in the performance of a business process, the size of an organization makes little difference in requirements for those person-to-person or process-to-person communication needs. However, the more individual end users that can significantly benefit from UC capabilities in doing their jobs, the greater the pay off for both the UC-U and UC-B aspects of UC investment ROI.
Siemens started looking at such end user UC needs, by asking them about common communication “pain points” that can be minimized or eliminated by UC technologies. It’s not that what such “pain points” will be a surprise, but rather to understand the relative impact on business process performance.
However, United Business Media did a similar study earlier last year, with somewhat different results, and CMP Media’s bMighty Publisher/Editor, Frederick Paul, compared the results in a bMighty article referenced in his blog. In addition, UC Strategies colleague, Marty Parker, also points out that the real challenge for business organizations is to help do something about those communication “pain point” problems.
Now that the spotlight is upon individual end users, regardless of where they work, it is clear that UC implementation has to help move traditional voice telephony into the converged domain of “virtual” and mobile IP communications, rather than the traditional wired, premise-based TDM networks. This change will also impact the carrier service providers, who have to let go of their “walled gardens” to support the mobile service application needs of both their subscribers (consumers) and business organizations. (More on that later.)
What Do You Think?
You can contact me at artr@ix.netcom.com or .
Copyright (C) Unified-View, All Rights Reserved.
As I have frequently pointed out, UC is really all about making timely and flexible contact with people, who are not always accessible or “available” in real time. Business contacts may be both traditional “person-to-person” contacts, as well as “process-to-person” contacts, where automated business application services proactively “notify” (deliver messages) to individual end users/subscribers about something that is important and time-sensitive specifically for them.
In either case, however, the ability of a recipient to be contacted more quickly because of mobile accessibility and/or a flexible choice of communication modalities, makes UC technology useful for both contact initiators and recipients, as well as for the performance of business processes that depend on people to take timely actions.
Up till now, there has been a primary focus by enterprise technology providers on UC infrastructure as a means of reducing support costs, TCO, etc., which is of particular interest to IT management, but not to individual end users or even to business management (LOB) in any size enterprise. While budgets and lower costs are important for management and implementation planning, they are not the real strategic objective for business operations. As I have often questioned, “If you got UC technology for free, what would you do with it?”
UC Surveys Starting To Look At Individual End User Needs
In the past year, there has been a realization that individual business users are really key beneficiaries of UC capabilities, but their communication needs and benefits are not identical. And it is not just about voice communications, either! That means UC implementation planning must be geared selectively to high-value needs of end users (“UC-U”), that, in turn, will also pay off most to the business ROI (“UC-B”). What should be recognized here is that if individual end user needs are not taken care of first, the business processes that depend on those users will suffer, because UC capabilities will not be adopted and exploited effectively.
From that perspective of end user needs as either a contact initiator or contact recipient in the performance of a business process, the size of an organization makes little difference in requirements for those person-to-person or process-to-person communication needs. However, the more individual end users that can significantly benefit from UC capabilities in doing their jobs, the greater the pay off for both the UC-U and UC-B aspects of UC investment ROI.
Siemens started looking at such end user UC needs, by asking them about common communication “pain points” that can be minimized or eliminated by UC technologies. It’s not that what such “pain points” will be a surprise, but rather to understand the relative impact on business process performance.
However, United Business Media did a similar study earlier last year, with somewhat different results, and CMP Media’s bMighty Publisher/Editor, Frederick Paul, compared the results in a bMighty article referenced in his blog. In addition, UC Strategies colleague, Marty Parker, also points out that the real challenge for business organizations is to help do something about those communication “pain point” problems.
Now that the spotlight is upon individual end users, regardless of where they work, it is clear that UC implementation has to help move traditional voice telephony into the converged domain of “virtual” and mobile IP communications, rather than the traditional wired, premise-based TDM networks. This change will also impact the carrier service providers, who have to let go of their “walled gardens” to support the mobile service application needs of both their subscribers (consumers) and business organizations. (More on that later.)
What Do You Think?
You can contact me at artr@ix.netcom.com or .
Copyright (C) Unified-View, All Rights Reserved.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
New Response Service For Text Message Recipients
Copyright © 2009 Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide
January 20, 2009
UM/UC Gets Another Boost From SpinVox’s “VoxLinks”
Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View
Messaging is an increasingly important component of unified communications (UC) for a number of practical reasons, including the fact that text messaging has become “real-time” through Instant Messaging and mobile SMS, but also because text messages are much more manageable, self-documenting, and resource-efficient than voice messages. Such benefits contribute to the goals of UC to minimize human latency in business communications through individual end user productivity (UC-U) and thereby also increase associated business process efficiencies (UC-B).
However, typing text message input has always been slow and error prone and the holy grail of business messaging has been to use the convenience and efficiency of voice for message input, but the efficiencies of text for message retrieval and management. The first step in this direction took place a couple of years ago when SpinVox, among others, offered a telephone answering service that allowed callers to leave traditional voice messages, but enabled the recipients to retrieve those messages in text form.
What Message Recipients Really Need
There are really two kinds of actions that message recipients have to take when they get notification of a new message:
1. Retrieve the message
2. Respond to the message
Both actions need flexibility to meet individual user needs for handling different kinds of messages and that’s where the power of unified messaging (UM) comes into play for UC. Recipients need to retrieve messages in any form that is convenient for them at the moment, especially when they are mobile, and they also need to respond/reply in any modality that is appropriate. If most people are like me, we respond immediately whenever possible, either to satisfy the time needs of other people as soon as possible or simply because we might forget about it.
Until recently, enterprise “unified messaging” technologies (UM) supported the capability for flexible message retrieval by primarily converting text messages to voice for notification and delivery by a voicemail system. Voice messages were also made a bit more manageable by using an email screen interface for retrieval, but the actual voice message retrieval and voice response had to be supported through a telephone and voicemail system.
SpinVox’s “VoxLinks” Cross-media Message Service For Recipients
SpinVox’s new service addresses the practical needs of the mobile user as a recipient to reply/respond to SMS text messages in voice. Expanding upon the success of it’s original voice-to-text-messaging service offered through wireless carriers, and more recently through enterprise providers like Avaya, VoxLinks provides any transcribed voice message that is delivered by SMS, with a “click-to-reply” voice option, as well as a “click-to-listen” option to hear the original voice message that was transcribed to the received text message. Now recipients can “Have their cake and eat it too!”
SpinVox is planning to bring speech recognition to messaging technologies to provide a variety of public services for mobile users. This should fit in nicely with UC service requirements for “click-to-call” and federated telephony presence management, as well as provide speech interfaces for mobile business applications. The latter should enable speech input to mesh efficiently with visual outputs for mobile devices. However, the proposed services will need to support regulatory compliance for business use and that is something that has not (yet) been publicized. So, stay tuned!
What Do You Think?
You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360.
Monday, January 19, 2009
UC and Nortel Bankruptcy
Copyright (C) Unified-View, All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2009 Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide
January 19, 2009
Did Nortel’s Bankruptcy Get Your Attention For Enterprise UC?
Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View
The enterprise telephony pundits are all putting their spin on the news that industry leader, Nortel, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. They all say that this is no surprise and it’s not just because Nortel made mistakes.
I also mentioned the first published rumble from Nortel in early December in a comment I wrote to an article on UC. (See what I wrote below. *) Because enterprise telephony technology is being integrated and absorbed into UC and multimodal mobile services are rapidly become available to consumers, the traditional telephony piece parts (endpoint devices, TDM networks, hardware switches, voice applications) will no longer be locked into those premise-based hardware/software solutions that the telecom industry has traditionally served up to the business market.
Blair Pleasant (at UC Strategies.com) took a great stab at trying to clear up the confusion that surrounds the fundamental concepts of “unified communications.” For the record, my own perspective has always focused on benefits for the individual end users of communication technology, which includes:
· Ease of use of endpoint communication devices
· Flexible and efficient modes of contact with people (who can’t always be available or accessible)
· Personalized manageability of all contact activities that are location and device independent
· Reasonable cost effectiveness
Whether for personal (consumer) usage or for business job responsibilities, without those benefits, UC technology will never gain user acceptance and enterprise implementations will never take off or pay off for business process efficiency!
Different Enterprise Constituencies and UC Perspectives
(* Comment on article “W ill the REAL Definition of UC Please Stand Up!”) )
Part of the problem of defining UC rests with the different constituencies involved with the use of UC capabilities. End users don't care about infrastructure requirements, only functionality and ease of use. Business management are primarily concerned with business process performance and operational costs. IT is mainly concerned with implementation and support costs for operational capacity, reliability, and security for network and server infrastructures, satisfying various end user needs and business management's application needs, and managing (control) over what they are responsible for, including software clients on end user endpoint devices.
What UC is changing the most is what Blair highlighted, the role of voice telephony. Not only is traditional telephony importance downshifting to visual interfaces and text content, but the traditional TDM network infrastructure and how it is managed is changing as well (IP telephony, VoIP, wireless mobility).
As Blair mentioned, the latter is having a drastic effect on enterprise telecom, telephone system providers, and the public service providers (carriers). Needless to say, the sales and support channels for all these providers will also be greatly impacted in who they represent and how they will do business with their clients.
Presence - Don’t Confuse Availability With Accessibility!
The one point I would want to clarify is the role of “presence management.” Availability status, from a contact initiation perspective, is primarily needed only for real-time connections, i.e., phone calls, IM, and conferencing. The increasing roles of asynchronous messaging and immediate message delivery (SMS) don't really require such information to be made available to senders. Message originators should be able to send messages whenever they need to, in whatever medium is convenient, and with any type of device, while recipients should have the same flexibility for controlling message delivery, retrieval and responses.
The reliability of location-independent message delivery (plus it's informational attachments) made email equally important with phone calls for business users in a study I reported upon over two years ago. At that time, the study didn't consider IM, so that would add another chunk of communication activity taken out of voice telephony's future role in business communications.
Voice conversations will always remain very important to both personal and business contacts, but the inefficiencies of ad hoc, "blind" call attempts that waste the caller's time can now shift to more efficient, "contextual" ways of initiating a successful call. That is where new federated presence technology will pay off, primarily to contact initiators, both on a person/application-to-person basis, or on a person-to-anyone-who-is- qualified-and-available basis (e.g., live assistance to a customer or any end user).
Changing Enterprise Responsibilities for UC Services/
The migration from current telephony investments that still work presents several challenges to enterprise organizations, primarily about what communication services they should be responsible for, what do they need to change first, who needs those changes, and how should they go about making such changes. I think it is getting very obvious that from an end user perspective, it will start with mobile devices for internal users, business partners, and customers who are involved with high-value business processes.
Mobility has always been the driving force of user demand for the flexibility that UC offers, rather than the desktop. So, to start with what all end users really need most from UC, just look at the role that the enterprise will play in supporting all the new "smart phones' that end users will bring to their work environment and that customers will start using to interact with enterprise portals and customer care staff. Desktop UC is "nice-to-have," but mobile UC will be "got-to-have!"
As Blair pointed out, the traditional telephony system and service providers are quickly trying to shift product gears to support the changing role of location-based, proprietary hardware and software telephony to open, software-based, device-independent UC and mobility.
Today's report that Nortel is considering bankruptcy possibilities is an indication that supporting Microsoft's UC strategies may not have done enough for their future survival. We are still watching how the other leading premise-based, business telephony (PBX) providers are changing (Avaya, Cisco, Siemens, Mitel, Alcatel-Lucent, etc.) vs. the enterprise premise-based email and IM technology providers (Microsoft, IBM), vs. what the hosted communication service providers are now able to offer.
Since UC covers all the pieces of business communication, including integration with business process applications (CEBP), it will be most interesting to see who ends up doing the business process consulting, solution selling, and technology infrastructure installation and support for the different UC components to fit various individual enterprise migration needs. Look for “UC Teams” of technology and service providers to be required to do the job of UC strategic planning and implementations.
What Do You Think?
You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or .
Monday, January 05, 2009
UC and Tradeshows
Copyright © 2009 Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide
January 5, 2009
UC and The Future of Tradeshows
Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View
It is interesting to see how the big industry players are having an impact on UC evolution, directly or indirectly, and how UC will, in turn, impact how we do business. Apple made a big move when it introduced the iPhone to support consumer UC (although they didn’t say “UC”). They quickly followed up with additional capabilities for business users as well.
Now, Apple seems to be taking the lead in changing the future role of traditional, location-based, shared trade shows and conferences to reach customers. I think UC will play an important role in this trend and, most particularly for the UC market itself. (We do have to “Practice what we preach!”) If you think about it, UC is all about supporting communication needs of individual users "anywhere, any time, anyhow." That includes person-to-person" contacts as well as information delivery to people from business process applications (CEBP). The following are some of my comments to the discussion about the “Death of Tradeshows.”
The “Anywhere” Is Key To “Virtual” Audiences
The "anywhere" is perhaps the biggest change Mobile UC brings to both personal and business communications, because it means that people don't have to be in an "office," at "home," or at a particular location to do their jobs, get information, or make contact with people in any modality they wish.
The "any time" factor, however, must still be managed, because people don't have unlimited time and have different individual priorities and deadlines to meet. That makes presence-based "availability" and "accessibility" key factors for real-time contacts in the UC game.
So, what are trade shows or conferences all about? A place to make contacts and get information! Well, guess what? They just don't always have to be location-based activities any more. The old ploy of time-consuming travel to conferences at enticing, but expensive, plush resorts is going to diminish, along with overloading conferences with so many concurrent presentations and events to maximize audience size, that it is impossible to do anything efficiently.
You might say conferences are a useful way to participate in a presentation, discussion, or round table. Well, there too, it doesn't mean you have to be physically present to do so. In fact, real-time discussions may be less useful than threaded exchanges to allow more thoughtful interactions at the convenience of interested participants.
Perhaps the only justification for location-based presence is where there has to be physical hands-on to a product, say, for an automobile. Otherwise, person-to-person contacts, information access, and demonstrations of business process applications can all be done on an individually personalized basis, remotely, and at any time that is convenient for the customer.
“Virtual” Sessions – Real-time or On demand
I personally started to add "virtual" sessions to existing conferences back in 1995. This allowed remote speakers and audience members to participate selectively in real-time. In one event, I had only 20 people in the room, including a panel of speakers, while over 300 were conferenced in. (Today, that's no big deal!)
Recording these virtual activities enable access to such events after the fact. The bottom line is that "virtual" online sessions expand the scope of participation significantly and at much less cost.
UC technology includes real time voice and video conferencing applications, in addition to person-to-person contacts in any mode required by the individual communicants. By scheduling such events, you can maximize real-time participation and interactions from any location. However, when does it really have to be real time when people are now accessible all the time with asynchronous communications (messaging) and "click-to-contact" for any real time needs?
With the web, our increasingly global environment and mobile/portable devices, many location-based business activities are diminishing, e.g., shopping, education and training, customer service, information access, office work, socializing, business collaboration, etc., so it should be obvious why the time and costs of location-based conferences and trade shows will also succumb to the flexibility of "virtual" online events.
As pointed out about Apple, "virtual" shows don't really have to be shared with all other sponsors; this will help eliminate the "overloaded" schedules that shared-show producers create to maximize physical attendance. (I found that to still be a problem with some new online shared trade shows.) So, although there will still be location-based events, they can also maximize their potential audience by also making them "virtual." As well proven by Google, advertising on the web is more powerful and responsive than just location-based signage.
So, the power of the web, wireless mobility, and UC will be driving the next generation of conferences and trade shows in my book. It will help move all aspects of market access to both people and information to “virtual” audiences in real-time or on-demand. That will help the “greening” of the marketplace and change the way companies do business.
What Do You Think?
You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
