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5 Steps to Unified Communications
<<<... Following are the five steps eWEEK Labs recommends that any company take before undergoing such a herculean project.
Step 1: Find a Champion
To be successful, UC should not be viewed as a technology project but rather as a technology-enabled business initiative, with clearly defined goals and quantifiable measures of success.
"Increasingly, what we are seeing with the next-generation workplace is that it is a business change process," said Kevin Bellinger, Avanades global solution manager for digital collaboration. "[Unified Communications] is being initiated by the business side—not the IT side."
To get there, senior leadership of any UC project is essential—to keep the project focused in terms of cost and scope, and to keep it on target to meet the underlying business objectives.
"The higher you get the sponsor, the better," said Frank Redey, a partner with Accentures Network Service Technology line. "If you could link [a UC initiative] to a C-level objective—of revenue generation, cost reduction or risk mitigation—you can demonstrate the solution value and increase shareholder value."
Mergers and acquisitions are prominent driving forces toward UC, which is frequently pursued both for tying together disparate networks and user groups and to rapidly speed the progress of pending moves. Both of these circumstances are senior-level concerns. During a joint conversation with Redey and Bellinger (Accenture and Avanade are both partners to Microsofts UC initiative), and in a separate discussion with Christopher Thompson, senior director of solutions marketing for Ciscos Unified Communications group, eWEEK Labs heard several strong examples of executives driving UC projects. In each case, senior executives drove the technology project to advance business goals—whether the project was initiated via a human resources department looking to reap the benefits that come with improved collaboration among its staff members; a sales manager looking to present an identical set of tools and experiences for salespeople, no matter their location; or a CFO looking to reduce occupancy costs by overprovisioning a workplace through flexible work space and a mobile work force. more>>>