A Cooperative Project of VoiceCon and UC Strategies

This issue of Unified Communications eWeekly is sponsored sponsored by UCStrategies:

UC Strategies is an industry resource and web portal to help enterprises, vendors, and system integrators develop their UC strategies. A source of objective information and thought leadership on Unified Communications, we provide analysis, executive interviews, podcasts, white papers, and other information on the UC industry. Visit the UCStrategies.com website for more detail.

Customer adoption stories and case studies are important for any new growth market, and Unified Communications (UC)

is no exception. The stories provide insights on what’s working, what to buy and how to justify it. Here are a few of the cases we are seeing in the market as more evidence of the value of Unified Communications, organized around the top UC applications (see “Top UC Applications Are Now Apparent” in the June 2007 issue of Business Communications Review).

Contact Management (the UC type, not the call center type) is a hot area, since it is customer facing. In its U.S. operations, Shimano, the global bicycle parts maker, was able to dramatically increase their customers’ ability to reach the sales team by using the “find-me” mobility features of Siemens OpenScape. In addition, the sales teams could use presence and click-to-call to immediately find available help from the sales support and logistics teams. The result was a significant year-over-year revenue growth plus increased customer satisfaction from the Shimano distributors.

Seamless Information for mobile personnel is also showing up, in part propelled the continued growth in the use of RIM’s BlackBerry, which provides the same email service when mobile as when at the desk. But, there are other examples such as Marin County, CA, which uses the Avaya Speech Access solution to deliver calls, voice mail, email and calendar information seamlessly to their officials, attorneys and inspectors who are constantly on the go. The result is improved service to the constituents while reducing wasted travel and call-backs.

Resource identification and problem resolution is another hot application. Global Crossing uses Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, with links to their provisioning system, to support the technical staff that performs network provisioning for Global Crossing’s customers. With the UC solution, the staff members no longer call around to get help with exceptions. Instead, the software looks up the assigned technician to solve the problem; if available as shown by Presence, an IM session is automatically opened to that technician, but if not available, the software finds a qualified and available backup technician for the IM session. Click-to-call is available for voice conversations, if needed. The result is 75% lower per-transaction costs with an 80% increase in customer responsiveness.

Collaboration acceleration is part of the rising use of audio, video and web conferencing. Advocate Health Care, a major regional provider in the Chicago area, reports that by deploying Alcatel MyTeamwork for video conferencing right from the desktop and including links to conference rooms, they generated $750,000 per year in savings on direct travel expense and lost time. Meanwhile a major German pharmaceutical company reported last week that the adoption of the Microsoft’s Office Communications Server 2007 for secure conferencing helps them protect their intellectual property to extend the economic life of their new drugs and also helps them bring new drugs to market more quickly. The UC benefits for this pharmaceutical company are measured, “In the billions.”

Job-specific communications-enabled portals are also catching on. Hospitals and clinics are using the XML displays on Cisco wireless IP phones to provide rapid two-way communication of information and requests for nurses, doctors and support staff. Replacing the former one-way paging, the result is improvements both in patient care and in patient “throughput”—the ability to complete the care on-time and on-budget. Another great example is the use of Cisco’s IP Phones with an RFID scanner attachment in the retail store environment, allowing customers to request alternate sizes or colors of clothing to be delivered right to the changing room. The leaps in customer satisfaction and purchase rates have dramatically increased revenues per store.

Every week we’re hearing about more great UC customer success stories. If your company is looking for where to invest in UC, make sure to ask for references and case studies on what others have done and then apply or innovate from those cases to reap the UC benefits in your enterprise. And, please visit UCStrategies.com for many more customer case studies, and customer podcasts as well as detailed descriptions and RFP templates for each of the application areas mentioned above.

What do you think? Do you have a UC Success Story you would like to share? Let me know at mparker@UniCommConsulting.com or post your comments here in the VoiceCon Unified Communications eWeekly forum.

Marty Parker
Principal, UniComm Consulting

Posted in Collaboration, Conferencing, Deployment, Applications, Marty Parker, Unified Communications |

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