Session Code #438 Building an Effective UC Strategy

1. Session Code #438Building an Effective UC Strategy Joe Seghatoleslami, Mike Taylor Strategic Products & Services

2. Discuss current UC best practices, the need for Line of Business buy-in, and the building blocks of an effective UC infrastructure. • Enable users to develop an effective UC strategy that will ensure ongoing success.

3. What is Unified Communications?

4. What is UC&C? • Integration of disparate, potentially multi-vendor, communications media • IM and Presence • Voice • Video • Document sharing • Conferencing – audio, video, web • The goal: drive productivity and business agility “Communications integrated to optimize business processes” –Marty Parker, UC Strategies UC Applications Audio and WebConferencing Mobility IP Telephony &Presence OnlineCollaboration VideoConferencing Chat / Instant Messaging Unified Messaging

5. What’s the Point? The virtual workforce requires the right tools: • CTrip: 9% productivity increase; happier, healthier agents • Aetna: $78M in real estate savings • Cisco: $195M/year in productivity increases (1993) Sources: “Does Working from Home Work?”. Bloom et al. Stanford University. “In telecommuting debate, Aetna sticks by big at-home workforce”. Reuters. “Location, Location, Location”. New York Times.

6. What’s the Point? De-risk yourself from your younger workforce: • Used to modern consumer tools • Don’t be a time portal • Be in control of: • Bandwidth • Security* • Compliance * http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/think-your-skype-messages-get-end-to-end-encryption-think-again/

7. The Problem with UC

8. The Problem with UC • Adoption: Just because you build it … they may not come • Too many technologies • IT requires a major cultural change as traditional silos must be merged Risks and Challenges Pan Am

9. What if I own “UC”? Major communications vendors have all switched to a three-tier licensing structure to sell their UC stack.

10. What if I own “UC”? • Remember the goal: drive productivity and business agility • Without a business case, “what if?” is really “so what?” • If it does not drive efficiencies or reduce risk in your business, it is a poor investment no matter what the cost. • Investments should be prioritized based on business value.

11. The Problem with UC • First, you must define it within the context of your business. • Business requirements • How will this initiative actually improve results/performance? • User requirements • Workflows and inefficiencies • Technical requirements • Security • Network • Compliance • Have you mapped your definition to specific goals? • Have you defined and analyzed existing gaps?

12. How to Develop a UC Strategy

13. How to Develop a Strategy Align with business goals and end user requirements • Identify stakeholders, business processes and user needs for UC • Define UC within the context of your business. • Specific business goals • Functional requirements • Assess your current environment • Design a “clean sheet” reference architecture which meets your core business and end user needs. • Perform a gap analysis between your current and target state • Define the projects required to fill in the gaps and prioritize based on value • Remember there is value to risk mitigation in addition to reducing costs or increasing productivity. • Define detailed training and rollout plans. • Implement, analyze, optimize.

14. Identify Stakeholders • UC will embed communications into work flows and should change the way people do business • Solicit input up-front to increase support and user adoption when deployed • Stakeholder Groups: • Line of Business • IT - Network • IT - Applications • IT - Security

15. Is This Your Organization? Leadership LOB Customer Experience LOB Product Management LOB Marketing IT Security IT Network Telecom IT Applications Aligned Incentives Build Bridges User Groups

16. Identify User Needs Think like a user.

17. Taking Use Cases to the Next Level • Use cases should be able to be tied back to specific goals. • Improve productivity: • Add IM/P and escalation • Click-to-dial from CRM • Provide advanced mobile services • Decrease time-to-market: • Video collaboration for product engineering • Document collaboration for sales • Improve communication with suppliers: • Federate IM/P

18. Assess Current Infrastructure • Understand corporate policies • Compliance: PCI/HIPAA/etc. • Archiving, eDiscovery • Data security • BYOD • Assess infrastructure readiness (short term, mid term, long term) • Applications • Network: LAN/WAN/Wi-Fi • Network access control • Mobile Device Management (MDM) • Edge support VPN/Edge servers/SBC • Identify gaps and remediation plan • Document visually and in writing—read from the same page. Speed the process and increase the chance of success by finding a Partner with experience in Voice, Video and Collaboration Applications.

19. Go Beyond Technical Diagrams

20. Gap Analysis Should Drive Projects

21. Implement, Analyze, Optimize • Training and proper communication are crucial at this phase • Measure or fail • Create a positive feedback loop between users, LOBs, and IT to drive optimization

22. On-Going Support • Ongoingsupport should always be considered when building a UC Strategy • It is important to have support agreements and SLAs in place prior to roll out regardless if the support is internal or external • Lengthy outages and poor user support will kill adoption faster than anything else and will take considerable time to recover from • Some things to considered: • Hard costs of manufacturer maintenance • Cost for MACs • Cost to service a support ticket vs. volume of tickets.

23. Conclusion

24. Conclusion • Proper planning ensures success • Having an outside partner can speed up the deployment and reduce risk • Include users up-front so your solution meets their needs to ensure adoption • Do an honest assessment of your current infrastructure • Have User Adoption and Ongoing Support plans in place prior to going live

25. Questions?