Question: “I’m hearing a lot about ‘unified communications’ from Microsoft at the moment, and although it all sounds like it’s a great direction for businesses to take, I just can’t see where all the extra money for investment is meant to come from? Like everyone else right now, funds and budgets are low – surely medium sized businesses like ours should be just trying to save money?” - Neil, Lancaster

Answer: Hi Neil, you’re certainly right that we all need to tighten our belts right now. At the same time, a downturn like this presents two options: we can either bury our heads in the sand and hope to weather the storm - or use it as an opportunity to build a business while others procrastinate or fall by the wayside.

Rather than using the downturn as an excuse to offer a lower quality of service (the classic belt-tightening mistake!), a modest investment in the right technology can help medium sized companies to not only reduce costs and remain profitable, but also emerge stronger and more competitive come the upturn.

How can unified communications help?

Like most companies, you no doubt use several methods of communication: email, phone, fax, Instant Messaging (IM), telephone conferencing and so forth. The trouble is, historically these technologies haven’t been ‘joined up’. For example, your email, voicemail and faxes etc. all get stored in different places, using different software and different interfaces.

Wouldn’t it be better if they worked together to allow you and your colleagues to contact customers – and be contacted by them - in the most appropriate and practical way, and at just the right time?

This is what we mean by Unified Communications (UC) - making technologies work better together to save employees time and make them more productive in their work. Let me give you an example:

‘Presence’ technology

When you want to respond to an email by phone, you normally have to type a number into the handset. Seven out of ten phone calls then inevitably go to voicemail because the other person turns out to be unavailable.

This is where ‘presence’ technology, a feature of UC, can help. If you use Instant Messenger, then you’ve already used presence technology – it’s that little green icon which tells you that someone is online. It lets you know when someone is free to talk or whether they’re ‘Away’, ‘Offline’ or they’ll ‘Be Right Back’.

To respond to an email using a UC system, dialling phone numbers is practically a thing of the past: an icon in the email will show whether the person concerned is available, and a simple click will dial them up. It saves time and it means customers get calls when it’s convenient for them as well as you.

Presence similarly means you can be online when you’re equipped to deal with calls and offline when you need to get on with other things.

More ways to communicate

For a complete communications solution, capable of meeting the needs of growing companies, we’ve put all the most popular communications tools together, in a package called Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007.

OCS simply requires you to have an internet connection to combine real-time communications like IM, VoIP (internet telephony), audio and video conferencing in one place. And because it integrates with familiar programs in Office 2007 and SharePoint Server, employees can be even more available - which is vital when expertise or resources are limited.

For example, OCS lets employees working out on the road use their laptops to keep in touch with the office from wherever they happen to be; with the same efficiency as being at their desks. Type a customer’s name into Outlook and you can make a call directly from your laptop; whether you’re in the car in a rain-soaked roadside lay-by, or tucked up on the sofa at home.

Less hassle, more savings

As you rightly point out, though, it’s hard to justify any kind of outlay right now. So how will UC ensure a good return on your investment when you’re looking to cut back, rather than increase spending? Where’s the payback? Well, let me try to explain by way of an example.

Let’s say you and your colleagues need to travel regularly to meetings with customers around the UK. The combined cost of travel, accommodation and out-of-pocket expenses is likely to run into hundreds of pounds each time - as well as wiping out a productive day for each of you. Wouldn’t it make more sense to do this remotely?

Thanks to Microsoft’s Office Live Meeting web conferencing service, you can. And again, all you need is a PC and an Internet connection. Live Meeting is a hosted service that enables people in different locations to talk to each other and work together. From your PC, you can make a presentation, brainstorm ideas and collaborate on whiteboards at a fraction of the cost of travelling.

It’s simple to set up across your entire company or within individual departments; and costs are manageable, too. It’s available as a hosted service, so you can pay a one-off or monthly fee as necessary, based on the number of attendees and how often you envisage using the service.

To give you an idea of the potential savings, Edinburgh-based energy and life sciences research consultancy Wood Mackenzie has seen annual savings of £100,000 in travel expenditure – equating to full payback on their investment in a matter of months. This isn't extrapolated ROI, it amounts to real hard savings. Others companies, too, are making significant savings on utility costs by using Live Meeting to extend their homeworking and flexible working policies.

A key factor in company growth

These are just two of the solutions that come under the general banner of ‘unified communications’. There are many others that can help make your employees more productive and maintain high standards of customer service in these troubled times. We’ve certainly found that UC quickly pays back any investment through rapid savings on travel and phone bills.

When times are tough, IT really comes into its own as a means of saving money and driving expansion without using valuable financial resources. A recent report by IT services provider Dimension Data recently found that 62% of IT managers believe UC has been a key factor in their company's growth. I hope this evidence encourages you to investigate UC further.

Good luck and please let us know how you get on.

--Mark.

 

If you’d like to try Live Meeting before you buy, click here for a 14-day free trial. To find out more about Microsoft Unified Communications solutions, contact a Microsoft Small Business Specialist Partner near you who will be able to advise you further.

Mark Deakin regularly discusses his experiences on his blog at http://blogs.technet.com/markdea or Twitter on http://www.twitter.com/markdeakin

Mark’s tips for integrating communications in a growing business:

  • Make as many types of communication as possible available to employees: email, phone, fax (people do still use it), text and instant messaging. Today’s ‘youngsters’ are the customers of the future and many prefer to converse online or by text than use the phone.
  • VoIP is important, but remember there is more to communications than just voice. Look at using unified communications with VoIP as part of the solution, rather than the whole picture.
  • Don’t think of IM as something only your children would use. IM can be more appropriate than email or a voice call for incidental conversations.
  • And remember that to tie all these disparate methods of communication together, you really need a server. Sure, IM can live on desktop PC’s, but to integrate resource-intensive applications like VoIP and email for several staff at once, a dedicated server is definitely the answer.

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