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■SPECIAL REPORT: UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
Clive Ryan, director of advisory Business case
services at Eircom, says that while When it comes to making the busi-
technology is key it should not be the ness case, McFadden believes UC is a
main driver. “Organisations are at harder pitch than some other tech-
the point where they have all the nologies. “It was easy to show tangible
building blocks for UC, but what savings with VoIP and justify a con-
they’ve been missing is the catalyst to verged IP network, for example, but
do it. It’s more about business reasons UC has more intangible benefits,” he
than technology.” says. “Certainly, there are cost sav-
He argues that it is increasingly ings but the main benefits are around
easy to make a business case for UC. productivity and efficiency savings.
“In the current economic climate, These are not easy to demonstrate to
there is a greater focus on the costs of a chief financial officer.”
doing business. For some, just the To help make the case, a BT survey
cost of travel is enough reason for an found that presence saves 32 minutes
organisation to embrace it.” per employee a day because staff are
Vincent McFadden, head of BT contacted at the first attempt. IM
Ireland’s convergent solutions prac- emerged as a particularly useful tool,
tice, agrees: “Organisations are facing leading to a 30pc reduction in mobile
big challenges around the cost of phone bills, a 40pc reduction in email
doing business and being able to traffic and a 15pc reduction in voice-
maintain customer service levels in mails. But improved productivity is
the new economic climate. UC can just one benefit, according to
address these challenges. As part of a McFadden. He also identifies lower
convergence strategy, organisations technology costs, improved business
can look to IT and telecoms to drive processes and the ability to manage
costs and inefficiencies out of the mobile workers more effectively as
business.” significant wins.
He says different organisations are To reap such rewards, an organisa-
at different stages of readiness to tion has to deploy UC tools that are
deploy, but the starting point is appropriate for its environment.
always the same. “First, you have to “Finding the right UC applications to
consolidate your networks into a sit on the network is about organisa-
single IP environment. Network and tions looking at their business
IT infrastructures should be more processes,” says Ryan. “The way they
closely aligned for better transactional communicate will dictate what the
performance across the business. optimum UC model would be.” At the
This forms the basis of UC. If you start of an implementation, Eircom
don’t have your network and IT closely begins by looking at user groups: how
aligned, then you are a long way off they work, share and communicate
deploying the unified applications.” with each other. “When you have a
He stresses the importance of hav- 3D model of the people and the
ing every piece in place: “If you get it processes, then you can look at how
wrong, it can cause major disruption. to streamline it with the most appro-
There are lots of potential problems if priate communication channels.”
the infrastructure has grown organi- For many organisations, this will be
cally. You might not have the right about moving from a siloed environ-
levels of security or quality of service ment to an enterprise-wide, converged
that UC is going to need. There may solution. This makes for a more effi-
be a lack of integration between cient infrastructure, not just in terms
the application and network layers, of personal productivity but also
which will cause major headaches.” in the way the IT department can
44 Knowledge Ireland September 2008
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