A Comprehensive Guide on How to Manage and Optimize Your Unified Communications Environment
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UC Optimization Guide for Pros A comprehensive guide on how to manage and optimize your unified communications environment. Get started Living in a collaborative Deploying Measure the impact Contents 01 work environment 07 Skype for Business 13 and optimize with confidence Why does your business Moving the dial Become a champion for 02 need optimized UC? 08 with Cisco 14 digital transformation Transform your Getting the most from Energizing your UC team 03 organization’s operations 09 your Avaya solution 15 and elevating productivity Optimizing your Vendor versus third-party How service providers 04 UC management 10 monitoring tools 16 can own UC optimization and reducing risk Managing your UC Keeping your finger Unlock the power of the 05 migration strategy 11 on the pulse 17 IR partner program UC is a multi-vendor world Troubleshooting Looking ahead: 06 12 like a ninja 18 2018 UC trend watch However, to fully realize these benefits and achieve Why read this guide? maximum ROI on your UC investment, it’s critical to optimize your UC environment. That’s where Ever wanted to reach higher? Do more than business UC best practices can help and why we’ve as usual in the network tower? Cut out the time- developed this guide. consuming, mind-numbing tasks that fail to propel the organization forward? Then keep reading. In the pages that follow, we'll take you from understanding your UC needs and setting your goals, This guide is for every frustrated Network to reducing your environment’s risk and migrating to Administrator, under-appreciated UC Ops Manager, the cloud or hybrid path. We'll look specifically at the and overworked CTO. It's geared toward large big vendors – things to watch out for and putting your enterprises, but there are plenty of takeaways for plan B in place. smaller players too. If you want to get the most out of your unified communications and collaboration We choose the best ways to keep your finger on the systems, this read (or skim read) is for you. It’s is jam- pulse of all things UC and guide you on deciding which packed with high-level and detailed UC best practices. platforms are right for you. We'll even teach you how We encourage you to share this guide with your team. to troubleshoot your UC like a ninja. We'll help you benchmark your performance today so you can easily see the gaps, fill them in, and measure the impact. We discuss empowering your network team and even ponder the notion of whether they can wear the digital transformation cape. Lastly, we take a look at market trends, share expert insights, and look to the future of UC. Introduction With unified communications, you’re not just enhancing your company’s business communication, collaboration and productivity. You’re helping each and every employee succeed in their work. You’re making your customers happier. And you’re contributing to your company’s bottom line. Living in a collaborative work environment 1 2 Disrupt or be disrupted The rise of connected work Team performance is necessary 01 Work is no longer a place that we go to, but The collaboration trends we’re seeing are leading for growth something that we do. This means there’s a growing to agile organizations that promote the open flow In the past, we gave employees the capability to Living in a need to enable workers to effectively collaborate of information, meaning that people don’t have to grow their individual performance. Unfortunately, with each other, with customers, and with partners, spend unnecessary effort looking for people, expertise tools and individual effort can only lead to so much collaborative regardless of location. Collaboration solutions are or content. Users want to leverage these resources value before reaching a plateau. A study from a rapidly evolving to reflect this shift. easily so that they can bring teams together, survey of CIOs shows that if you invest in optimizing make decisions, and move projects forward. This both individual and team performance, it will result In the past, we relied heavily on face-to-face meetings, work environment often involves the new trend of self-forming teams in higher overall growth in terms of revenue per which often required expensive travel. Today, using the that disperse after completing a task in a short employee. By allowing people to access the resources latest collaboration tools, we are able to bring together amount of time. Ultimately, we’re moving toward a they need in real time, your organization will have a remote teams in real time at short notice using rich landscape that’s mobile, people-centric, contextual, significant competitive advantage. media including video and web conferencing as well collaborative, innovative and customer-driven. as digital whiteboards. This allows us to gain access to expertise, bring stakeholders together, make decisions, and move business processes forward faster Collaboration tools influence and more efficiently. Better collaboration tools take knowledge retention cost and time out of the cycle, which effectively adds margin into the business in the form of principal or If we want to bring teams together to reach their shareholder value. goals quickly, the work environment should enable the highest level of knowledge transfer and retention. Better collaboration tools directly lead to a higher level of execution. When we’re given the ability to watch and listen to a video or web conference, knowledge transfer rates jump to 70% – from 20% for audio When we’re given the ability only (Human Productivity Lab). to watch and listen to a video or web conference, knowledge transfer rates jump to 70% 5 UC Optimization Guide for Pros 1 2 Changing customer communication Business leaders’ top 5 priorities are tied to collaboration 01 preferences Living in a collaborative It isn’t just the way we work that’s changing, but also the way people buy in the marketplace. If 1 Customer satisfaction If customers love your company, they will continue to buy from you. work environment your revenue stream depends on a target market comprised of Generation Y/Millennials, picking up the phone to make a call is their fourth choice in communication behind electronic messaging, social If you can take costs out of the structure, it results in increased margins Cost control media, and smartphone apps, according to recent 2 and profitability. research. As we look at enhancing our collaboration architectures, we need to make sure that we have a multichannel strategy because the way our customers Productivity comes from getting the most out of the team by providing want to reach us is changing. 3 Productivity the best tools, whether it’s the type of workspace or the type of New ways to work fundamentally impacts how a communication technology. business operates, which adds velocity to decision making. When leaders join together in real time to People on the team should feel empowered by communication tools, so make a decision that affects a customer, event, or 4 Engagement market penetration plan, they are able to execute at they feel valued and are able to excel. a higher level. Executive and technical talent can be leveraged anytime, anywhere. Innovation Without constant innovation and growth, companies will eventually 5 and growth become irrelevant. Using the latest collaboration tools is critical to your employees, your company, and your customers. Integrating and managing them effectively – How collaborative UC can give you and optimizing your unified communications an agile advantage environment – is equally important. FIND OUT MORE 6 UC Optimization Guide for Pros Why does your business need optimized UC? 1 In today’s business world, communication matters Optimized UC is the best kept secret. more than ever. People want to communicate in new 02 ways everyday: more channels, more devices, more Why? When UC is humming in the flexibility. But these demands rely on a new generation background, nobody pays attention Why does your of technology, operating in real time. What happens – it’ invisible. End users simply do their if the technology isn’t reliable? What if digital services work, as it should be. business need to customers are unreachable, phones stop working, or video conferences crash? A small outage can have a big impact. You need to react quickly and get to the optimized UC? root cause to find a solution. You need to ensure your UC is reliable and optimized. Unified communications are the arteries and veins of your organization and its connection to the outside world. Internally, you can’t function properly when problems exist. Externally, you’re paralyzed when there’s an outage. Unified communications keep the heart of the organization pumping. Optimized UC keeps the communications pulse steady and channels unblocked. Ineffective communications and collaboration capabilities slow product development and decision making, putting your employees at a competitive disadvantage. Reliable communications and collaboration infrastructure that helps employees work efficiently allows your organization to breathe. How IR can optimize your UC Don’t just FIND OUT MORE aim to fix – aim to 8 UC Optimization Guide for Pros optimize Transform your organization’s operations 1 2 Achieving your operational Which operational efficiency goals should you set? How should these goals change over time? 03 efficiency goals Companies are on varying levels across the If a company starts in a chaotic environment dealing operational maturity spectrum. In some cases, with constant outages, their initial goals will shift to Spending all your energy and time on urgent their initial UC goals should be to get out of be more proactive: focus on stopping the outages, Transform your organizational demands, as opposed to strategic fighting fires in their UC environment.