Key Factors for Unified Communications Success
Email
Print
Key factors for unified communications success
Some common themes emerged from the survey, as those individuals who had achieved successful deployment at their organization offered their thoughts on what factors contributed to the achievement.
While training was not as big a headache as anticipated, it was still critical for successful deployments. Training was necessary to help users understand basic endpoint device functionality and to enable them to customize options and solve basic issues on their own.
Similarly, IT staffs needed to be trained so that they could quickly resolve problems that were escalating. Those surveyed cited IT staff and user training as the most common issues related to UC deployment (48 percent and 45 percent, respectively).
To meet the varied needs of users across the enterprise such as road warriors, telecommuters and cubicle workers, those surveyed found that it was necessary to do hands-on evaluation of a broad range of endpoint devices in the planning stages.
Acceptance of the endpoint device was critical in successful deployments, as it was the piece that connected users to the UC infrastructure. The IT workers surveyed found that if employees couldn't easily and comfortably use their endpoint device, they did not adopt the UC technology as a whole.
An IT decision maker at a company in the entertainment industry noted, "At the time (of UC endpoint device selection), we thought the devices would just work and there would be no need to spend time comparing the differences. We saw them as a commodity. We no longer think this way."
