Dell Survey Uncovers Challenges to Providing UC to Remote Workers

More and more businesses are looking to provide a unified communications experience to remote workers, but there are hurdles to overcome.

More employees are working remotely than before, and the trend is only going up. Eighty-three percent of the more than 200 respondents to Dell’s survey expect the number of remote workers in their organization to increase in the coming year, driving the need for UC capabilities in their businesses.

Ninety-five percent of respondents—all of whom are responsible for managing UC platforms—said that they face hurdles in delivering quality UC service to remote workers, and that the situation is aggravated by the fact that 79 percent of them rely on users to alert them to quality-of-service issues, which means IT staffs never know about many of the problems.

Ninety-eight percent of respondents said gaining insight into remote worker usage of UC would be valuable, but 75 percent added that their existing UC technologies don’t have the analytic or diagnostic capabilities needed to improve the user experience.

If workers aren’t getting the UC experience they need, they’ll turn to unsupported communication tools, according to Dell. That’s an issue for IT staffs—77 percent of survey respondents said they have data security concerns when it comes to unsupported technologies, and 55 percent are concerned about maintaining regulatory compliance.

In a nod to the importance of UC, 71 percent of respondents said their organizations have increased UC investments to better support remote works. However, issues like training difficulties, quality-of-service challenges and unexpected costs are the key barriers to adoption.

And that’s because 69 percent of organizations surveyed can’t track usage rates. That makes it difficult to evaluate decisions to invest in the technologies.

Fifty-five percent of respondents said they need to spend time troubleshooting quality-of-experience issues every week; 20 percent said they troubleshoot problems daily hourly.

Almost half of the respondents said they face problems when using their UC platforms remotely and need to employ an array of workaround techniques to fix the issues. This exposes the company to risk, and also discourages employees from adopting the technologies.

Among the steps businesses can take to improve the situation is to find ways to track and trend remote workers’ use of the technologies. If an organization can get better insight into how workers are using the UC technology, they can improve the user experience and proactively monitor for any compliance and data loss concerns. They also can improve adoption by taking steps such as remotely deploying an updated UC client.

Remote workers are in a less managed environment, which means a greater chance of something reducing the quality of the experience. For example, having to use a VPN connection while running audio or video features can lead to latency issues. Getting a better view on a remote worker’s experience—from the make and model of the device to the network connection type—helps IT staffs better find and address problems.

There are any number of challenges facing remote workers, from the endpoint device to the UC client software and type of external network connection they’re using. Better insight into all aspects of remote workers’ environments makes it easier to take corrective action when needed. For example, knowing what versions of Microsoft’s Skype for Business software the worker is running will enable IT staffs to know whether an employee needs an upgrade or to proactively prevent particular outdated versions from connecting.