Blog

Unified Communications success depends on changing users’ habits

Computerworld published an online article (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9220377/Unified_communications_success_depends_on_changing_habits) about the adoption of unified communications in the workplace and how it largely depends on changing the users’ habits.

The article speaks of the CIO of Land O’ Lakes responding to how the success of a UC deployment within an organization depends whether or not the users’ habits can be changed to use the UC system. Land O’ Lakes CIO, Barry Libeson says:

“People move at their own pace around [this] technology. It’s not like a new ERP system.”

They setup about a dozen flat screen monitors to inform about 3,000 employees of the chances to their communications platform and offered demos for groups of 10 to adopt the changing technology.

I somewhat agree with this as most are used to an environment known as the “interruption workplace” whereby it is mostly a reactive environment where emails, messages, tasks and phone calls are dealt with as they are received. This becomes quickly apparent when you notice you are having a conversation over email. To change this style of working, most unified communications solutions offer an easy adoptable method of communicating with your peers and clients and completing your tasks in a timely and efficient manner. The best use case to describe this using all aspects of a UC solution:

• Corporate Instant Messaging
• Presence
• Voice and Messaging
• Audio/Video Conferencing and Collaboration

If I needed to nail down some specific project dates on a Project Plan for a customer I would see that my PM is available, IM her to see if she had a chance to go through the document and escalate that to a collaboration session where we would have the ability to modify the Project Plan and save it for delivery to the customer.

Now, this process did take a bit to get used to and training sessions on how to use the functionality to its fullest potential were required – as with any new system or feature. However, not only is a change in habits needed but the system itself should be highly integrated into other commonly used programs such as email, browser, contact database, CRM tool, etc. The UC interfaces should also mimic common software programs that corporate users are used to.

A screenshot of Microsoft Lync integration in Outlook:

Unified Communications solutions adoption relies heavily on the user experience itself with very little, although some, dependance on the user.

Please feel free to comment.

Tags: Immersion, Microsoft