Best Practices in UC Deployment

Taking a phased approach to a mobile UC rollout accomplishes multiple objectives, while managing resources accordingly.

Phase One establishes a clear understanding of the business case the enterprise is trying to achieve. Who are the company’s target users? What communication scenarios are these users trying to realize? What positive outcomes does the business want to achieve from these scenarios? It’s in this phase where enterprises have the opportunity to look at technology as a means to enable these scenarios. Collaboration is key during Phase One. When it comes to mobility, many organizations have an entirely separate security devices team that tends not to be thinking of UC services when developing security protocols and guidelines. It’s here in Phase One where multiple teams, such as mobile device security, need to get involved early on in the process to ensure that all necessary considerations are factored in to the end-to-end solution.

Phase Two focuses on engineering an entire solution. We often see customers look at engineering from an infrastructure piece without considering the associated technologies surrounding the infrastructure to make the end-to-end scenario happen. For example with mobility, the WiFi environment engineered in each office will have a huge impact on the mobile experience of your users. Committing to deliver an enterprise grade, UC service over a WiFi environment represents a significant commitment from the company’s WiFi engineering team. So teams, such as these, must also be involved in the UC engineering process to ensure that the company can get to its desired end state. Taking a holistic view of engineering is critical to the development and deployment of a successful UC initiative.

Phase Three is the pilot phase. In this phase, companies should use both IT and end-users for testing. Find folks who are willing to try something new and deal with an imperfect product, in order to get the feedback needed to iterate a solution. During this phase, enterprises should also be open to the possibility that their solution may ultimately only be extended to a certain segment of users because it doesn’t deliver the full quality or experience laid out during Phase One.

As companies reach Phase Four – mass rollout – it’s critical to both provide proper training to users and track employee usage and adoption. User education empowers employees to optimize their mobile UC experience by understanding how and when to use the application properly. Mobile workers tend to run UC on devices that are doing multiple tasks simultaneously. This can interfere with the quality and functionality of the UC client. Additionally, most employees think of mobile communication as being synonymous with moving communication. The act of walking around an office building or roaming the streets outside with questionable data connections can hinder UC services, resulting in user expectations and experiences that don’t match.

An added challenge with UC adoption is overcoming people’s existing ways of talking with each other. Just because the UC client is 80 percent enabled, doesn’t mean that 80 percent of people are using it. Tracking adoption gives enterprises a clear indication of whether or not users accept the solution, and also helps to calculate ROI based on the business case established in Phase One. With a fundamental understanding of how best to optimize UC coupled with monitoring end-user adoption, employees and their organizations can reap the benefits of true, real-time, mobile communication.

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