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Improving your Return on Investment can be a tough task, but Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) makes successful performance that much easier, since existing technologies can be merged with new technologies to connect people and companies at volumes and speeds never seen before.

CIOs are under constant pressure to drive their organizations to stellar performance while staying within budgets that can be small – or even non-existent. Whether you manage a small to medium sized business or a large corporation, Unified Communications is a key performer when it comes to boosting your organization’s ROI, while keeping a tight leash on costs.

When UC&C is deployed, CIOs can implement collaboration to create a competitive advantage and align IT staff across the organization – thereby boosting ROI. There are multiple approaches to consider when deploying UC&C, with the best option depending on your business model as it relates to the acquisition of technology. Whereas some organizations may choose to purchase an entire UC&C solution as a capital expense, some may decide to deploy a fully hosted or UC as a Service (UCaaS) approach and treat it as an operational expense. You can also choose a hybrid model with a mix of capital and operational expenses. To determine the value of UC&C, you should evaluate the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and Return on Investment (ROI). TCO is important in both a services (opex) model as well as a capex model when you have to consider the ongoing expense to maintain the software and hardware from the vendor. UC&C provides many distinct functions and services.

Web conferencing, for example, offers cost savings as an obvious benefit, but if you’re wondering if it’s beneficial to your business beyond the dollar, the answer is yes. You can leverage the benefits of hosted offerings that offer web conferencing to communicate transparently across your organization. With features such as web conferencing, you see an instant impact on your bottom line. Web conferencing allows you to oversee company operations by hosting virtual meetings, or even viewing collaborative documents in real-time. With web conferencing, it’s important to consider the types of meetings your business conducts. It’s possible, when evaluating TCO, that it would be more cost-effective to purchase and host your own on-premises system verses continuing to pay a monthly expense in perpetuity. What’s more, all UC&C solutions, whether hosted or on-premises, improve overall business efficiency and productivity through the integrated solution, thus providing a greater chance of cost reduction. According to research from Wainhouse, 69 percent of survey respondents use web conferencing tools to facilitate meetings that they couldn’t otherwise hold due to timing and cost restraints. Additionally, when considering cost, be sure to think in terms of TOTAL cost of Ownership in addition to ROI. When considering the TCO of deploying a premises-based UC&C solution, consider the following additional factors, suggested by Information Week, when justifying your decision and maximizing your TCO.

To fully leverage the growth potential Unified Communications and Collaboration has to offer, it is key to understand that these technologies will not work in a vacuum. While they will open the doors for great benefits to your organization that can ultimately lead to significant growth, they must be implemented properly. The greatest savings in implementing UC&C comes from identifying how you can improve your current infrastructure and how new tools can be integrated into your current investment in ways that improve the entire organization.

In order to cut costs and increase your ROI, it is essential to approach UC&C with the consideration of how it benefits the greater good of your organization as a whole, rather than focusing solely on the technology. The best way to do so is to examine your current communications infrastructure with your business objectives and investment in mind. Start by asking yourself the following questions:

• Do the current communications infrastructures enable the rapid and secure exchange of information between stakeholders?
• Can they support a variety of types of users, who each play a different role within the business and/or its supply chain?
• Does the technology fully support core business processes?

If you answered “no” to any of these questions, then your current communications solution may need a makeover. Based on your organization’s specific needs and budget there are many solutions to choose from and methods to deploy them. The growing trend of deploying fully integrated software-based premises solutions provides you with the greatest control and choice, as well as substantially lowering your TCO. Although there are many factors to consider when determining an accurate and representative TCO, clearly developing a strategy and defining a deployment road map with the right vendor gives you the best opportunity for successfully realizing the benefits UC&C can offer your organization. You may want to take a look at UC&C technologies and consider how its flexibility matches up against your business objectives. To see how UC yielded measurable results and improved the workflow of one company, download the ROI of Unified Communications white paper below. 

Unified Communications (UC) technology is rapidly evolving, and with this change, there is an ongoing pressure for CIOs to stay current if they want to remain competitive. As technology continues to evolve, CIOs have the added pressure to update existing technology or deploy a new solution in half the time, with half the budget – and in some cases with half the resources available to them. With only one to two years to adapt before what’s “current” becomes yesterday’s technology, you certainly want to implement communications technology solutions that rapidly adapts to changes in order to provide your business with the most current communications software and applications available for your business to stay competitive and productive. Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) could be the solution to address this critical business need.

UCaaS is a complete service offering that can be implemented into your IT strategy over a defined period of time. With UCaas, services are delivered from the cloud, enabling your business to quickly and easily scale communications as needed and choose your preferred deployment model, be it a private, hybrid or public cloud environment. UCaaS allows for flexibility based on your requirements, and puts you in a position to make decisions based on your business practices and specific needs – not the needs of the manufacturer. The following are just a few ways deploying UCaaS prepares you to face IT challenges that may come your way.

• Empowers your business’ workforce

With UCaaS, businesses of all sizes can make a significant impact to their overall costs, IT efficiencies and individual productivity. Because UCaaS delivers a complete set of voice features and unified communications (UC) and collaboration applications, you can consolidate your communications staff. What implications does this have for your business? For starters, consolidating helps decrease overall spending. What’s more, you can simultaneously increase individual productivity, responsiveness and accessibility. Deploying UCaaS helps leverage the abilities of your IT staff to focus on other business issues. With UCaaS, gone are the days when your IT team ties up a majority of their time dealing with testing, scheduling and installing new software updates.

• Enables True Collaboration 

Ideally, all departments and levels in a corporation should interact with one another to collaborate toward a common goal – UCaaS helps make this possible by offering the ability for you to achieve on-demand access across any device. With a comprehensive suite of powerful UC and collaboration applications, your business will quickly and easily be able to streamline communications and information delivery. Deploying UCaas in your organization will provide a consistent user experience across multiple devices which, in turn, minimize the need for training so the user’s time can be dedicated to other tasks. The evolution of UCaaS has spanned from basic features such as Unified Messaging, Presence and IM to an ever expanding set of new capabilities. UCaaS enables your employees to tailor their communications to the specific needs of their role, plus gives total control over how, when and where they choose to be reached.

• Eases Budget and Management Concerns

We’d all like to reduce, and if possible, eliminate hardware costs altogether but still receive all the features and benefits of our applications, right? Gartner predicts that by 2015, 35% of technology spending won't be controlled by IT but by the business. So, with that in mind, remember the following about UCaas: (1) Since UCaas is consistently upgraded, there is no need to budget, purchase, and install hardware upgrades, so critical IT resources can be dedicated to other projects that help your business to compete better in the market. (2) With UCaaS, you have upfront clear per-user costs, which simplify the service you offer your organization. You decide what you need and when. For example, you can purchase communications as an Operating Expense (OPEX) for a fraction of the upfront costs that you’d incur in a traditional Capital Expense (CAPEX) model – simply choose the solution(s) that best suit your needs at limited or no upfront cost (3) UCaas is also offered at consistent and predictable costs, which reduces the headache of searching for additional budget to fund costly projects.

• Offers flexible UC options

With UCaaS, standard UC features (with varying functionality) are offered on a per-seat basis. This means that the monthly seat cost includes system requirements needed to for you to leverage the functions of your UC system. Just because UCaaS consists of a standard set of offerings, you can still implement an offering that doesn’t require all users to be at the same level. For example, a phone in a public area for general use shouldn’t cost the same as the applications delivered to your CEO. The flexibility to customize these options, along with the ability to add on additional features to meet specific needs, ensures that you’re delivering a service that’s valued by the organization.

Check out the CIO.com webinar to learn more about how implementing UCaaS can help your business successfully overcome technology challenges without risking your ability to stay competitive.

Part II

Long hold times and staff inefficiency are just a few flaws that can affect customer service and experience. In our last post we highlighted the first five of ten ways you can put your contact center to work for you by using it to enhance your campus. Keep reading as we reveal 6-10. 

6. Agent Assignment Flexibility and Statistics

When your contact center has flexible agent assignment capability, the administrative offices can increase or decrease staff available to take calls during peak activity times. There are two methods to accomplish this objective: process and technology.

With the process method, any individual who takes calls is established as an “agent”. At normal times, only those whose primary job function includes answering incoming queries log in to the contact center application. As call volume increases, additional personnel can log in to take calls and relieve any backlog, and log off when the call volume decreases. A unified communications (UC) enabled desktop application for agents simplifies this process by allowing agents to easily view the information that they need through a desktop client.

With the technology solution, again, any individual who takes calls is established as an “agent”. The contact center application is programmed to send calls to back-up personnel only when certain thresholds are met – the number of waiting callers or the longest time any caller has currently waited. The benefit of this technology solution is that it tends to respond more quickly and reliably to spikes in the call volume.

7. Auto Attendant and Campus Directory

The Auto Attendant provides call routing capabilities for the campus. You may recognize this feature as the familiar situation where the caller hears a greeting message and is given up to ten options to begin directing the call – for example, “For Administrative Offices, press 1, Health Center press 2, etc.” Auto Attendant options can be processed several ways: play an automated message, transfer to an extension number or contact center, or further qualify with additional prompts.

You can implement an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system to produce messages that provide answers to common questions. When you do this, it takes the load off of staff, giving them more time to provide assistance to other callers.

8. Mobile and Remote Representatives

You can easily allow your campus representatives to become mobile by merging your contact center technology with wireless technology. Doing so improves efficiency and means that help desk staffers can be reached while providing in-person computer repair, and bookstore personnel can walk around the store to check stock on an item. The “Remote Agent” capability allows staff to be reached even when out of the office. This is an ideal way to provide flexibility to your staff and assure that critical help lines remain open regardless of any campus closure.

9. Outbound: Preview and Power Dialing

Outbound contact center capabilities can improve the accuracy and effectiveness of a fund raising campaign. When the dialing process is automated, time spent on wrong numbers is significantly reduced. You can go a step further and integrate with a database of historical donations, thereby streamlining the information gathering process so solicitation can begin immediately.

Once a campus representative becomes available for the next call, preview dialing enables that individual to preview the information regarding the next call prior to the placement of that call. With the press of a button, the system dials the call. Power dialing is similar, but automatically dials the next call when the representative becomes available, while simultaneously displaying the preview information.

10. Self-Service Applications (IVR and Web)

You can further enhance your contact center efficiency by transferring tasks to self-service applications enabled to work over IVR or web interface. Good candidates for self service are those which integrate a user interface with data in various campus databases, for example, student and personnel records, library services, etc. Self-service applications allow users to access and work with distributed content from a single interface.

A few self service opportunities on a campus include:

• admissions and registration processing and status 
• health and medical database information 
• order status for recent purchases
• password reset 
• time sheets and time tracking 
• benefits administration

You can rest assured that security concerns are addressed by establishing the strongest possible authentication and identity management measures. Single sign-on and identity management applications enable the user to login to multiple locations through a single login manager with a single unique password.
When evaluating applications for potential self-service implementation, the campus should evaluate not just the cost savings but also the improvement in customer service by enabling users to have access at their convenience.

Check out our previous post where we listed the first five ways a contact center can help improve your campus, and, to learn more about the benefits your campus can reap with a UC enabled contact center, download the white paper.

Part 1

We’ve all been that frustrated caller on hold waiting to speak to a “real” person who can address our concerns. While waiting, you’ve probably thought of all the ways your experience could be improved if they would just answer the one or two quick questions you wish to ask. While you can’t get any of your time back, the good news is, there are several contact center features that can minimize your customer’s frustration, and, as a result enhance their experience. It’s no secret that a consolidated, centralized contact center can increase staff efficiency, but how is this increased efficiency accomplished? The following list highlights the first five of ten ways contact centers enhance institutions of higher learning.

1. Contact Routing for Multimedia Contacts

Multimedia contact centers enable students, prospective students and other customers to interact with campus offices however they please – whether by phone, e-mail or Web chat. Regardless of the medium they choose, call routing ensures each student receives the priority attention they deserve.

For example, many campuses may sell tickets to campus events over the Internet. Potential customers include not only students, faculty and staff, but members of the community as well. If your campus contact center offers customers an extra opportunity to have their questions answered by offering a web chat capability, you can very well decrease the number of abandoned shopping carts, while increasing the number of completed sales and simultaneously providing opportunities for personnel in the ticket office to better serve customers.

For offices taking calls from existing students, faculty and staff, contacts can be routed based on campus identification (ID) numbers. This number enables the call to be routed, along with caller information from a stored database, to the most appropriate representative. For prospective students or other callers, the Automatic Number Identification (ANI – typically the caller’s phone number) can be used to route or set a priority to the call.

2. Response Library and E-mail Auto-Response

A knowledge-based library houses responses to frequently asked questions (FAQ). Use of these pre-defined entries can simplify the representative’s job and significantly speed the process of creating responses.

One useful element to store in the knowledge library is a response to be automatically delivered to the sender of a message to give them an idea of when their inquiry may receive attention. When an e-mail is received, the multimedia application should automatically reply with a message acknowledging receipt and committing to a personalized response in a specified timeframe. In doing this, the campus has a much greater opportunity to meet expectations – and met expectations translate into customer satisfaction.

3. Screen Pop

When a caller can be identified by either campus ID or phone number, database information for that caller can be presented in a pop-up window to the representative at the time the call is received. This feature is known as “screen pop” and eliminates the time required for a representative to collect key information from the caller, resulting in increased productivity and improved accuracy.

4. Queue Announcements

At a time of high call volume (which is typical in contact centers), it is inevitable that some callers will wind up in queue waiting to speak to a campus representative. However, implementing queue announcements can discourage callers from hanging up by offering other contact options and providing useful information.
Did you know that a caller in queue is using campus resources – ports in the communications infrastructure, IVR resources, and potentially long distance resources? If this caller becomes frustrated with the wait, hangs up and calls back later, then the campus pays for twice as many resources for that one caller. This costly situation can be avoided by providing information to set the expectation for the caller, making them much less likely to “abandon” their call while waiting in queue. In either case, resources are not wasted since the campus only pays for the caller to wait in queue one time.

5. Callback

Callback can help improve caller satisfaction. In addition, callbacks decrease indirect costs and direct costs. Indirect costs are associated with the ports required to keep calls in queue. Direct costs are reduced as the campus does not incur toll charges for the time the call remains in queue awaiting an answer. The callback capability offers to return the call when an agent becomes available, thus preserving the caller’s place in the queue. The result – reduced resources required to support the call on hold. Additionally, callers can be offered a return call at the time when their call would normally have been answered, or they are offered the opportunity to request a callback at a specific time.

Whether you’re looking to increase productivity and efficiency, enhance student experience, or make a financial impact, your campus or university may have much to gain from a successfully implemented contact center. We’ve just scratched the surface on the benefits you can reap, to learn more, check back for 6-10 and download the White Paper. 

Traditional contact centers: you know, the ones where rows of agents wearing headsets process large volumes of calls? While they’re extremely functional in certain venues, they do not have much of a place in Higher Education. Higher Education is a channel where contact center technology should be used to improve the student experience, streamline administrative processes, increase sales for bookstores and ticket offices, support fund raising campaigns, and enhance the college or university as a whole. To accomplish these goals, contact centers in higher education have a unique profile that influences both practices and communications architecture.

Collegiate contact centers are “casual” or “informal”, meaning they are typically made up of small groups staffed by representatives for whom answering the phone is not their primary job function. For example, these staffers must be enabled to work on projects, attend meetings and carry out other duties that will require them to be away from their desk and, therefore, their phone. Administrative, auxiliary and academic offices around the campus all experience fluctuations in demand for services in relation to the time of year and the progress in the current semester. Contact center technology in a campus or university setting can accomplish unique objectives for the various types of departments as well as accommodate temporary expansions that occur as a result of fluctuations in volume. Contact center opportunities exist in a number of administrative offices; let’s first take a look at how Administration and Student Services are impacted.

As a new semester begins, administrative offices can be overwhelmed by phone calls from students trying to make schedule adjustments, complete financial aid requirements or settle into a residence hall. These offices don’t have the man power to handle the high call volume that results. Ultimately, this means inconvenient back-ups, callers waiting on hold for long periods of time, and growing frustrations. In addition, it takes more time and resources to handle callers during periods of long wait times. Callers are likely to get frustrated, hang up, and call again at a later time. This ties up communications resources twice – once for each call. If the contact center is able to assist the caller the first time, it not only improves customer service, it increases cost effectiveness. Additionally, a beneficial feature of contact centers is the ability to utilize queue announcements which can be used to encourage callers to continue to wait – including providing an estimated wait time or the number of callers currently ahead in the queue.

While adding more staff on a whim is likely the desirable option, it is not typically the most feasible. To accommodate this, there are several contact center technologies available that allow campus departments to respond to the demand of their resources:

• UC-enabled desktop applications allow others to login as an agent and help out as needed. For example, administrative and advising staff can login when call volume is high and view the availability/presence of other co-workers to transfer calls as needed or conference someone in with just a click of a button. 
• Multilevel/multilingual auto-attendant allows you to build a script where the campus can provide answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) or redirect callers to the university Web site to find the information they’re seeking. This can help to decrease the overall call volume that reaches the administrative staff. 
• Applications that deliver phone calls, e-mail and Web chats. Simply hire temporary student workers to help process calls during times of heavy volume. The training is quick and easy, and once trained, these students can provide basic information and execute simple requests so experienced staffers can handle the more complex issues and calls. 
• On each phone or desktop, a display can inform the individual of the number of calls waiting and the time that the longest call has currently waited. This information notifies other department members that the call volume is increasing and enables them to login and take calls until the volume starts to subside again. Where departments can collaborate, the contact center application can be designed to deliver calls to an alternate department in the case of extreme call volumes. This enables a department or group that is potentially less busy at a given moment to help take care of the callers waiting for assistance. 

Campus administrative offices are the “face of the campus” for currently enrolled students as well as prospective students, parents and visitors – all of whom represent potential customers, so to speak. As a result, how calls are handled will directly impact the experience of a current student as well as influence the decisions of prospective students. Both groups represent potential revenue to the campus, so there is little to no room for error or inefficiency. For example, the goodwill of the existing student may eventually influence future monetary donations, and the decision of the prospective student will determine whether their tuition dollars help fund this institution. It’s an ongoing cycle, and, therefore customer service is directly related to “the bottom line”. Download the white paper below to learn more about how the advanced technology of contact centers can improve the “bottom line” in your institute of higher learning.

Overhead pages, telephones ringing, and ongoing conversations between caregivers can be a source of discomfort for patients, and, as noted by The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS), noise levels are a significant factor in determining overall patient satisfaction with their care. Noise distractions can also interfere with the concentration of caregivers and increase the potential for errors when providing care. In addition, HCAHPS also notes that delays in staff response to patient call bells were frequently cited as a source of patient concern. This poses a significant problem because in many hospitals call bell systems are the chief mode of communication from patient to nurse or other caregiver. With a call bell system, when the patient rings the call bell, a message is sent to a central station for processing. Sounds simple, but the caveat is that the caregiver must then be located by overhead page or pager-type communication device. In either instance no specific information is presented to the nurse about the nature of the call, forcing the caregiver to return to the bedside to determine the patient needs before acting upon it. How much more efficient would this process be if the patient’s specific request could be given to the nurse directly rather than first traveling through a general overhead alert system?

When a healthcare organization utilizes Unified Communications (UC), alerts, messages, and other time-sensitive notifications can be delivered directly to a clinician’s smart-device. Perhaps the most valuable asset preserved through UC implementation is time. The right Unified Communications vendors can add additional functionality in a healthcare setting to leverage the flexibility, mobility, and capability of smartphone technology to better enable caregivers to address noise and communication issues faces within a hospital. According to HIMSS Analytics, a caregiver can save up to two hours of overtime per shift through better, more efficient communication. Those two hours are valuable, and can, in turn, be used toward better, more focused patient care, charting and documentation.

However ironic it may seem, alarm systems have actually caused much harm in the clinical setting. One of the main challenges in dealing with alarm systems is differentiating between what is “noise” and what is an actual signal. Where the alarm systems are intended to alert the clinician on the patient’s condition, they have actually steered away from patient protection. Most notably has been the shocking and startling effect of alarm systems, or the fact that they have become a huge nuisance. Alarm system related hazards are ranked number one on the ECRI Institute 2012 Top 10 Technology Hazards. Multiple alarm systems with different interfaces present in many healthcare settings in part contribute to this problem, leading to chaos, confusion, and anxiety.
An overwhelming result of alarm system related hazards is alarm fatigue. Clinical alarm fatigue tops the list of concerns for nurses in their clinical workflow processes, and according to the AAMI (Advancing Safety in Medical Technology) 2011 Clinical Alarms Summit, alarm fatigue results from “technology driving processes rather than processes driving technology”. A few causes of alarm fatigue are: 

• Clinicians being inundated with hundreds of alarm conditions per patient per day
• Patient anxiety due to the multiple alarm signals
• Unreliable alarm systems
• Compromise of life-threatening situations due to confusion of alarm systems

One way to help optimize your alarm systems is by implementing technology such as Clinical Workforce Solutions. A few other ways to optimize those systems is through clinical testing and data analysis. Keep patient safety as your foremost priority and shape implementations and alarm regulations around what’s best for the patient. Lastly, regularly update alarm system policies and configurations to minimize room for error.

Ultimately, reducing overhead noise eliminates disruptive noises in the healing environment, decreases alarm fatigue, reduces the length of time a patient stays, and improves the quality of care.  The need for mobility and access to data for point-of-care services is critical, as improved communication workflows result in greater overall efficiency, reduced costs and increased staff confidence. A quieter and more restful hospital environment is sure to drive higher patient satisfaction scores. Additionally, ensuring the security your Unified Communications vendor provides meets HIPPA standards so that you are able to communicate confidential information on a privately owned smart device is key.  Click below to learn more ways you can increase your patient satisfaction scores and provide the best care possible with NEC’s Clinical Workforce Solutions.

The healthcare industry has traditionally been dependent on data communication methods through computer-based information systems. Recent studies, however, have shown that clinicians no longer wish to be confined to a PC to retrieve critical information such as lab results, STAT orders, radiology reports and other health care applications. The need for communications tools that have the capability of providing coordinated patient care is on the rise. Here’s the proof: research by Aptilon Corporation reports that, by the end of 2011, 84% of physicians were using a smartphone in their daily practice. Manhattan Research reports an 82% adoption rate of smartphones within the same timeframe, and while the iPhone appears to be the preferred device for healthcare professionals, the survey does show that Android and Blackberry platforms as well as traditional cell phones are also being employed.

With the proliferation of mobile devices in healthcare, there is an increasingly urgent desire to leverage the value of immediate access offered by Unified Communications. Deploying Unified Communications in a healthcare setting can equip your organization with the tools it needs to transform clinical workflow. With UC, healthcare professionals can instantly connect to each other and to patients, positively impacting staff satisfaction and quality of care. Utilizing Unified Communications within a healthcare setting results in improved communication workflows, which in turn result in greater overall efficiency, reduced costs, increased staff confidence and patient satisfaction. If you're wondering how UC makes this possible, here are just a few of the many ways:

• Nurses and physicians are notified instantly with automatic alerts delivered directly to their mobile device of choice - even when outside the walls of the hospital (as appropriate).
• Clinicians are able to retrieve patient data at point-of-care from their mobile device, allowing them to offer a faster, more effective and efficient care response. 
• Clinical staff members are able to easily communicate with each other in a healthcare environment that supports multiple devices for multiple purposes. 
• Nurses can easily locate and dial or send secure care-related text messages to physicians using smartphones.

The move towards intelligent mobile technology is not limited to smartphones. With the development of mobile technology continuously on the rise, physicians' use of all portable devices is expanding even faster than anticipated. This is particularly true with tablets where, according to a Manhattan Research study, use has almost doubled since 2011. The study predicts that physician tablet adoption for professional purposes is expected to reach 62 percent in 2012, with the iPad being the dominant platform. Of tablet-owning physicians, half have already started using their device at point-of-care.

With smartphones and portable devices becoming the tools of choice for healthcare professionals, Unified Communications solutions allow clinicians to connect with staff, information, and applications whenever and wherever is best for them. Through UC physicians, nurses and clinicians can leverage the benefits of this technology to access new applications and provide the best patient care possible.

Click below to learn more about NEC’s clinical workflow solutions and how you can improve overall efficiency through increased staff confidence and patient satisfaction. 

If you are contemplating a Unified Communications (UC) solution for your business, key points to consider are the efficiency and functionality of your organization’s current telecommunications strategy, followed by why and how your business should implement Unified Communications. For smaller organizations, UC implementation is simplified due to the smaller number of users. In these businesses, it’s easier for an IT manager to configure applications on individual desktops, whereas in medium to large organizations there simply aren’t enough resources to utilize this method. Instead, the IT manager may send the client application to a central location for download, or send an e-mail to users with a link for them to self-configure their desktops. Regardless of your organization’s size, it’s still crucial that you evaluate current systems and solicit feedback from employees when integrating Unified Communications into your business. The following list of guidelines can help you develop a strategy to guide you. 

• UC project management

The first step you’ll want to take is identifying a project manager to oversee all UC implementation. You will also want to form an interdependent team --members from all sides and departments of your business who can benefit from the increased user productivity of UC implementation. You can simplify UC project management through thorough planning and the consistent assessment of needs, risks, and benefits of the project. Becoming very familiar with your prospective Unified Communications provider is also beneficial, making sure the provider can help your business adapt to changing needs. Evaluate the mobility of your workforce and see how UC projects will fit in to, for example, a bring your own device (BYOD) policy. Having a back-up plan as well as a recovery strategy in case of an emergency is also something you’ll want to think about sooner rather than later.

• Understand business needs EARLY

Ask what problems need to be solved and what other processes within your organization are in need of improvement? When preparing to implement UC, you must thoroughly understand what business processes are taking place and how improving such processes will contribute to enhanced productivity. In doing so, involving business partners in developing a UC strategy is ideal. By doing so, you can gain a better understanding of, for example, how important mobility is to business processes/practices. Have your UC project management personnel spend some time with employees in their daily workings to gain first-hand experience of how UC planning can help them.

• Assess current performance and solidify business buy-in

Evaluate how the implementation of UC applications will change your current IT infrastructure. Consider performance, cost, satisfaction, and general success and failure of business processes. Recording this information can be very helpful in comparing current operations to future operations. Also consider the amount of traffic you receive and from there determine which UC applications can best handle your traffic flow. Once you have decided which UC solutions you will implement, it is imperative the entire business agrees with the new technology implementation.

• Provide Product Outline

Provide key staff members the framework for potential product and services to be implemented and keep members of your organization well informed about developments in the strategy. As you receive feedback, start implementing small scale changes and continue to communicate implementation plans so you can make the full solution transition much smoother. You may want to take advantage of opportunities to test performance of your selected UC solution before implementation. Employing the “build-a-little-test-a-little” strategy can be very beneficial as it allows staff and users to test applications and give feedback.

• Training

Employing UC comes with many benefits--increased productivity, satisfaction, and savings. However, in order to fully yield these benefits, your staff must be well-trained on the solution you choose to implement. The good news is, training will be relatively easy since many users are familiar with and comfortable using UC type applications in their personal lives. On the flip side, just because users are comfortable, doesn’t mean training is any less of a necessity. Training is key in maximizing your investment and ROI – if users are not properly trained, they will likely not use the application and view it as a waste. How do your users learn to adapt to new technology? It is essential that training providers give IT staff quality instruction based on implemented UC solutions. Users must be able to receive quick, reliable feedback to any problems. Providing critical UC training to employees is vital in successful adoption. Determine the best environment to train your users, whether it is online, in-classroom, etc. To make sure users are completely comfortable with the new platform, allowing them to work remotely from time to time may be ideal, especially for business continuity.

Lastly, it is important not to leave UC planning up to users.   According to research from Nemertes, companies that have a prior UC plan in place are “measurably better” compared to companies that leave strategy planning in the hands of their users. Proper preparation and strategy can have your business well on its way to not only reaping the benefits of Unified Communications, but seeing drastic improvements in your organizations workflow.  To really see the value in your investment, plan on tracking your improvements and measuring your ROI.  To see how UC yielded measurable results and improved the workflow of one company, download the ROI of Unified Communications white paper below. 

Today’s healthcare professionals are highly mobile and as a result require tools that provide instant access to crucial information and communications with their colleagues. Safety, quality, costs and staffing shortages are just some of the critical factors impacting patient care in hospitals today, making efficient communications more essential than ever before. According to the HealthLeaders Media Industry Survey 2012-Nurse Leaders Report, top priorities for nurse leaders for the next three years include patient experience and satisfaction, clinical quality and safety, and process improvement with a noticeable reduction in cost.

Chief Nursing Officers (CNO) also have concern regarding risk mitigation, staffing issues, and regulatory agency visits (such as the Joint Commission). If you are one of the many healthcare organizations considering Unified Communications technology to enhance your clinical operations, consider some of the ways Unified Communications can optimize your clinical workflow:

1. Real-Time Information/Secure Communications-
Unified Communications technology enables the delivery of real-time information to clinicians. Through quickly relaying time-sensitive data, UC plays a huge role in risk mitigation by reducing the possibility of error and unnecessary treatments. Incorporating Unified Communications into a healthcare setting can also speed up the overall process of preparation, which in turn increases productivity and efficiency. Having real-time, reliable access to patient data allows you to leverage your UC investment and, more importantly, see a reduction in inaccuracies and improvements in the quality of healthcare your organization provides. With Unified Communications, clinical messages are delivered securely, with full data encryption and enforced user authentication. The secure communication feature of Unified Communications keeps information from Electronic Health Records (EHR) safe, enabling you to meet the stringent compliance requirements of healthcare organizations.

2. Improved Staff Collaboration and Satisfaction-
With advanced, easy-to-use communication solutions, clinical and operational workflows are dramatically improved. Unified Communications gives you the ability to integrate clinical applications, which in turn makes it easier to achieve other clinical needs such as ongoing medical education and training. An additional element of improved staff collaboration is the utilization of a mass notification system as well as the ability for clinicians to make decisions in a timelier manner.

In a hospital setting, implementing a mass notification system extends beyond emergencies – doctors, nurses and administrative staff can also be alerted of shift changes or increased availability. A mass notification system will allow the same message to be broadcast to hundreds, or even thousands, of people, and some advanced systems include instant recipient response and polling. Do you have a message or question that needs to be dispersed immediately? Mass communications can be sent to personal and internal devices by email, voice, SMS and other communication venues so that within minutes everyone who is affected by the content of the message has received it.

3. Improved Patient Care/Flow-
Since Unified Communications enables clinicians to receive alerts and notifications immediately and directly on their preferred device, your hospital can optimize patient flow by reducing patient waiting time, coordination time for staff, and patient length of stay, resulting in quicker bed turnover. Nurse-patient face time is also increased as a result. This makes for an improved patient experience as well as improved clinical outcomes.

4. Increased Revenue-
The revenue cycle in a healthcare setting is driven strongly by communications, and inefficient communications can result in high capital loss due to delays and errors. With Unified Communications you can merge your various clinical information systems into a single, easily managed solution which will help to optimize communications and increase revenue. For example, the quicker bed turnover we mentioned previously can generate additional revenue, and the improved clinical workflows and staff efficiencies yielded as a result of UC deployment can reduce overall costs. When you’re pondering whether or not Unified Communications has a place in your hospital environment, it is important to keep in mind that clinical needs should control the technology solutions you implement, not vice versa. To learn more about the value you can add by deploying Unified Communications in a healthcare setting, download this webinar.

Now that Unified Communications (UC) has been around a while, you are likely well-versed on the benefits of UC platforms, or may have even already deployed one yourself. There are the security aspects, end user satisfaction, and perhaps at the forefront of your mind – savings. Then there are the suggested policies and best practice methods. But if your business is heavily dependent on communications, have you considered how you can leverage Unified Communications to benefit your business in the event of an emergency?

Disaster recovery planning optimized with Unified Communications should be an essential component of your IT strategy and emergency preparedness. One great benefit of the flexibility and mobility of unified communications is that it enables seamless implementation of disaster recovery strategies. UC technologies provide a whole new degree of integration and collaboration among employees, enabling secure data traffic through a single application regardless of location. In any emergency, it is important that uninterrupted communications capabilities are maintained at all times. We narrowed down the top four ways to optimize Unified Communications in case of a disaster: 

• Evaluate Possible Scenarios-- How would different scenarios affect your business? For example, would you take different measures during an earthquake as opposed to a flood? How about a systems attack, virus, or other type of infrastructure failure? After identifying some specific scenarios, you may want to identify the various general types of disaster you want to be prepared for. It is helpful to determine what aspects of your business will be most affected in these situations, and determine how UC will perform and assist in your preparation and response.

• Geographic Diversity--If your company is geographically dispersed, you have an inherent capacity for redundancy that you can take advantage of. Routing communications and other processes to your various locations - whether they are in the same state or different countries – could be an ideal solution during disaster situations. Unified Communications helps make this possible. Alerting all divisions or departments within your organization of a major event as well as taking note of theirs can help smooth the recovery process. Reaching out to disaster recovery services, such as remote workstations, offsite data storage, and collocated branches is also a good idea. The effectiveness of this was demonstrated during the September 11, 2001 attacks when disaster recovery services provided office space and restored operations for many displaced businesses.

• Remote Productivity and Remote Workers --UC is commonly associated with desktop productivity, but with the use of mobile devices consistently increasing, it is beneficial to become familiar with methods to increase your company’s remote productivity. This can become particularly critical during a disaster, so it is essential to be prepared rather than waiting for disaster to strike. A good starting point is to fully understand the tools and resources necessary to enable remote productivity. You may also want to consider requiring users to work from home a few days every year, or rotating workers through home-office test runs to ensure they are comfortable with the Unified Communications platform you utilize and can effectively use UC if they are unable to make it to the office in the event of an emergency.

• Consumer Technologies-- Unified Communications has the ability to interface with consumer technologies, such as instant messaging and social media, and can display the presence and availability of mobile workers. This capability can be crucial in times of disaster. By employing the same technology across the board, UC allows employees to access the same tools and communicate remotely even in a disaster situation. 

Planning ahead and evaluating your disaster recovery plan can be very beneficial to your business. With a solid plan in place you can avoid preventable mistakes when the time comes to take action. This list provides a starting point, but if you really want to leverage your investment, particularly in times of emergency, makes it a priority to not only devise a plan, but continually test and update your recovery plan with current trends.

For more on current trends in disaster recovery and business continuity planning, check out what our friends at CSO have to say. Click here to download the CSO guide to basics of disaster recovery planning.