Unified Communications: Users Up In Arms

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The unified communications wave has swept across several large enterprises in the country. But CTOs/CIOs are still cagey about a number of facts such as the extensive need for routers and issues related to configuration. However, there is a sharp rise in the demand for unified communications as enterprises are looking at thinning their spends in order to enhance the bottom-line.

Billed as a mandatory item in enterprises' communication tools set, the effective utilization of unified communications assists enterprises-both large and medium scale-add value to an array of business processes. It also substantially improves productivity and efficiency, and helps in gaining tangible profits.

Has unified communications really simplified the issues faced by enterprises? Has it offered what the enterprises had asked for? Let's explore.

Benefits Aplenty
Unified communications helps key people to become more efficient and effective, regardless of where they are working, by providing universal access to people and making enterprise communication tools accessible and more transparent. Through unified communications, the users who could benefit the most include highly mobile workers, those with frequent customer interaction and those who need to collaborate with internal or external teams.

"Unified communications is at the heart of our solutions. If I make a comparison between our expectations and actual realizations, I would say we are happy with the solutions offered by vendors, though we are skeptical about some issues," says Arindam Bose, head-IT, LG Electronics India.

LG Electronics, has a presence in consumer electronics, IT products and GSM handsets businesses, and connects extensively with customers and dealers. The number of customers and dealers is growing across the country in a big way. LG has deployed unified communications and some of the benefits the company has seen include assistance in conducting interviews systematically, and reduction of complex issues such as those related to support, management, billing. Financial benefits have been to the tune of 20-25%, and cost of ownership has also reduced.

"It has not simplified the communications. Users do not have faith in the systems and use them only under very special circumstances"

-Alagu Balaraman, executive vice president (IT & corporate development), Godfrey Phillips

Godfrey Phillips, the second largest player in the Indian cigarette industry with an annual turnover of over $265 mn, had deployed a WAN in 2003 and installed a VoIP telephone system and linked its video conferencing system to it as well.

"Deployment of unified communications for contact centers is not very large in number yet but there are centers with email/voice and chat catering to our customers in the US/UK. HTMT as an organization uses unified communications across multiple platforms and geographies to ensure online availability of information to enable decisions to interface with our customers. We have a strong backbone across our offices to ensure high availability and achieve the desired results for providing information online at all times," says C Subramanya, vice president (technologies), HTMT, a leading BPO.

Some Concerns
Enterprises are up in arms as there is growing pressure on improving performance. Concerns have overtaken advantages, while a few enterprises say the simplification aspect is miles away.

According to Alagu Balaraman, executive vice president (IT & corporate development), Godfrey Phillips, "There were issues of availability and congestion, leading to breaks in the voice. At the same time, telephony costs were rapidly dropping, while WAN costs were not. There was doubt on the financial viability of adopting VoIP. Capital costs were high due to regulatory restrictions on linking with the same EPABX units used for telephony. As a result, VoIP usage dropped significantly. Video conferencing was much older and there were issues of quality of images, complexity of operation and, also, breaks in connections. Meetings were often disrupted due to technical problems and fall back to conference calling was common."

"The cost of data connectivity can be justified only if the call traffic is high between the locations. This is particularly true in the current context, when the STD/ISD charges on public switched network have come down drastically. It is now simpler and cheaper to use PSTN"

-N Chandrasekaran, GM, IT, Ashok Leyland

"Users do not have faith in the systems and use them only under very special circumstances," he adds.

According to N Chandrasekaran, general manager-IT, Ashok Leyland, "As per the government regulations you can't have voice over Internet. We have employed voice over our private networks using a separate PBX dedicated for voice within our locations, without mixing it with the public voice network."

Ashok Leyland has been facing challenges too with respect to costs. The cost of data connectivity can be justified only if the call traffic is high between the locations. In the current context when the STD / ISD charges on PSTN have come down drastically, it's far cheaper to use the regular phones. "The extensive need for hardware with regard to routers and configuration needed to establish dialing when we use IP voice, drive the users to resort to PSTN instead of IP phones," says Chandrasekaran.

Integration of various platforms and cultures across centers are the main challenges faced by HTMT. Unified forms of reports across platform and made seamlessly available across media is an ongoing task. "Implementation for our customers as a contact center practice is yet to get initialized and we are receiving queries from a few customers on such services. Going forward on this could be a trend in the contact centers and we are in constant discussions with our technology partners to address the new challenges," says HTMT's C Subramanya.

Some of the major concerns include dependence on one vendor, which may be a negative thing, as turnaround time is not up to the mark. The last mile cost can go up because of remote locations. Companies are now opting for opting wireless solutions for this. Issues such as security, reliability and ease of maintenance are critical in the case of unified communications.

-Arindam Bose, head-IT,
LG Electronics

What is Expected
Any new communication tool has to be simple and intuitive to operate. It needs to be highly efficient and reliable. Since communication is exploding, it needs to be cost effective as well. Finally, it needs to integrate with the rest of the world and cannot be an isolated network. With the deep penetration of mobile phones and dramatic lowering of costs in mobile telephony, fixed units have lost favor.

"Any device coming in now must be capable of working with GSM and VoIP. Otherwise, I believe users will not switch over to this usage; email and mobile phones today are doing a very good job. Unless something brings them together, it will lead to more clutter than use," says Balaraman.

The most desired situation is to have a system whereby we are able to make a call to any phone whether it is an IP phone or PSTN from any desktop or laptop. The system should facilitate audio/video conferencing and instant messaging, according to Chandrasekaran.

HTMT finds implementation and integration across platforms and the customer relationship management software a challenge across the centers as the same would have to be synchronized at all times. "Internally, we also intend to migrate to an ERP. The challenges of implementation with a single platform and then migrating towards unified communications center would remain a challenge. This implementation being a back office function for HTMT, achieving return on investment is an ongoing issue," adds Subramanya.