Principles Of An Effective UC Strategy

Tools that are easy, location independent, and inexpensive form the backbone of an enterprise’s collaboration strategy. Ruchir Godura, Vice President, India and South Asia, Vidyo, in conversation with Biztech2.com, talks about the business value of an effective unified communication strategy and shares some tips on how to go about planning one out.

What are the challenges faced by enterprises when it comes to building an effective collaborative workplace?

In my opinion, one of the major challenges that enterprises face is the complexity of technology. The technology that goes into collaboration within an enterprise, whether it is mere messaging tools or video communication, is extensively complex. Today, when we talk about video communication within an organisation, we think of a complex device that sits in a conference room, which would generally need extensive IT work to turn on and operate. This puts people off. Everyone likes using tools that are easy, location independent and which are inexpensive so that they do not need to be rationed out. So the complexity and cost of technology become major bottlenecks to building an effective collaborative workplace.

What advantages does a unified communication system offer to an enterprise as far as business value is concerned?

The biggest advantage that a unified communication system offers is that it allows people to be productive for a lot longer - regardless of their time and location - by just helping them collaborate with their colleagues. This ubiquity adds a whole lot of business value to enterprises. A good enterprise unified communication system today can largely reduce the need to physically travel for business meetings as well as reduce the need for a whole lot of prior resource reservation, thereby, saving on time and cost.

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What, according to you, are the basic principles of planning out an effective unified communication strategy?

In the past, technology used to be the primary concern of CIOs. Today, their concerns are increasingly moving towards bottom lines, fluctuations and security. Hence, when looking for a collaboration platform, CIOs have to take all these three factors into consideration. Bottom line of any organisation is affected by the cost of deployment. Hence, how much the platform costs is important. Security is another important factor. In today’s world, every organisation’s value lies in its intellectual property, and this can be easily compromised if the right tools are not successfully secured. Thirdly, its important to consider that productivity gains happen only when people use the platform, and people will use it only when its ubiquitous, easy to use and of high quality. Hence, the need to factor in the quality aspect.

What is the rate of adoption of video conferencing in India?

As per a research report, 75 million users in India will be using Internet streaming video in one form or another by 2015. Now, out of these 75 million users even if 10 percent are using it in the enterprise space for video collaboration, then that’s a dramatic jump from where we are today where we have less than a million using video.

Overall, video conferencing in India, as a trend, is picking up pace. Couple of years back, the idea of video conferencing had not even penetrated the personal lives of individuals, let alone the enterprise space. Today, with barriers such as complexity of technology, high costs, poor quality and unreliability being overcome, more and more people have begun to use video conferencing in their day-to-day lives. The vast spread of broadband connectivity has also helped push the usage further.

Using video conferencing in their personal lives has made people aware of the value and quality that video conferencing has over the phone. They are now demanding it within their workplaces, hence creating a pull for video collaboration within enterprises As opposed to the CIO pushing it and the users resisting it owing to the complexity, today the scenario has changed and there is a pull coming from the users themselves.

Also, today technology has advanced to a stage where high quality video can work reliably on desktops, tablets or any other mobile device. The quality of the hardware and software involved in video conferencing has also improved, giving it a further thrust.