ADTRAN Blog

In my last post, I talked briefly about the need to send the right message to gain broad adoption for UC. I stressed this as part of the need to set realistic expectations, and the fact that there isn’t one right way to deploy UC. Just as there are numerous and fluid solutions from vendors, as well as definitions of UC itself, there is no clear path for a successful rollout.

Thinking along those lines, crafting the right message is a real challenge, and you may well need multiple messages that speak to different constituencies among your employees. So, before trying to nail this the first time around, I think it will be helpful to first figure out what not to say. UC is still a work in progress, and at this stage of the game, I would wager you’ll have more success anticipating what isn’t going to work than trying to guess what their real needs and wants are.

Over the course of my ongoing research with vendors, end users and channels, I have a broad perspective about what defines value for UC, and a number of wrong messages come to mind that IT would do well to avoid. I’ll explore two of these now, and continue the theme in my next post.

Wrong Message #1 – More is Better

Nobody buys into this simple mantra like Americans, but in the case of UC, you don’t really want to go there. First of all, employees – aka end users – aren’t the buyers, so they attach no monetary value to UC. As such, there is no bang-for-the-buck benefit that comes from using, say 7 applications as opposed to 4. More importantly, UC is not about overkill. The name of the game is not to overwhelm everyone else – especially customers – with your ability to use 5 modes at once, unless they truly can work that way.

On the contrary, UC can be very effective just using one mode, and in some ways, that’s where the true value proposition lies. The real magic for end users comes from knowing which mode to use with the other party/parties, as well as doing so at the right time and with the right interface. Presence has a lot to do with this, but that’s a pretty abstract concept to communicate as a driver.

Wrong Message #2 – More Communicating = Better Productivity

This is a second cousin to Wrong Message #1, and can be equally dangerous. The end goal is clear – management wants employees to be more productive, and IT wants to enable that with a well understood UC deployment. In this case, the “more is better” fallacy sounds good on paper, but when left to their own devices, employees will be just as likely to achieve the opposite result.

Old school IT managers may not get this, but the Internet generation are largely self-taught and have been very effectively conditioned to accept the self-serve model for using the Web. While this comes with a sense of self-reliant pride, the accompanying skill set may not be ideal for boosting productivity. In the absence of best practices for using UC – which could/should come from vendors or the channels – end users will be on their own here.

If you send the message that more communicating leads to better productivity, end users may simply view all the UC applications as toys in the sandbox to figure out for themselves. Some will do this right away, but others could end up simply flooding the network with messages across all modes, thinking that they’re being productive by virtue of all this activity. Bad idea, and I’m sure you can write the ending to this scene just as well as me.

Do these scenarios sound familiar? I have others coming, but would love to hear what else you’re seeing in terms the wrong messages to be sending around UC.

There are a few themes to pick up on from my last post, with the basic idea being that UC is changing the role of IT. Many core IT functions will remain, but UC is as much about behavior change as adopting new technology. Of course, UC is impacting vendors as well, but that’s another discussion.

Coming back to IT, in my last post I identified two ways of gauging the acceptance of UC prior to a broadly-based rollout. This is a good starting point, and IT shouldn’t have to feel they’re totally on their own to figure things out. UC is new for everyone and it’s a bit early for a universal set of best practices. IT should recognize that mistakes will be made along the way, and that it’s okay to take inspiration or guidance from wherever learning is available. There’s no one right way to deploy UC, but there are many missteps that will lead to failure. The key is to minimize the mistakes rather than aim for perfection out of the gate – it’s not going to happen.

Based on this, a good first principal is to set realistic expectations across the various stakeholder groups for adopting UC. There’s no point in setting the bar too high, but don’t set it too low either. If the perceived value is nominal, end users will have little motivation to invest time in UC, and that’s a difficult mindset to change.

With that in mind, let’s start with those bleeding edge Millennials. Not only will they have a great intuitive sense of how to use UC, but for this reason, the perceived value will be relatively high. Millennials will see the utility that comes from integrating various modes into a common interface, and once they get comfortable with this, they will almost certainly do their own mashups and find new applications that have high business value but were not part of the offering.

Your next challenge is to build on this learning and bring it to the broader organization. A good starting point is to view this challenge as a large scale UC collaboration exercise. In that regard, Millennials should be very helpful in both crafting and socializing the message you need to get out to everyone else. They know what it’s like to collaborate and reach out to large networks of contacts – as in Facebook – and will have a good sense around the modes that non-Millennials will be most responsive to.

The key here is communicating the right message to get everyone else involved. Millennials will likely be your best early adopters, so getting them onside won’t be your biggest challenge. For everyone else, you won’t get them all – at least first time around – but you should have a good shot at getting the fast follower and mainstream adopter types onside.

At a basic level, you’ll get these end users if they understand that the more people using UC, the more valuable it becomes for everyone. You’ll need more hooks, though, and that’s what I’ll explore in my next post. Until then, I’ll ask you to think about the messages you’ve been sending so far in support of UC, and how effective they’ve actually been. Would you be surprised if there was a disconnect here? I wouldn’t.

Over the past few series of posts, I’ve touched on a few topics that are impacting both UC vendors and IT decision makers, and clearly there’s a lot more involved than just the underlying technology. In no particular order, this includes the role of video, smartphones/tablets, social media and free/OTT services. I’d like to change gears and step back to look at what this all means for these two stakeholder groups, starting first with IT.

As noted already, IT must wear many hats with UC, as well as meet the needs of a diverse group of stakeholders. Just thinking about video, the expectations among Millennials will be much different than older employees who are less comfortable with it. When intelligently deployed, UC delivers great value to the business, but every application has specific requirements, and not all end users are created equal. Ultimately, IT would like to see every employee using every UC application, but that’s just not realistic. As such, IT needs to set expectations with management as to how UC will be adopted, and making it clear this is not a one-size-fits-all solution.

This also means that IT needs to work more closely with UC vendors to get their support beyond installing software, IP phones and servers. Enterprise-wide adoption will come in phases, and this is where vendors can add new value. There are many things IT can do in advance to gauge the acceptance of UC across the organization, and I’ll touch on two here for starters.

1. Identify a small beta test group. You probably won’t have the luxury of a staged rollout, but it should not be difficult to get a handful of beta testers to help evaluate the core features and overall UC user experience. This doesn’t need to be a scientific sample – the important thing is finding willing/able employees who will have an intuitive feel for UC, both on a technology and business value level. You may already have people in mind who have been asking for UC, and they will likely know others who could fit the bill as well. Another approach would be to post a request online wherever employees can be found – company Intranet, user forums, company Facebook page, etc.
2. Initially target high value end users. Think in terms of who would get the most business value from UC. Sales certainly would – so would project/team leaders who manage groups. Other types include highly mobile workers and some home-based workers. Contact center is good too, but their needs are more complex, and probably not ideal for this initial user base. Whereas the beta test group is more focused on tech savvy users, this approach is about business value. Initially, it will be more important to show that UC is yielding tangible results – even if just among some vertical groups or functions – rather than how broadly you can get it deployed. By showing business-level benefits early on, management will be more patient as you work on getting everyone else up to speed on UC.

The basic idea here is that IT should not be flying solo or blind when deploying UC. There are many ways to get preliminary input from end users, and for vendors – or channels – to share best practices from other deployments. The last thing you want to do is a blanket rollout across the organization, and you do not lack for options in taking a smarter approach. This is very much a part of how UC is changing the role of IT, and I’ll continue exploring this in my next post. How has your role been changing with UC, and what are your biggest challenges?