You don’t need a Cisco-powered network to run its Unified Communications platform. As long as you have a sufficiently robust infrastructure, you’ll be able to take advantage of the collaboration capabilities afforded by this solution. But, it may make sense to implement Unified Communications on a Cisco network, if you have the flexibility in your infrastructure, budget and staff. There are hidden benefits that you may not recognize immediately, but they will be noticeable down the road.

Read the rest of this entry »

This must seem like a strange question. After all, it has nothing to do with technology. And, it’s not often that you find an empty conference room when you need one! Well, all this is about to change. With Cisco Unified Communications, you won’t need to cram everyone into a small room for a long meeting. Not only can you meet from your desk (or device, anywhere), but you’ll also have access to all the information you need to make that meeting productive.

Read the rest of this entry »

With all the communications tools already on the market, it’s still difficult, sometimes, to put the right group of professionals together. The effort becomes even more complex when you include the need to share documents, collaborate on daunting issues or share ideas in real time. Somehow, many of the collaboration solutions fall short of delivering the ability to connect quickly and work together in real time without regard to business units and physical locations. With Cisco Unified Communications, however, you can take full advantage of the deep business and technical knowledge resident in your business, as though everyone involved were sitting in the same room.

In today’s well-connected and hyper-competitive marketplace – regardless of what industry you’re in – the ability to communicate no longer provides a competitive edge. Rather, it’s the price of admission. If you can’t pull together the right group of experts quickly, you risk falling behind … and ceding market share to the competition. It’s too easy to miss an opportunity when the pace of business is measured in seconds instead of days or weeks.

Read the rest of this entry »

You’re deep into the sales cycle. Your prospect is at the point where tough, detailed questions are the norm, and they’re coming at you at a rapid pace. Every second counts, especially when you’re competing with other companies for a specific opportunity. In fact, your ability to respond is being evaluated, even if informally, and you’re eager to put your best foot forward. At moments like this, Cisco Unified Communications can change your ability to compete profoundly and deliver a return on investment that’s incredibly easy to measure.

When a question comes in from a client, Cisco UC can give you swift and direct access to all the information resident in your organization. If it’s on a server, a desktop or inside an employee’s head, the tools from Cisco can help the right people get together, regardles of where they are located physically, in order to understand the inquiry, formulate the right response and support it with all the data available. Specification documents, presentations, diagrams and performance data – along with everything else you can imagine – can be shared quickly to facilitate planning and discussion.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve all made that dreaded customer care phone call, wondering while dialing how long we’ll be stuck on hold. Whether it’s for tech support or to check on an airline reservation, one thing is certain: it won’t be short. For companies that provide customer care, this is a vexing problem. It puts your reputation at risk, but unpredictable call volumes and the occasional curve ball make the process difficult to fix.

What you need is a way to marshal all the knowledge in your company – across borders and business units – quickly to get to the bottom of a customer’s issue. The challenge may seem daunting, but Cisco’s Unified Communications platform can tip the odds in your favor.

Read the rest of this entry »

The hardest part of improving employee collaboration is cultural: you need to make it habit to communicate. For too long, the contrary has been the case. Not knowing where pockets of expertise reside, employees have had to do more on their own, spending time looking for solutions that their colleagues may know immediately. It’s not their fault, though. Without the tools to collaborate effectively, people have had to become more self-reliant. Even in businesses where collaboration and sharing tools have been implemented, they’ve often failed to deliver on the ease of use, specific functionality and performance necessary to make collaboration a reality.

Cisco Unified Communications changes the technological barriers, delivering integrated video, voice and data and applications to make genuine real-time collaboration possible. History, however, has shaped perception, resulting in a hefty dose of skepticism that will have to be overcome in order for collaboration to become a reality. So, to gain employee buy-in, you’ll need to make the case for collaboration. With Cisco UC, you’ll have the resources you need to demonstrate that collaboration isn’t just possible but effective.

Read the rest of this entry »

New directions and new ideas at VoiceCon last week in San Francisco at the Moscone Convention Center. The Yankee Group estimated there were about 3,000 people who attended the premier communications event, about the same as 2008, a good turnout given the cloud of trepidation hanging over the industry about the economy and corporate investment in technology.
New directions for business communications revolved around the integration of social media into the corporate world. The potential impact and dangers of meshing interactive sites into the mainstream marketing, operations and administration were hot topics at VoiceCon. One interesting idea was bringing Twitter into the enterprise as a true working communications tool rather than a novelty marketing application, a starting point for many companies. IT teams are faced with a daunting challenge in meeting expectations and assumptions of an increasingly social media savvy workforce with the security, management and support requirements of the corporation. This will be a fascinating, rapidly-changing dynamic to follow between end-users and tech staff.
New ideas for Unified Communications focused more than ever around solving business processes and operational issues through applications available under the UC umbrella. As we discussed a couple of weeks ago, it’s our responsibility as trusted advisors to our clients to expand conversations outside IT to every key area of the business so we can understand the potential impact of UC and ensure we’re designing and deploying the right solution with a return on investment that makes good business sense.
Expanding UC to mobile communications was another key point for customers. We’ve spoken for years about building demand for seamless communications from anywhere from any device and it’s now a pre-requisite for businesses with mobile phones appearing to be the consensus pick for the primary end-user device in the years ahead. The key for us is proving the value of that flexibility and mobility – how does that make our clients money? Save money? Make their employees more productive? What is the value of reaching the right person the first time at any time? Another challenge will be supporting clients in the design, deployment and management of a challenging technology environment.
By the time we hit VoiceCon 2010 in Orlando next March, we should see tremendous inroads of social media into the corporate infrastructure with some deeper ground rules and guidance on best practices for integration and support as well as further announcements from vendors on mobility enhancements for collaboration and presence.