There is no doubt that Unified Communications is looked upon by companies the world over as essential for future business development. With British companies such as Vodafone bringing out superb packages such as Vodafone One Net, these are exciting times in the telecommunications industry.
However, even though interest in Unified Communications is running high, there are a lot of IT and company decision makers that are still a little bit hesitant to commit. This is according to a recent Osterman Research study that was sponsored by ConnectSolutions. The survey highlighted that 48 per cent of the top decision makers surveyed admitted that they didn’t understand what sort of an impact UC would have on their business. One in six decision makers stated that their investment in telephony and related systems was an important factor financially for not adopting UC straight away.
The CEO of ConnectSolutions, Glen Vondrick, talking about the survey, said: “Businesses hear all about the benefits of UC, but they want to know how UC will impact their specific organisation, and they’re right to question this, because no enterprise is the same and no UC deployment will be the same. This can be difficult to comprehend, because the benefits of UC and time to ROI for each organisation depend on so many factors, including network configuration, workforce culture, adoption roadblocks, and where UC can help each business the most.”
Almost 75 per cent of decision makers want to see a full return on legacy technology before moving to UC, but many policy makers consider the expected improvement in employee productivity due to UC to make up for any losses.
While the fear and hesitation is still continuing, one thing that most companies believe is that for the future, there are huge gains to be made to justify UC migration. These gains are available for big and small businesses alike, but with many businesses preparing for the ISDN Switch-Off, a UC solution could be the perfect alternative.