Driving workforce productivity with unified communications

By Philippe Winthrop

Aberdeen’s research shows that unified communications (UC) solutions – both fixed and mobile – have a measurable impact on the productivity of an organization’s workforce. Best-in-Class (BIC) organizations are leveraging their UC solutions as part of an integrated business process-mapping program to understand what is core to their organization and how UC solutions help the workforce most effectively impact those core business processes.

Benchmarking the Best-in-Class
Aberdeen’s March 2007 report, Improving Customer Satisfaction through Unified Communications, showed that organizations considered “providing their customers with more personalized service” a strategic concern. BIC respondents to that survey addressed that pressure and achieved measurable improvements in customer satisfaction levels through the accelerated adoption of unified communications solutions. Aberdeen’s latest research shows the two greatest pressures organizations currently face are the continued need to have timely and high-quality responsiveness to customer needs, as well as managing a decentralized workforce. At first glance, these two issues may not seem interconnected, but closer scrutiny reveals they are very much intertwined.

While customer service remains paramount, the increasingly fluid and competitive global market drives organizations to stay as lean and competitive as possible. Specifically, they are looking to increase revenues through advances in flexibility and mobility while simultaneously decreasing the cost of doing that business.

Organizations recognize that one of the most important ways to ensure high levels of customer intimacy and satisfaction is through face-to-face interactions. As organizations become more successful and continue to grow, their customer base expands thus requiring even more travel. However, this symbiotic phenomenon is in fact a double-edged sword. An organization’s success eventually leads to the need for increased travel to ensure appropriate levels of customer care.

This enhanced travel requirement also drives the need to more effectively mobilize an organization’s workforce, thereby allowing employees to 1) be more responsive to both internal and external customer needs; 2) share information with colleagues, partners, and customers more as a means of increasing collaboration; and 3) thus help increase the flexibility of internally and market-facing employees.

The returns from Best-in-Class performance
BIC organizations spent, on average, considerably more than what all other organizations invested on UC solutions. That upfront investment has paid off handsomely over the last 12 months. In fact, the larger investments in UC solutions translated into a 67 percent relative increase in top line revenue and a 50 percent relative increase in the overall profitability of the organization.

Top performing organizations place the most emphasis on leveraging their technology enablers as a means to an end - not as an end of its own. In fact, BIC organizations are more likely than all others to leverage technologies to create a borderless office – mobilizing the workforce – to enhance that productivity.

Organizational capabilities and technology enablers
The essential ingredients of successfully deploying and reaping the benefits of a UC solution that can mobilize and increase the productivity of an organization’s workforce include process, organization, and technology enablers that come together to form a working solution that translates to more effective and profitable working environments for organizations.

• Process

BIC organizations in this survey have formal policies governing appropriate usage, and the centralized management of UC solutions as compared to all other organizations.

BIC organizations are 62 percent more likely to have business rules in place for the appropriate use of UC solutions. These rules and regulations are vital to creating a proper framework for leveraging these technologies. Implementing these rules and regulations results in BIC organizations being 20 percent more likely than the industry average to connect to the person they are trying to reach on the first try, thanks in part to the processes they put in place.

• Organization

BIC organizations are 43 percent more likely than laggard organizations to have someone on staff to train the workforce on how to best leverage UC solutions. They are also over 54 percent more likely to have dedicated staff in place to manage the UC solutions. BIC organizations recognize that a successful technology implementation requires a complete lifecycle approach including consulting, implementation, operation, support, and training services. This organizational structure results in 47 percent of BIC organizations saying UC solutions greatly improve the use of human resources – four times more frequently than all other organizations.

• Technology

91 percent of BIC organizations stated they are currently, or were in the planning stages of, leveraging smart phones as part of their unified communications strategy – over 65 percent more frequently than laggards. Additionally, 77 percent of BIC organizations have call redirection capabilities in order to drive towards true fixed / mobile convergence. These organizations understand that the value of UC solutions has begun the process of extending beyond the walls of an organization’s offices to help drive the increased mobility of the workforce.

Required actions
The adoption of fixed and mobile UC solutions is driven by BIC organizations’ need to 1) better respond to customer needs, 2) better manage an increasingly mobile and decentralized workforce, and 3) maintain a strong and continuous work pace no matter where employees may be around the world. The greatest challenge for organizations is to ensure they are deploying the most appropriate UC solutions to the right people within the organization. The effectiveness of a UC implementation and the productivity gains it will drive within an organization depend on the approach that an organization is taking, as well as the KPIs that are developed in the planning process for ongoing performance measurement.

Aberdeen’s research has identified the pressures organizations face in regards to improving workforce productivity and how they responded to those pressures from both an organizational and technological decision process. That being said, all organizations, whether laggard or even BIC, must consider a continuous analysis of not just the technology but the existing business processes to drive improved workforce productivity, thereby ensuring their ability to remain speedy and nimble in both their current and emerging competitive areas.

As such, whether an organization is trying to improve its workforce’s productivity, flexibility and collaboration from laggard to industry average, or industry average to BIC, the following actions will help spur the necessary performance improvements:

Laggard steps to success

• Analyze core versus contextual business processes

A top concern for any organization is the ability to determine and focus its human and capital resources on its core competencies. Once an organization has been able to determine its core competencies, it needs to also be able to assess which technologies will help facilitate those processes. BIC organizations are over 26 percent more likely than laggard organizations to have systems in place to analyze core versus non-core business practices, allowing them to determine what teams and groups can most benefit from UC solutions.

• Deploy text-to-speech capabilities

Text-to-speech capabilities significantly increase the accessibility of information when an individual is not near a computer. Aberdeen’s research shows that currently less than one in five laggard organizations have deployed text-to-speech capabilities. BIC organizations that use these systems more frequently are able to reduce their response times to customers thus reducing the opportunity for customer dissatisfaction.

Industry steps to success

• Develop policies for the appropriate use of UC applications

Currently, less than half the industry average organizations in this study stated they had policies in place for the appropriate use of UC solutions. It’s no surprise then to see that only 50 percent of industry average organizations in this study also have formal training procedures around the UC solutions. Training and appropriate use policies are vital to ensuring that the maximum value is derived from the applications. BIC organizations are 26 percent more likely to have usage policies in place.

• Leverage telepresence systems

While video conferencing systems have been available for years, telepresence systems promise to deliver even greater benefits and help reduce travel costs. While less than one in five of industry average organizations are currently using these systems, these organizations should accelerate their adoption of the technology.

63 percent of BIC organizations stated in this survey that telepresence systems had a positive impact on their interactions with partners/suppliers, and 55 percent said the same in regards to the impact it had on customer interactions.

Best-in-Class steps to success

• Develop more timely productivity measurement plans

While BIC organizations are far more likely than all others to have any kind of measurement plan in place, Aberdeen’s research shows that the frequency with which even BIC organizations measure the productivity gains from UC solutions leaves much room for improvement. Specifically, the benefits from UC solutions are most frequently measured annually or on an adhoc basis. All organizations should develop at least a quarterly measurement plan to determine the impact these solutions have on the workforce.

• Accelerate the integration of mobile enterprise applications

Just like in a fixed environment, such as a call center, where employees count on the ability to access enterprise applications and leverage that information via UC solutions, individuals need to have access to that data in a mobile context. Currently, only 58 percent of BIC organizations state they have access to their mobile enterprise applications in conjunction with their UC solutions. The ability to integrate dashboards and other content through mobile devices and share that information via mobile IM / presence applications would be a great opportunity to enhance knowledge sharing and help improve team productivity.

Aberdeen Insights – summary
Both vendors and end-user organizations have suggested at times that UC was in fact a solution in search of a problem. This has translated to an adoption rate that has been arguably less than what the technology’s vendors would have hoped for.

Aberdeen’s research has shed light onto the question of UC’s validity and the productivity gains fixed and mobile solutions can deliver to an organization. BIC organizations that have been using a broader portfolio of UC functionality more frequently within their organizations have been shown to effectively leverage these technology enablers to improve their business processes thus improving their workforce’s productivity and delivering superior service to their customers. The next step in this evolution for BIC organizations will be to adopt a true fixed / mobile convergence strategy.

About Philippe Winthrop
Philippe Winthrop is a Research Director in Aberdeen Group’s Wireless and Mobility Research Practice. In this capacity, Philippe brings his expertise for all things wireless and researches the impact of disruptive technologies, including WiFi / WiMax, PDAs, mobile devices, Mobile VoIP, on the business value chain.

Philippe holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics with a concentration in Romance Languages from Boston College, as well as a Master of Arts degree from Brandeis University, incorporating studies at Université de Paris IX – Dauphine.

Key Insights

• Employees at Best-in-Class organizations are working, on average, three hours less per week since last year, yet gross margins have increased 19 percent in the same time frame
• Employees at Best-in-Class organizations spend, on average, 32 percent of their time teleworking – 47 percent more than all others
• 67 percent of Best-in-Class organizations say that UC solutions have increased the speed with which their products reach the market

Fast Facts

• On average, organizations state that 18 percent of their budget is spent on telecommunications
• BIC Class organizations have increased their expenditures on UC solutions 20 percent in the last 12 months
• 63 percent of BIC organizations use UC solutions within their sales and marketing organizations.

Fast Facts

• 94 percent of BIC organizations are using, or will be integrating, wireless enterprise applications into their UC solutions within the next 12 months
• Employees at BIC organizations complete nearly 25 percent more of their weekly tasks than employees at Laggard organizations
• BIC organizations find the competitiveness of their organization has increased over 3x that of all other organizations

Key Insights

• 80 percent of BIC organizations are using an Instant Messaging (IM) / presence system
• BIC organizations are 54 percent more likely than Laggards to have dedicated staff to manage the UC solutions
• 77 percent of BIC have, or are developing, methods to analyze core versus non-core business processes that can leverage UC solutions