INX Blog

UC Helps Business Harness Information Silos

One of the biggest impacts of collaboration on the enterprise is the increased ability to find and use the right information at the right time. But, recent research findings differ. It would appear that there's either way too much information to make sense of, or that the ability to find what we need is severely limited—depending upon who you ask.

Collaboration powered by unified communications can help streamline the information flow. It's all about harnessing the silos you have now while working to make the boundaries to the information contained within them more fluid. Eliminating silos has been a battle cry for increasing informational access. But, perhaps that's too big an effort for many enterprises to tackle during this period of do more with less.

Consider simplifying your efforts.

Last month's post, Workspaces Put an End to Mass Project Emails, discussed how to end the chaos of overflowing email which also serves to create silos of information for project teams. Increasing productivity—even amidst silos of information—becomes possible when the information critical to completing a project can be compiled within a workspace and made accessible to all project members, regardless of which silo or system sourced it.

One way to accomplish this is by enabling access to subject-matter experts via unified messaging, presence and video conferencing. This access allows your workers increased ability to actually find and gain access to the information they need. Once discovered the information can be added to the workspace for the entire team to use to do their jobs better...and faster.

The truth is that most companies produce silos of information created around areas of expertise. That's the nature of departmental work. You have your contact center silo, your solution area silos, your sales silo and marketing silo, to mention a few. Each of those areas is a concentrated niche of expertise that includes the subject matter experts who can facilitate access and establish context for how the information can best be applied to the project at hand.

The inherent problem with a "silo" is that it's limited by how data is accessed and used. Data usually has only one way in and one way out. Based on the demand for access to information that meets a workers' needs at a specific point in time, the better choice may be to improve collaboration across silo boundaries.

Perhaps harnessing your existing information silos via unified communications and collaboration is a more compelling and economically feasible approach than attempting to merge all of your information islands together while struggling to maintain the integrity of the data simultaneously.

What do you think?

Collaboration powered by unified communications can help streamline the information flow. It's all about harnessing the silos you have now while working to make the boundaries to the information contained within them more fluid. Eliminating silos has been a battle cry for increasing informational access. But, perhaps that's too big an effort for many enterprises to tackle during this period of do more with less.

Consider simplifying your efforts.

Last month's post, Workspaces Put an End to Mass Project Emails, discussed how to end the chaos of overflowing email which also serves to create silos of information for project teams. Increasing productivity—even amidst silos of information—becomes possible when the information critical to completing a project can be compiled within a workspace and made accessible to all project members, regardless of which silo or system sourced it.

One way to accomplish this is by enabling access to subject-matter experts via unified messaging, presence and video conferencing. This access allows your workers increased ability to actually find and gain access to the information they need. Once discovered the information can be added to the workspace for the entire team to use to do their jobs better...and faster.

The truth is that most companies produce silos of information created around areas of expertise. That's the nature of departmental work. You have your contact center silo, your solution area silos, your sales silo and marketing silo, to mention a few. Each of those areas is a concentrated niche of expertise that includes the subject matter experts who can facilitate access and establish context for how the information can best be applied to the project at hand.

The inherent problem with a "silo" is that it's limited by how data is accessed and used. Data usually has only one way in and one way out. Based on the demand for access to information that meets a workers' needs at a specific point in time, the better choice may be to improve collaboration across silo boundaries.

Perhaps harnessing your existing information silos via unified communications and collaboration is a more compelling and economically feasible approach than attempting to merge all of your information islands together while struggling to maintain the integrity of the data simultaneously.

What do you think?

Eliminating Communication Latency Boosts Business

Considering that communications are likely the lifeblood of your business, eliminating communication latency should be a top priority. In order to keep pace with the demands of our business environments, we've got to improve the way we work together as well as the way we serve our customers' increasing demands.

We've all used email and the phone extensively in our professional lives. Both can be used in a one-to-one or one-to-many setting. However, one limitation with only phone or email is that phone excludes data and email excludes voice.

When using only phone or email, response times are unreliable. If people are not available immediately, this can result in messages getting lost in overflowing inboxes or voice mail that can remain unanswered. Unified communications simplifies the growing complexity of communications by taking the guesswork out of the process.

Presence not only aids workers in discovering who's available when needed, but the best way to reach them. This reduces delays to decision making, improves your ability to hit project milestones on time and helps your company resolve more customer issues during the first call—to name but a few benefits that can boost your business results.

Speed and instant gratification seem to be the norm for communications today. This expectation has been aided by social media and Web 2.0 tools that enable seemingly instantaneous interactions. Your customers expect faster response times and so does your workforce.

Unified Communications is focused on reducing response times for work completion by enabling people to choose the most efficient and effective means of interaction for the task at hand. That means connecting the right people with the right information at the right time, regardless of location.

If you're looking for solid reasons to justify investing in advanced communication technology, here are a few issues that unified communications can help to correct:

• Number of customer issues requiring more than one call for resolution.
• Project delays based on the unavailability of subject matter experts.
• Amount of time executives are unavailable due to travel.
• Escalating product development costs.
• Lengthening sales cycles due to scheduling conflicts for sales meetings.

Enabling better connectivity between voice, data and applications impacts all of these at varying degrees. And the impacts are powerful enough to produce quite a return on investment.

Even Basic Collaboration Pays Off

Frost and Sullivan conducted a study together with Cisco and Verizon to discern the returns on collaboration seen by companies who have deployed varying degrees of unified communications and collaboration (UC&C). They found that even Basic Collaborators identify an almost 2.8 return on their UC&C investment. The more progressive that collaboration deployments become, the higher the return with those at the highest levels seeing a return of six times on their investment.

Here's a snapshot of the differing levels of collaboration the study found:

Source: Frost and Sullivan

Unified communications is often touted as delivering ROI through reduced travel expenses. But, the returns on collaboration aren’t as simple as traditional ROI measurements tied to dollars and cents. Research is finding that the benefits show up in unexpected ways related to improvements tied to functional areas.

The research into returns by functional area found that interactions involving higher numbers of people produced the highest levels of returns, for example:

• HR – 2.4
• R&D – 5.1
• Sales – 5.2
• Marketing – 4.4

The point to consider is that every level of UC&C deployments are found to deliver ROI. So, start now and roll out additional tools incrementally to generate those progressive levels of improvements that payoff with quantifiable performance improvements.

Download the Frost and Sullivan Report and see how Biesse America is realizing a $15,000 to $18,000 monthly ROI from their UC&C deployment over on Search VoIP

See Unified Communications in Action

This video shows how collaboration improves customer service relationships. It's a fun take on what the future might look like on a personal level combined with the way business can get done better and more efficiently behind the scenes.

Isn't it interesting that by simplifying how teams and employees connect across your company you can transform how your customers experience your complex products? Although I'm still not sure I'm ready to hear Scrappy talk to me in English...

Collaboration Closes the Distance Gap

We respond in real time and expect the same from others we need to exchange information with at a personal level. Employees have come to expect the same experiences from their work environments and the tools that facilitate how they collaborate to do their jobs.

Social networking, webinars and virtual conferencing have ramped up our need to participate. We’re spending more time online interacting with people on a variety of platforms about numerous topics of interest. Essentially, we’re now living in the experience economy, transcending the barriers of time and distance. We rely on technology more than ever for our communication needs.

We respond in real time and expect the same from others we need to exchange information with. Employees have come to expect the same experiences from their work environments and the tools that facilitate how they do their jobs.

The ways in which we utilize digital social and community platforms has removed the necessity for us to be face-to-face with someone for all conversations. We’re becoming adept at getting much of what we need through textual communications.

We’ve all come to rely on email and document attachments. This said, there are some times when the nuances of language and the body language in response to conversations is the key to getting the outcomes that pull a project back on track or cement a relationship with a customer into place.

To keep working at the pace our businesses require, we need the instant gratification of collaboration technology to help us out.

From being able to find the people we need to interact with—along with the best way to contact them in real time—to the ability to escalate the method of communication to get clarity without losing the thread, a technology assist can become a productivity boost.

Consider this typical situation:

• You need answers to questions a customer in Houston raised about project execution in their proposal.


• You locate the expert you need in Boston and see they’re available by Instant Message.


• After a brief exchange, you need to discuss the rewording of a clause in the proposal.


• With one click you escalate the Instant Message session to a web conference.


• You can now see each other on video as well as see the document in the web browser and work together to edit it in real time.


• As you hang up, you save the updated proposal and call your customer. You pop into a web conference and walk her through the updated change, getting her agreement to move forward.

If you tried to accomplish this through standard methods—like sending email or chasing people via voicemail—how much longer would it take to get the same outcome?

How much more value do you think your customer will assign to your efforts given the personalization and speed of your responsiveness via collaborative technology?