UC and User ProductivityUC and User Productivity

The UCStrategies.com team has been differentiating between the two types of Unified Communications: UC User Productivity (UC-UP) and UC Business Process (UC BP).

The UCStrategies.com team has been differentiating between the two types of Unified Communications: UC User Productivity (UC-UP) and UC Business Process (UC BP).UC-UP focuses on personal productivity and features like "click to call," while UC-BP focused on integrating UC with the organization's business processes and applications, impacting the business and the way in which certain processes get done. We've been preaching that while both elements are important and enterprises can focus on either or both, the more significant ROI will come from the UC BP side. Still, many enterprises have begun on the road to UC focusing on the User Productivity elements--how UC impacts individual users and teams or workgroups--and there are significant benefits to be gained by going down that road.

My colleague Nancy Jamison and I are in the process of conducting a UC End User Productivity study, which we expect to publish in June. Rather than talking primarily with the IT managers who are responsible for implementing and running the UC systems, we've been talking with the people who actually use UC; we're trying to find out whether and how it impacts their day-to-day jobs.

Of course, it's always a challenge to find users willing to talk, but those that do seem to be really happy campers--they LOVE their UC systems. In fact, when asked "What would you do or how would you react if your UC system was taken away from you?" we got similar responses from all the respondents so far, ranging from "I'd scream" to "it would be painful" to "I can't imagine working without it."

Several respondents liken UC to email--it's hard to identify the time savings, but it's a tool that eases communications and helps you better do your job. Whether UC saves you 30 minutes a day or 3 hours isn't the point--it helps improve productivity and effectiveness. As one user noted, "It's still challenging to quantify these benefits.... It helps productivity in a subtle way from a numbers standpoint, but in the end it's obvious that you're getting things done more quickly." Another told us, "I'm much more effective in being able to deal with business issues in a real time manner."

So, do you really need to prove a hard ROI to justify purchasing and implementing a UC solution? Yes and no. The audiences I've polled during, for example, the VoiceCon UC Roadshow in 2007, swung from answering overwhelmingly yes to overwhelmingly no. My general impression from talking to IT managers who have recently taken the plunge into UC is that most have done so without having hard ROI data to back it up. Perhaps we've reached a point where enough people and companies understand the value of UC and how it helps improve productivity and effectiveness, and thus the bottom line.

I'm still looking for more enterprise end users to survey, so if you'd like to participate (anonymously--all information is being aggregated), please contact me at [email protected].