The UC User Dilemma: If I&O Builds It, Will They Come?The UC User Dilemma: If I&O Builds It, Will They Come?

To increase UC adoption, it is imperative to understand and cater to the variety of employee concerns.

The term "unified communications" (UC) emerged approximately seven years ago. Since then, Infrastructure and Operations (I&O) professionals have widely debated its definition, maturity and viability. Although some of these debates continue today, the landscape has matured to the point where I&O professionals regularly plan, build, and operate UC systems.

One sign of market maturity is the alignment of vendors and enterprises on terminology and pricing. UC is not yet a commodity, but the term is well-enough established that ball-park prices for components are able to be defined. For example, hosted models for UC start with monthly rates at a low of $50 per month and can go as high as $150. In addition, a recent Forrester survey found that nearly two-thirds of IT executives are interested in unified communications and are well along deploying some component of the technology.

Considering the current maturity of the UC market, I&O organizations should be well on their way to ensuring that they have the right approach and methods to deliver the best value. In reality, many companies are faced with a user population that chooses to ignore the tools I&O provisions. To increase UC adoption, it is imperative that I&O professionals understand and cater to the variety of employee concerns.

One major concern voiced by end users is that real-time presence information will pose interruptions to their everyday work (much like e-mail was viewed in its early days.) Others may cling to stubborn "old communication methods are enough" mindsets and revert to existing methods of communication when they encounter UC tools that they feel are too complex. Video conferencing in particular is often met with hesitation from end users. While many may object because videoconferencing puts them on the spot when it comes to their appearance, there are also those who simply feel uncomfortable on camera.

After identifying the concerns specific to their organization, I&O professionals can begin to resolve the issue of limited user adoption by ensuring that they design and execute a comprehensive change management program and create a solid UC infrastructure. In recent research, Forrester recommends taking the following actions to accelerate UC and overcome common pitfalls:

1. Invest in a UC change management team and plan
Promoting the rollout of UC like a product launch, where marketing professionals can help craft a creative campaign, creates awareness and drives excitement in the user community. If business leaders develop the perception that a technology doesn’t deliver value, then the initial excitement and support for that technology dwindles.

2. Don't overly rely on UC vendors for training materials
Very few UC vendors provide training materials that are well funded, designed, or maintained. It is crucial that organizations that are deploying UC provide answers to ensure a more seamless user experience.

3. Assume users are not well versed in UC
I&O professionals too often make the mistake of assuming that users are well-versed in UC. Even with all of the recent trends such as instant messaging and video as a free service, users aren’t necessarily comfortable with the exact tools that they will encounter. Organizations should create initiatives to help users, such as wiki-style support groups so that users can reach out to other nontechnical employees to get plain English answers to their questions.

4. Involve end user and line-of-business executives in planning
It is important to engage users who are familiar with key business processes in the decision-making process of the organization's UC capabilities. These users are the players who are able to provide job-specific input and are key to driving a broader desire to adopt this technology.

5. Identify collaboration champions and engage them in early trials
Getting end users to trial UC helps identify issues or features that are important to worker roles that can be captured for training later, so don't place the technology solely in the hands of the IT professionals who are experts. Identify your collaboration champions and engage them in early trials in order to create users who can vouch for UC's value who, in turn, encourage others to invest in its adoption. These collaboration champions are typically users who "get it". They can articulate how UC directly benefits their job and can define specific cases where key benefits like increased revenue, reduced costs, and increased customer satisfaction are a direct result of their adoption of UC. They become the internal case studies that will attract other users to adopt UC.

Art Schoeller is Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, serving Infrastructure and Operations professionals. He will be speaking at Forrester’s upcoming Infrastructure & Operations Forum, November 9-10, in Miami, FL.