Driving workforce productivity with unified communications

Aberdeen’s research shows that unified communications (UC) solutions – both fixed and mobile – have a measurable impact on the productivity of an organisation’s workforce. Best-in-Class (BIC) organisations are leveraging their UC solutions as part of an integrated business process-mapping program to understand what is core to their organisation 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 organisations considered “providing their customers with more personalised 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 organisations currently face are the continued need to have timely and high-quality responsiveness to customer needs, as well as managing a decentralised 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 organisations 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.

Organisations recognise that one of the most important ways to ensure high levels of customer intimacy and satisfaction is through face-to-face interactions. As organisations 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 organisation’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 mobilise an organisation’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 organisations spent, on average, considerably more than what all other organisations 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 organisation.

Top performing organisations 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 organisations are more likely than all others to leverage technologies to create a borderless office – mobilising the workforce – to enhance that productivity.

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

• Process
  BIC organisations in this survey have formal policies governing appropriate usage, and the centralised management of UC solutions as compared to all other organisations.

BIC organisations 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 organisations 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.

• Organisation
  BIC organisations are 43 percent more likely than laggard organisations 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 organisations recognise that a successful technology implementation requires a complete lifecycle approach including consulting, implementation, operation, support, and training services. This organisational structure results in 47 percent of BIC organisations saying UC solutions greatly improve the use of human resources – four times more frequently than all other organisations.
• Technology
  91 percent of BIC organisations 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 organisations have call redirection capabilities in order to drive towards true fixed / mobile convergence. These organisations understand that the value of UC solutions has begun the process of extending beyond the walls of an organisation’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 organisations’ need to 1) better respond to customer needs, 2) better manage an increasingly mobile and decentralised workforce, and 3) maintain a strong and continuous work pace no matter where employees may be around the world. The greatest challenge for organisations is to ensure they are deploying the most appropriate UC solutions to the right people within the organisation. The effectiveness of a UC implementation and the productivity gains it will drive within an organisation depend on the approach that an organisation 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 organisations face in regards to improving workforce productivity and how they responded to those pressures from both an organisational and technological decision process. That being said, all organisations, 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 organisation 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

• Analyse core versus contextual business processes
  A top concern for any organisation is the ability to determine and focus its human and capital resources on its core competencies. Once an organisation has been able to determine its core competencies, it needs to also be able to assess which technologies will help facilitate those processes. BIC organisations are over 26 percent more likely than laggard organisations to have systems in place to analyse 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 organisations have deployed text-to-speech capabilities. BIC organisations 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 organisations 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 organisations 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 organisations 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 organisations is currently using these systems, these organisations should accelerate their adoption of the technology.

63 percent of BIC organisations 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 organisations 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 organisations 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 ad hoc basis. All organisations 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 centre, 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 organisations 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 organisations 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 organisation. BIC organisations that have been using a broader portfolio of UC functionality more frequently within their organisations 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 organisations will be to adopt a true fixed / mobile convergence strategy.

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 organisations 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 organisations spend, on average, 32 percent of their time teleworking – 47 percent more than all others
• 67 percent of Best-in-Class organisations say that UC solutions have increased the speed with which their products reach the market
• 80 percent of BIC organisations are using an Instant Messaging (IM) / presence system
• BIC organisations 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 analyse core versus non-core business processes that can leverage UC solutions

Fast Facts

• On average, organisations state that 18 percent of their budget is spent on telecommunications
• BIC Class organisations have increased their expenditures on UC solutions 20 percent in the last 12 months
• 63 percent of BIC organisations use UC solutions within their sales and marketing organisations.
• 94 percent of BIC organisations are using, or will be integrating, wireless enterprise applications into their UC solutions within the next 12 months
• Employees at BIC organisations complete nearly 25 percent more of their weekly tasks than employees at Laggard organisations
• BIC organisations find the competitiveness of their organisation has increased over 3x that of all other organisations