How to Unify all Communications: Get Social.
by Caleb Barlow
Just twenty years ago, businesses found it standard practice to communicate through telephones and face-to-face meetings. Now, as businesses learn the importance of communicating more effectively across a widespread network, their tools for communication need to evolve. In-person meetings and the travel often required for them, as well as traditional telephony, are no longer the most efficient way of connecting; more immediate results are needed to keep ahead of the competition.
Interactions with colleagues, customers and partners are now much more complex and fluid. Competitive pressures, combined with easy access to information online, especially from smart mobile devices, have set the expectation that collaboration occurs instantaneously. Questions are answered in seconds rather than minutes or days, as people from all around the world come together as if they’re in the same room.
According to the Census, there are nearly seven billion people on the planet, approximately five billion of whom have cell phones. According to a Nielsen Report, smart phones are now more present than ever, surpassing traditional cell phones this year. The smart phone is becoming more and more pervasive in the unified communications (UC) realm due to its rapidly dropping cost and accessibility. With the smart phone’s increasing presence, there is no longer a dominant player providing the operating system for how we communicate; phones can now do what computers can, and much more.
Additionally, with social media sites growing in popularity, a well placed Tweet or Facebook wall update is just as important a form of communication as a phone call. In fact, 75% of small to mid-sized business are using social networking in the workplace. Through enterprise social networking, businesses are finding that they can interact more efficiently, while still preserving the integrity of communication. With businesses effectively using social networking, there is a need to apply the same social elements to their means of communication.
Social networking sites are also becoming a prime way for consumers to obtain information on a daily basis and drive traffic to company websites. The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism conducted an in-depth study of detailed audience statistics from the Nielsen Company. The results found that Facebook, with its approximately 750 million users, is one of the most important news referring sources, driving unique visitors to five top news sites.
The way employees interact (forming relationships, making decisions, managing workloads and purchasing goods) are fundamentally changing. Investments in communications infrastructure can no longer just focus on the telephone. To drive greater success, organizations need to unify their traditional communications infrastructure and channels with the broader mix of collaboration tools, including social.
Traditional UC strategies include the intersection of instant messaging, video, and audio. Today, UC is evolving to include activity streaming, presence awareness with click to call/click to message, and seamless access and integration to social networks from a wide variety of devices and applications. This new form of UC, “social UC,” provides employees with the ability to take immediate action with their personal and professional network.
In becoming a social business, CIOs today understand how their employees communicate. They travel with their tablets, take sales calls in the evenings on their Blackberries and Tweet with their colleagues and friends. In what would seem to be record timing, social UC allows deals to be completed quickly; within seconds, contracts are signed and shared online. It accelerates the decision making process by reducing the question-and-response time, and allows business interactions to happen quickly and more efficiency.
For example, emergency response requires government and non-government agencies to work together in pressure situations. When the City of Fort Worth and Tarrant County, TX, needed a more integrated form of emergency response communication in the City-County joining emergency operations center (JEOC), they turned to social UC to better respond to calls and communicate instantaneously. UC software, integrated with radio-over-IP software, helped the emergency management team integrate push-to-talk radio, cellular telephony, and text messaging (including text documents and file sharing). This combined with Fort Worth and Tarrant County’s JEOC IP telephony infrastructure ensured an immediate response and aide.
In February 2011, Social UC technology helped more than 40 agencies and departments coordinate leading up to Super Bowl XLV at Cowboys Stadium. When an unusual winter storm struck prior to the big game, the JEOC called for full activation of the new emergency operations center three days earlier than scheduled, addressing the emergency requests and ensuring the game could happen.
Taking unified communications to the next level with social requires a few steps:
- Ensure you have the enterprise tools for social that will not only provide you the ability to find, reach and collaborate with experts within or outside of your own company, while also providing the policy and compliance management and security you need within the enterprise.
- Start leveraging soft phones (enables calls over the Internet via software) that can be integrated into your social applications, rather than dialing numbers. Give your users click-to-call capabilities and watch the benefits accrue from the cost savings of no longer needing traditional telephony.
- Implement a strong mobile plan. The number of global smart phone and tablet users is increasing; employees need to be able to communicate through these devices to make efficient business decisions. The increasing popularity of tablets and smart phones allow for work mobility, but it is up to the business to ensure its employees can effectively communicate via those means.
A social business relies on quick access to information that is reliable and focuses on leveraging networks of people to operate as one transparent organization. Of course, tools that are easy to use and simple to access are more likely to yield positive results from employee use. While UC helps lower travel, telephony and other business expenses, it leverages social collaboration, within the context of how you work every day, from the applications and devices you want to use, which hold the most promise for substantive business transformation.
Today’s social businesses understand why social UC is so important; the challenge is no longer just about connecting people for a singular conversation, but rather enabling them to determine the best way to reach a person and ensure faster access to information. With seamless access to new, social tools that make it even simpler to connect, it’s now easier than ever to assemble a group, regardless of location, and make a decision almost immediately. Organizations that realize the value of social UC as they evolve into a social business will outperform their peers.
About The Author: Caleb Barlow is director of unified communications and collaboration at IBM.
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