UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS : Taking Communication to the Next Level

Unified communications is fast changing the paradigm of enterprise

communications, and the vertical that is poised to benefit most from it is BPO.

UC offers new ways to stay close to employees, business partners, and clients

at lesser cost. Powerful new applications like unified messaging allow

organizations to harness the power of converged communication for complete

collaboration and mobility, creating a virtual organization offering optimal

opportunities for connection.

Evidently, unified communication fits the BPO industry with much ease. And as

in the current market scenario, the concept of home agents is growing since

companies want to cut down on travel costs and attrition. Safir Adani, CEO and

MD of Sitel India, says, “The UC concept holds a lot of promise to the BPO

sector in terms of flexibility and speed of the market.”

In the same vein, Vivek J Porwal, head, Business Unit, Unified

Communications, Avaya GlobalConnect says, “The BPOs gain primarily in terms of

improvement in productivity, improved mobility, presence, multi-tasking,

reduction of travel costs, and related stresses. It also makes possible working

from home.”

Commenting on the relevance of UC, Steve Tan, director, Marketing, at Aspect

Software, says, “The power of UC has already been experienced by BPOs and large

enterprises, and now it is the turn of SMBs to feel the difference that would

essentially reduce the total cost of ownership. Ultimately it is not about

mobility, it is cost effectiveness that will be the driving force for SMBs.”

The presence of a UC environment in an organization, and the use of IM with

other collaborative technologies of UC help in increasing as much as twenty

minutes of productivity per day for every employee. Apart from that, UC also

promotes green advantages by reducing travel and thereby reducing carbon

footprints.

Unifying BPOs



Today, BPOs are actively using UC by deploying IP networks as the foundation

technology and then deploying UC applications to provide a multimedia

collaboration experience. Although, it is worth mentioning that it is yet to

take its place in its broader sense in the industry, in most cases only pilots

of the technology are being incorporated.

Vikas Gupta, director, Technical Infrastructure Management, Tech Mahindra

says, “UC helps collapse multiple communication channels into one integrated

interface to allow highly optimized communication, as well as simple user

experience.”

NIIT Smartserve is also carrying out a UC pilot for internal communication.

“We are looking at major cost saving as a result of UC deployment. As of now, we

haven't decided any timeline for the implementation, however, we do see one

challenge in UC, that of recording files,” says Puneet Bhatiani, technology

manager, NIIT Smartserve.

HTMT has been using UC for more than a year now. “UC helps in the sense that

the agents can multi-task. And, up till now we haven't faced any major issues,”

says Subramanya C, global chief technology officer, HTMT Global Solutions.

Rajendra Deshpande, CTO, Intelenet Global Solutions says, “Contact centers

are definitely one of the early adopters of this technology and unified

communication would have a clear advantage in servicing our clients, thus

increasing productivity.”

Even provider companies like Datacraft, Cisco, and Avaya are targeting

complete contact spheres including captive BPOs, third party BPOs, and largely

known domestic BPOs. Ideally suited for the BPO outfit where customer bases are

huge, UC comes as a boon to the industry.

According to Datacraft's director, Sunil Manglore, UC is being rapidly

adopted by the communication industry to drive internal efficiency. He says,

“Enterprises across the industry are adopting UC to drive internal efficiency,

enhance productivity, and improve customer satisfaction.”

Working Together



UC very much relies on VoIP and pulls together unified messaging, voice, and
video conferencing, and the presence technology to create and secure

communication anywhere, anytime, and anyway through the enterprises and beyond.

According to Sanjay Manchanda, director, Microsoft Business Division,

“VoIP-based communication is fast gaining traction in the face of pressures to

reduce costs and increase productivity. We also believe that unified

communication can significantly reduce environmental impact brought by employee

travel.”

The best in class companies use a broader range of UC applications and have

seen immense growth in their businesses. More than 80% of them are using an

IM/presence system, and 81% use wireless email.

Apart from IM, PBX (private branch exchange), presence, and conferencing are

the other parts of the UC technology. PBX is installed by a company that seeks

to reduce the number of phone lines used in its premise.

Some people like Gurpreet Singh Kohli, GM, Network Practices, HCL

Technologies think that presence is the backbone of UC, and that it would have

been incomplete without this functionality. He says, “Traditionally, instant

messaging platforms have maintained presence engines in a big way where status

of every individual is available.”

Although UC has created a vast impact on the way employees comunicate,

service breach is one of the issues that on a general note organizations would

like to avert.

Technology Risks

Amongst all the risks that UC poses, IM perhaps comes with the maximum amount

of risk. This could be attributed to the high level of public IM penetration

into the corporate environment. Most IM users use services like the MSN and

Yahoo Messenger which allow transmission of audio, video, and files, and since

most of these services are free there is little threat regarding security.

However, they are prone to identity theft and identity ambiguity. The safest way

to ensure organizational control over identity and credentials is by

implementing corporate IM systems like Microsoft Live Communication/Office

Communications Server.

Though UC promises huge cost saving, the BPO industry faces some challenges

in implementing it. “We feel that the BPO industry is just catching up with UC.

However, the processes currently being run in the country are more toward voice

or independent processes where one needs only voice/chat or email,” says Avneesh

Mathur, director, Avis eSolutions. Noida-based Avis is a technology consulting,

integration, and services firm.

The current bearish environment is likely to fuel further interest in UC. The

industry is looking at cost reduction to enable innovative ways of their process

deliverables. BPOs have become more value conscious.

Earlier, Trai regulations were limiting the deployment of UC in BPO. But this

is no longer the case. With the recent Trai announcement removing all curbs on

Internet telephony, UC deployment is likely to experience an upsurge. In the

coming two-to-three years, the technology will integrate business process

software into communication tools and accelerate business across the industry

segment.

Sunny Sen



sunnys@cybermedia.co.in