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