UC Vendors Must Guide Clients Through Business Process Transformation To Succeed

Over the past several years, vendors have worked hard to build integrated suites for the unified communications (UC) and collaboration space.  Mergers and acquisitions were prevalent as smaller firms with critical technology, such as Jabber in presence and Traverse in mobility, were snapped up to fill gaps in product portfolios of larger firms. In spite of this consolidation trend, the market landscape remains crowded with telephony vendors such as Avaya and Siemens, network vendors such as Cisco, software players including IBM and Microsoft, and even Internet companies such as Google.

But while the types of UC and collaboration purveyors have grown, the growth of the unified communications market, like many other technology markets in 2009, is uncertain. IT departments face numerous challenges including stagnant, or even shrinking, budgets and the need to introduce new and better service with fewer resources. For the past several years, IT spending has seen increases in the 3-5% range [per annum], but it is likely that most firms will push hard to retain flat budgets in 2009. UC suppliers now pitch a vision of business process improvement, such as Avaya’s Communication Enabled Business Processes (“CEBP”), but the reality is that few firms know how to successfully use these technologies to accelerate or transform a process.

As a result, UC vendors will be challenged to prove that the technology saves money, delivers on its promise of multivendor support and integrates new Web 2.0 features with an IT department's existing investments. To be successful in 2009, vendors need an action plan that addresses each of these concerns with both tactical and strategic methods. Tactical actions would include items such as ROI/TCO tools and analysis, continued investment in multi-vendor integration, and making products "cloud friendly". But the real win for UC suppliers will come from building strategic programs that help customers and prospects understand how UC can optimize business processes.

To win business, UC suppliers must help firms with this transition. First, a vendor should document and quantify the results of using the technology internally. It can then use these results to capture the attention of senior management and provide suggestions for initial steps in optimizing a process.  Vendors should also work closely with a few of their clients to create a baseline "HOW TO” template for business process improvement using UC In addition, UC suppliers should team up with system integrators and software vendors to build reference models for the integration of leading business apps like CRM and ERP with UC. One way to accomplish this is to deliver open APIs to the software and build a development community for support and product extension. A vendor that focuses on helping firms optimize a business process through the use of reference kits, app integration and strong ecosystem partnerships will move from being just a widget pitcher to a strategic supplier.