Culture is Key to Advanced Collaboration

Organizations that deploy the most advanced Internet protocol-based collaboration technologies achieve more than twice the return on their collaboration investment and perform better than their less collaborative peers, according to a thought-provoking Frost & Sullivan market study.

"Meetings Around the World II: Charting the Course of Advanced Collaboration," sponsored by Verizon and Cisco, examines how busy professionals in businesses and government agencies use advanced collaboration tools such as voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP), instant messaging or meeting via high definition video or Cisco TelePresence to get their work done.

The study is the first to develop a model for measuring a return on collaboration investment, the Return on Collaboration (ROC) Index. It establishes a progressive impact of deploying advanced Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) technologies on business performance and measures improvements in areas such as research and development, human resources, sales, marketing, investor relations and public relations.

Advanced Collaborators Harness Competitive Advantage
The study also identified emerging business technology adoption trends and attitudes across the globe. Key findings from the study include:

• Businesses and government agencies deploying increasingly more sophisticated collaboration tools -- such as VoIP soft phones, immersive video and fixed mobile convergence -- saw a corresponding improvement in business results relative to the amount invested.
• The overall average ROC score was 4.2 -- meaning organizations received an average return of four times their investment in deploying collaboration technologies.
• The majority of organizations deploying UC&C report they are more successful than their peers compared to those not deploying UC&C (70 percent versus 47 percent).
• Of organizations deploying UC&C, 40 percent plan to increase spending.
• VoIP is leading the way for delivery of advanced communications and collaboration applications.
  

Why Corporate Culture is a Defining Factor
If you're thinking that simply deploying online collaboration tools will deliver results similar to the leaders -- then think again. Your work environment is truly instrumental to success.

How do the Advanced Collaborators attain an ROC score of 6.1? These organizations tend to have "open" entrepreneurial corporate cultures where individuals are accessible, and there's regular cooperation between business units.

"Meetings Around the World II confirms and extends the key findings of the original study and builds on those conclusions. This latest research shows adopting progressively more advanced unified communications and collaboration tools can help organizations achieve a corresponding return on collaboration and improvement across all business functions. This return was most dramatic in the areas of sales, marketing and research and development" says Brian Cotton, vice president for Information and Communications Technologies for Frost & Sullivan.

The Secret of Business Growth in 2010

Having had their fill of the economic downside, business leaders are truly ready for the eventual upside. Apparently, U.S. companies are preparing for a global economic recovery to begin in the first half of 2010, according to a new "Road to Growth" market study from AT&T.

Key study findings include the following insights:

Business Agility and ROI Pressures
In today's economic climate, U.S. companies have significantly shortened the time frame over which a Return on Investment (ROI) is delivered.

More than half of U.S. IT executives stated they are under pressure to deliver a return on investment in half the time than their previous efforts. As a result, two-thirds cited that the change has affected their IT budgets, strategies and priorities.

The study found that companies are less willing to invest in longer-term projects -- where the return does not come quickly. One CIO stated that IT projects must give at least a 100% ROI in 12 months -- otherwise, the project is terminated.

Shrinking Costs, While Growing the Upside
No surprise, regarding the top-of-mind challenges. Cost cutting and increasing revenue remain the two primary business goals. To achieve those objectives, survive the recession and move towards growth, business technology strategies are focused on:

Reducing operating costs: 87 percent cited "reducing operating costs" as "extremely or very important." Improve collaboration with customers and partners: 85 percent cited "improved collaboration with customers and partners" as "extremely or very important." Enhancing workforce performance and productivity: 83 percent cited "enhancing workforce performance" as "extremely or very important."

Rise of the Any-Term Business Strategy
The study found that U.S. companies employ multiple strategies to address business goals, and do not distinguish between short-term and long-term strategies. It appears that U.S. companies are reducing the time period for their long-term forecasting until after the recession is over.

Moreover, the role IT plays in helping U.S. companies achieve long-term strategies is very similar to the role IT plays in supporting a company's short-term business strategies.

Ongoing Role of Business Technology
IT investments and priorities are very focused in a couple of key areas. The study found that "business continuity and security solutions" will have the biggest positive impact on business growth as U.S. companies prepare for an economic turnaround.

This is closely followed by "enterprise mobility solutions" and "Web delivery solutions." Areas of IT investment that are expected to have a high to moderate impact on businesses are "unified communications services" and "hosted solutions."

For more information, and a copy of the executive summary, visit the AT&T Road to Growth Study on their website.

Managed Telecom Services Deliver Business Continuity Automatically

You never know when an unexpected turn of events is going to keep you out of your office. You may not live in earthquake country, or a hurricane zone, or a tornado corridor, but that doesn't exempt you. Everything from fires to broken water mains to police actions can unexpectedly mean that you're suddenly not able to do business where you thought you would that day.

Acquirent, an outsourced sales execution firm based in Evanston, Illinois, knows this all too well. When its eleven employees were told to evacuate the premises unexpectedly one day, they had no choice but to pack up and go. But the disruption was surprisingly minimal.

Built-In Business Continuity
Because Acquirent offers outsourced sales services, founder and CEO Pete Kadens had a high level of confidence in choosing an outsourced phone system. He had deployed Geckotech's hosted IP phone system, which meant that his telecommunications capabilities weren't even inside the affected location.

"We all just packed up our files, laptops and Cisco phones and went home," says Pete Kadens. "Everyone plugged in their office phones at home to their DSL or cable and the office was back up and running with no disruption of our business. Even during the drive home incoming calls were automatically redirected to our cell phones. Without Geckotech VoIP, I don't know what we would've done."

Managed Services Bring More Flexibility
Managed telecom services provide a great deal of flexibility for companies who don't want to own their own phone system, both in terms of adding people and avoiding capital expenditures. And VoIP systems bring added benefits in terms of integrated electronic in-boxes and easier collaboration between colleagues.

But they also bring an added measure of protection in the event of a disaster. If you have a small or midsized business, take a moment to think about how you would continue to communicate among colleagues and clients if you were unable to work from your office, and consider the value of managed telecom services in that situation.

Perhaps you've already considered a managed network services solution to reduce your operational costs, or free-up your valuable time to reinvest in your core business. Now you can add one more benefit to the list – have a game plan for the unexpected interruption to your business communication capabilities.

Unified Communications Helps Law Firm Serve Clients

A professional education trains someone to be a lawyer, doctor, or accountant, but it rarely teaches them how to run a business practice – that's typically learned from experience. Ken Wolfe is a worker's compensation lawyer in Chicago with 25 years experience.

When he hung out his own shingle, he realized that in addition to being a lawyer, he was now managing his own business operations.

Among other things, that meant making decisions about choosing the best telephone system for his business needs. Wolfe thought he was playing it safe by setting up his operation with phone and Internet service from a leading telecommunications provider, using traditional technology.

But before long, he realized he missed many of the services that had been available at his previous firm, which had used Geckotech's hosted IP-based phone system. Lesson learned, he switched providers after a year.

Hosted System Brings Voice and Data Together
Because the replacement phone system was hosted, Wolfe no longer had to worry about leasing, managing, or maintaining the phone system. Because it was IP-based, his firm was able to take advantage of capabilities that integrated voice and data together.

For instance, his employees could easily forward calls to a different number, such as a home phone or cell phone if they expected an important call from a client – they could also route less crucial calls to voice mail if they arrived after hours.

Because Geckotech offers a variety of reports regarding phone services, Wolfe Law could track length of calls by client, which made professional services billing simpler. It could also track outbound calls by employee, inbound calls, and call length, among other metrics. It was also easy to add new employees to the system, simply by plugging in a new IP phone.

Increased Productivity, More Control
Wolfe Law also benefits from Geckotech's 24-hour support from a local help desk, a dependable monthly bill from one service provider, and built in disaster-recovery.

As Wolfe says, "In my practice, phone calls are extremely important, but they also can be the bane of my existence. Geckotech helps me keep them manageable and under control. I cannot imagine running my practice without it."

When it comes to telephone service, bigger is not always better. Sometimes smaller firms using IP-based hosted services, like Geckotech, can offer more creative ways to help businesses to not only track their communications expense, but gain valuable business insight from that data. Think about what kind of data you might be able to glean from your telecommunications system.

Managed Services: Branching Out to Branch Offices

Companies with branch offices are facing a technology paradox: On the one hand, businesses are expanding their branch office locations by 6.8 percent annually. On the other hand, only 15 percent of those remote locations have on-site technology staff members, according to Nemertes Research.

Those stats beg the following question: How do you empower branch office employees with the proper technology when you can't afford to staff those remote offices with more IT staff?

The answer (as our regular readers already know) is managed services. Increasingly, companies are moving their IT assets out of remote offices and into either (A) a centralized data center or (B) an Internet cloud.

The march toward centralizing and virtualizing IT has some benefits and some challenges.

Next Generation Empowered Branch
The good news: Centralizing applications and IT infrastructure can make networks easier (and less costly) to maintain. The bad news: Accessing centralized applications from remote offices can be a painful, time consuming process. And application performance over a Wide Area Network (WAN) connection can be horrendous.

A range of managed services, however, can potentially eliminate those challenges. Application acceleration services, hosted VoIP, hosted unified communications and managed 3G services are now all mainstream solutions for branch offices.

And the trend toward managed branch office services will surely accelerate -- especially as companies explore next-generation technologies such as TelePresence.

The lesson for readers: Keep expanding those branch offices.

But, check in with managed service providers (from big companies like Verizon Business down to small companies like your local VAR or integrator) to see what type of managed branch office services they offer.

Creative Applications for Managed Network Services

Perhaps the restaurant sector doesn't immediately come to mind when you think of creative applications of current business technology. But, that's exactly why it can provide a distinctive competitive advantage for a savvy forward-looking company.

Popeyes quick-service restaurant was founded in 1972 and has expanded to over 1000 franchised locations globally. A Popeyes franchise owner of multiple U.S. east coast locations became interested in using the latest communications technology to reduce his operational costs and streamline back-office functions at each site.

This upgrade included installing a new voice and data network that could manage secure credit card transactions. The decision was made to research a solution to update communication capabilities with a private Internet Protocol (IP) network.

A network using Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology was procured, replacing the cumbersome and outdated analog communication lines. Once the private voice, data, and video network was in place, the next logical step was to determine how to further gain cost advantages by leveraging this advanced infrastructure.

Built on a Solid Foundation
After carefully evaluating several telephone system solutions, the decision was made to use a hosted Voice over IP (VoIP) service from Geckotech, layered over the new backbone network. As a hosted service provider, Geckotech manages an off-premise voice solution that has built-in disaster recovery and very high reliability.

The Popeyes franchises are now able to fully realize the advantages of an outsourced VoIP phone system without having to purchase, maintain, or manage separate phone systems at each location.

All restaurant sites can easily reach each other using simple 4-digit extension dialing. They also benefit from one consolidated monthly telecom bill -- which includes unlimited local and long distance, advanced features like Auto-Attendant, eFax, Conferencing, and Unified Messaging.

Moreover, all of the outdated phone systems were replaced with one advanced VoIP solution, using Cisco Systems hardware end-to-end. As a result, Geckotech enabled the franchise owner to prepare for future business needs, based on a solid communications foundation.

The multiple locations benefit from a built-in disaster recovery plan, which reroutes all calls to a different office location should any site experience a disturbance or natural disaster. The new voice system has reduced overall operational costs by almost 40 percent at each site.

The Power of Strategic Foresight
In reality, there are few enterprises in the 21st century that are inherently low-tech. Every industry has its early-adopters of business technology that assess all the options, survey the competitive landscape, and then take decisive action.

The rewards clearly go to those business leaders who keep and open mind, and willingly embrace change –- especially when it equates to a quantum leap in progress.

Globalization and the Small Business Teleworker

The trend of globalization, and the need to connect remote employees, now touches nearly every segment of American business -- regardless of organization size or industry. Here’s a case in point.

Founded in January 2001, Illinois-based Kirix began as a data analysis specialist for the recovery audit industry. They've done a lot of data analysis and software development work in that time and have had a particular specialty in identifying duplicate payments and other overpayment errors in large corporate accounting systems.

More recently, by generalizing their tool set and incorporating Web connectivity into their software, they apply that analytical firepower to all kinds of data -- regardless of where it is located -- even data that's on the Web.

The Borderless Communication Challenge
Benjamin Williams, one of the company founders, had been planning to relocate to Germany. As a valuable asset to their corporation, Kirix wanted to retain his services, but wasn't sure how the international transition might work -- particularly with the potential latency of connecting a Voice over IP (VoIP) phone halfway around the world.

Kirix turned to Geckotech to provide a fully hosted communication solution to enable their corporation to utilize Ben's services overseas, without compromising the quality of their voice and data network.

In this scenario, one feature has proven to be very beneficial -- four-digit extension dialing. This enables simple "internal" calls by dialing the last four digits of a direct-dial number -- even if that employee works in a different country, in another continent.

Unified Communications for the Teleworker
By using Geckotech's outsourced IP phone system, Kirix has been able to retain a key employee while conducting business overseas. The corporation's staff has been pleasantly surprised by the actual quality and reliability of their voice and data network.

"Four-digit dialing to my co-workers from Germany is obviously tremendous, but the quality of service is unbelievable," marvels Mr. Williams. "All that was required was a DSL broadband connection and my Cisco phone and I was making perfectly clear calls to my U.S. office as if I was in the next room over."

As more companies entertain the idea of employing the best talent that's available globally, the demand for the out-tasking of multinational IT and networking services will escalate. It's efficient, it's effective and infinitely more flexible to adapt to the changing communication and collaboration needs of a geographically diverse organization.

Simplicity of a Managed Service Solution

By out-tasking business technology responsibilities, you can avoid the need to manage equipment and add operations staff, freeing your in-house talent to focus on strategic projects.

How would that work in practice? Here's a case in point.

A residential Real Estate brokerage, located in Chicago, came to Geckotech as a new business looking to differentiate them in a highly competitive market. The owner was looking for something unique, a communication solution to launch his new business -- without worrying about how a phone system worked. And, he needed a system that would easily scale, as they added agents.

The owner didn't want the distraction of managing hardware, but needed a high-tech solution for his mobile workforce and wanted to use technology as a competitive advantage -- as well as a way to recruit quality agents to the team.

Geckotech proposed and implemented a best-fit out-tasked solution at their new office, which included a private T1 connection, Cisco IP phones and network equipment.

"We coordinated the entire process through a dedicated project manager who made sure that our customer was informed throughout the implementation," says Josh Robbins, managing partner of Geckotech. "The new IP phone system allows his agents to print only one number on their marketing materials and be accessible via their cell phones using the Find-Me/Follow-Me function of the system which intelligently forwards callers based on their caller ID and the time of day."

The business owner was able to open his new firm quickly and without worrying about the technical infrastructure. By outsourcing their phone and data networks, they're able to focus on real estate transactions and growing the business.

Because Geckotech uses industry leading technology and a Cisco Powered network, the brokerage operations staff doesn't worry about outages or equipment failures that normally plague small businesses.

In summary, agents are completely mobile and free to communicate at will with their customers. They can log into the phone system from any computer connected to the Internet and receive their voice-mails or forward their calls. This solution created the ultimate win-win scenario – overall simplicity, plus inherent flexibility, by design.