Frank Braski has suffered through the hype surrounding real-time communications dashboards for years. But these days he says the presence technology is finally fulfilling its promise. RTC dashboards blend instant messaging, e-mail, audio- and videoconferencing, whiteboarding and file sharing into a unified view via desktop PCs or mobile devices.

RTC dashboards and you Before you decide if a real-time communications dashboard is right for your enterprise . . .
ASK YOURSELF
•	How many communications applications are my users using?
•	If I will be justifying the expense of this project based on productivity gains, how will I measure such gains?
•	Am I prepared for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol or other directory integration so that I don’t have to replicate databases?
•	Do I need a tool that embeds into my users’ most-used applications, or can I deploy a stand-alone solution?
•	How do I ensure that the tool will meet my company’s compliance and privacy mandates?
ASK YOUR VENDORS
•	What toolsets does your product include (instant messaging, e-mail, videoconferencing and so forth)?
•	How do you handle privacy and compliance? What is your strategy for communications record retention?
•	Does your system support standards such as the IETF’s Session Initiation Protocol?
•	Do you support mobile access?
•	In what ways do you let users customize their privacy settings and their view of the dashboard?

"I've been living with the promise of this technology for the past 10 years - we went through a serious period of disillusionment. But we're finally at a point where we can give our people actionable systems," says Braski, manager of high-performance workplaces at American Family Life Assurance Co. (AFLAC), in Columbus, Ga.

The technology, which attempts to meld enterprise communications tools into a single view, gives context to collaboration, including knowing with whom, when and how to make contact (for example, via BlackBerry or e-mail).

Braski combines custom-built and off-the-shelf RTC dashboards across AFLAC, which comprises 4,800 employees and 65,000 agents. For example, he uses a Unix- and Java-based dashboard to give independent field-force agents up-to-the-minute alerts about insurance programs.

Once they receive alerts, they use e-mail, IMs or other preferred methods to communicate with appropriate personnel. "We don't have a dedicated sales force so we need to work closely with our independent agents. The dashboard allows us to have proactive communications where they otherwise would have had to call us," he says.

AFLAC gains competitive advantage by working with independent agents in a personalized manner and offering them advanced tools, Braski says.