Webtorials and Avaya have once again provided a great reference for those considering a unified communications (UC) deployment. The white paper, titled “Why UC Implementations Fail,” reviews the top 10 pitfalls that organizations should consider when as they move through the UC implementation process.
MORE CAUTION: Moving to the cloud in 2012? Look out for these pitfalls
As Steve Taylor points is his introduction to the paper, one common need is setting reasonable expectations and offering the portions of UC that are most attractive to each individual organization. For example, he notes, “being able to customize your approach is key. Just because there are a ‘gazillion’ options doesn’t mean that every option must be implemented. In fact, in some cases there may be so many options that users end up resisting using the capabilities due to the complexity.”
Tom Cain, a solutions engineer with hands-on experience at Avaya, added that he has sometimes found “that there is lack of discovery on the interview as to the details of the customer requirements for the sale. I have reviewed many pre/post sales and the ability for any member of the team to state the customer requirements is often sputtered in sentence fragments. A good discovery will often lead to a … better customer experience. Know your customer needs.”
The white paper starts its “top 10” issues list by suggesting that misaligned business requirements, misunderstood end-user capabilities, and improper solution sizing are among the reasons UC deployments don’t always work well. The paper also concludes with some advice on the keys to successful implementation, suggesting what considerations need to be taken into account before selecting and deploying a UC system of any size.
Our thanks to Avaya for sharing their experience and to Webtorials for making this resource available; to download the paper, please click here.
Next time, we’ll report in from the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) being held in Las Vegas with some convergence-related news.
