Top 10 Reasons why a UC Solution could fail – reissued (original issued by Avaya)

18Mar10

1. Misaligned business requirements — Everything but the kitchen sink

Many UC implementations fail because organizations use the wrong set of business requirements when determining the ultimate solution. What the IT department thought end users wanted and what they actually needed were often two different things. Many organizations find themselves changing mission-critical business processes to align with the functions and features that a UC platform can deliver rather than aligning the UC system with how the business operates and how users will put it to task. Although many of the leading UC platforms offer similar features and functionality, they do so in vastly different ways. These differences need to be taken into account when determining user and business requirements.

2. Understanding end-user capabilities — We needed a sailboat, you gave us a rocket ship

When technology is too complicated or cumbersome for end users to embrace, the result is simple — they don’t use it. Technology should be designed to make users’ jobs easier, not harder. Just because a UC system has more bells and whistles than users could ever need, such features may not be what they actually want. Understanding what end users will actually use, as well as the limits of their comfort zone, is critical to the successful adoption of UC across the enterprise.

3. Solution sizing — My eyes were bigger than my stomach

How much UC does the organization really need? The short answer is just enough to get the job done. The solution has to align with how the business operates and how UC will be used. UC is an overlay to enterprise organizational processes and is designed to help organizations operate more efficiently and effectively by letting people communicate and exchange information across numerous devices. UC also involves highly complex components and solutions, most of which have a “no return” policy. Organizations should buy only what is immediately required and add on components as needed. The right vendor or partner can help organizations understand what they need and what makes financial and technical sense. The most efficient and effective way to roll out a UC system

is in phases. According to Bob Hersch, Accenture global managing director, “A phased approach to creating a blueprint and executing the plan — combined with sound advice from solutions providers — will bring the best results. The whole implementation process should take anywhere from 15 to 22 months, depending on your network readiness, extent of projects and planning expertise. Move too hastily, however, and your organization may fail to secure enough return on investment and even expose itself to unnecessary risk. The idea is to spend only on the infrastructure and functions that bring value. Unified communications and collaboration solutions therefore should have a tag that reads ‘Don’t plug this in until you know what’s on the other end.’”

4. Vendor and partner selection — It takes two to tango

Selecting a vendor for its UC implementation is one of the most important decisions an organization will make. Vendors and partners have a tremendous amount of influence on which solution is ultimately implemented. Organizations typically evaluate 2.66 vendors before choosing one. Ideally, they should evaluate four vendors to get a solid assessment before making their final selection.4 But, at the end of the day, organizations, not vendors, have to live with the consequences if the implementation isn’t successful. Because UC is a complex solution, selected vendors should have deep expertise and be recognized leaders by the manufacturer. According to Info-Tech Research Group, Avaya and Ciscoare the only two market-leading UC platform providers as of 2009. The research firm argues that it does not consider IBM and Microsoft® leaders in the UC space because they do not offer the “span of additional feature sets that appeal to many prospective customers, including network security infrastructure, contact center and vertical solutions, or the ability to interoperate with leading solutions from other vendors and promote and facilitate third-party development.”5 Although Mitel, Siemens, NEC, ShoreTel and Alcatel-Lucent are seen as competitors in the UC marketplace, Info-Tech does not consider these organizations leaders based on key evaluation criteria.  Organizations need to consider their vendor or partner choices carefully, because the end result of that selection could prove vital to the overall success of their UC implementation. According to Info-Tech Research Group, “The fact is that for most enterprises, the selection of the product itself should be secondary to the strength and vision of the vendor, and the knowledge and expertise of the integrator.”

5. Wrong platform choice — All that glitters is not gold

A key challenge to deploying a UC system is in limiting the amount of chaos organizations face as they adopt unfamiliar technologies. Elizabeth Herrell, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc., says problem areas include system interoperability, infrastructure readiness and user training. Failing to fully address each of these points, she notes, could lead to crippling enterprise communications failures. “UC adoption is not a single solution but a process,” Herrell warns. “Without a clear understanding of how UC benefits the entire user community, many of its benefits may not be achieved.”8

6. Cost of investment — Champagne taste on a beer budget

While the upfront costs of UC systems may appear manageable and within budget, it is usually the longer-term costs that eventually put a UC project into the red. For example, a UC platform designed for a midsize enterprise with 1,000 users will require 10 servers in a Microsoft environment, five servers with Cisco and two with Avaya — an 80 percent cost difference in hardware alone. Add on the cost of hardware maintenance, system administrators and redundancy needed to keep systems online above the 95 percent required threshold, and an organization could be looking at a sizeable investment long before a single piece of software is installed. Many organizations don’t use the full array of features available in the most popular UC platforms, but they still may end up paying licensing costs for features they don’t use because of the way manufacturers bundle software licensing in “all or none” packages. Knowing the front-end costs (hardware, software, licensing) as well as the back-end costs (administration, maintenance, service delivery) up-front can go a long way toward understanding the bottom-line costs of a UC implementation.

7. Return on investment — A penny saved is a penny earned

Determining the return on investment (ROI) for UC platforms can be complicated. The metrics and measurements used are often arbitrary because of how the business chooses to measure its UC implementation’s expected return. However, ROI can be found in Internet Protocol (IP) transport savings, reduced mobile phone charges, increased employee productivity and cost savings inherent in a modern communications platform. Some metrics are more difficult to measure than others, so organizations need to find those that make the most sense for their business.

8. Total cost of ownership —A fool and his money are soon parted

UC systems are complex environments with complex underlying systems. Many of the costs associated with purchasing, owning and operating a UC platform are unknown until the system goes live and employees begin using it. Today, only a few leading UC vendors — Avaya, Microsoft, Cisco and IBM — offer complete enterprisewide solutions. Most of the ownership costs are not even discussed during the sales cycle primarily because sales representatives typically don’t focus on how IT will support the UC system after implementation. However, organizations with limited IT resources and users who are not technology savvy may quickly discover that their IT department is spending an inordinate amount of time answering questions and teaching users how to navigate the system, all of which add to ownership costs.

9. Change management — Didn’t you get the memo?

Many transformational activities fail due to poor change management processes. The speed at which business transformation occurs today demands reliable and well established change management practices. The right hand needs to know what the left hand is doing if they are going to work together. An effective change management program begins with a well-crafted communications strategy. Let everyone know what’s going on and when. Provide a clear understanding of the difference between individual and organizational benefits of implementing a UC platform. Who gets what and when is critical when laying out a business outcome road map and deployment schedule. Set expectations regarding what types of changes users and the business should see after the UC platform is rolled out. If people know what to expect, they are more likely to be flexible when things don’t go as planned. Provide user training. Users who don’t know how to use the new tools will become frustrated, causing adoption to drop, complaints to rise and a less-than-ideal transition to the new UC system.

10. Executive and IT sponsorship —all bark and no bite

A lack of sponsorship is one of the most important reasons why UC implementations fail. The technology could work flawlessly, costs could stay well within budget, delivery could occur on time and as planned, and users may be ecstatic about the system’s new features, but if management doesn’t like the new platform or IT doesn’t support it, the overall perception will be that the project failed to deliver the expected value to the business and its users. Simply installing UC does not mean people will use it — there has to be a mandate from the top that this is the direction the organization is taking and people need to get onboard. Without clear direction, the UC train will fly off the tracks at the first turn around the bend.

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