Who Really Knows Business End User UC Needs?

August 8, 2008

Who In The Enterprise Should Represent End User Needs for UC?

Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View

It’s getting very obvious that with mobile communications, teleworking, CEBP, and UC, every business end user will require more personalized capabilities than the traditional person-to-person forms of contact. The value of UC applications will also vary from business to business, as well as from individual to individual. The latter will be based upon their job responsibilities, as well as well as their work environments. So, when it comes to UC migration planning for UC, who really knows what end users need today vs. tomorrow?

Do We Need a New “C” Level Position In The Enterprise Organization?

Business management can take responsibility for business processes, but it is going to be difficult to also worry about every end user in the group and how they are using new UC capabilities. Did business management ever look at employee effective use of telephones in the past? The only thing they usually cared about was long distance charges, and even there, they simply asked telecom to report excessive usage.

So, if we now need to look at both effective and efficient business communications across all forms of contact, who will be qualified to determine what end users need and to evaluate the new usage metrics that UC can generate?

I don’t want to get into creating a new job title for overseeing UC planning and usage management, when we are having a difficult time defining what “UC” is all about. However, UC usage management has to be more than just about the costs of the technology and the ROI to the enterprise (UC-B), because it also has to fit the needs of different individual end users like a glove (UC-U) in order to be effective. In particular, Mobile UC, which will provide the greatest amount of productivity for both end users and business process, will demand the greatest amount of personalization and usage management oversight.

So, put your thinking caps on and get creative – send me your thoughts so we can put someone in charge of UC when it gets into your organization, including job title, skill requirements, and job responsibilities. (Should HR get involved?).

What Do You Think?

You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360.

Confused About Implementing “UC?”

The experts at UCStrategies.com published a comprehensive UC eBook that focuses very heavily on defining the various components of UC and how to systematically plan enterprise migrations from current communications technologies to a UC environment. Take a look and see if it answers your questions!